Killer Combo – “Saproling Salad”
This weekend was the big Commander Event and man did we have a blast! Be sure you check out our podcast on our experiences at Hall of Heroes this weekend, and look on our blog for Commander decklists and reviews.
Because I know you’re all excited to improve on your Commander decks, or to employ cards from them in other decks you’ve been brewing, throughout this week I’ll be posting Killer Combos involving the five primary commanders from the pre-cons that went on sale last weekend.
We’ll start with the commander of the deck I played, Ghave, Guru of Spores. Because I know some of your are new to the game, I’m going to keep these combos in Standard (despite the fact that the Commander cards themselves are NOT legal in standard). I want to be sure to share combos involving cards that most of you will have access to.
I call this one “Saproling Salad”:
Probably my biggest complaint with “Counterpunch” was the fact that it was split between a couple of different (sometimes competing) strategies. Ghave does a good job synergizing the dual theme of saproling tokens and +1/+1 counters, and if I was going to seriously rebuild the deck I would concentrate on what Ghave does best.
One card in particular that would be a BOMB in “Counterpunch” is Blade of the Bloodchief. While this equipment seems to be heavily vampire-aligned, it isn’t necessarily so, and Ghave provides a way to both turn those +1/+1 counters into saprolings and then to send them to the graveyard. Each time a saproling bites the dust this way Ghave hands out a counter and the Blade adds another.
How you use those counters is up to you. They can make for some chaotic combat in which your opponent has no real chance of blocking the right creature. They can be filtered through Spike Feeder for lives aplenty (even more if the Feeder is the one holding the Blade). They can even be a great way to pump up Skullbriar, the Walking Grave who should find a home in “Counterpunch” rather than “Devour for Power”.
There’s a lot you can do to make these Commander decks better, and you don’t need to spend a ton of money or go rooting around for old cards to do it. I think the one card that I was really disappointed about not seeing in “Counterpunch” was Doubling Season. As expensive as that card is now, it would have been really nice for Wizards to put a few more of them into circulation.
Rules Tip: Note that tokens DO hit the graveyard, but after they do this rule comes into play:
216.3. A token in a zone other than the in-play zone ceases to exist. This is a state-based effect.
This means that every effect triggered by a creature entering a graveyard happens, but there is no way to bring tokens back from a graveyard and they do not “count” for cards that check the number of creatures in your graveyard.
What additions are you making to “Counterpunch”? What cards are you rotating out? Let me know how this combo treats you, and, as always, keep it casual.
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