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Ghave, Guru of Spores

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Ghave, Guru of Spores

At a glance

  • Commander: Ghave, Guru of Spores
  • Colors: Abzan
  • Archetype: Abzan tokens/aristocrats counters
  • Power tier: mid-high

Cards

Gameplan

Grindy Abzan midrange/aristocrats. Flood the board with Saprolings and death-token creatures, then convert the board into incremental life-drain through repeatable death triggers while Ghave keeps the bodies coming. Ghave himself enters as a 0/0 with five counters — he can immediately start sacrificing/recurring. We don’t durdle into a wrath; we win by inevitability: a board that constantly dies and re-makes itself, draining the table every loop.

Key synergy lines

  • Persist + Ghave = repeatable death engine. Sac a persist creature (Putrid Goblin, Safehold Elite, Rendclaw Trow) to a free outlet → it returns with a -1/-1 counter. Use Ghave’s , Sacrifice a creature: put a +1/+1 counter` (on the persist creature) to cancel the -1/-1, resetting persist. Each cycle = a death trigger. With Falkenrath Noble out, every one of those deaths drains a player for 1 and gains you 1 — a slow-but-real mana-into-life-loss loop.
  • Cauldron Familiar + Food. Familiar drains 1 on each ETB; sacrifice it to any outlet, then return it by sacrificing a Food (Filigree-style Food sources, Witch’s Cauldron-adjacent, Mintstrosity-type). Even without a perpetual Food chain, it’s repeatable drain fodder for Ghave and Falkenrath Noble.
  • Counter-dump dorks. Servant of the Scale, Iron Apprentice, Star Pupil enter with counters and move them to another creature when they die — sacrifice them to Ghave/a free outlet and bank the counters onto a threat (or onto Ghave to make more Saprolings).
  • Mortician Beetle / Rot Shambler / Voracious Vermin balloon every time a creature is sacrificed or dies — free sac outlets turn the whole board into their growth.
  • Free outlets: Carrion Feeder, Viscera Seer, Bloodthrone Vampire let you sacrifice at no mana, so Ghave’s per-token cost is the only tax and the death triggers are free.
  • Saproling/token engines: Saproling Migration, Selesnya Evangel, Undercellar Myconid (token on ETB and death + mana), the Thallids, plus all the “dies → make a token” one-drops give Ghave endless counter-removal targets and sac fodder.

Role breakdown (with counts)

  • Lands: 36 — three Thriving lands, three guildgates, four taplands, Command Tower / Path of Ancestry, two fetch-to-basic + Ash Barrens, and 18 basics (7 Forest / 6 Swamp / 5 Plains).
  • Ramp / fixing: 11 — Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Commander’s Sphere, Manalith, Mind Stone, Rampant Growth, Cultivate, Kodama’s Reach, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Wood Elves, Yavimaya Elder. (Most double as color fixing; the green ramp also feeds the sac engine.)
  • Card advantage: 10 — Sign in Blood, Read the Bones, Night’s Whisper, Village Rites, Costly Plunder, Deadly Dispute, Witch’s Cauldron, Elvish Visionary, Llanowar Visionary, Feral Prowler. (Phyrexian Vivisector adds repeatable death-scry on top.)
  • Spot removal / interaction: 8 — Fleshbag Marauder, Slum Reaper, Murder, Cast Down, Eyeblight’s Ending, Tragic Slip, Bone Splinters, Final Payment. (The two edict bodies double as sac payoffs.)
  • Mass / pseudo-wipe: 3 — Drown in Sorrow, Festercreep, Pestilence. Pestilence doubles as a repeatable drain wincon; all three kill our own small creatures, which is fuel for Falkenrath Noble drains.
  • Engine / payoffs (rest): sac outlets, persist creatures, counter-dump dorks, aristocrat drains, Saproling/token makers.

Manabase / fixing note

~18 fixing sources (3 Thriving “any-but-X” lands, 3 guildgates, Command Tower, Path of Ancestry, Subterranean Cavern, the any-color rocks Sol Ring-adjacent Manalith/Commander’s Sphere/Arcane Signet, plus Cultivate/Kodama/Sakura/Wood Elves/Yavimaya fetching basics) make all three colors castable; black is the deepest color so Swamp is weighted highest.

Pilot notes

  • Cast Ghave on curve; he’s resilient because counters re-spread. Don’t over-extend into a known board wipe — the deck rebuilds from one-drops and token spells fast.
  • Sequence free outlets before Ghave activations so growth creatures (Mortician Beetle, Rot Shambler) catch every death.
  • Falkenrath Noble is the engine piece — protect it; it converts every Ghave loop and every wipe into table-wide damage.
  • Pestilence is your closer in a grind: with a wide-enough board and life buffer, ping the table down while your token-makers and persist creatures shrug it off.

Weaknesses

  • No true free/infinite combo at common — wins are incremental, so very fast combo decks can race you.
  • Graveyard hate slows the persist/recursion grind.
  • Heavy reliance on small bodies means a well-timed exile-based wipe (rare at this table’s power) hurts more than a destroy-based one. Falkenrath Noble dying mid-loop stalls the drain.

Decklist

⬇ Download as .txt — paste into Moxfield, Archidekt, or MTG Arena.

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