While he may not have won the tournament, Adam Bowman made waves at the StarCityGames Open in Cincinnati with his Slivers deck, sneaking into Top 8 as the
eighth seed. Unfortunately, he fell to a bad matchup in Todd Anderson’s Infect deck in the Top 8.
Slivers plays out similarly to Merfolk in that it wants to go wide with creatures and “lords” that pump all of their other creatures. That’s about where
the similarities end though. Slivers can grant their creatures a host of abilities that are helpful in any number of situations. Necrotic Sliver, in
particular, is great at handling random issues. Manaweft Sliver enables some busted turns and makes casting Collected Company relatively easy. We also saw
Adam set up Manaweft Sliver alongside Sliver Hive and Necrotic Sliver to basically put his opponents in the lock.
As we saw on coverage, Adam continually walked his opponents into falling for his crazy shenanigans. Lifelink, haste, vigilance, flying, and +1/+1 are
among some of the crazy stuff he can accomplish at instant speed thanks to Aether Vial or Collected Company. If you’re not familiar with every Sliver out
there, perhaps it’s time to become acquainted with them.
As the commentators mentioned on coverage, Abrupt Decay might not be the right card for the job. Dismember also stops the Splinter Twin deck and is
actually castable. Sure, you can lose to Dispel, but this deck doesn’t exactly give them enough time. I also think the sideboard could be better, as it
just looks like a random collection of Slivers. However, with Sliver Hive and Cavern of Souls, your options are certainly limited.
Collected Company appears to have given new life to numerous archetypes, but I don’t think anyone could have predicted Slivers making a Top 8!
Creatures (30)
- 3 Sedge Sliver
- 1 Darkheart Sliver
- 2 Necrotic Sliver
- 4 Sinew Sliver
- 2 Blur Sliver
- 2 Sentinel Sliver
- 4 Predatory Sliver
- 4 Galerider Sliver
- 1 Syphon Sliver
- 4 Manaweft Sliver
- 3 Diffusion Sliver
Lands (20)
Spells (10)
