Sweet deck buddy, 1+ from me always happy to see a ghave deck that combos this well.

Hey man! Looking through your deck's sorcery list I noticed Nature's Lore. Saw your deck on a forum and you said you were looking for room to put in Vindicate. Personally I feel Nature's Lore is a little slow for ramp. Sure it's nice early game to help you hit four drops on turn three or even color fix, but overall 2 mana for one land is a little weak. Throw in Cultivate for cheap mana ramping. If you want to search for Forest cards than go with Skyshroud Claim. Or if you want to make room for the Vindicate, that may not be a bad switch.

This deck looks really solid. It does what it's supposed to do: combo off! Your strategy is to combo off before the other players can kill you or win themselves, so interacting with their boards is less of a concern for you. I'd add Dictate of Erebos and Butcher of Malakir somehow though, as those are killers with your commander. They will help clear any threats while you assemble combo pieces. I'm a big fan of using Oracle of Mul Daya and The Gitrog Monster whenever possible too. Nice deck!

You both have some good points. I'm not sure I'm willing to drop Nature's Lore (simply because it's so cheap and it's among my routes for a strong t3 and then a t4 Ghave). I'll test Cultivate out in its slot, but I'm thinking Lore will be my stronger choice, still.

And yeah, wavesport001, I definitely want to try and combo off ASAP to avoid messy situations which is why I don't want to remove my early ramp. Dictate or Erebos is one of those cards I've had sitting in the deck box forever, but I've never figured out what to remove for it. I may try it in Puppeteer Clique's slot or Eldrazi Monument's slot (probably the latter, now that I think about it. I like the Persist creatures too much, probably). Either way, I'll give it a shot. Thanks guys!

love the name of this deck. crazy amount of combos. +1

Hey, thanks man! Appreciate the good thoughts

Any chance of a Viscera Seer so you have a sac outlet that can be looked out with Birthing Pod. The traditional meleria/anafenza/Quillspike/Necrotic Ooze combos exist. Love the deck, best of luck.

Viscera Seer is a really good idea. It's strange it never really occurred to me to add him in here, considering I played Pod in Modern for two years, lol.

What would you recommend removing to add it in, lagotripha? I'm thinking about swapping Smothering Abomination with him, but I'll probably have to test it out.

I'd consider Butcher Ghoul and Greater Good- greater good is fantastic once you've got +1/+1 shenanigans going on, but most of the time its gonna be just Ghave, so it'll be a seven mana scry 5 draw 2- which isn't great, and you aren't running enough Primal Forcemage type combo cards to make it super worth it.

I just realized that I had Soul Warden in the deck, and made the swap to Viscera Seer. You have a point on Greater Good, though. I normally use it to draw 3, discard 3 and filter through my library by using Kitchen Finks, Puppeteer Clique, Geralf's Messenger, and Reveillark, and while it does get better if I have Mazirek, Mikaeus, Bloodspore Thrinax, Cathars' Crusade, etc., out (which, you shouldn't have to set up a draw engine), I usually wind up drawing 3 and discarding 3, filling my graveyard with goodies to use until I hit Reveillark, and then I use him to bring out Karmic Guide, then something like Mikaeus/Triskelion to win on the spot (drawing all of those cards on an opponent's turn, and then untapping to sac and then sac Reveillark is how I normally do it). I use it like a specific combo piece with secondary uses, but I'm open to any suggestions that might be a better use of that slot since I do see some problems with the card.

If thats how you're using it I'd reccomend Abundance, Foster, Brutalizer Exarch, Congregation at Dawn, Cream of the Crop, Hermit Druid and Primal Command for consideration- I'm a big fan of congregation with the number of creature combos you run and the way you describe using it, but they all have their uses.

What do you think of Traverse the Ulvenwald and Eldritch Evolution?

Eldritch Evolution will work great here- Grab a witness and a Reveillark and its a second birthing pod, but accelerates faster. Traverse the Ulvenwald is interesting- it'd make a great replacement for some manasearching but your manabase is already rock solid and you have around 1/10 cards as tutors already. Its the big difference between 'to hand' and 'to battlefield'.

I actually was debating about Eldritch Evolution for quite some time. I've been trying out Evolution in the same spot as Natural Order, as they each have their benefits and I originally couldn't decide.

I should probably run both, eventually. Grabbing Woodfall Primus, even with just Ghave out, feels extremely powerful since you get repeatable destruction at a low cost. Evolution has been almost exclusively used to find Reveillark or Viscera Seer, depending upon what I had in my hand, but that's still pretty good.

For spreading more counters across all your creatures, consider Nissa, Voice of Zendikar. Hardened Scales can help your counters be more efficient too. Pair it with Daghatar the Adamant for lots of counters wherever you need them most.

PookandPie You can't fetch for viscera seer with evolution. Even using a token, you still need to search for something with a CMC of 2

PookandPie WAIT A TICK! X or less! I'm bad, ignore me

lol, it's cool, man. It took me a minute to realize how good Evolution was, too. I originally thought it was going to be too restrictive in what I can search since I'd normally need a persist/undying creature to take full advantage of it (and half the time, those are what I tutor for), but I discovered yesterday that this card is absolutely nuts and not to be taken lightly.

I had a game that was t1 Birds of Paradise, t2 Saffi Eriksdotter, t3, Academy Rector, t4 Eldritch Evolution sacrificing Rector and grabbing both Greater Good and Reveillark, which I then proceeded to draw my entire library by looping Lark+Saffi, eventually reanimating extra creatures like Viscera Seer and Karmic Guide, the latter of whom I then used to loop Woodfall Primus with about 10 cards left in my library, ending my turn with almost every creature from my library on the battlefield, and everyone conceded (Mikaeus was in my last 10, and while I could have scried to him, I hit Primus first and just went, "Eh, when in Rome.").

Evolution is so good. Sacrificing Wood Elves, Geralf's Messenger, Kitchen Finks, etc., to get Academy Rector/ Reveillark/ Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest/ Sadistic Hypnotist/ Juniper Order Ranger is awesome, and even sacrificing Butcher Ghoul or mana creatures lets me grab Rector, so I couldn't be happier with the card. That was, like, the greatest suggestion ever and I'm probably not going back to Natural Order now, lol, since its use was basically, "Do I have a sac outlet? Mazirek, then. Do I not have Ghave, but have a persist creature? Juniper Order Ranger. Do I have to deal with a noncreature permanent? Woodfall Primus. Ghave and we have to play fairly? Seedborn." I might swap Order over Defense of the Heart, though DotH is really great at grabbing Mike+Trike with little fuss at low cost. Hrm. Decisions, decisions, lol.

Yup, seems pretty broken lol. I kinda want to pick up a playset of them before they explode in modern.

I'm not gonna lie to you Pook, I decided to build this deck last week. I've been trying to jam stuff in spots for cards I don't have yet. Evolution was one of the cards I decided to use and figured I'd ask if you liked the idea or not.

Oh yeah, that was an absolutely fantastic suggestion. The more I've played with it, the more excited for it I've become. I'm kind of lukewarm on Traverse the Ulvenwald simply because I don't usually have delirium before turn four or five (during testing, I usually only had a land, a creature, and an instant/sorcery), and it's probably because I run too many creatures. Due to that, Worldly Tutor, Eladamri's Call, and Crop Rotation are what I'm sticking with for right now, but Evolution is absolutely insane. I'm getting 3 more whenever I have opportunity, because there's a lot of nonsense it enables.

Since you're building Ghave, there's a new white creature coming in Conspiracy 2 that I'm super excited for right now, lol. I believe it's called Recruiter of the Guard, he's 2W and his ETB is tutor a creature with toughness 2 or less. That's another one I think Ghave/blink players will enjoy because if your creature base winds up looking anything like mine, it'll be able to find all but 7 or so creatures in the deck. No clue what to drop for it, but it looks phenomenal since it can find sac outlets, persist/undying creatures, counter sources (all but Mikaeus), recursion (Karmic Guide/Saffi, no Reveillark), protection, and Blood Artist/Zulaport Cutthroat. I'm hoping he won't be expensive but presales are showing him as pretty costly right now.

What about Mentor of the Meek? He's not necessary for any specific combo. I haven't made any crazy good use out of him yet but I haven't come even close to recognizing everything I can do with the deck either

That's a good idea. I was eyeing between he and Eldrazi Monument for Recruiter of the Guard, because both only really help in the event of having to play a fair game, though Monument does a lot more towards that than Mentor. Using Mentor in a combo requires you make one additional mana in a loop (on top of token generation) which basically means he's win-more since he already requires infinite mana and/or tokens to 'combo'. If you're already being disrupted to that point you can't combo, you most likely won't draw off of him anyway, lol.

Finding a specific creature would be better that draw much of the time anyway. That would essentially mean my draw engines get limited to Smothering Abomination, Fecundity, and Skullclamp, but I would have 15 or so tutors. So that still seems super reasonable to me. I guess I can count Evolutionary Leap, Solemn Simulacrum + Recursion (I may like using him in a Pod chain more than I should since he enables 2 cards, ramp, and both Reveillark and Karmic Guide in the course of two turns), Greater Good + either Reveillark, Mazirek, Bloodspore Thrinax, or Cathars' Crusade as 'draw' sources too, but they're a bit more unreliable, lol.

Good suggestion, man. Once the set releases, I'll be making that change.

Ivy Lane Denizen and Sigil Captain are two more in the Champion of Lambholt/Juniper Order Ranger vein. With these you'd have 5 creatures with this ability, making the odds of one being in your opening hand quite high. And it is the best stand-alone ability in the deck alongside Ghave.

Crystalline Crawler actually turned out to be a surprise combo piece in my deck. The ability to put +1/+1 counters on it and then remove them for mana has both practical and combo uses.

Martyr's Bond is basically super Grave Pact, as it not only wipes their creatures when you sac your tokens, but it also punishes all your opponents when someone tries to remove it or any of your other combo pieces.

Overall fantastic Ghave deck. I just recently completed mine, if you wanna look through, possibly leave some tips.

Ghave, Guru of Combos

I have always liked Sigil Captain even after I removed him a couple years ago, and I'm not sure I have any room in the deck for him now. Champion of Lambholt is just a cheaper option for what usually works out as the same ability plus some added benefits, while Juniper Order Ranger lets me go infinite with Persist creatures, which Sigil Cap would not do. If I ever want to squeeze in that effect again, I'll probably go with Ivy Lane just because it allows an infinite with Finks and Primus, though I'm not sure I could fit it in right now, lol.

I've never actually tried Crystalline Crawler. It can go infinite with Cathar's Crusade, Ghave, and itself, which isn't bad. I may look into that one some more.

Martyr's Bond is unfortunately too costly for the effect as my meta finishes games around turns 4-6, so I wouldn't have a lot of room to use it. Grabbing it via Academy Rector sounds hilarious, but grabbing Pattern of Rebirth and just winning seems a better option right now.

I'll check out your deck in a moment, thank you for the suggestions! I'll keep Ivy Lane Denizen and Crystalline Crawler in mind.

Came here from the "Advertise your Commander Deck" thread thinking I could give you some tips and then link my deck on the thread.

I am so overwhelmed by your deck and the ridiculous number of combos that I am not worthy. I leave you with this comment, a +1, and I will not post in the forum thread. Hope someone else does and gives you the advice you deserve :)