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blogging-phelddagrif · 7 years ago

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EDH Deck Tech: Ghave, Guru of Spores

[you can see every deck tech here]

Hello & welcome to this weekly deck tech! This week it’s time for some EDH and since there was the release of the new Commander 2017 products yesterday, I wanted to talk about something in the same vein as those products, being a tribal deck. So I thought to myself “what’s the coolest tribe out there that not everyone has already built” and obviously the answer is: Ghaves, Guru of Spores.

Ghave supports one of, imo, the coolest tribe out there; Saprolings. It also has an amazing synergy with the Thallid creatures, so you can easily make a deck that has both tribes working in harmony. The deck revolves around generating counters (wether they be Spore counters or +1/+1 counters) and making a bunch of Saprolings. I’ll go over the different aspects of the deck so that you have a better idea of how it works.

Fungus Half

As some of you may know, Thallids have the creature type “fungus” and mostly work with the Spore counters. They generate those counters in different situations or just at your upkeep and you can remove those counters to have some special effects. Most of the time it’s not really worth it, but if you put enough ressources into generating more counters than it can get pretty nuts. You have access to a lot of Fungi & Spore-related cards, such as Deathspore Thallid, Elvish Farmer, Feral Thallid, Fungal Behemot, Fungal Bloom, Mold Adder, Mold Shambler, Mycologist, Mycoloth, Pallid Mycoderm, Psychotrope Thallid, Rot Shambler, Savage Thallid, Spore Flower, Sporemound, Sporesower Thallid, Sporogenesis, Sporoloth Ancient, Thallid, Thallid Devourer, Thallid Germinator, Thallid Shell-Dweller, Thorn Thallid, Tukatongue Thallid, Undergrowth Scavenger, Utopia Mycon & Vitaspore Thallid. I know that’s a lot of cards, but by having all those fongus-related stuff you are making sure to generate spore counters faster and have better value out of it!

Saproling Half

Now that we’ve been over the fongus stuff, time for some plant stuff. There is quite a few cards that generate some Saprolings, sadly some of the good ones require red mana to play, but you still have access to some really good cards (there was a few on the fungus cards that generated some Saprolings as well); so cards like Aura Mutation, Death Mutation, Fungal Sprouting, Golgari Germination, Korozda Guildmage, Life and Limb, Morbid Bloom, Necrogenesis, Night Soil, Pollenbright Wings, Saproling Symbiosis, Seed Spark, Selesnya Guildmage, Verdeloth the Ancient & Vitu-Ghazi the City-Tree. With all those cards you’ll be sure to grow yourself a nice Saproling army that goes very well with your commander.

Playing with Counters

So your commander likes to make some counters and use some counters; you can use that to your advantage by making sure you generate enough of them. There’s a few cards that can make sure you’ll pump up your little guys to become huge threats; stuff like Bloodspore Thrinax, Cathars’ Crusade, Gavony Township, Hardened Scales, Nissa Voice of Zendikar, Sigil Captain & Winding Constrictor. All of your Saprolings & Thallids will become gigantic and you’ll be able to overrun your opponent in no time!

Fungal Reproduction

Since you’re already making a bunch of tokens and generating quite a few counters, might as well double the fun with cards like Anointed Procession, Doubling Season & Primal Vigor! They work very well with the theme of the deck and can make sure you apply enough pressure on your opponents. Never underestimate how out of hand these cards get, it’s CRAZY how fast your board can grow with these cards and how easily you can rebuild a board after a mass removal spell; these cards are very important. The only problem is that those cards are expensive...so if you’re on a budget I’d recommend dropping most of them for some more removal spells or ramp spells. The deck can function without and easily half of the deck budget, if not more, is from those token doubling effects.

Ramping Up

It’s just good to run a few ramp spells in an EDH deck that plays green; regular stuff like Cultivate, Farkseek & Kodama’s Reach. It’s really up to you for that part as it doesn’t matter that much and doesn’t affect the goal of the deck. I can’t stress enough how important ramp can be to make sure your deck is consistent, even if it’s just mana rocks. You can take out some of the more expensive Saproling generating cards like Death Mutation, Morbid Bloom & Pollenbright Wings for some Golgari Signet, Orzhov Signet & Selesnya Signet; that’s up to you really, but I’d prefer the ramp.

Removal Package

Some people don’t really care about removal but I think it’s good to always have a few options at hand, just some stuff like Mortify & Abrupt Decay. It’s good to have answers when you really need some, but if you’re not too keen on removal you can always play something else; that’s entirely up to your meta. If you play in a more casual setting, people tend to play less removal and focus more on what cool things they’re trying to do; while if you’re playing in something a bit more “competitive” or serious then you’ll need ways to stop your opponent from winning the game. Since you can’t play any counterspells, the best way to do that is getting rid of the threats when they’re on the board and the abzan colours has some nice ways of doing that.

Wrap-Up

That’s it for the deck! You really want to play around with all those Spore counters and well as generating as many +1/+1 counters and Saproling tokens as possible. If you opponents don’t have mass removal on hand they will have a very bad time. The problem is that if they DO have mass removal spells, then you’re the one who’s going to have a very bad time; the deck is very reliant on making a good amount of little tokens that will grow, but without your board you don’t have much interaction and you don’t have access to good card draw to let you rebuild...so just be careful. If I missed anything let me know. I’ll see you guys next week for a Pauper deck tech, since I haven’t done that in a while!

#mtg #magic the gathering #magic #magic: the gathering #magic blog #mtg blog #edh #deck tech

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