Slivers!

8.30.04 

Hey all, and welcome back to the Magic Deck Garage! Sorry for the delay between articles, but GenCon struck! For those who haven’t had the chance to go to GenCon – find a way! Sometime in your life, you must find a way to scrape together the cash, time, and will to go. It is such a blast! The only bad part is that it eventually does end and you have to come back to reality. On that point, if any of you have had to wait a while for an answer to your e-mails – blame GenCon. I am slowly working my way back through 30+ e-mails, all requesting help with decks. I’m not ignoring you; I’m just a slow typer.

Ok, four exclamation points and a lengthy explanation later, I’m back on track. This week, I was sent a Sliver deck by Vincent. Here’s Vincent’s e-mail…

I have a sliver deck that I would like to improve on. I'm not to concerned about budget. I have only been playing Magic for about a year and I need a good deck for tournaments.

Sliver Deck

Lands (26)

6 Islands

2 Lonley Sandbars

8 Plains

3 Secluded Steppe

7 Forests

Creatures (20)

3 Winged Slivers

4 Plated Slivers

3 Ward Slivers

1 Windborn Muse

1 Root Sliver

1 Essence Sliver

1 Vine Trellis

1 Krosan Wayfarer

1 Angel of Mercy

3 Shifting Slivers

1 Brood Sliver

Other(16)

3 Pacifism

1 Index

1 Remove Soul

1 Naturalize

1 Awe Strike

1 Frozen Solid

1 Righteous Cause

1 Flash Counter

1 Demistify

2 Explosive Vegetation

2 Tribal Unity

1 Crown of Vigor

I would like to add some more Slivers to this deck and find a way to deal with really powerful enemy monsters.

Thanks,

Vincent

OK, Vincent said he wants to get into tournament play. Since it hasn’t quite rolled around to Extended season yet, I am going to hook Vincent up with a Type II deck so he can jump right into Friday Night Magic piloting Slivers.

The first thing I’d like to do is make the deck Type II legal. Unfortunately, this means a few Slivers in the current decklist have to make the trip.

-3 Winged Slivers

Now that we’ve done that, I have to give major props to Vincent for only having three colors in his Sliver deck. Working in a game store, I see a *ton* of Sliver decks come through, and almost every one of them is piloting five colors. The problem with this is that you will tend to have mana issues when you run five colors (without using major mana fixers), so I always have to tell people to cut it down to three.

However, I do want to swap out one of the colors. Looking at the Slivers available to Vincent, I think green is (by far) the weakest color. Instead of green, I want to put in red Slivers, all three of which seem to be really good. So, since we’re pulling green…

-1 Brood Sliver

-1 Crown of Vigor

-2 Explosive Vegetation

-7 Forest

-1 Krosan Wayfarer

-1 Naturalize

-1 Root Sliver

-2 Tribal Unity

-1 Vine Trellis

Next, let’s start from the bottom and build up. What’s the bottom? Well, Vincent is using a Sliver deck, so…why not start with the Slivers?

-4 Plated Sliver

+4 Hunter Sliver

Of the nine Slivers available to these three colors (red, white, and blue), I like Plated Sliver the least. Yes, it is cheap, but it isn’t that *good*. How many of you would play a 1/2 for W? What if it made a lot of your creatures +0/+1? I’m not sure I would at all – there just isn’t enough benefit. However, giving all of your creatures Provoke (in a world filled with Arcbound guys, Disciples, Eternal Witnesses, etc.) is extremely useful, especially since small creatures seem to be reigning supreme.

+4 Blade Sliver

I would, however, pay for a creature that gave a bonus to the power of all of my creatures, and Blade Sliver is just that. I’m not sure I would be down with all of my creatures getting +0/+2 because of a pair of sub-par creatures, but a +2/+0 to a lot of my creatures makes me smile. I hope that made sense.

-1 Angel of Mercy

-1 Windborn Muse

+1 Shifting Sliver

I absolutely love making unblockable creatures, and with the current Type II environment, it is rather hard to do so with convential means, like giving creatures fear (through, say, Cover of Darkness) – there are just too many answers. Fortunately, many of those answers (Naturalize or black/artifact creatures) don’t apply to Shifting Sliver, so I upped the count in Vincent’s deck to four. At the same time, I cleared out Angel of Mercy and Windborn Muse, only on the grounds that they don’t fit the theme of his deck.

+3 Magma Sliver

If there is a frightening card in this deck, it is Magma Sliver. If Vincent leaves a single creature back, then his entire team becomes extremely frightening. His opponent will not really want to let a single card through, because if he/she does, then they are setting themselves up to take a *lot* of damage.

+1 Essence Sliver

I just upped the count on the Essence Sliver, if only because I wanted Vincent to have another body in his deck, and it has a good ability that can help him get into the game if he gets too far behind.

+2 Synapse Sliver

Again, I added this guy to (a) be another large body, and (b) card-drawing is always good. Don’t forget, with multiples of Synapse Sliver in play, each time a Sliver hits can net more than one card.

Now that we’ve taken care of the creature base in Vincent’s deck, we can turn our attention to the non-creature spells. Since Vincent said that he isn’t too concerned about budget, and most of the Slivers are fairly inexpensive, I’m going to go out on a limb and include Chrome Mox into this deck, just on grounds that the deck is a bit high on the mana curve, and he could probably use the boost.

+4 Chrome Mox

Next, I do like the idea of using a few control cards to keep the early beats off. Vincent was already onto this concept, as shown with Remove Soul, Frozen Solid, and Flash Counter, but I think a lot of his 1-ofs would be better served as Mana Leaks and Condescend. Both only have one blue mana, making them a good fit for the deck. Mana Leak is obviously good in the early game, and Condescend’s Scry ability is also good for ensuring better draws for Vincent.

-1 Awe Strike

-1 Demystify

-1 Flash Counter

-1 Frozen Solid

-1 Index

-1 Remove Soul

-1 Rightious Cause

+3 Condescend

+4 Mana Leak

Finally, I’m going to adjust Vincent’s land situation slightly. I won’t go into great detail over it; I’ll just present it…

4 City of Brass

2 Grand Coliseum

7 Island

5 Mountain

4 Plains

In the end, Vincent’s decklist looks something like this…

CREATURES (22):

4 Blade Sliver

2 Essence Sliver

4 Hunter Sliver

3 Magma Sliver

4 Shifting Slivers

2 Synapse Sliver

3 Ward Sliver

NON-CREATURE (16):

4 Chrome Mox

3 Condescend

4 Mana Leak

3 Pacifism

LAND (22):

4 City of Brass

2 Grand Coliseum

7 Island

5 Mountain

4 Plains

Hopefully, Vincent will experience a bit better luck in his local tournaments with this version of a Sliver deck. Good luck, Vincent, and let me know how you do!

That about wraps it up for this week; I hope y’all enjoyed the article. As GenCon has passed and I am back on a normal schedule, I’ll be back next week at the standard time (Monday morning) with another Magic Deck Garage.

Remember, if you’d like to have your deck in the Magic Deck Garage, drop me an e-mail at Hagan0001@aol.com, and I’ll get back with you a.s.a.p.

Happy gaming!

-Paul Hagan

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