There were a few hiccups and growing pains along the way, but I love the spot where my Ghave, Guru of Spores deck lives in my local meta. He doesn't win an excessive share of games, floating around the 25-30% mark, but I really enjoy the engaging lines of play that come out of it. What got me to this spot were a few decisions that set my deck apart from other Ghave decks.
1) The Counter Suite
When it comes to a +1/+1 counter theme, big flashy cards like Doubling Season, Corpsejack Menace, and Branching Evolution stand out as terrifying stalwarts if you can enable their lines of play. None of these cards currently make the cut in Ghave despite the big effect they can have on a boardstate. Instead of relying on these players, I elected to only use their simpler alternatives like Hardened Scales and Ozolith, the Shattered Spire. Since Ghave only ever places 1 counter per activation, doubling the number of tokens only becomes relevant after stacking multiple sources. Casting Ghave with a Branching Evolution on the board alone nets four extra +1/+1 counters for two extra mana over Hardened Scales. This may be a difference maker between getting an extra big damage swing for Ghave commander damage, but the downstream tradeoff between these two cards is negligible and my early plays had two extra mana to play with. Playing both of these likely would be better yet, but finding the room for a seventh source of extra counters that provides no value alone is tricky. The upside to the Hardened Scales-esque cards are their bonus utility: Kami of Whispered Hopes is turbo charged mana dork, Ozolith, the Shattered Spire can tap to place counters, and Conclave Mentor has saved me in multiple games with the lifegain off of removing it.
A lot of the counters theme is taken up by cards that generate immediate two-card synergies with Ghave. These include cards that produce counters on creature ETBs, like Good-Fortune Unicorn and Renata, Called to the Hunt and combos that can generate card draw like Breena, the Demagogue or Leinore, Autumn Sovereign. Getting counters without using Ghave's sacrifice ability means I can flood the board very effectively with saprolings, and set up for bigger future turns with lots of bodies to either pump or to use as sacrifice fodder.
Geralf's Messenger sits in a weird spot in the deck. Undying sometimes can be a non-bo with the amount of counter generation, but getting a board state with just Ghave, Geralf's Messenger, and either mana Altar results in an infinite drain combo. He was a late addition into the deck after a heavy transition into both Undying and Persist, and is the only one to survive those themes being broken off into Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest / Meren of Clan Nel Toth persist combo.
2) The token suite
This portion of the deck has been the most volatile since moving the deck away from fungus tribal and into generic Ghave combo territory. In my ideal lines of play, I aim to win before Ghave comes down onto the battlefield, or I aim to set up as much value and board presence as possible to eek out more value from Ghave activations. Chatterfang, Squirrel General has synergies with every other token producer to get an additional body on the field, which mostly works as a redundancy to Mondrak, Glory Dominus. One of these two (likely Mondrak due to his prohibitive 2WW cost) will eventually be switched for the flashing Doubling Season, which then doubles up for both the counter and the token themes. Tendershoot Dryad is a glorious removal magnet. If it can last an entire turn cycle, the four additional bodies end up being quite impactful as either sacrifice fodder or bodies, and likely will be 3/3 at bare minimum thanks to the city's blessing.
The most important piece in this theme is a true hoser to any graveyard strategies. Nemata, Primeval Warden has caused so many groans over my tenure with this deck. Not only do I get value for each creature dying, but I get to shut down so many different creature recursion lines. Drawing into Nemata has the biggest win percentage boost in the entire deck.
3) The Utility Suite
The utility portion of the deck fits into a few generic themes - card draw, removal, mana ramp, recursion. My approach to these themes is to use pseudo-commanders. These are creatures that can stand up on their own and act out the majority of my goals when Ghave either can't make it onto the battlefield or if he gets hated on too aggressively. Some of these have already been covered, such as the card drawers and counter generators Breena and Leinore, or the token generators Tendershoot Dryad and Nemata, but my favorite include in the deck is Braids, Arisen Nightmare. The little sister of the deservedly banned Braids, Cabal Minion, this Braids works by taxing the rest of the table of permanents they may not be willing to sacrifice but that I may have an ample supply of. The sacrifice is optional, so this utility works well in a pinch if I need to guarantee a draw-three by sacrificing a land that no one wants to match. Braids alongside any stream of tokens ends up being a great value generator when compared to other taxing draw effects in the deck like Esper Sentinel. Paying the mana often times feels easier than sacrificing a much needed blocker or your commander on a slim board, so the draws are always plentiful.
