Am I missing something?...
Asked by Angel_Of_Deathx666 8 years ago
I've spent the last hour looking online to figure out what Ghave, Guru of Spores, Ashnod's Altar and Parallel Lives do exactly. Several sites said it was an infinite combo but it doesn't appear to net neither tokens, nor mana. So does it only cause an infinite amount of etb and death triggers? If so it's getting the axe in my Commander deck.
Angel_Of_Deathx666 says... #2
Awesome. Thanks Epoch, I was pretty sure I was correct but I couldn't find anything concrete after several searches that confirmed or denied it and several people had it listed as an infinite combo. Can't always trust the Internet e.e... I love this site I only wish the combo section explained what exactly the cards did together so this kind of confusion wouldn't happen. Then again I guess that's what the forum is for.
Thanks again, and have a good night. Cheers!
Epochalyptik says... Accepted answer #1
You're correct. Without some other component to capitalize on the sacrifices or without an additional token or counter adding effect, you end up with a "combo" that just allows you to continuously make and sac tokens at no cost.
Let's assume that Ghave, Guru of Spores has at least two +1/+1 counters on it.
Activate Ghave, Guru of Spores's first ability, removing a counter and creating a token. Because of Parallel Lives, you product two tokens instead. You've spent
to do this.
You sacrifice one token, producing
(and thus a net of 
because you paid into the process at the beginning with the activation cost). You then spend the remaining 
and sacrifice the second token to activate Ghave, Guru of Spores's third ability.
This leaves you with no net change in counters on Ghave, Guru of Spores, no net mana, and no net tokens.
You would need to combine this with something like Blood Artist, Doubling Season, or Blade of the Bloodchief in order to do something with it.
July 23, 2015 10:49 p.m.