Commander Deck Generator gallery

Ghave, Guru of Spores

Requested: $120 mainboard budget, bracket 2, intent: Tokens, +1/+1 counters and sacrifice outlets.

Mainboard price
$119.33
Estimated bracket
3
Model calls
2
Tokens (in / out)
6,604 / 4,277
Estimated model cost
$0.0012
Wall time
195 s

What the generator itself flagged

These warnings are stored with the deck. They are shown unedited, including failures.

Commander profile

Written by the model in one profile_synthesis call from the commander's card text and the evidence below. Identity, set and timestamps come from trusted inputs, not the model.

Token and counter aristocrats

Ghave is a self-contained engine that converts +1/+1 counters into Saproling tokens and tokens into +1/+1 counters. The deck aims to establish a loop between these two abilities, amplified by token doublers and counter doublers, and then cash in the resulting creatures and counters for value through sacrifice outlets and drain effects. The commander follows a standard value-engine pattern: it rewards cards that generate tokens, add counters, or sacrifice creatures, and it does not invert conventional card evaluation heuristics.

Win conditions the profile proposes

"in deck" marks profile key cards that made the final list. Others were cut by budget, legality, or optimization.

Build paths the profile describes
  • Combo-centric Aristocrats (mainstream): Focus on assembling infinite loops with token doublers, counter doublers, and free sacrifice outlets, using drain effects to close the game.
  • Token Swarm (mainstream): Generate a wide board of Saprolings and other tokens, then pump them with anthem effects and counter synergies to win through combat.
  • Counter Value Engine (emerging): Use Ghave's abilities to repeatedly move counters around, triggering 'when a creature dies' and 'when a counter is placed' effects for incremental advantage.
Rest of the strategic profile
Synergy priorities
high: ['Token generation', 'Counter doubling', 'Sacrifice outlets', 'Drain effects']; medium: ['Card draw from tokens (e.g., Skullclamp)', "Mana generation from tokens (e.g., Ashnod's Altar)", 'Creature death triggers']; low: ['Combat tricks', 'Voltron equipment', 'Landfall']
Anti synergies
description: Cards that exile creatures or prevent death triggers disrupt the sacrifice engine., cards_to_avoid: ['Rest in Peace', 'Leyline of the Void'], reasoning: Ghave's second ability requires sacrificing creatures, and many payoff cards rely on creatures dying. Exiling creatures instead of sending them to the graveyard breaks the engine.; description: Cards that remove all counters from creatures can reset Ghave's starting counters and hinder counter-based synergies., cards_to_avoid: ['Hex Parasite', 'Vampire Hexmage'], reasoning: These cards can strip counters from your own creatures, reducing the resources needed for Ghave's first ability.
Strategic constraints
mana_base_requirements: Three-color mana base with emphasis on green for ramp; include fetch lands and shock lands for consistency.; interaction_density: medium; speed_tier: midrange
Power indicators
estimated_ceiling_bracket: 5; estimated_floor_bracket: 3; notes: Ghave can easily assemble infinite combos with common pieces, pushing the ceiling to bracket 5. Without combo pieces, it still functions as a solid token/counter value deck, landing around bracket 3.
Value inversions
Engine dependencies
engine: The core engine is the conversion loop between +1/+1 counters and Saproling tokens. The deck must accumulate counters and tokens to feed Ghave's activated abilities., engine_card_traits: ['Cards that add +1/+1 counters to creatures', 'Cards that create creature tokens', 'Cards that double counters or tokens', 'Cards that sacrifice creatures for value'], dependent_outputs: ['Saproling tokens', '+1/+1 counters on creatures', 'Death triggers from sacrificed creatures', 'Mana or card draw from sacrificing tokens'], false_synergy_warning: Cards that simply drain life or create tokens without interacting with counters or sacrifice may look synergistic but don't feed the engine. For example, a card like 'Saproling Symbiosis' creates tokens but doesn't help convert counters, so it's a trap unless it also provides counters or sacrifice value.
Mispriced card examples

Evidence cited

SourceWhat the build had
Card textOracle text for Ghave, Guru of Spores: Ghave enters with five +1/+1 counters on it. {1}, Remove a +1/+1 counter from a creature you control: Create a 1/1 green Saproling creature token. {1}, Sacrifice a creature: Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.
Commander cohort (EDHREC)available: 8,259 public decks, general cohort, retrieved 2026-10-02 from EDHREC. observed inclusion rates only; no win rate or causal effect is implied; edhrec general cohort, 8259 decks, 285 cards
Most-included cards given to the profileForest 98% in deck, Swamp 97% in deck, Plains 96% in deck, Command Tower 88% in deck, Sol Ring 83% in deck, Ashnod's Altar 67%, Arcane Signet 67% in deck, Skullclamp 62% in deck, Slimefoot, the Stowaway 61% in deck, Corpsejack Menace 58% in deck, Doubling Season 57%, Swords to Plowshares 55% in deck, Hardened Scales 54% in deck, Cathars' Crusade 53% in deck, Mycoloth 53% in deck …
Community discussion (Reddit)0 threads. The search request was refused (HTTP 403) during these builds, so the profile had no community evidence.
Rules and reference chunks0 referenced. The reference corpus in the build database is empty, so no rules text was retrieved.
Tournament results0 decks; no tournament signal for this build.
Scoring signalsUsed: commander_cohort, embeddings, narrative, rules. Unavailable: edhrec, tournament_cwe. The legacy edhrec signal (a per-card table filled by a separate ingestion job) is reported unavailable even though the cohort data above was used; the project's evaluation report lists merging these two labels as follow-up work.

Pipeline stages

Deterministic code does the assembly. Counts and timings below are what this run recorded.

  1. Hard filters

    Color identity, Commander legality, singleton and per-card price ceiling leave 17,950 candidate cards. (1.1 s)

  2. Role scoring and Pareto pruning

    Each candidate is scored on synergy, mana efficiency and replacement value. Candidates dominated on every objective are dropped, leaving 1,275. 0 protected strategy and infrastructure cards are reserved before pruning so they cannot be lost. (3.9 s)

  3. Strategy plan

    Archetype general, status unavailable. Requirements: none. Final counts: none.

    No specialized archetype plan; existing protected-engine contract remains active.

  4. Role targets

    Targets come from the commander template, which bounds what the optimizer aims for.

    RoleTargetFinalStatus
    Ramp1213met
    Card draw88met
    Removal69met
    Board wipes22met
    Win conditions86short
    Tutors65short
    Protection86short
    Recursion53short

  5. Infrastructure and synergy fill

    Infrastructure placed first: Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Nature's Lore, Beast Within, Generous Gift, Stroke of Midnight, Swords to Plowshares, Feed the Swarm, Austere Command, Day of Judgment, Swiftfoot Boots, Lightning Greaves. A greedy fill then adds the card with the best marginal objective until 99 slots are filled (synergy matrix over 1,275 candidates).

  6. Swap refinement

    The optimizer proposed 18 one-for-one swaps, each improving its current objective. Under the production preserve policy, a change set must pass a function-preservation check. This one was rejected (supported_function_loss, unknown_removed_functionality, missing_one_to_one_substitution_proof, deck_support_loss_or_unmodeled_dependency), so the previous list was kept.

  7. Budget repair and rebalance

    The optimizer proposed 0 upgrade(s), 1 unbundle(s) and 0 downgrade(s), for a mainboard total of $114.73. Under the production preserve policy, a change set must pass a function-preservation check. This one was rejected (supported_function_loss, unknown_removed_functionality, missing_one_to_one_substitution_proof, deck_support_loss_or_unmodeled_dependency), so the previous list was kept.

    Mainboard total after this stage: $119.33 (99.4% of budget).

How the list changed between stages

SnapshotCardsMainboard priceChange from previous
Synergy fill (greedy assembly)99$119.33Starting list
After swap refinement and strategy-variant choice99$119.33No change
After budget rebalance and repair99$119.33No change
After the safety review's replacements99$119.33No change
Final list99$119.33No change

Optimizer 30.3 s, review 86.3 s, profile 71.4 s.

Safety review

One batched card_fit_batch call reviews the riskiest selections and a menu of alternatives. Bounded risk review, not exhaustive card review.

Reviewed 18 of 60 eligible selections, plus 8 alternatives, in 1 call. A replacement must pass its own verdict and the final legality, budget and role checks. If no replacement passes, the card stays in the deck and is flagged, as below.

Selections left flagged

Flagged cardWhy it stayed
Ascent of the WorthyNo reviewed replacement satisfies final constraints.
13 deterministic capability findings on cards in this deck

Final legality check

Recomputed for this page from the stored card records, separately from the builder's own acceptance check.

CheckResultDetail
Commander is legal as a commanderpassGhave, Guru of Spores
99 cards plus the commanderpass99 + 1
Singleton (basic lands and 'any number' cards exempt)passno duplicates
Every card within the commander's color identitypassidentity BGW
Every card Commander-legal in the stored catalogpassall legal
Mainboard within budget (commander priced separately)pass$119.33 of $120; commander $1.21

The builder's own acceptance check recorded 0 hard failure(s) and 9 warning(s), listed at the top of this page. Prices are from the corpus snapshot, not today's market.

Tokens and cost

Every model call goes through one client that records token usage, linked here to this deck. Costs are estimates at the configured rates ($0.06/M input, $0.015/M cached input, $0.18/M output for deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731:deepinfra), not invoices. The deck summary is rendered from card facts and makes no model call.

Model callInput tokensCached inputOutput tokensEstimated cost
profile_synthesis3,19902,447$0.000632
card_fit_batch3,40501,830$0.000534
Total (2 calls)6,60404,277$0.001166

Decklist

Grouped by the slot role the optimizer assigned. ⚑ marks a card the safety review left flagged.

Ramp 13

Card draw 8

Removal 11

Protection 3

Win conditions 6

Synergy and utility 24

Lands 34

Download the JSON record for this build, which includes the full profile, the stage snapshots, review and audit data, and model-call usage.