From Right Field - A Million Little Pieces

{From Right Field is a column for Magic players on a budget or players who don’t want to play netdecks. The decks are designed to let the budget-conscious player be competitive in local, Saturday tournaments. They are not decks that will qualify a player for The Pro Tour. As such, the decks written about in this column are, almost by necessity, rogue decks. The author tries to limit the number of non-land rares as a way to limit the cost of the decks. When they do contain rares, those cards will either be cheap rares or staples of which new players should be trying to collect a set of four, such as Dark Confidant, Birds of Paradise, or Wrath of God. The decks are also tested by the author, who isn’t very good at playing Magic. He will never claim that a deck has an 85% winning percentage against the entire field. He will also let you know when the decks are just plain lousy. Readers should never consider these decks "set in stone" or "done." If you think you can change some cards to make them better, well, you probably can, and the author encourages you to do so.}

Last week, you got a really, extremely, very long piece. Think of it as an early Valentine’s Day present from me to you. Hopefully, you’ll have gotten many chuckles out of it. In contrast, and for those folks who didn’t like last week’s piece, this is going to be much shorter in honor of its subject, Slivers:

Sliver
Pronunciation: ‘sli-v&r
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English slivere, from sliven to slice off, from Old English -slIfan; akin to Old English –sl[AE]fan to cut
1 a : a long slender piece cut or torn off : SPLINTER / b : a small and narrow portion <a sliver of land> / c : PARTICLE, SCRAP <not a sliver of evidence>

(From Merriam-Webter Online.)

Slivers have intrigued me, as I’m sure they’ve done to others, since I saw my first Tempest Sliver. By sharing abilities, they make the deck ideas nearly endless. You just need the right colors, lands that produce the right mana, and, of course, the right support spells.

Like any other deck, pretty much. Hmm… anyway…

I know that it’s late in the Time Spiral life cycle for me to be doing my first Preconstructed Deconstruction, but I was just too busy before now. Moreover, this is the only one I’m doing. As I’ve said before, Sliver Evolution is the only Time Spiral precon that really caught my eye, mostly because it comes with a Gemstone Mine. If you haven’t seen it before, here’s the Sliver Evolution precon decklist.

6 Mountain
8 Forest
8 Plains
1 Gemstone Mine
2 Terramorphic Expanse

2 Two-Headed Sliver
3 Bonesplitter Sliver
2 Fury Sliver
4 Gemhide Sliver
1 Fungus Sliver
2 Might Sliver
3 Sidewinder Sliver
3 Quilled Sliver
3 Watcher Sliver
1 Pulmonic Sliver
2 Spined Sliver
1 Harmonic Sliver
2 Venser’s Sliver

1 Avoid Fate
2 Strength in Numbers
1 Molder
2 Spirit Loop

If you’re unfamiliar with what I do with these, it’s similar to what other folks who have ripped off my idea do. What I’m looking for is to see if I can take two copies of a precon, smoosh them together with minimal help from cards outside of the two decks, and come up with one pretty good deck. If I can, I’ve given you a decent deck that you can build for about twenty-five bucks. If not, you know to stay away from that precon.

The first step is playing about a dozen or so games with the unadulterated precon. Some readers have asked me why I play so many. “Can’t you tell from just a couple of games what’s good and what needs to go?” Are you kidding? Have you looked at some of the decklists for precons? They’re so schizophrenic that even Sybil would say “You have got to pull yourself together.”

One thing that I used to do that I try to keep myself from doing now is predicting which cards will be good and which won’t. I found that I wasn’t very good at that. Besides, I also found that I tended to prejudice myself against cards. So, now, I don’t make any predictions to myself; I just play the deck.

(Thirteen games later…)

Okay, I’m back. And here’s why I don’t make predictions to myself. First off, if I had, I probably would have told myself “this deck’s manabase is awful for three colors. There are two lands that fetch a basic land. There are no spells that grab lands a la Search for Tomorrow. Am I really going to trust Gemhide Sliver?” Turns out the mana was just fine. I also have a new nickname for Gemhide Sliver: the poor player’s Birds of Paradise. Ponder this, buckos and buckettes. For one more mana, you get a common creature that does the exact same thing. Now, that one mana is huge. Birds help you power out three-mana spells on turn 2. The Gemhide can only help you power out four-mana spells on turn 3. Still, for what it does, it’s excellent.

Bonus Deck-Building Tip: You can even use the Gemhide Slivers in a non-Sliver deck. A Gemhide Sliver itself still taps for one mana of any color.

On the other hand, I would have thought that Harmonic Sliver would have been one badass. Instead, it was one bad apple. You see, while the ability to continually blow up artifacts and Enchantments is useful, it really bites hard when you have Venser’s Sliver on board… and there aren’t any other targets for the Harmonic Sliver’s ability. Guh.

I also would not have predicted how good the Two-Headed Sliver was. Come on, it’s a 1/1 for two mana. Sure, the Gemhide’s also a 1/1 for two mana, but the Gemhide doesn’t say “Hey! Let’s be aggressive!” The Gemhide says “Howdy. I’m gonna spend a lot of my time bent over, helping get these other guys out there, mmmm-kay?” The Two-Headed Sliver says “You want to swing with us now. We’re so hard to block.” I didn’t buy it. Until I played it. Then it all made sense.

The deck’s three combat MVPs were Spined Sliver, Sidewinder Sliver, and Might Sliver. I probably don’t need to go over their strengths… but, for the latecomers, I will. Those of you who know this stuff can skip ahead.

Spined Sliver: What can you say about a 2/2 Sliver that makes every Sliver a powerhouse when attacking? On the offense, he trades with Watchwolf and takes down Kird Ape without dying. Grrrr.

Sidewinder Sliver: One of my favorite plays was dropping a second-turn Spined Sliver and a third-turn Sidewinder after my opponent had dropped a Watchwolf. I could just tell that he was thinking “My Watchwolf’s gonna keep that Spined Sliver right where it is.” Not with the Sidewinder on board. The Spined Sliver gets bigger when it’s blocked and the triggered (Flanking) ability given by the Sidewinder makes the Watchwolf a 2/2. In other words, instead of a 3/3 facing down a 3/3, my 3/3 would be running into a 2/2. Typically, then, the Spiny got through.

Might Sliver: What can you say? He puts all Slivers out of Pyroclasm range.

There were two other surprises as far as I was concerned. First, Quilled Sliver didn’t impress me much. To use it well, I was required to keep guys out of combat. That’s not really what this deck wants to do. In addition, the opponent can see it coming. It behaved like a “win more” card. It was only useful when my opponent had no choice but to block knowing he’d lose creatures to that ability.

The other surprise was the Fury Sliver. While Double Strike is a nice idea, the Fury Sliver just costs too much. (I can see now, though, why the deck ran twenty-five lands.)

Finally, Fungus Sliver was just useless, but that didn’t surprise me. With that ability on board, opponents either made sure that the Sliver died in combat or didn’t take damage. His best use was with Quilled Sliver. After blockers were done being declared, I could use the Quilled Sliver’s ability to hit a guy (or two) for one damage, thus, making it a bit bigger before combat damage was dealt.

(FYI, I know that Slivers grant their ability to every Sliver. So, when I’m talking about, for example, the “Quilled Sliver’s ability,” I do actually know that all Slivers have that ability when there’s a Quilled Sliver on board. I know that I don’t need to use only the Quilled Sliver to deal damage to an attacker or blocker; any active Sliver can do it. I use such a phrase as a shorthand way to say “I tapped the Gemhide Sliver to use the activated ability granted to it from the Quilled Sliver.” Just to stave off those forum posts that people are already planning on writing along the lines of “Romeo, dude, you know that any Sliver can use that ability, right?” Yes, I do.)

Moving Right Along

The next step in my process is that I try to make a deck using only the cards that I found in the two precons. Again, we’re trying to make it as painless as possible for someone who wants to grab two of these off of the shelf and just play. After a couple of starts and stops, this is what I worked with:

Sliver Devolution, v.1.5

Chris Romeo

Test deck on 02-18-2007

Standard

Creatures (32)

Lands (24)

Spells (4)

4 Strength in Numbers

Playing this version showed me that Pulmonic Sliver could be a game breaker. When all of your guys can suddenly fly over the opposition, that’s A Good Thing. It also showed me that Harmonic Sliver really is a sideboard card. As a 1/1 for three mana, it needs to have an ability that won’t be wasted. Often, it’s not. Mostly, though, it is. When my opponent was playing with Enchantments (and the few artifacts that showed up), I ended up wanting to hold this guy until he could actually come into play himself and kill something. Why? Because, when he was already on board, he got killed first. This will definitely be a four-of in the sideboard, though.

When I showed this to one friend, he asked where Spirit Loop had gone. It did not impress me in the first version. I know that, as one of the new “perpetual” Enchantments, it should stick around and gain a lot of life, but it needs a creature to do that. When it worked, it was awesome. When it didn’t, I wished it was almost any Sliver in these three colors. If you want lifegain with Slivers, go get Essence Sliver.

Still, this version wasn’t too hot, either. Strength in Numbers was a nice trick, but typically the creature was only getting +2/+2 or +3/+3. Sometimes that allowed my guy to stay alive. Sometimes, it just meant killing both blockers rather than one. I wanted some removal that let my guys waltz through. Hmm… lifegain and removal. Sounds like Faiths Fetters or Lightning Helix to me.

The Problem with First-Set Precon-Decons

This is why doing precon-decons for the first set of a block is so tough. I want to stick with just the cards in the deck. I really do. But the card pool is too limited. I pretty much have to expand to the rest of Standard. When I do that, I just try to make the impact minimal. In this case, it was fairly easy. First, one of each basic land was dropped to make way for one of each of the Ravnica common Guild lands that was associated with these three colors (Boros Garrison, Selesnya Sanctuary, and Gruul Turf). The color fixing wasn’t as important as being able to pull back a Gemstone Mine that was holding onto its last counter. If I had to use that last one, fine. But I’d rather not be losing lands. The “Karoo” lands helped with that.

I also swapped in first Lightning Helix and then Faith’s Fetters for Strength in Numbers. While the Helix could go to my opponent’s head, the Fetters essentially did, too. By preventing the biggest creature from meaning anything in combat, I typically got three or more extra damage through.

Of course, with Fetters in, Harmonic Sliver most certainly had to go. Fortunately, I wanted to try Firewake Sliver. In the back of my mind, it sat in a corner saying “I’m really good,” but I just couldn’t believe it.

Until I tried it, that is.

I figured he was like Harmonic Sliver, a 1/1 for three mana with a so-so ability. Wrong. He’s a 1/1 for three mana with one fantastic ability and one situationally useful ability. You see, Firewake Sliver has Haste, too. Because of that, I often had this kind of turn sequence.

First turn: Plains, Sidewinder Sliver.
Second turn: Swing with Sidewinder, Forest, Gemhide Sliver
Third turn: Mountain, play Firewake Sliver, tap the Firewake and Gemhide to cast a two-mana Sliver like Spined Sliver or Two-Headed Sliver or tap the Gemhide, Firewake, and Sidewinder to drop a second Firewake.

At that point, the Slivers are vulnerable to being wiped out by Pyroclasm. So, if I saw Red mana up on the other side, I’d keep that one Sliver out of combat. That way, I could at least save one Sliver.

Typically, turn 4 was horrible for the other guy. I could drop a Might Sliver and swing for tons of damage, especially if there was a Two-Headed Sliver on board. Pulmonic Sliver was also nice at that point. Bonesplitter Sliver was fine, too. The second version of the deck looked like this:

Sliver Devolution, v.2.3

Chris Romeo

Test deck on 02-18-2007

Standard

Creatures (32)

Lands (24)

Spells (4)

4 Faith's Fetters

As you can see, in order to get four Firewake Slivers in here (yes, you want four), I had to drop two of something along with the two Harmonic Slivers. Watcher Sliver drew the short straw. Of course, it’s nice that everyone the team is immune to Pyroclasm with a Watcher Sliver on board, but it doesn’t make the deck more aggressive. So, two Watchers made way to for two Firewake Slivers.

This version was fast and fun, two keys to convincing me to continue with a deck. Moreover, I only had to go outside of the two precons for four cheap uncommons and seven commons.

But I Have Ten More Dollars from my Tax Refund!

I was pretty happy with this version (2.3 because I fiddled around with the numbers a couple of times before settling on these). In fact, I had been doing so well that I was a little embarrassed. Let’s be honest, a Sliver deck is the kind of deck that little kids want to play. What was it doing playing so well? This deck is a quintessential beatdown deck. Everything in the deck except for the four Fetters are geared toward sending creatures into the Red Zone. There were no recursion tricks, no direct damage spells, no board-clearing Wrath effects, no spells to draw cards or grab lands to thin the deck. Just thirty-two creatures and four spells to get them through.

To say I was pretty happy, though, isn’t to say that I was ecstatic. Sure, it had beat up on the Casual Room decks on MTGO badly enough that I had to take my act to the Tournament Practice room. Throwing Harmonic Sliver, Elvish Skysweeper, Loaming Shaman, and some colorless removal a la Serrated Arrows and Rod of Ruin (yes, really) into the sideboard, I ended up doing fairly well there, too. Empty the Warrens was a tough match simply because I hadn’t seriously considered using Pyroclasm given how badly it rips a new one for Slivers. Black Rack was not that bad since I could take out The Rack in games 2 and 3 thanks to Harmonic Sliver. The worst decks to face were the various U/W, B/W, and U/B/W Control decks that could wipe out the board and / or take out my hand. This does not qualify as news. Anyone who plays dedicated beatdown knows that Wrath of God is Bad for Beatdown. Dredge decks can often come back from a board-clearing spell, but most beatdown decks end up in topdeck mode after Wrath, just praying (no, the irony is not lost on me) for a big beater on their next draw.

What could I do about that with a few more bucks, though? At first, I thought about adding Blue for card drawing, or even Browbeat from the suite of Red Card-Drawing Spells. (Wheel of Fate? Hmm…) The two cards I ended up deciding that this deck could abuse were Essence Sliver and Chord of Calling.

Essence Sliver was the quickest and easiest change. I dropped the two Watcher Slivers and the two Pulmonic Slivers.

Hold On a Second, Cowboy!

“You’ve already dropped the Fungus Slivers. Now, you’re gonna drop the only other rares from the precons? Why even start with the precons?” That question answers itself. We’re only starting with the precons. Essence Sliver is an excellent trick, often better than the Pulmonic Sliver because the lifegain can sometimes be impossible for the other guy to deal with. Flying is a great ability for your army to have, too. Start with Pulmonic since the decks come with one. You can add Essence Sliver later. Or you don’t have to add it at all. Your choice. As of right now, we’re looking outside the foxhole for cards for this deck. Essence Sliver. Pulmonic Sliver. Whichever you like best.

Chord of Calling, though, what can I say? I think the best thing to say here is “… whoa…”

In fact, the Chord was so good at grabbing whatever Sliver tool I needed, that I decided to drop one Harmonic Sliver back into the deck. It was a fantastic choice. However, the Chord costs a minimum of four mana (to grab the one-mana Sidewinder Sliver) and would cost as much as eight mana (grabbing a Might Sliver). That means it wasn’t the kind of card that would warrant a four-of slot in the deck. Fortunately, I could simply drop one of each of the three most expensive Slivers for three Chords and one Firewake for the Harmonic Sliver.

Accord of Slivers, v.1.1

Chris Romeo

Test deck on 02-18-2007

Standard

Creatures (29)

Lands (24)

Spells (7)

The “v.1.1” is because I put the mana right back where it was. With the Chord’s triple Green in the casting cost, I thought I’d need more Forests. Turns out, that wasn’t true. By the time the Chord became useful, I had the GGG, but I needed quicker access to White and Red. So, back to the previous version’s manabase.

Back to the Future

This piece is going on longer than I’d wanted after last week. Here, then, it ends. Kinda. As for the future, Planar Chaos gives this deck Sinew Sliver, and we must find a place for it. The problem that I have looking at the deck as it is, though, is I don’t see anything that I want to drop. The logical choice, due to mana cost, would be the Two-Headed Sliver. My gut says that a 1/1 for two mana that makes the opponent block with two creatures isn’t as good as a 2/2 for two mana that makes all of your creatures bigger. That may not be true, though. I haven’t tested with Sinew Sliver yet, but the Two-Headed Sliver turned out to be huge. This may end up being case where I drop down to three of pretty much every other low-mana Sliver (Spined Sliver, Two-Headed Sliver, and Sidewinder Sliver). Those guys are too, too good, though. Maybe the Firewake Slivers will go. Haste may not be as great an ability on turn 3 as staving off Pyroclasm (with a second-turn Gemhide and two third-turn Sinew Sliver). Or not. I haven’t tested it… yet.

As usual, you’ve been great audience. I hope you’ll join me in congratulating The Indianapolis Colts on winning The Super Bowl. Thank goodness, I don’t have to write about “Super-Bowl-winning quarterback Rex Grossman.” *shudder*

Chris Romeo
FromRightField-at-Comcast-dot-net