Normally I would talk about the PTQ format here, but I hate Two-Headed Giant with the heat of a thousand suns. My partner is a good enough player, and I think 2HG drafting is a blast, but 2HG Sealed… ugh. So I’m skipping ahead to the next PTQ format, Block Constructed.
One nice thing about the cutback from five Pro Tours per year to four is that the seasons are much longer. Constructed seasons actually develop deep metagames that evolve over months or more, where in the past the terms “season” and “metagame” seemed only applicable for a week or two. Having seen how long Extended season went on and how much it evolved over that time, it pays to get an early jump on Time Spiral Block.
With this in mind, here is a deck I’ve been working on lately:
Creatures (28)
- 4 Wall of Roots
- 1 Basal Sliver
- 4 Gemhide Sliver
- 1 Might Sliver
- 1 Mindlash Sliver
- 1 Psionic Sliver
- 4 Telekinetic Sliver
- 1 Triskelavus
- 4 Darkheart Sliver
- 4 Dormant Sliver
- 1 Necrotic Sliver
- 1 Reflex Sliver
- 1 Sinew Sliver
Lands (24)
Spells (8)
The sideboard is still in flux because of the White Aggro matchup, which I will mention below. It’s guaranteed to include two (or possibly three) copies of Haunting Hymn, three copies of Might Sliver, and four copies of Hunting Wilds.
Let me just say straight away, since I’ve seen some people on the forums get up in arms about these sorts of questions, that this isn’t “my” deck. I first heard about it at the end of this Nick Eisel article, and Nick said he received it from Mike McGlinchey. McGlinchey’s sideboard was different than mine – he had Serrated Arrows, for one thing – and he wasn’t running Psionic Sliver. However, Psionic Sliver is a pretty obvious choice and I’m not even sure on my current sideboard at the moment, so I am not claiming this as some kind of unique mm_young creation.
Evan Erwin also mentioned Wild Pair + Slivers in (link to) last week’s Magic Show; his deck was also four colors but preferred Red over White, for Sedge Sliver and a Disintegrate kill. I like that idea, but it doesn’t solve too many fundamental problems of the G/U/B/W deck. Cards like Damnation and Sudden Death laugh in the face of Sister Sedge. Personally, I don’t think that you should get too attached to that Disintegrate kill either: if you can keep enough Slivers into play that you could generate an X of 10 or more, you should have plenty of wins that don’t involve sacrificing your whole team and potentially running into a counterspell.
Playing the Deck
The deck functions with two basic plans. The obvious one is as your typical Sliver deck, where you get a group of men in play to form some kind of Voltron Sliver which none of the opposing creatures can rumble with, and then crush your opposition with a single attack. Many times you will adopt this plan in post-sideboard games, boarding out Wild Pair for Might Sliver.
The second plan is as Wild Pair combo deck. With Wild Pair in play, just about any creature in your deck could start a tidal wave of Slivery goodness; while winning that same turn is difficult, most of the time you’ll get so far ahead that you might as well have won. For example, last week in the Tournament Practice room I was playing against a U/B Teferi deck. When he tapped low to suspend Aeon Chronicler for two I forced through a Haunting Hymn, and then dropped a Wild Pair the following turn. On the turn after that I went off:
(1) Wall of Roots, floating a mana in response to the Wild Pair trigger;
(2) Search up Dormant Sliver, draw a card;
(3) Play a second Dormant Sliver from hand, Wild Pair triggers;
(4) Search up Reflex Sliver;
(5) Draw four cards total from Dormant #2 and Reflex;
(6) Play Telekinetic Sliver, draw two more cards.
Yes, my opponent forced down Teferi off of the Chronicler draws, but with his Black mana tapped down every upkeep he would never have Damnation available. Plus, he was going to have to start countering Gemhide Slivers unless he wanted me to draw 4+ cards a turn for the rest of the game. I won shortly thereafter.
The Sliver plan is typically not difficult to play. You just assemble a bunch of guys, including a Might and / or Sinew Sliver, sacrifice your Dormant Slivers at the appropriate time, and smash face. The combo plan, however…
Sliving Wish
Congratulations! You have untapped with Wild Pair in play and a creature in hand. What to do now?
The important thing is to have a goal. Envision how you intend to win the game against this particular opponent, and then use this turn to reach that goal. Your combo-win plans usually take the shape of…
*Triskelavus. Checking the wording of Wild Pair’s ability reveals that your 1/1 Slivers can search up the Trike. It’s pretty hard to lose to beatdown decks if you have a Trike in play, mana available, and Evolution Charms left in your library. You’ll often make this play if you have emptied your hand to get Wild Pair out, and the best you can do in the post-Pair situation is a 1/1 Sliver. This is also a useful play for baiting Damnation or Sudden Death from a control deck, should you need to do that before going for a different type of win.
*Assembling a couple of Dormant Slivers and overwhelming your opponent with sheer card advantage, before sacrificing the Dormants and beating down for the kill. This is a fine way to go against control decks, as in the example above. Against Brian David-Marshall U/W build, I was fumbling for a kill because he had Magus of the Tabernacle tying up my mana, so I had to stop using Wild Pair (yes, it’s a “may” ability) or else I would have decked myself with Dormant Sliver (no, it’s not a “may” ability).
*The Telekinetic Sliver lock – you play a Telekinetic Sliver, and use Wild Pair to search up a Reflex Sliver. More slivers will usually precede or follow, allowing hasty tap-downs at will. This is a solid plan against almost everything, and is especially key against Red Akroma (a non-Blue, non-White sliver can still use the TK Sliver ability to tap down the Angel of Fury) and the mirror (hard to play Wild Pair if your board is tapped down during upkeep).
*Necrotic Sliver, sort of a backup to the TK Sliver lock. This one is not quite as efficient because it has a much higher cost (mana and sacrifice), but on the other hand it doesn’t require guys to tap, so you can beat down while doing it. It’s good against multi-color decks that are vulnerable to mana screw. I also like this one as a win of last resort, if you’ve exhausted a lot of your opponent’s resources but you’ve exhausted a lot of your own as well. If an opponent has already used, say, his only copy of Sudden Death, he’ll have a hard time stopping a Necrotic and a couple of random 1/1 and 2/2 Slivers from beating him to death since you can just Necrotic any blocker he plays.
*The Psionic Sliver + Might Sliver chain, which crushes aggro and is a way to deal damage with a bunch of Dormant Slivers in play. However, it requires some finesse to pull off. If you play Might Sliver first, he becomes a 4/4 with the Wild Pair trigger on the stack, and you won’t be able to find anything when it resolves. So you will typically chain together some Sliver plays and Pair searches that end with Might Sliver being the last guy searched up. During that process you’d also like to find Reflex Sliver, so that you don’t wait on Psionic activations, thus the chain gets even more complicated. It’s easiest to go for this one if you have simply drawn, or used Evolution Charm to regrow, a Reflex or Psionic Sliver.
Matchups
Teferi Control decks
You are a slight favorite. I fully expect that claim to be challenged in the forums, because if someone has played a match or two in which the Pair deck had bad draws or the Pair player was playing badly, it seems like the Teferi deck should win in a blowout. The Pair player really has to be at the top of his game in this matchup; I’ve found that if I let my concentration slip even a little, games against Teferi decks can turn ugly.
However, I do think that the Pair player is a slight favorite, mainly because Teferi isn’t of much use against a deck with only four instants. Remember, the Blue deck probably won’t have more than six or seven counterspells, and one of those is Draining Whelk, so they can’t just counter everything willy-nilly. Those counterspells also start at three mana including UU, so you can get off to some spicy Gemhide Sliver starts. Yes, that means you will lose the Gemhide and friends to a Damnation, but typically you want to draw out that Damnation early so that it doesn’t come later after a savage Wild Pair turn.
The worst-case scenario for you is that you get off to a slow start, they Draining Whelk one of your spells (any spell, even a Gemhide Sliver) and then chain Teachings together so that you never resolve another spell until you are dead. The same can happen with Bogardan Hellkite, but it’s not always easy for them to get eight mana including double-Red. In the Draining Whelk case, 4UU is not too much trouble for them as long as they can get the Whelk in hand.
Mono-Black and Mostly-Black Control
These decks can be all over the place. Some will be sophisticated control builds with secret tech like Shrouded Lore, as in this Zac Hill article, and some will just be random collections of every removal spell that the pilot could scrounge out of his Magic Online account. You are probably a slight underdog to a properly-assembled build, but I’m not sure if anyone knows what that build is yet.
Of their spot removal, the only card that should really freak you out is Sudden Death. Tendrils of Corruption is not as bad for you as you might think; many times they will not gain the life because of a Sliver with a sacrifice ability, and even if they do gain the life it’s not hard to sculpt a Might Sliver kill from thirty once you have Wild Pair in play. Sudden Death, however, turns off every trick that you might like to use in response. Void seems scary, except that it won’t always be played to kill your creatures; since they don’t have any way to remove enchantments, they may have to Void for six just to check your hand for Wild Pair.
As with the Teferi matchup, the real danger is that they will stop you cold by resolving their giant flier. They don’t have Think Twice – some of these decks don’t even splash for Aeon Chronicler – so you’ll probably draw more extra cards than they will, but sometimes they will just pull sufficient removal to prolong the game until they have eight mana, throw down a Hellkite, and crush you. Them’s the breaks.
I originally put Hunting Wilds in my sideboard for the Red/Green matchup (see below), but I’ve found they’re also pretty decent here, allowing you to accelerate into Wild Pair before they can Void your hand or your Gemhide Slivers away. Typically, I board out the Basal Sliver, the Sinew Sliver, and one copy each of Dormant and Telekinetic Slivers to make room.
Red/Green
Your chances in this match are dependent upon how much land destruction the opponents are running, versus how much cheap removal (i.e., Dead/Gone). If they have lots of both, you have to expect them to be able to hose both your lands and your Gemhide Slivers. If they are heavy in only land destruction, a good Wall of Roots draw can easily recover. Best of all would be if they were heavy in the creature removal, since Dormant Sliver lets you keep up with them on cards unless they draw an obscene amount of Harmonizes.
The Hunting Wilds in the sideboard are specifically for this matchup, as well as other random decks like Blink Riders that will attack your manabase. As long as you have sufficient Forests, Evolution Charm and Gemhide Sliver can pull you out of a lot of bad spots. However, it’s not by coincidence that I have started playing a Red/Green deck myself in the last couple of days; their good draws can hose a lot of different strategies, including the Sliver-based one.
White Aggro (White Weenie and White/X beatdown)
Most of the other matchups, even if things are not great, you can stage a turnaround – such is the power of Wild Pair and the weakness of countermagic in this format. However, this is where the good news ends. White decks have so many cards that are ridiculously bad for you, starting with a turn 1 Icatian Javelineers to shut down your explosive Gemhide Sliver starts. You can’t block fliers, so Telekinetic Sliver is your only game 1 out to Griffin Guide. It’s difficult for you to construct a Sliver big enough to rumble with Calciderm, so if they draw multiple ‘Derms or a Stonecloaker to reset one of the ‘Derms, all you can do to prevent death is chump block. Regrowing dead creatures with Evolution Charm is iffy because of Stonecloaker. You will sometimes be randomly owned by Mana Tithe. The list just goes on and on.
I was thinking about a half-dozen different ways to shore up this matchup, and each had its own problems. Most lists have Serrated Arrows in the sideboard, and that card will occasionally be a huge blowout, but it is also a little slow to stop Griffin Guide and it doesn’t touch Calciderm. Hivestone could combo with Dormant Sliver to turn opposing men into defenders, but the White creatures then become cheap cantrips; the aggro player will just draw infinite cards until they reach a Sunlance to remove the Dormant Sliver. Evan Erwin list put me on Utopia Vow, which is an interesting answer to Griffin Guide, but it is obviated by Stonecloaker and Cloudchaser Kestrel (which many White decks are now running in the main).
I did like Erwin’s Sedge Slivers as an answer to Calciderm. For this reason, eventually it may come to pass that Red, and not White, is the fourth color you want in this deck. For now, though, I have had too many good results with Necrotic Sliver in other matchups to make the change.
Other Decks
*The worst blowout I had while testing this deck was in an 8-man queue when in round 1 I faced the G/R/B Sliver beatdown deck. All he had to do was get a Two-Headed Sliver and a Bonesplitter Sliver and I was basically facing a three-turn clock; when I tried to slow him down with Dormant Sliver or Telekinetic Sliver he would have Rift Bolt in game 1 and Strangling Soot in post-board games. Wild Pair also isn’t very useful when your opponent can play men who change your slivers’ power and toughness, thus keeping you from searching.
*In the Tournament Practice room I have faced more than a few decks that have tried to abuse Reality Acid, with Dream Stalker and Riftwing Cloudskate and such. I’m not saying this idea is necessarily ready for prime time, but it will blow out your weak draws since you have relatively little answer for the Acid itself. It’s pretty easy to stop them if you get a strong Telekinetic Sliver draw, since their stuff mostly works at sorcery speed.
One More Thing…
After a few days of playing this deck on Magic Online only, I realized that it poses some problems for those of you who only play in the “real” world. MTGO updates each creature’s static abilities automatically, and it offers you the option on all of your “may” effects so that you don’t forget them. In paper Magic this deck invites a lot of rules-lawyering, angle-shooting, and outright cheating, from both sides of the table.
Opponents might “forget” that slivers have a given ability (such as defender from the Dormants), or misrepresent the slivers’ power / toughness, or bring so many slivers into play in one turn that it’s difficult to remember who is summoning-sick and who is not. Even if your opponent is not intentionally cheating you, he may just be a lazy moron who is used to having MTGO do everything for him. So, be careful out there, whether you’re running this deck or playing against it. The Sliver, she is a harsh and complicated mistress.
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