[Deck] WUGbr Slivers [Archive]

RoddyVR

07-23-2007, 03:03 PM

Been a while since i updated this... currently trying to figure out what to do for GP Chicago.

Mana 19
4x Windswept Heath
4x Wooded Foothills
4x Savannah
2x Tropical Island
1x Tundra
1x Taiga
1x Bayou
1x Forest
1x Mutavault

Non sliver spells 14
4x Aether Vial
4x Stifle
4x Survival of the Fittest
1x Genesis
1x Squee, Goblin Nabob

Slivers: 28
4x Plated Sliver
4x Sinew Sliver
4x Muscle Sliver
4x Crystalline Sliver
4x Gemhide Sliver
2x Darkheart Sliver
1x Winged Sliver
1x Talon Sliver
1x Heart Sliver
1x Harmonic Sliver
1x Essence Sliver
1x Sliver Legion

Sideboard: 15
1x Winged Sliver
2x Harmonic Sliver
1x Necrotic Sliver
1x Root Sliver
3x Krosan Grip
4x Orim's Chant
3x Relic of Reliquium

Please do not suggest taking Sliver Legion out of the deck, (though i could understand suggestions of changing it to an overlord or even queen.)
I've got 8 fetchlands in the deck, and atleast 4 other shuffle effects, which would generaly mean i should play brainstorm, oddly enough the 1 Blue mana is often the reason i cant use brainstorm. If someone can come up with a good 4 cards to get rid of to add brainstorm, i'll probably try it.

The Mana Base:
I'm fairly happy with the mana base of the deck as it is. I rarely have color problems, and even though sometimes i do get mana screwed (especialy if i keep 1 land+vial hands and the vial gets killed). Because of survival, the manabase is currently green based (ie almost all lands make green, and fetches all get green). I'm not 100% sold on Mutavault being usefull, i think it might be worth it to change that to either a Trop island or a second forest.

Aeither Vial
In a deck with almost 30 creatures, Aether vial is amazing. I've gone back to having 4 MD because its the best turn 1 play i have by far, and even having 2 of them isnt that bad.

Stifle
Stifle MD because otherwise most combo matches are autolosses. Some combo players dont expect their tendrils to be stifled game one. And even non combo decks tend to have something usefull to stifle.

The 4of Slivers
Plated, Sinew, Muscle - Bread and butter of this deck. Cheap creatures that grow as the game progresses is what slivers are all about. Some people suggest taking Plated out, but i find that a first turn Plated often does as much in a game as all the other slivers combined (cause its around longer, but also easier to risk in combat and so on).
Crystalline - Brokenest sliver. I've lost count of the number of opponents who've basicaly said "Crystalline just kills my deck".
Gemhide - With survival, the deck becomes very mana hungry, so Gemhide is almost always one of the first two slivers to survival up. They're also great answers to blood moons and tabernacle effects.

Tool Box slivers
Winged - two of these seems like a good number, but i've had to cut one to the sideboard for space reasons. playing it often wins games (that were stalled on the ground), but sometimes its just a 1/1 sliver for 2 mana (instead of the standard 2/2 for 2), having two at once is pointless, and i can tutor for it if i realy need it.
Talon - he used to be SB, but with the widespread use of 'Goyf i'm needing him more and more to take out that monster without losing 3 or 4 slivers. His function most often is to allow me to stall the early game against other agro decks who's creatures start out bigger then mine. Great combat trick with vial too.
Heart - sometimes attacking with more creatures then you had the turn before is a gamewinner, and if i start with gem and heart in hand, i can play out my whole hand on turn 4, and attack with most of those slivers. With survival he's become even more important, cause he can accelerate how soon i get to be able to genesis back slivers every turn.
Darkheart - cheapest life gain against burnlike decks, and also for the Ichorid type decks with Bridge from Below... need an instant way to remove bridges from the enemy graveyard. And even if i dont need the life gain, its still a 2/2 sliver for 2. Has gone up to two because i realized its actualy prety good against TES type decks too, sometimes they just cant get much over 10 storm.
Harmonic - this is main deck because there are some decks that just fold as soon as it hits the table (affinity, stax if i play it early enough) that would be real tough games without one of these guys. 2 more in the sideboard cause things like E Plague require more then one of these to be dealt with.
Essence Sliver - I think this is the weakest slot in the sliver list... but i feel i need a 4drop sliver, and root isnt needed main deck, and i've decided camelion colossus isnt that amazing either. Considering telekinetic (opposition) sliver here. Essense seems about a turn too slow to deal with a dedicated burn deck, so its not as good as Darkheart. But i can immagine situations where i need life gain that doesnt cost me creatures.
Sliver Legion - he's basicaly the finisher. Vs Agro, a lot of games come down to a stalemate of creatures where this guy's ability to make all my slivers huge is usualy a win. Or else I'll be in a situation where I've built up my hive, but havent done much damage and need to win quick, and this guy making the 4 slivers on the table into 4/4 or bigger not to mention being a 10/10 himself is a good way to achieve that.

Slivers i'd like to include but cant fit
Quick - I think i'd need more instants in the deck (brainstorm, StP) to make this guy realy worth it, but he's actualy prety good against counterbalance.
Hibernation - sometimes its just better to lose 8 life to a Damnation then to lose 4 slivers. With Vial this guy can make slivers be both defence and attack at same time.

Sideboard
Winged Sliver - this guy realy should be main deck, but he's the 61st(well 62nd) card at this point.
Harmonic Slivers - against decks that lose to these guys, the more the merrier, and with enough people running E. Plague in sideboards, i need a few of these for when i need to use them as a disenchant (cast, kill e plague, but sliver dies to being a 0/0 anyway)
Necrotic Sliver - Sometimes you just need to be able to kill a land (tabernacle). Also one of the locals has put dormant sliver in his sideboard, this thing is prety much the only sliver that can get rid of it.
Root - Being able to just ignore counterbalance is SOOO fun. A 2/2 for 4 mana is prety steep, but as its only 1 sliver in the deck with such crappy stats, it doesnt hurt too much. Its hard to get this guy to stick around, but if he does, he's amazing.

Krosan Grip - mostly cause i got tired of being beat with counterbalance. Could be used against dreadnaughts, and dreadstill is my least favorite deck right now.
Orim's Chant - More anti combo sideboard. Between these and the stifles, i have a fighting chance against some combo decks.
Relic of Progenitus - This is prety much Goyf hate. An early goyf can wreak havoc while my hive isnt big enough to deal with him. This can neuter goyfs, and is also prety usefull against other grave dependant decks. I like this more then crypt cause crypt sometimes doesnt affect goyf at all, and its always a one shot deal. The relic, if cast early can just keep oponent graveyard empty, and still retain the threat of making goyfs 0/1s. Slightly unsynergistic with survival, but oh well.

thefreakaccident

07-23-2007, 03:28 PM

The idea looks interesting enough... do you ever feel the need for removal?

does the loss of FoW hurt your combo MU? (seeing as you now have no turn 1 answer)

do you have a good goblin mu for the most part? (I know countersliver does)

can you consistantly get red mana (or any mana for that matter), seeing as you only have 5 red sources (including the gemhide)?

what did you play at the open?

do you have MU annalyses yet?

finally, why would we wan to play this over anything else already out there?

Tacosnape

07-23-2007, 03:46 PM

Where are Hibernation and Sedge Sliver, the two top reasons to run Red and Black?

I think basic lands in a 5-color deck is an awful idea, also. If you're going to commit to 5-color, do it.

HdH_Cthulhu

07-23-2007, 03:49 PM

I played nearly the same list in my causal group, and it does very well.

But add 4 Heart Sliver! He is insane with Gemnhidesliver!

RoddyVR

07-23-2007, 04:08 PM

The idea looks interesting enough... do you ever feel the need for removal?yes, sometimes i realy wish i had an StP or something to get rid of a magus of the tabernacle or some other creature who's point is not attacking for damage.

does the loss of FoW hurt your combo MU? (seeing as you now have no turn 1 answer) i would assume it should, but frankly i found my MU against fast combos was prety bad even with FoW. atleast without FoW (and the extra blue instants that went with it) i have a better clock, cause i often can play a plated turn one and a muscle/sinew each turn after that. just realized that i havent played against combo since putting the stiffles in the board, that should make it better. and things like turn 1 for 8 goblin tokens has never been an issue. (10 can be tougher, would basicaly require that essence, a plated and a gemhide start in your hand, but if they do i think surviving 12 tokens is doable)

do you have a good goblin mu for the most part? (I know countersliver does) this is a tough question. I always considered it prety good (would usualy prefer playing against goblins then almost anything else) but always had problems with their wastelands. During the Seadrake tourny i lost a match horribly to a goblin deck that had more wastelands then i had lands. This was the first weekend i had basics in the deck and it did ok vs goblins, i only had 2 matchups against goblins, round 4 we IDed then played one game for the fun of it, he won by gempalming every sliver i played and killing me with piledrivers. i kept thinking after every gempalm that there shouldnt be another and i'd not play the crystaline (cause it would be useless against the piledrivers). didnt play a second game.
first round of top 8 was against goblins also. won both games. as far as i can tell the slivers were just too fast for the goblins. i dont know if he got horrible draws or what, but my slivers consistently outclassed his goblins in terms of beating power.

can you consistantly get red mana (or any mana for that matter), seeing as you only have 5 red sources (including the gemhide)?
as i only have 2 spells that need red mana (heart and legion) and both are MUCH better if they're played after a gemhide i usualy do have a gemhide first (via a call if i have an extra call). but i actualy have 12 red(and/or black) sources counting if you count the fetches. any of the 8 fetches can get the plateau or scrubland if i need that color.
most land destruction seems to be generaly aimed for the U/x lands cause people fear the blue (or blue/white) cards in the deck more then anything else. so i rarely lose the single red or black source once i have it in play.
at the same time, except for Counterspell (and Stifle realy) every spell in the deck has either a W or a 1 in its casting cost, so a Plateau is never realy the "wrong" land to get (espeicialy if i already have a trop island in play)

what did you play at the open? sorry, i dont understand the question... either "the open" was a tournament in which case IF i was in it (i dont recognize the name) i was playing this deck (its the deck i've played since i started playing tournys back in december, though it has changed a lot over its life). if "play at the open" is some term for "what do you play first turn" or something like that.... well no i dont understand the question, sorry.

do you have MU annalyses yet? not realy. frankly i dont think i have enough games against anything (except B/W prison pox, for who the plan is "mutter: I hate your deck", lol) to be of much use here. i had MWS for a little while, till WinXP died, so the only time i actualy play the deck is at tournaments, not the best place for testing... I rarely know what the deck i'm playing against realy is (for example yesterday i was sure i played against a Death and Taxes deck round 2 or 1) but it turned out to be an Angel Stompy deck... i still dont know the difference between them... gotta go look it up now.

finally, why would we wan to play this over anything else already out there? that's a tough question, because most answers will be met with "why not regular MeatHooks". While i think it would be realy cool for more people to play slivers cause they're my favorite creature type by far, Its not realy my goal to get people to play my deck. I will be the first to agree that in a lot of people's hands MeatHooks is a better deck, but its also harder to play. I guess i could say that you should play this deck if you meat 2 conditions:
1. you love slivers and want to play a sliver deck.
2. you arent sure enough of your knowledge of all the decks that others play, that you'd be comfortable playing MeatHooks, because you would never quite know what the "right" spell to counter is.

Slivers have an answer for almost any problem you can immagine, and my deck used to try to use all of them (that didnt work all that often). But now it has kept the broad answers (harmonic, essence, winged) without forgeting that slivers are creatures that can grow large quick and keeps heavily to the aggro theme that that implies.

---------------------

Where are Hibernation and Sedge Sliver, the two top reasons to run Red and Black? i tried Sedge. though not for long, and have been considering going back to it. biggest problem is that for a sedge to hit play, i'd need either a gemhide or BOTH the plateau and scrubland, which would seriuosly limit my # of islands and green mana.
also, once a Sedge is in play (or games 2/3 when they know i play it) any land destruction would be quickly aimed at the Scrubland, which would make the sedge prety pointless.
Hibernation is probably a good idea to include, but when i had him before, he would always just be the first target of a removal spell, and i'd have to decide to save/not save him, and then the rest would get wiped by a mass removal spell anyway. basicaly i found him a little more limited in practical use then theory would suggest.

I think basic lands in a 5-color deck is an awful idea, also. If you're going to commit to 5-color, do it. i thought the same thing you did till just over a week ago. but i was wrong. a full duals/nonbasics mana base loses to too many decks with wastelands, not the last of which is goblins. the 3 basics have not hurt my colors yet at all. 12 rounds of tournaments since i've put them in, and not once did i enounter the problem of having enough lands, but because of basics, not enough colors (i'm wrong, i had one hand that i mulliganed cause the ONLY land was a forest, if it had been a tundra or trop island i would have kept the top/daze/stifle one land hand, though in general i NEED to dump one land hands anyway).

I played nearly the same list in my causal group, and it does very well. yes i immagine it would. back when i first started making it i played it in a few multiplayer casual games, it rocked. i stoped playing it though cause it was too fast for that metagame, and with harmonic it was making the game not fun for an average of 3 of the 6 players there cause none fo their artifacts/enchantments stuck around.

But add 4 Heart Sliver! He is insane with Gemnhidesliver! i used to have more hearts... there's realy no need. two hearts isnt better then one in play. while the combo with gemhide is great, it is actualy rarely used for more then a turn (to empty your hand of all slivers and go on the attack). most of the time his use is in the surprise factor. vial him in after casting legion to attack with a 12/12 and a 6/6 that werent there there at the start of the turn. a few times he has served as the last needed attacker to win before opponent does, when they count your slivers, leave enough blockers to block all of them when even one getting through would finish the game... playing anything else would be pointless cause even if it made my slivers bigger, they'd still be blocked. but play a heart and you've suddenly got one more attacker that they werent counting on.
i prefer him as a surprise factor, so having multiples would only force me to spoil the surprise (when i have no othe sliver to play except heart even though i dont need the surprise now).
i have actualy been trying to add a Quick sliver to the deck for a different type of surprise factor (unforseen combat tricks for the win), but keep not having the space.

thefreakaccident

07-23-2007, 05:28 PM

what did you play at the open?
sorry, i dont understand the question... either "the open" was a tournament in which case IF i was in it (i dont recognize the name) i was playing this deck (its the deck i've played since i started playing tournys back in december, though it has changed a lot over its life). if "play at the open" is some term for "what do you play first turn" or something like that.... well no i dont understand the question, sorry.

what I meant was, what did you play against... I tend to call dual land tournies opens (I don't know why, just a bad habit).

Pinder

07-23-2007, 06:20 PM

Where are Hibernation and Sedge Sliver, the two top reasons to run Red and Black?

This is a very good point. Now, with it being 5c and all, I can see not wanting to put Sedge in because you might not have enough :b: to regenerate stuff reliably, but the +1/+1 if you control just one swamp is incredibly relevant. Believe me on this one. Run a couple of Urborgs if you have to.

Hibernation I've never been a huge fan of, but it is definitely an admirable substitute in case you can't find a Crystalline and need to save a guy.

Also, any deck that has :g: and :b: and sliver should definitely look at Darkheart Sliver. That thing is such a freaking house. I know with Essence Sliver and all it might be a moot point, but a 2/2 for 2 (which will likely get a lot bigger) that turns all your dudes into Baloths is pretty sexy. Plus it gives a way to get around StP, by saccing stuff in response. I don't think you really have any way to recur things, but it's there.

Also, get more than 1 Winged in the deck. You have Call, so 2 should be fine,
but only having 1 and then having it answered just plain sucks.

Also, Spined sliver could warrant a look at as well. Having him, Sedge, Muscle, and Sinew would effectively make combat unwinnable for your opponent. And it stacks, which is just plain sexy.

RoddyVR

07-24-2007, 01:17 AM

what I meant was, what did you play against... I tend to call dual land tournies opens (I don't know why, just a bad habit).

oh. lets see if i can reconstruct the tournament from the scattered notes i jotted down with the life totals.

round 1. Jesse. i thought it was a Death and Taxes deck but was later told that pete was the only one there with D&T.
i wont 2-0 and the note sais "winged both times" which means i found the winged sliver both times which gave me the wins (dont remember if it was cause i could block his flyers or fly over grunts and such). the life totals go down on both side so neither game was completely onesided as both of us were doing damage.

round 2. Bryan (fairly certain its the one called F'n Bryan)
won 2-1
he killed me game one from 13 life down to 0 with a note that sais "jitte". i have a vague memory of an angel with a jitte on it, but that might be from a different game (or even differnt tourny, i tend to see jitte a lot)
game 2 i won by getting him from 14 to 5 then 5 to win. note sais Winged+muscles... guess my flyers were too much.
game 3 he got me down to 7, but then lost with his last life total being 15 with a note that sais "heart+legion for 19 damage" guess i got myself a hasty legion in that game.

Round 3. Samantha (i hope i spelled that right) with a deck that kept making me discard my cards with Gerrards verdict.
won 2-0
game one i got to 3 life, though i cant remember what it was that was attacking me. (for 2 damage a turn from 11 to 3). i have her life totals going 18,13,6 and then win.
game 2 i recall playing a bunch of muscle slivers even though she made me discard 2 cards atleast once, and maybe twice. (even discarded a land to the verdicts giving her 3 life at one point).

Round 4. dang.. dong have a name writen down... we were both 3-0 so we called it a draw after it was explained to me that by drawing in the final round i would get into top 8 with a 3-0-2 record for sure... played a game for the heck of it, his gempalm goblins kept killing every sliver i'd drop and i kept expecting him to run out of gempalms and so not playing the crystalline in my hand cause i wanted something that could block the piledrivers he had on board... didnt play a game 2 cause the match going on next to us was funnier to watch then playing our own was.

Round 5. (i think i'm looking at right page the name i have is Nate ) it was the Ichorid deck that made way too many hasty 4/4 zombie tokens.
he didnt want to ID cause he wanted to keep winnning. crushed me like a bug 0-2.
even after siding in 4 crypts and 4 stiffles and muliganing to 5 to find a crypt (and failing) i lost without ever having a chance. still not sure if stifle can even do anything in that matchup cause half of the stuff i'd want to stiffle is the COSTS of his cards, not the effects.

Top 8: James with goblins (sorry dont remember if he had a non red color in it)
i won 2-0 though i'm not sure now what exactly it was that did it. i tend to remember him not having the best possible hands, but i dont think it was mana problems like flooding or extreme shortages. anyway, after the 2 games against his goblin deck, played one against his ichorid deck, and again got my ass whoopped.

top 4. Slay with Alluren
i think it was game one that i countered his alluren... and he went from 17 to 12 life with his vault then 2 damage /turn from what i think was my crystalline sliver. i never got below the 19 my fetch put me at
game 2 i sided out Sliver Legion and then during the game went to find him with a call only to realize that i was a dumbass... had to get a muscle instead and lost with slay at 8 life. i'm not sure if had i gotten the legion at that point if i could have done enough damage to him to win... he comboed out but i dont remember how many turns after i'd called it was.
by the time we were playing game 3 i was too tired to keep life totals strait, forget notes. i know i won, but how or why i have no clue.

Top 2. Pete with Death and taxes.
i love playing against pete's deck, even though i think he's beat me more times than i have him. between the combat tricks on both sides with vials (he tends to win those wars, his deck just has way more tricks then mine) and the stiffle war we had in one of the games yesterday (7 stifles played between us) it was a lot of fun, even if i was completely falling asleep by that point
sorry i cant give any sort of play by play for this match, i kept 0 nonlifetotal notes and all my games against pete over the last few weeks of tournaments at off the wall are meshing with the memories of the games yesterday.
i know i got him to 1 life game 3, and then lost cause he engeneered explosived away my muscle and talon (i think that was the second one) slivers, and then when i attacked with the harmonic and plated he blocked one, and then removed the other from the game with his one 1/1 guy that can do that. then the next turn he played 2 grunts and something else and i had no chance at that point.

Samshire

07-24-2007, 01:52 AM

Sideboard: 15
4x Tormod's Crypt
4x Styfle
2x Sidewinder Sliver
1x Talon Sliver
1x Heart Sliver
2x Harmonic Sliver
1x Necrotic Sliver

This is how everyone should spell Stifle from now on

Tacosnape

07-24-2007, 01:57 AM

Interesting match results.

Also, Why the hell does every tournament report ever nowadays involve Death and Taxes taking 1st?

Bovinious

07-24-2007, 02:05 AM

What IS Death and Taxes anyways? I remember back when I played WoW the best guild overrall was named Death and Taxes, those were dark days /shiver. But srsly what is it?

C.P.

07-24-2007, 02:15 AM

What IS Death and Taxes anyways? I remember back when I played WoW the best guild overrall was named Death and Taxes, those were dark days /shiver. But srsly what is it?

If my knowledge is correct, it is a White Winnie that takes advantage of Krakas and Legends and have lots and lots of trick with them.

Bovinious

07-24-2007, 02:27 AM

LOLZ, Im sorry, but that just sounds God-awful, this is winning tournaments? Where?

RoddyVR

07-24-2007, 11:29 AM

This is a very good point. Now, with it being 5c and all, I can see not wanting to put Sedge in because you might not have enough :b: to regenerate stuff reliably, but the +1/+1 if you control just one swamp is incredibly relevant. Believe me on this one. Run a couple of Urborgs if you have to. having the :b: to regenerate wouldnt be as big a problem as it seems cause i tend to have a gemhide around most time (so attack with half the slivers, and regenerate them with the other half if needed).
but a sliver thats a 2/2 for 2R that reads "all slivers gain :B: :regenerate" isnt realy all that impressive. putting in Urborgs would i think be worse then just putting in more swamp/x duals cause atleast the duals i could search up. and if the problem is keeping a swamp in play cause of land destruction, it can kill an urborg same as a dual.

Hibernation I've never been a huge fan of, but it is definitely an admirable substitute in case you can't find a Crystalline and need to save a guy. i already run 4 crystalines and 4 tutors for it, so adding a 9th or even 9/10th replacement wount realy up my chances of having it by much. it would be good against some board sweepers and to do some nasty combat tricks in combination with vial. but i dont think its realy all THAT neccessary. yes sweepers suck, but deck that play then tend not to have many creatures, so a few slivers are usualy enough, and i just need to learn to keep some back in my hand.

Also, any deck that has :g: and :b: and sliver should definitely look at Darkheart Sliver. That thing is such a freaking house. I know with Essence Sliver and all it might be a moot point, but a 2/2 for 2 (which will likely get a lot bigger) that turns all your dudes into Baloths is pretty sexy. Plus it gives a way to get around StP, by saccing stuff in response. I don't think you really have any way to recur things, but it's there. till a week or two ago i had darkheart in my sideboard, i agree its a great sliver. and i think now that i've faced that ichorid deck with the bridges from below i will put it back in somehow, cause an instant way to remove the bridges would be helpfull in that matchup. the problem with darkheart is that it is most usefull in situations where i dont have a crystaline (ie i'll sac a sliver in response to a lightning bolt or something), but in that situation, its always the darkheart itself that gets targeted with the first bit or removal, so i hav to sac it for 3 life, and then other slivers are left without its protection. same problem as using hybernation as an answer to targeted removal. crystalline is much better then either not so much because it doesnt cost 2 life or even because it doesnt need the sacrifice of the sliver, but because it itself is VERY hard to get rid of by the same methods that it is protecting against.
as for recuring slivers from yard. very early on in the deck i used ot have a couple volrath's strongholds in the deck, but they are just SOOO slow and realy suck when they're the only land you've got. though now that i have the tops, mabye it would be better cause i could use the stronghold then activate top's draw ability to get the sliver to hand right away (and maybe vial it in)

Also, get more than 1 Winged in the deck. You have Call, so 2 should be fine,
but only having 1 and then having it answered just plain sucks. yep, i've been slowly going towards the same thought for a while now... just gotta figure out what to cut.

Also, Spined sliver could warrant a look at as well. Having him, Sedge, Muscle, and Sinew would effectively make combat unwinnable for your opponent. And it stacks, which is just plain sexy.
i tried to build a deck with all the pump slivers at one point. problem is basicaly that it realy becomes a 5 color deck, which is very tought to have a usable mana base for. my current deck, while having all 5 colors, i never have a situation where i need UW this turn (crystaline) and RG the next to cast what i want. my current deck realy is just WUG so its mana base works, but having an even spread of 1G, 1W, 2R (that needs a B in play to be usefull), GR and UW cards would just REALY screw with a mana base.

LOLZ, Im sorry, but that just sounds God-awful, this is winning tournaments? Where?its an amazing deck, their 1 drops are 2/2, their 2 drops are 4/4s and 3/3 flying vigilants.
With vials and jittes those things are HARD to fight. And then you add the tricks with karakas, vial and stoneclocker and their creatures are just amazing. Add in mother of runes (i'm not sure how much a staple it is, but i've seen it in some D&T decks) and Mangara of Corondor and most of the oponents deck become useles (or one turn effects instead of permanents).
disclaimer: my knowledge of Death and Taxes is purely from playing against it a dozen or so times, so please do not consider me an authority on it. i'm fairly certain there's a thread for it around here.

Slay

07-24-2007, 12:04 PM

LOLZ, Im sorry, but that just sounds God-awful, this is winning tournaments? Where?

Massachusetts meta doesn't have combo decks in the top 8.
-Slay

RoddyVR

07-25-2007, 03:52 PM

Well adding a second Winged sliver seems like the first and best improvement to make at this point... so i need to decide what to take out for it.

i think the options are:
1. a top. only card in the deck that having 2 of which is COMPLETELY pointless, but this would mean i almost never actualy get the one that's left.
2. a vial. a second or third vial is rarely needed, but they're best if played turn 1, and when they are they are REALY good.
3. a counterspell (probably not a daze).
4. moving either harmonic or essence to sideboard...

I think i'm leaning most towards taking out a counterspell, because i realy do like the 1 drop artifacts, and i'm too used to having a harmonic or essence to call for in game one.

I think i'll put the 4th counterspell in the sideboard instaed of one of the two Sidewinder slivers.
I also am gonna put a Darkheart sliver into the sideboard. Not sure yet if it will be replacing the Necrotic sliver or one of the Tormod's Crypts.

Bane of the Living

07-25-2007, 06:33 PM

LOLZ, Im sorry, but that just sounds God-awful, this is winning tournaments? Where?

Phaerimmarchlord plays at three different sanctioned legacy events a week in western mass. He wins them all.

I wouldnt say this is because of a lack of combo since he plays Meddling Mage and Styfle.

@Roddy
Yea its Nate. Im really glad you didnt have Force since it made my wins pretty easy. Congrats on top 4.

RoddyVR

08-23-2007, 12:14 PM

updated the deck with latest changes.

biggest of it is the inclusion of my first Non Sliver creature in the deck.

most of the sideboard was 1 or X costing artifacts, but i had no way to search for them once i would side them in (short of mulliganing into em) so instead i included a creature that can do that.

Trinket Mage can be found via Eladamri's Call
once cast, he will find the Chalice/Needle/explosives i need
and those are ususaly prety easy to cast (chalice and explosives i usualy need set at 0)

in doing this, i also moved the talon and heart slivers to main deck, cause it was prety pointless having them SB. lowered the landcount by 1 (trying out 18 lands) and took out 1 vial from MD to SB (cause i needed the space).

RoddyVR

11-01-2007, 11:38 AM

been a couple of months since i've updated this thread... and since i'm almost certainly going to the mana leak tourny in CT this weekend, i figure i should update this and hopefully get some helpfull input for last minute changes.

changes already made to deck since last time this thread was updated.

Main Deck:
-4x Daze
+4x Swords to Plowshares
goyfs got so annoying i needed a way to kill em.

Side board
-3 Chalice of the Void
+1 Tormod's Crypt
+1 Meddling mage
+1 Yixlid Jailer

and today i decided that the whole Eladamri's Call for Trinket Mage to "hate" artifact was not a great plan... it is turn 3 at the earliest, and by then i could be dead... those cheap artifacts are good because they can be cast turn 1, by turn 3 or 4 they are WAY less effective.
so i'm cutting them.
gonna try to have pure creature hate... like the Meddling mage and jailer.

so taking out:
-1 Meddling mage
-1 Chalice of the Void
-1 Tormod's Crypt
-1 Engeneered Explosives
-1 Pithing Needle

Going to add in:
+1 Jotun Grunt (there are just so many graveyardy decks that i hate... and he's 4/4 for 1W)

+4x ??????

not sure what to make the other 4 cards, options i'm considering:
1. one of the artifacts i just took out, putting in 4x of Needle or Chalice would make them findable for turn 1 via muliganing if i realy need it...
2. Daze or Spell Snare... my deck currenty only has 4 counterspells, adding another 4 would make it possible to go a more controlish route against decks i dont need many creatures against.
3. Trickbind... i love stifle so much that i've actualy gotten 4 of these things, but not sure if the doubled casting cost would make this thing almost useless.
4. more toolbox slivers like necrotic (land destruction basicaly against tabernackle and such), more darkheart (against burn decks and bridge from below), Hybernation (against mass removal).
5. Gaddock Teeg (would have to buy/trade for one) and 3 other cards... he doesnt affect any of my deck, and shuts down 8 out of 10 of the most evil cards against my deck. force, e plague, Wog/Damnation,EE, Chalice (for 2), Belcher, Warrens....basicaly everything evil i can think of except Goyf and Deed. but i can Sword (and sometimes fight) goyfn, and i can stifle (and sometimes kill via harmonic) Deed.

The two cards right now i want to fit into the main Deck are Hybernation Sliver (realy should try him out) and Gaddock Teeg... not sure what to cut for them though.

RoddyVR

04-08-2008, 05:32 PM

I'm bumping this cause I need some input into how to fit the Survival of the Fittest engine into the deck and which slivers (or even non slivers) to remove or add with it.

I updated the first post to reflect the current version of the deck, so some of the earlier replies wont make much sense...

I'm curretly trading (or trying to) for 4x Survival of the fittest, 1x Squee, and 1x Genesis to put into this deck.
Will most likely cut the Eladamri's Calls for the Survivals, but not sure what to cut for the creatures that survival needs. Any advice on this would be much appreciated.

Also, should i try to include Eternal Witness and/or Dryad Arbor in the deck once survival is in?

Can Dryan Arbor be Vialed in by a Vial at 0? how about if its turn 1 and i've already played a land that turn (by which i got the vial played)?
EDIT: found a rules thread that sais yes.... cool, now do i put it in if i have:
Fetches
Vial
Survival
in the deck already.

raharu

04-08-2008, 06:48 PM

Jaynel

04-08-2008, 06:51 PM

I disagree with the Oversold Cemetary bit. I do think Survival and Aether Vial could be very hot.

What do you think about using Virulent Sliver? Too fragile?

raharu

04-08-2008, 06:55 PM

I disagree with the Oversold Cemetary bit. I do think Survival and Aether Vial could be very hot.

What do you think about using Virulent Sliver? Too fragile?
Oversold Cemetery eleminates the need for Squee, which is a fairly useless card by it's lonesome, and it recurs creatures to play/ vial/ tutor with next turn, and it's general CA.

Jaynel

04-08-2008, 06:57 PM

And Oversold Cemetery is pretty useless without the Survival engine going. I'd rather have 1 dead card instead of 4 dead cards.

RoddyVR

04-08-2008, 10:07 PM

I would sugest an engine like this:

4x Aether Vial
4x Survival of the Fittest
4x Oversold Cemetry

You have a compact, mana-less recursion engine that supliments your tutor engine. 4 of each because redundance is the best way to get things to stick w/o your own counters (which don't fit here).

I had actualy considered Oversold Cemetery by itself before (meaning wihtout survival).
There are a few things i dont like about it.
1. Its black. My deck currently has a total of 3 black cards, 2 of which are usualy vialed in, and the third costs 5 and if i've got 5 lands, making one of them the scrubland isnt hard. With Cemetery i would have to add more black lands to the deck, and generaly make it a 4 color+1subcolor deck instead of the 3+2 that it is now.
2. It does nothing by itself early in the game. Getting those 5 creatures in the yard could prove difficult sometimes.
3. It needs to be a 4 of if its in the deck at all, which is a lot of space for something that doesnt do anything on its own.

If i'm going for survival, it'll be survivals plus squee and genesis... not sure about anything else.

What do you think about using Virulent Sliver? Too fragile?
I've tried virulent, both as part of the toolbox, and as a 4of.
As a 1 of its completely useless. When a sliver attacks it rarely does less then 2 damage, so i'd kill with damage before killing with poison.
As a 4 of, it sucked cause i never got more then 1 or 2, and if i did get 2 or more, that meant i wasnt playing other slivers to make these guys bigger, so all they had to do was block 1/1 slivers.

With survival, 4 virulents might be interesting, cause if a survival sticks i could put all 4 in play prety quick. But even in this case, i'd need the 4 virulents (or atleast 3) and an evasion sliver, and probably a crystal to protect them. and if i need 5 or 6 slivers to make the attacking force, i might as well make it 5 muslces. and kill em with a stack of 6/6s.

Serious life gain decks havent shown up much around here, if they start then i'd probably sneak a virulent into the deck. Decks that just gain a LOT of life dont scare me much (things like wellwishers in elf decks) cause given enough time a hive of slivers with legion at the head can outdamage any life gain (in sane amounts). And true infinite life decks are prety rare.

Oversold Cemetery eleminates the need for Squee, which is a fairly useless card by it's lonesome, and it recurs creatures to play/ vial/ tutor with next turn, and it's general CA.
That's an odd statement. 4 cards that eliminate the need for 1 card seems counter producting. Both squee and Genesis actualy have uses even without survival, one in being a recuring blocker and the other in being a self sustained reanimation engine or sizable beater.

xsockmonkeyx

04-09-2008, 07:53 PM

If i'm going for survival, it'll be survivals plus squee and genesis... not sure about anything else.

This sounds like an excellent idea. Have you tried Survival Before?

I would play 4 Vials main, just on general principal, but also because your slivers have diverse CC's, and multiple vials might come in handy.

Why didnt Brainstorm make the cut?

[Stupid Idea]How about Leyline of Lifeforce in the SB to fight countermagic/balance? You dont run any countermagic of your own, so it is non-symmetrical[stupid]

Can Dryan Arbor be Vialed in by a Vial at 0? how about if its turn 1 and i've already played a land that turn (by which i got the vial played)?
EDIT: found a rules thread that sais yes.... cool, now do i put it in if i have:
Fetches
Vial
Survival
in the deck already.

Only if it was a Sliver. Mutavault is a sliver though, but no vial/survival fun.

RoddyVR

04-10-2008, 10:44 AM

This sounds like an excellent idea. Have you tried Survival Before?
No i've never played Survival in any deck before, which is why I'm trying to get some advice on what i should or shouldnt add/subtract from the deck when taking survival as my Tutor engine.

I would play 4 Vials main, just on general principal, but also because your slivers have diverse CC's, and multiple vials might come in handy.
I used to have 4 vials main, but dropped it three mainly because very little of my deck is not 2cc. There are Plated slivers at 1cc, which are either easy to play the normal way, or are vialed in while the vial is growing to 2 counters. And then there's 1 each of the 3cc, 4cc and 5cc slivers. So there's realy only 3 slivers in the deck that need vial to ever be above 2.
But again, having not played Survival before, i dont know if maybe having 2 vials at 2 would actualy be a good thing, so that i can leave all my mana to activating genesis and survival and use the vials to cast the slivers (with the engine going i could be playing upto 3 slivers a turn).

Why didnt Brainstorm make the cut?
Mostly space issues, i dont know what ot cut to put it in. Also i seem to completely suck at using it. Always seem to end up fetching before i use the brainstorm, or worse putting back the wrong cards (in hindsight) and then shuffling them away.
I liked Brainstorm when i had counterspells in the deck, cause i'd leave mana open for the counters, but could use it eot their turn for brainstorm instead if i didnt use a counter. With quicksliver (gives flash) in main deck now, i might actualy go back and try brainstorm again.
I think the best "reason" i can cite for not running brainstorm is that in the beggining of the game my deck is prety mana hungry, but it is also prety much full of threats, and so using a blue mana to basicaly replace brainstorm with a sliver i might not now have the mana to cast isnt the best investment.

I guess I should realy explain my thought process so far with this transformation to the deck, so that you guys know what i already think and can correct/add to my thought process.

1. 4x Survival of the Fittest replaces 4x Eladamri's Call.
Cons:
a. If i need one specific sliver (say crystalline), Survival is slower then EOT Call.
b. It actualy costs a card more . Play Survival, discard a sliver, get a sliver. lose 2 gain 1.
c. It costs more mana.
Pros:
a. Survival can be used more then once per card. So if i need to tutor up 3 Muscle slivers, its easier with Survivals then Calls.
b. With Squee, its a great card advantage engine, Genesis just adds to that.
c. Unlike calls, i can easily waste a tutor effect on a Gemhide, and compensate for the mana cost that way.

2. Once Suvival is in the deck, Squee Goblin Nabob is an amazing card.
Cons:
a. Without Survival and without red mana in play he is at worst a Single dead card in the deck.
Pros:
a. Without survival but with mana to cast him, he's a recuring 1/1. Can block a Goyf all day long, or even be a suicidal attacker if all opponents blockers are x/1.
b. With survival in play, he is the most broken card in legacy "G: search your library for answer to target deck. Draw a card at beggining of your next upkeep"

3. Genesis. Now that i list the pros and cons i realize i should have had this card main deck before survival even.
Cons:
a. 4/4 for 4G isnt the most efficient creature ever... Then again he's an easier 5cc to cast then Sliver Legion.
b. Not a sliver. No shourd, no muscle effects...
c. At 5cc it might be a dead card for a good while, till i get to 5 mana or get Survival.
Pros:
a. Self recurring 4/4, even at 4G is still a recurring 4/4.
b. Can help me recover from sweepers in mid to late game.
c. Once in yard (somehow) Allows me to be MUCH more agressive with my slivers cause i wont be afraid of losing the one winged in the deck to a combat trick. So you kill it, so what, i genesis it back, and up to the skies the hive goes again.
d. With survival becomes a "2G: draw a card, use this ability once a turn".

4. Eternal Witness. Not sure this one is worth cutting another sliver for.
Cons:
a. 2/1 for 1GG is so crappy compared to the rest of my decks creatures...
b. Not a sliver.
c. cost has GG, and with only 4 actual lands that make green mana, that can be tough to play. With Survival in play, will likely mean no green mana left to use the survival that turn.
d. Short of suicide attacking with her with genesis in graveyard, she's a one time effect.
Pros:
a. Can be kept in hand to get a killed survival back.
b. Can get a killed vial back.
c. Vial in Witness to get Swords back and sword something evil.
d. Can get a fetchland back from yard to increase land count.

5. Dryad Arbor.
Cons:
a. summoning sickness on land = yuck.
b. creature in play that's not a sliver = yuck. gives a use to opponents STPs and Shriekmaws after Crystalline has made it a dead card = negative card advantage.
Pros:
a. A one land hand, i should have mulliganed it for being a 1 land hand, not cause it was this land.
A two land hand with vial, this actualy accelerates by "other land" -> Vial -> Arbor.
A two land hand without vial, i proly wasnt gonna do much turn 1 anyway (yes, a plated might not get played), so droping this turn one isnt so bad.
b. Can be Survivaled, fetched, Genesised, and Vialed. Talk about recuring.
c. this would be a 5th landbased green sourse in the deck.

6. Enlightned Tutor.
Cons:
a. probably needs to be more then a 1of to have any effect at all.
b. Card disadvantage.
Pros:
a. effectively increases the number of both survivals and vials in the deck.
b. tutor for Surival turn 1, play survival turn 2.
c. tutor for vials if already have a survival.

Ofcourse the biggest Con to any of these is that i have to cut a card out of the current deck for each of them, and i tend to like ALL of the cards currently in the deck. This is what i realy need help with, what to cut?

Sek'Kuar

04-10-2008, 11:23 AM

I'd ditch red. Keep the black, but kill red. In red's place you have room for dormants and oversold cemeteries.

RoddyVR

04-10-2008, 11:35 AM

I'd ditch red. Keep the black, but kill red. In red's place you have room for dormants and oversold cemeteries.

um No.

Ditching red would give me a grand total of TWO slots. Heart and Legion are the only two cards with red. It would also allow one more land (plateau) to be a black land (another scrubland). neither of those is enough for oversold cemeteries. and dormants, while being one of my favorite slivers, do not fit in this deck, i've tried. Dormants are for sliver combo decks (most likely including the queen, or at the very least a LOT of 1drop slivers).
I also have a grand total of 2 slivers that would let me pick up (or sac) the dormant and both are black, would sort of suck if they (or the black lands) got answered while i had a dormant in play.
Lol at the thought of automatic game loss to my own draw engine that makes all my creatures (except squee and genesis, lol) into walls..

I'm also heavily against the idea of droping either Heart or Legion.
If i'm going for Survival, Heart sliver becomes even more important as i think that assuming i'm not going for 6 muscles, the second sliver survival would get (after a crystaline) would be gemhide, and heart is a good candidate for probably third or forth.

Legion is such an "I win" card that i'm not getting rid of him, while i have tutors in the deck, i'm actualy more likely to cut one of the muscle/sinews then him.

EDIT: just realized that ditching red also makes Squee that much worse.

xsockmonkeyx

04-10-2008, 12:30 PM

No i've never played Survival in any deck before, which is why I'm trying to get some advice on what i should or shouldnt add/subtract from the deck when taking survival as my Tutor engine.

Given your laundry list of pros and cons, I would think you are on on the right track. At least its clear that you know what youre doing.

Jaynel

04-10-2008, 03:17 PM

20-21 land

4 Survival
4 Aether Vial
4 Swords to Plowshares

4 Gemhide Sliver
4 Crystalline
4 Muscle
4 Sinew

1 Squee
1 Genesis
1 Winged Sliver
1 Heart Sliver (OR Anger, depends on your manabase)
x Metagame/whatever Slivers

I think this is where I would go with the deck. It's heavily modeled after RGB Survival, except it has the Sliver subtheme (which is really good with silver bullets). The list above is a rough outline that gives you a bunch of slots with which to work. You have a solid core or Slivers and then some really good non-Sliver cards, followed by random situational Slivers. Some of my thoughts:

Squee and Genesis really aren't that bad to have in the deck. They are 2 dead cards without Survival, and are amazing with it.
Eternal Witness is a bad call. It would dilute the gameplan too much. I feel like silver bullets need to be Creature - Sliver or they don't make the cut.

Good luck with the deck!

RoddyVR

04-10-2008, 03:55 PM

Took me 5 minutes of comparing that list to mine, thinking the whole time "how does he have that much space???" before i realized that you list of 4x slivers doesnt include Plated. Was that a choice or did you just forget about them? Especialy with that many Gemhides, plated is an amazing sliver.

Why so many Gemhides?
On turn 2, would you play a gemhide over either crystalline or survival?
Though i guess you could be using the gemhide to set up playing a survival with activations on turn 3. But for this Plated is almost a must have.

Why so many lands? I havent had much issue with 18+3 vials+2 gemhide, and you've got more of each. Is Survival THAT mana hungry?

So i guess the other major cut from my list is the 4x Stifles. I've had it suggested before that i should move em to side at least, and i'm starting to think that this may be the best way to go at this point.
I think at this point i'm going to start out testing this transformation with:

18 lands
8x W/x Fetches
2x Tundra
2x Trop Island
1x Savanah (maybe replace a tundra with a second one?)
1x Plateau
1x Scrubland
3x Basic Island/Plains/Forest

12 Non Creature spells
4x Aether Vial
4x Survival of the Fittest
4x Swords to Plowshares

30 Creatures
1x Dryad Arbor
1x Squee, Goblin Nabob
1x Genesis

4x Plated Sliver
4x Sinew Sliver
4x Muscle Sliver
4x Crystalline Sliver
3x Gemhide
1x Heart
1x Quick
1x Talon
1x Darkheart
1x Hibernation
1x Harmonic
1x Root
1x Legion

I've gotta find out how mana hungry this will be, and if i need to add more lands. Also i realy like the interactions of Dryad Arbor, but will only realy start to appreciate the downsides when they start hitting me in the face, so for now i'll test with it.
If i find myself wanting the Witness effect often, i'll probably try to replace a Gemhide with a Witness to see how well that works.

nastynate

04-10-2008, 06:00 PM

Jaynel has his crap together. He's got a great foundation there. I'd still like to throw my 2 cents in too, if you don't mind. :smile:

You really should run 20-22 lands and the four gemhide slivers in this deck, simply because once you've got SotF in play, you have essentially set yourself back one green mana on every turn for the rest of the game (assuming you use survival every turn thereafter...which you should). Survival really is that mana hungry.

The next thing you need to do is make sure that your manabase is primarily green duals and basic forests. Survival and genesis demand green mana, and lots of it. You should still run basic forests to combat things like wasteland and blood moon, but gemhide slivers (as a 4-of) fix your other mana requirements should such effects pose a problem.

Try something like this:
4 forest
4 savannah
3 wooded foothills
3 windswept heath
2 tropical island
2 bayou
2 taiga

You absolutely want 4 SotF and 4 Vials. You want to see both every single game, and they will get destroyed by your opponents, so you need extras. Normally survival-based decks run eternal witness to get back lost elements such as these, but I think that's a mistake in your deck. Your biggest strength is threat density (kind of like how goblins just overwhelms people sometimes), and eternal witness is not a worthwhile threat or a sliver.

Swords is just good against bigger creatures, particularly things like tarmogoyf and chameleon colossus which can ruin your day. Running 4 is never a bad thing in this format.

All you want for creatures that play nice with SotF are squee and genesis. Dryad arbor is terrible. It falls into the "danger of cool things" category of cards. Sure you can pitch it to survival, put it into play with vial set at 1, and block or attack with it, but it's a 1/1 creature and a non-basic land that dies to everything. Don't bother...anything else you could run would be better.

Try something like this:
4 survival of the fittest
4 aether vial
4 swords to plowshares
1 squee, goblin nabob
1 genesis

That leaves you room for 26 slivers. The first thing you need to do is identify the key slivers and run 4 of each. Utility-based slivers can be cut down to singletons, and the really narrow ones can be shifted to the side-board. The most important in my mind are the muscles/sinews which make the other slivers worth having; run four of each. The second most important are the crystalline slivers which give you immunity to spot removal. The last essential group of slivers are the gemhides, which give you mana acceleration, protection from non-basic land hate, tabernacle effects, and the colors you need if you fail to draw them. You should probably run 4 plated sliver too. It's a one drop to compliment aether vial, it has a nice cumulative effect on your other slivers, and there are no other worthwhile one-drops in the sliver family. That leaves six slots for utility slivers. The first two are obvious: winged sliver (flying) and heart sliver (haste). The last four are up to you, but I think harmonic and plated are probably the best two options. Harmonic deals with numerous problems, and hordes of first strike dudes wins battles against bigger creatures and similar aggro decks.

Try this:
4 Muscle Sliver
4 Sinew Sliver
4 Gemhide Sliver
4 Crystalline Sliver
4 Plated Sliver
1 Heart Sliver
1 Winged Sliver
1 Talon Sliver
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 open slot singleton sliver
1 open slot singleton sliver

You like stifle, so put 4 of them here. Gaddock Teeg shores up your protection from sweepers like, EE, damnation and wrath of god (it also helps against combo). Some darkheart slivers (which help against burn and ichorid), are a good idea, as is some form of graveyard hate. You could put some singleton slivers into the board too, if you find any that are awesome in particular match-ups but useless in others.

A good starting point would be something like this:
4 Stifle
1 narrow sliver of your choice
1 narrow sliver of your choice
3 Offalsnout
3 Gaddock Teeg
3 Darkheart Sliver

xsockmonkeyx

04-11-2008, 01:16 AM

So i guess the other major cut from my list is the 4x Stifles. I've had it suggested before that i should move em to side at least, and i'm starting to think that this may be the best way to go at this point.

Well, dont cut the Stifles from your 75. With Survival, Vials, and a Bunch of Slivers, Pernicious Deed will eat you up. Might want some Grips or Needles too, for extra protection.

Thehunter820

04-11-2008, 11:12 AM

nastynate

04-11-2008, 11:37 AM

I agree with Raharu's posted engine, it works well, the aether vial is nice for dropping creatures, the survival and the oversold search for creatures and let you bring them back to hand, as well as for things like darkheart or necrotic work well with it too.

The question that needs to be answered about oversold is "is this better than genesis?" To some, extent, yes it is, but genesis requires only a single slot and can be tutored up and tossed into the graveyard with survival. To effectively utilize oversold, you need to have multiples to ensure that you see it, which chews into slots that might better be spent on threats.

I love the cemetery, but I think I'd just run squee and genesis instead.

Pulp_Fiction

04-13-2008, 04:20 PM

RoddyVR

04-20-2008, 12:36 AM

Somewhere back someone suggested running the green Leyline. I highly recommend this, the card is fantastic. That being said, only play it if you have problems with Threshold. If you generally can just run them over it is really not necessary.

What happened to Sedge Sliver, I thought that thing was really good, same with Spined Sliver.

Thershold is i think about 50/50 for me. And the worst part about playing against threshold is staring with a 4 land hand and then having the 3 slivers countered/burned/sworded and being in top deck mode to draw a sliver. Survival should help with this a bit, in that i'll actualy have a card advantage engine. And this is the one place where survival is realy better then eladamri's call. If i play Call, get a sliver and play it only to have it countered, i've spent 4 mana and a card to draw out a counter... if they want to stop survival, they'll have to counter it itself (as opposed to the cards it gives me), so i'll only spend 2 mana and a card to draw out a counter.

Sedge Sliver, while a prety good sliver, sucks in my deck cause i only have 1 swamp, and even that is non basic (ie wasteland/bloodmoon kill it off). That's not even to mention that i only have 1 red land, which means casting Sedge might be tough.

Finaly figured out what i think would be a good mana base setup for the survival version of the deck (well i figured out how to build it to make fetches get anything i need, not figured out the total number of lands).

8 Fetches:
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills

9 "forests":
4 Savannah
2 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
2 forest (under a blood moon, i'd need 1 forest to survival and another to cast the gemhide sliver)

2 non forests:
1 Plateau (can be gotten as mountain by foothills, or as plains by heaths)
1 Plains (basicaly to be able to StP magi of the moon)

Switching the fetches to be G/x makes most of the lands in the deck have green, which survival and geneses will need. Going down to only 2 blue lands might be a bad idea, but since i am dropping the stifles from the main deck, i'll only have 6 blue spells (4 crystaline, 1 winged, 1 legion) in the deck.
If i find that as you guys tell me, survival requires 20 or more lands, then I will add more trop islands.

Also going up to only 19 (for now) lands makes me have to get rid of only 2 of my toolbox slivers, and Hibernation is a prety obveous choice. One because its function isnt as needed with genesis in the deck. Two because with blue becoming a much more minor color in the deck, casting a UB creatures will be very tough.
Still not quite sure of the second one to get rid of, Root is probably the most narrow (not to mention least efficient in cost/size terms), but it is also SUCH a hoser against counterbalance decks that i realy would like to keep it (also gives vial something to do at 4 on its way to 5 for legion).
Harmonic maindeck might not be neccessary, and could even be counter productive if i have ot end up killing my own vials and survivals.
Quick and Talon are both closer to "but its a real cool trick" then they are to being real good slivers. But what's the point of a toolbox if not for cool tricks.
Frankly i'm leaning towards taking one of the Gemhides off... Its only realy gonna be needed after survival is down, and in that case, having that many isnt needed, just tutor one up. It and Crystalline are the only two slivers left in the deck that have non stacking effects, and i doubt anyone would suggest cutting a cristalline.

So once i can trade for the Squee, Bayou, last Savannah and 4x Foothills that i need to do this transformation, the new deck will look like this, but need one card taken out:

4x Windswept Heath
4x Wooded Foothills
4x Savannah
2x Tropical Island
1x Bayou
1x Plateau
2x Forest
1x Plains

4x Aether Vial
4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Survival of the Fittest
1x Genesis
1x Squee, Goblin Nabob
4x Plated Sliver
4x Sinew Sliver
4x Muscle Sliver
4x Gemhide Sliver
4x Crystalline Sliver
1x Quick Sliver
1x Talon Sliver
1x Winged Sliver
1x Heart Sliver
1x Darkheart Sliver
1x Harmonic Sliver
1x Root Sliver
1x Sliver Legion

Total 61.

RoddyVR

05-17-2008, 10:16 PM

bumping cause i top 8ed with the survival version in a 34 man tourny at http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9181

will write up a report some time later.

xsockmonkeyx

05-19-2008, 08:37 AM

bumping cause i top 8ed with the survival version in a 34 man tourny at http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9181

will write up a report some time later.

Sweet! What was the list you ended up taking?

RoddyVR

05-19-2008, 12:41 PM

Sweet! What was the list you ended up taking?

Its on the OP.

I also took 1st in the 15 man local tourny yesterday with the same list.
My record for the weekend is:
Matches:
4-0 then 2 IDs then a loss in top 8 on saturday
3-0 then 1 ID then 2-0 in top 4 on sunday
total matches: 9-1-3
Games:
8-2 then 1-3 in the IDs then 1-2 in top 8
6-2* then 0-2 in the ID then 4-2 in top 4
total games: 20-13 with almost half of those losses being in "just for the hell of it" games in the rounds we IDed into the top 8/4.

*it might be 6-1 cause i dont remember if i won in 2 or in 3 the first round

Its a good thing i went undefeated in the Swiss rounds of both tournys cause every single person i IDed with this weekend had a deck that would have (and did) crush me.

The one change i want to make now is to squeeze in a Necrotic Sliver into the sideboard.
Yesterday between atleast 2 decks there running Tabernacles (thank god i got out of their bracket prety quick), the Mosswort bridges with consistent protean hulks under them that the other 3-0 had (ID with him, and he got defeated in top 4 by someone else) and a bunch of other annoying permanents that would have been realy nice to kill off once i had the survival thing going. With survival it can cost as little as 5 mana a turn to vindicate every turn (survival squee into plated, play plated, sac to vindicate). 7 if i'm using genesis for the recursion of the plated sliver. But its more for hte one time effect (maybe even take vial up to 3 to get the necrotic into play) that i want it cause there's always some realy evil permanent around to kill off (like the bayou that happens to be the only black source for the deck playing deeds and cabal therapies that hit 3x stifles in my hand).

xsockmonkeyx

05-20-2008, 02:30 AM

RoddyVR

05-20-2008, 10:14 AM

I could see Necrotic Sliver as an Ok target if you have intentions to recur Slivers with Genesis. 6 Mana + sliver + G to Survival it up for a Vindicate isnt exactly efficient, but with Plated or a Vial in the mix it could be an effective means to win an attrition battle.
My default plan for once survival is active is something along the lines of:
1 find then discard squee
2 get crystaline if opponent has any targeted removal (sometimes i skip this step if i'm prety sure they cant deal with survival itself so their removal will only "delay" the game, which is in my favor with survival anyway)
3 get Gemhide sliver to increase amount of mana i can produce by insane amounts
4 get heart sliver to be able to use the slivers i play to get more mana to play others.
5 get either muscles or legion and win.

After step 3 or 4 getting Necrotic to get rid of some realy annoying permanent (like tabernacle UGHH!) would be prety usefull, even if it does cost me 6 mana.

I have some questions regarding how the following Survival targets have performed:
1x Quick Sliver - When do you find yourself grabbing Quick? How useful is he without Gemstone in play?
I'm not sure i've gotten it with survival yet, but its most effective uses so far have been against Counterbalance (and once against an opposition deck). Its most effective when enough mana to cast it and a combat trick sliver (muscle or talon or something).
The most usefull its been is against counterbalance, when i have either it in play and a harmonic in hand, or harmonic in play and quick in hand (or both in play and a third sliver in hand) because it allows killing off the sense's top in response to its tap ability (when they try to counter a 1 cost spell), or just overwhelming their mana (for top activations) reserves by playing spells both EOT and then during my turn without giving them time to untap in the middle.

1x Talon Sliver - When is he better than another Sinew Sliver?
If i could play a 9th +1/+1 sliver i would, but i dont think i'd take talon out of the deck. Against most agro decks, the plan is to stall the early game cause their goyfs are bigger then my slivers, and talon is amazing at that, talon and a muscle (+any other sliver if the goyfs have grown a lot already) can keep upto 3 goyfs from attacking (and have). Vialing talon is also combat trick #1.

1x Heart Sliver - How often do you grab this guy to kill your opponent a turn earlier? How often does the extra turn matter? With survival, more then the "turn earlier attack" its the "cast sliver for 2 mana, use it to make 1 mana now" effeft that heart is in the deck for.

1x Sliver Legion - How often can you get this guy into play, and how often does it immediately win you the game?
I wouldnt give this guy up for anything. He's a "win now" about every 5th game by making 4 other slivers into 5/5s or more all at once. He's a "win soon" another one out of probably 10 games (when i play him but cant win for a few turns cause i gotta kill off the goyfs first).
Against people who know i play him, i could probably start taking a vial up above 2 even without legion in my hand just to scare the crap out of them, cause they'll assume its to get up to vialing in legion (and i have vialed him in before).

Anyway, Im impressed by this deck's progress. Plus you have to respect someone who T8's with a Sliver Legion.
Thanks.
I'm glad you asked those questions, cause having answered the one about Quick sliver, i'm thinking that with the survival version it might be better as a sideboard card... which would give me space for hibernation main deck.

Spectör

05-21-2008, 10:31 AM

RoddyVR

05-21-2008, 10:40 AM

Haven't you ever had a problem with Harmonic Sliver destroying your own Survival or Vial?
I've found that very disruptive sometimes, but that problem could be solved with Hibernation oder Necrotic Sliver.

It has yet to be an issue even once. Even when i play against decks that dont have obveous targets for harmonic in game one, i leave it in most of the time (cause most anti sliver/survival hate is enchantment/artifact).
I have killed my own vials sometimes with harmonic, but usualy its only when i'm either completely losing anyway and the harmonic does nothing but block once and then i lose anyway, or i'm winning enough that the vial no longer matters (like if the harmonic is the last sliver i need so that legion makes everyone else big enough to win now).
I've killed my own survival once with harmonic, but that was my own choice, cause i had another in hand anyway.

The reason its never realy an issue, is that if i have survival in play and i draw the harmonic when opponent doesnt have anything to disenchant, then i can just survival the harmoic away for a different sliver. If there's only 1 or 2 things that i want to kill off, then i can just survival for a darkheart or hibernation sliver to get rid of the harmonic after it's done its job.

The Legacy Weapon

05-25-2008, 12:45 PM

RoddyVR

05-26-2008, 12:54 AM

Seems like this survival build of slivers would have a God awful time dealing with Wrath of God, Damnation, or pretty much anything that wipes the board. Believe me, I've tried building many different variations of sliver decks and sweepers were the main reason I lost most games. MeatHooks is the only sliver deck I've built and had success with because I was always able to counter the Wraths and other things that would otherwise kick my ass. Seriously, what do you do on turn four when your opponent plays Wrath of God? How do yoyu recover from that? Slowly Genesis back each sliver to your hand? That's to assume that you even had the SotF engine in place before they played WoG.

If i was on the play, then without survivial, i just win before their turn 4, with survival, between genesis and squee, i can get 2 slivers in a turn, which most sweeper decks have problems against (they cant wrath every turn, usualy). Frankly, i dont know if its the MA meta or what, but i rarely encounter wraths. I've got hibernation and darkheart that make sweeper effects sort of suck if either/both are in play.

Against most decks that do pack WoG (or more usualy Damnation), its usualy the rest of the deck that gives me problems (like the discard or deeds), not the creature sweepers. They're more annoying in theory then they are in practice.

As for MeatHooks, i'll be the first to admit that its very possible that that sliver deck is better then mine in some metas. I havent played against it with the survival version, but i usualy beat me before. MeatHooks is a control deck, mine is much more agro and (with survival) combo, so strait comparisons dont realy work well.

The Legacy Weapon

05-26-2008, 02:16 PM

Can you win on or before turn four on a consistant basis? It doesn't look like it. I have a RG Survival Advantage deck and the SotF engine is kinda slow so I played creatures that could hold my opponent off until I had built up enough land to go nuts. Seems like you would need a lot of land to get 2 slivers a turn and cast/vial them into play that same turn. I know they only cost 2 mana each (Plated Slivers cost 1 mana but I doubt you would waste a SotF activation on that one) but the activation cost pretty much makes each sliver cost 3. You only run 18 land and only 10 of them make mana. Seems like a game would go like this:

Turn 1 - Windswept heath, sac and get Tropical Island, cast Aether Vial. Pass
Turn 2 - Counter on Vial, Play Savannah, Cast SotF. Pass. End of opponent's turn vial in Plated Sliver.
Turn 3 - Put 2nd counter on Vial, Play Wooded Foothills, sac and get Plateau.

I'm not sure what direction is optimal to go from here but notice that it took 2 turns to set that up and the 3rd turn will probably be spent Survivaling out the goodies you want but notice that I was being very generous with the land variety. You may not always be lucky enough to see two fetchlands that early without cantrips and is it an auto mulligan if you don't have one in your opening hand? I'm not trying to be harsh. I just can't see the speed that is promised by the previous posts. I promise you that if you fight Threshold, IF you resolve a SotF, you may only get one activation before it gets Krosan Gripped to hell. Would you mind typing up some example hands and playing it out like it's supposed to run?

RoddyVR

05-26-2008, 07:46 PM

I said i could win by turn 4 without survival, with survival i have recursion (via genesis) and card advantage (via squee) so i dont care so much if they wipe the board.

1: land, vial
2: land2, muscle sliver, vial in plated
3: vial in heart, play sinew, attack with 4 3/4 slivers for 12
4: win.

1: land, vial
2: land2, gemhide sliver, vial in plated
3: vial in one sliver, play another with lands, and a third with slivers
4: win (ye, this one's a bit of a stretch for turn 4)

1: land, plated
2: land2, muscle, attack for 2
3: land3, muscle, attack for 6 more
4: land4, muscle and muscle, or muscle and heart, attack for 15 or 16 respectively total of 23 or 24.

I've had all variations of that happen on multiple occasions. sometimes its a turn slower cause i dont have one of the pieces, or one of the slivers i play is a crystalline instead of a muscle.
Ofcourse this isnt the plan i rely on, especialy if i'm facing a deck i suspect has mass removal, but every once in a while that's what you draw, and there's rarely a deck that has good answers for it.

Unlike other survival decks, who's plan when they dont have survival on the board is basicaly to survive till they do, in my deck the Survival plan is the Slow version of the deck, not the fast version. Surivial is more a tutor and a recursion engine then a game plan.

The Legacy Weapon

05-27-2008, 02:29 PM

Unlike other survival decks, who's plan when they dont have survival on the board is basicaly to survive till they do, in my deck the Survival plan is the Slow version of the deck, not the fast version. Surivial is more a tutor and a recursion engine then a game plan.

The real question is: Why in the hell would you want to include a slower recursion engine into what you claim is a fast aggro sliver build? Why even bother with SotF when you could put in other things that could further compliment your fast paced strategy? It would seem like drawing into ANY of the SotF pieces would only slow you down when you would want to be drawing more slivers or disruption.

scrumdogg

05-27-2008, 03:42 PM

Because there are only 6 Survival pieces (Aether Vial not really counting, being a fine portion of a normal sliver/aggro deck, and worst comes to worst, 2 of the SotF pieces are critters) your odds of getting 'clogged' with SotF pieces are extremely slim. What those pieces allow, however, is the ability to either recover from board-stalling or mass destruction or simply to overwhelm it. SotF also makes any silver bullets much more potent and having the ability to play a Muscle-ish Sliver every turn should not be ignored. Need to fly? Done. Need to be untargettable? Done. First strike suddenly attractive as an option, so combat & blocking become one-sided? Done. Pesky enchantments or artifacts clogging things? You see where this is going....

RoddyVR

05-27-2008, 04:21 PM

The real question is: Why in the hell would you want to include a slower recursion engine into what you claim is a fast aggro sliver build? Why even bother with SotF when you could put in other things that could further compliment your fast paced strategy? It would seem like drawing into ANY of the SotF pieces would only slow you down when you would want to be drawing more slivers or disruption.

Because unfortunately i have to run a 60 card deck and there are only 2 +1/+1 slivers, so i can only run 8 of them in total, so that turn 4 win cannot be depended on every game. Basicaly the strategy of the deck tends to be "overwhelm one way or another" and survival just allows me 2 more ways to overwhelm different decks (card advantage or recursion) in addition to being a decent tutor (which is what its slot is in the strait agro plan).

Many decks i overwhelm by just having more creatures then they do.
a lot i overwhelm by having all my creatures be untargetable (chrystalline)Some i overwhelm by having more disenchant effects then is sane (with just one harmonic in play).
Some i overwhelm by having too many ways to play creatures uncounterably then they can handle (between vial and root sliver...)
some i overwhelm by having more life gain then they can handle (darkheart with 3 slivers in play is enough for a burn deck to scoop).

Survival can help with all of those plans by being a tutor, and can also overwhelm sweeper decks by being able to constantly replay slivers after they sweep.

Having said that, i do side out the whole surivial package prety regularly. Once i know which overwhelm my opponent's deck fears most, it is often benefitial to side out survival for worldly tutors because they get the one sliver i need to answer my opponent's deck faster, and also they are harder to hate out themselves then survival is, as most decks have sideboard hate either against enchantments or activated abilities or graveyards (or all 3).

RoddyVR

05-28-2008, 04:09 PM

It seems my deck's gotten put up in an article by Doug Linn at StarCity.
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/15934.html
While i welcome critisims of the deck (even if i sometimes respond to in a prety hostile manner), would have been nice to know about it... Anyway, thought i'd respond to some of his "improvements".

talked about this with my teammate Rian Litchard; upon seeing the list, his first reaction was "why isn't the best sliver in there?" Upon probing, he said he'd swap Plated Sliver for Virulent Sliver. This is a fantastic idea. Rian points out that you only need to get in for ten at that point
One virulent sliver is useless, it's ability will kill an opponent at the same speed as ONE muscle sliver's (10 hits), but there's twice as many muscles and there are some slivers that start bigger then 1/1. Also, if the one Virulent is killed, all your progress towards the poison win is basicaly gone, where as even if all the muscles are killed, the other slivers can still advance the damage gameplan.

This means you're either hoping to have 2 of a 4of in your starting cards or you're assuming that you'll have survival.
Getting rid of Plated is about the worst idea i've heard. Plated is an answer to lackey that survives and that cant be killed (before fighting lackey) by a Fanatic. It also allows your slivers to survive things like Engeneered plagues, and most importantly it gives time to build up the sliver horde against other agro decks by making your slivers able to block creatures bigger then them. Its also the 1 drop sliver that you dont mind losing. Virulent would be yet another sliver that you would not want to trade for an opponents creaure.

I did a bit of testing with this and Virulent Slivers give the deck an explosiveness and reach that it previously lacked. Okay, now you can kill the punk with a trillion life, but that's not the appeal. It's those times when you lead with Virulent Sliver on the first turn, a Muscle Sliver on the second and a Survival on the third or fourth turn, pulling up a second Virulent Sliver or maybe the Winged Sliver to get the poison into the veins.
So you agree that Virulent into another virulent and maybe even into a third is prety pointless, cause they'd be 1/1s that will be killed off before doing their poisonous job. Once you play virulent+muscle, the damage plan is as fast as the poison plan (ie 10 slivers need to connect). Adding a second virulent via survival (which in your plan you cant do untill turn 4 by the way, not turn 3, cause you need 2 mana to play SotF and 1 to search for the virulent, leaving you with 0 to play your 1 drop), will mean you have to connect 5 times with 3 creatures that are all 2/2s without having any of them killed (if the virulents are killed you're screwed. Getting the winged means you're still doing 2 damage per sliver and 1 poison, ie poison didnt help.

It's not a potent sliver by itself, but with two or more in play it becomes terrifying. That is true of all slivers, but virulent DEPENDS on Survival to be at all more effective then a metalic sliver.

Any attack that gets through will be putting the opponent at a precarious place, and it makes chump attacking and trading in combat much more advantageous for you. Either i'm misunderstanding what "chump attacking and trading in combat is, or this is just plain wrong. If you're searching for/playing Virulents instead of plateds and muscles then your slivers are small, which means that you cant attack with the actual Virulent slivers, since if they die, your whole plan goes out the window.
A sliver player almost never wants to trade a sliver for a non sliver creature, because opponent loses one creature and thats it, while the Sliver player loses one creature and the rest of his creatures become weaker. Plated is the ONLY sliver that is worth running as a 4of that also doesnt completely screw the game plan if you lose it.

The player with huge threats on his board is still trembling when each unmolested attacker brings him a fifth closer to dying. The player with huge threats on his board will block your 2 virulent slivers and because you didnt play enough plated/muscle slivers trying to win via poison he probably wont even have to trade, which means you wont have the slivers left to kill him with damage either.

I'm not sure whether Virulent Sliver is hot-dog-awesome or moonrise-over-the-Earth awesome, but it's pretty rad in any case.Virulent sliver is the biggest "danger of cool things" sliver there is. Unless you used a dying Protean hulk to bring 4 of them and a Heart sliver into play, Virulent is not better then Metalic sliver.

I'd rather have it than Plated Sliver any day. Plated is possibly the third best agro sliver there is (after Crystalline and the two muscles).

There are a few other cute Slivers that I'd want to cut down on or eliminate. Root Sliver gets you around Counterbalance, but Aether Vials and Harmonic Sliver do the same; I wouldn't devote such a dead spot to that Sliver. Quick Sliver is an ersatz Aether Vial, enabling those flashy combat tricks just the same. I'm not sure I'd ever actually fetch one up, though.Both Root and Quick are in the deck to deal with the insane amount of counterbalance running around. Vial does not deal with counterballance as well as root because Vial ALWAYS gets countered or destroyed by the counterbalance player. Vial also cannot be searched for in the deck and cannot be recurred with genesis. Harmonic sliver is great against counterbalance except that it gets countered or requires the vial to be taken up to 3, which makes it prety useless afterwards.

The same with Talon Sliver; it just doesn't seem to do the job where one of the eight pump slivers would fail. Goyf. 3 muscle slivers cannot keep 2 goyfs back, but 2 muscles and a talon can keep 4 back easily (actualy a plated, a muscle and a talon can keep 3 back usualy). Almost every deck now has some giant creature for 1 or 2 mana (Dreadnought, goyf, tombstalker) Sliver take a while to get huge, and often they need to just stall the ground war untill they do, Talon is the best defencive sliver there is (also amazing with vial tricks).

Sliver Legion borders on poor, but retains the possiblity of "hay guise, im a 9/9 lol." For five mana, that's pretty good, and it makes for an awful mean trick to fetch up and end the game on the spot. You say he's poor, then give two reasons why he's good, not bad... I dont realy know how to react to that other then saying that i think those 2 reasons are enough to make him good, not poor.

I am partial to adding Necrotic Sliver, since it can kill annoying lands and creatures that cannot be ignored. The casting cost is rough, but Gemhide Sliver pays for a lot of it and Aether Vial can solve that problem completely. The three extra mana to activate is also hard, but not prohibitive.Agreed.

I mostly like it as an alternative to Harmonic Sliver for certain situations. The latter doesn't have "may" in the clause, meaning that, lacking other targets, your slivers will vibrate your Survivals and Vials off the table. Disagreed. Harmonic almost never kills my own Vials or Surivivals unless i no longer need the afformentioned (a vial at 3 taken there specificaly to vial in a harmonic to kill opposing counterbalance or top or a duplicate surivival). If the opponent doesnt play any artifacts or enchantments at all (i'd like ot see that deck by the way) then the harmonic (if drawn) can be cycled via survival or just used as a hyper agressive, dont care if you block and kill it, attacker/blocker.

I want to get the Worldly Tutors off the sideboard in favor of something else; it seems that they're there to be quasi-Survivals, but I get the feeling that Ponder would just be better. I'll admit they arent the best thing ever, but they serve to replace the whole surivial package against decks where survival is either too easily hated out or is just too slow (burn for example, survival is way too slow, but tutor lets you play darkheart turn 2 or 3 and gain 3,6 or more life any time you're about to die).

I'd like to explore bringing in more Darkheart Slivers. I remember many games with older builds of Survival decks, facing down the storm-playing opponent and killing them because a Spike Feeder and a Ravenous Baloth made for a serious extra life buffer against storming out. Unneccessary. You seem to ignore the fact that 1 darkheart in this deck = 3 life PER SLIVER, not per darkheart. In your older Survival builds, each Darkheart/Baloth was 3/4 life per "life gain creature" so you would need many to get out of tendrils range. In this deck, every creature in the deck is an instant 3 life when darkheart is on the table.

I should probably read through what i just wrote and edit it to make it less reactonary, and probably easier to read, but i have to go for now. Might edit it later...

Illissius

05-28-2008, 04:28 PM

I didn't get through all of your post, and while I agree that Virulent Sliver is a bad idea, this bit:

[Plated Sliver is] also the 1 drop sliver that you dont mind losing. Virulent would be yet another sliver that you would not want to trade for an opponents creaure.

does not make sense. They both cost one card and one mana, so whichever of them is the stronger card is the one you would least be willing to lose.

RoddyVR

05-28-2008, 04:45 PM

I didn't get through all of your post, and while I agree that Virulent Sliver is a bad idea, this bit:
does not make sense. They both cost one card and one mana, so whichever of them is the stronger card is the one you would least be willing to lose.

The difference is that Virulent basicaly has its own plan towards a win while plated is just a cheap helper to the big slivers plan. Whether you have 1 or 3 virulents in play, losing one of them, almost no matter the other slivers you have in play, either cuts off or seriously hinders your "win by poison" plan. Losing a plated rarely impacts your board that much. Short of Metalic sliver (which sucks) or duplicates of things like crystalline you rarely want to lose a sliver because its usualy granting an ability to the rest of your slivers, Plated's ability is very usefull early on, but the sliver becomes more "sacrificable" then others later on.

Nihil Credo

05-28-2008, 04:51 PM

They both cost one card and one mana, so whichever of them is the stronger card is the one you would least be willing to lose.
I think I get the reasoning behind that. Virulents get exponentially more powerful in multiples, therefore each one you lose is a bigger pain because it makes the poison kill all the more difficult.

On the other side, given that most creatures in the format have power no greater than their toughness, multiple Plated Slivers offer diminishing returns. An X/X+1 is considerably better than an X/X, since it can kill opposing X/Xs without trading; but the only advantage of an X/X+2 over an X/X+1 is that it can keep up a stalemate against an X+1/X+1.

Therefore, even if the Plated Sliver were the better overall card (I'm not making any claim either way, btw), you'd be less afraid of losing it since you only really want one of them, whereas you want every Virulent Sliver you can get, and losing one means your other ones virtually get weaker too.

Edit: sarnath'd

nastynate

05-28-2008, 05:24 PM

The difference is that Virulent basically has its own plan towards a win while plated is just a cheap helper to the big slivers plan. Whether you have 1 or 3 virulents in play, losing one of them, almost no matter the other slivers you have in play, either cuts off or seriously hinders your "win by poison" plan. Losing a plated rarely impacts your board that much.

Roddy is totally and completely correct. Plated is simultaneously more useful (harder to kill, better synergy with the 8 muscle/sinew plan, still good if you only see one, and a viable chump blocker) and less critical to success since losing one won't cripple your path to victory; losing a virulent makes winning with poison much more difficult.

xsockmonkeyx

05-29-2008, 04:06 PM

@Roddy

Just ignore the article. The assessment of this deck in the article was just plain awful and misinformed. Virulent Sliver, are you serious? Id type more but Im so angry Im afraid my arguments would be skewed. *goes off to RAGE*

Hanni

07-28-2008, 08:37 AM

G/W/b/u/r Sliver Survival

Lands (17)
4 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Flooded Strand
1 Savannah
2 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
1 Scrubland
1 Tundra
1 Taiga
1 Forest
1 Plains

Creatures (28)
4 Plated Sliver
4 Gemhide Sliver
4 Muscle Sliver
4 Sinew Sliver
4 Crystalline Sliver
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Necrotic Sliver
2 Shriekmaw
1 Wonder
1 Anger
1 Genesis
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob

Spells (15)
4 Brainstorm
4 Survival
4 Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy

Sideboard (15)
1 Cabal Therapy
4 Extirpate
1 Talon Sliver
3 Harmonic Sliver
2 Pithing Needle
1 Shriekmaw
1 Gigapede

I think the overall strategy of Slivers is bettered by Survival in the long run, as opposed to just cantrips. The deck still maintains resilience to combo with the discard package and still maintains consistency with Brainstorm but it gains alot more creature spots, a "draw engine," and the ability to have recurable beats via Genesis (and Gigapede) vs control (mass removal).

Vial is nuts but running Gemhide Sliver... is a Sliver. That's awesome when you consider Plated Sliver becomes a Birds of Paradise and Gemhide Sliver becomes a Werebear (with "Thresh," or +1/+1 pumps). The mana production eventually gets crazy... with Survival, the deck can go nuts. I've considered a second Squee in the past, though I don't think the deck needs to go that insane to actually win a game.

I like how the deck plays like a G/W/b Beats deck when it doesn't have Survival... the consistency of the pump core (12 pumpers) is really strong.

I've been considering trying a 5c Thresh-like manabase (City of Brass) and seeing what config works better. For now, Gemhide Sliver has been providing the deck with more than enough mana. I'm also not sure if 17 lands is enough yet, I still need to test more. I was fine with 17 lands in the original CounterSliver shell I was working on with 4 Vial. This deck is obviously different from that (especially since it has less cantrips). I'll see about this.

There's alot goin on in there but feel free to discuss it if you'd like.

RoddyVR

07-28-2008, 11:04 AM

I like that list... except the no vials thing.

I dont think vials are a card you want to cut, though admitedly i've never actualy tried the survival route without vials.

17 lands an no vials is WAY too little for the survival slivers.
i've got 19 lands and 4 vials, and i still get into situations where "one more land" would have been the best card i could have gotten.

In meathooks, 2 lands is all you realy need. here 3 is not always enough.

turn 1 thoughtseize/brainstorm, turn 2 survival, turn 3 use survival twice, turn 4 cast one sliver, turn 5 cast one more sliver, turn 6 cast 2 slivers (if one of the first 2 was gemhide)... is about the best you can hope for with 2 lands... not all that impresive.
You need atleast 3 lands so you can survival once a turn and cast a sliver. 17 lands isnt gonna give you that. I also think you need atleast 2 basic forests to survive against bloodmoon effects.

Also, while i can understand the Anger over Heart sliver choice (though i dont agree with it), i think Wonder over Winged is a clear mistake.

With your small mana base i wouldnt use Necrotic. I dont even want to try to figure out what turn you'd actualy be able to use it. but i'd guess not earlier then turn 5 or 6, and that's if most of your resourses were spent towards it.
I've prety much given up on Necrotic main deck. Vindicate would be better. Sideboard against realy slow decks that run evil shit like the Tabernacle land or something, yes, but main deck, you'll never get up to the 6 mana to use it, or the 7/8 mana to recur another sliver with genesis and sac to Necrotic.

Cabal therapy, realy? What creatures do you have that you actualy WANT to sac? Is presense of Genesis realy enough to warant therapy? I'd just play duress, if i wanted something to add to thoughtsieze.

Having said all that, i'd realy like to try this type of aproach... I never liked counterspells, so i cant realy play meathooks, but the discard thing i think would fit me prety well.

EDIT: wow... i cant get the fetches/duals to work for a sliver deck with black spells. It all comes out as complete crap. I had thought cutting swords would allow cutting back on white, but you cant realy, cause plated, sinew and crystal all have white, and those are 3 of your 5 4ofs. Which means you need a mana base that can reliably give you G, W, and B, and there just arent the fetches to do that (no BW or GB fetch). Oddly enough the best i can come up with is my current manabase, but with 2 more bayous and 1 less savanah (and no basic plains since i dont need it without swords).

Edit2: you shouldnt do Anger over Heart Sliver. You only have 1 mountain in your deck. considering how screwy your mana base is, you do not want to be forced to always get the taiga with one of your fetches (casting survival and crystaline is almost imposible for you untill after you get gemhide). Heart sliver you can atleast cast after a gemhide (which is when you realy need haste anyway) even if you dont have the mountain.

Volt

07-30-2008, 02:36 AM

Pinder

07-30-2008, 02:42 AM

You can't honestly be telling me that you're in green and black and you're not running Darkheart Sliver. Non-sliver Survival runs him. That's how awesome he is. I'd make room for him.

Wonder over Winged seems defendable, though, at least.

Volt

07-30-2008, 02:51 AM

xsockmonkeyx

07-30-2008, 03:16 AM

GWBU Slivival
Sideboard (15)
1 Cabal Therapy
4 Extirpate
1 Talon Sliver
3 Harmonic Sliver
2 Pithing Needle
1 Shriekmaw
1 Gigapede

Faerie Macabre! At least 1. Also, 4 Muscle, 2 Sinew. Green is your primary color.

Volt

07-30-2008, 03:20 AM

Pinder

07-30-2008, 03:44 AM

Non-sliver survival runs Darkheart primarily for synergy with Harmonic Sliver. We have Hibernation for that. Still, I'll see about working him in.

The synergy with Harmonic is certainly a consideration, but they could realistically use any 2 mana sliver (or 1 mana sliver) if that was all they wanted. The continual lifegain from Darkheart is nothing to sneeze at.

Volt

07-30-2008, 04:29 AM

RoddyVR

07-30-2008, 10:15 AM

Volt, that list sucks. I dont know what you're thinking, but that is just a Bad survival list. If you're doing birds and roffelos, then there's very little reason to run slivers instead of the independantly better creatures like goyf. You're gaining very little here by having a sliver core.

Crystalline no longer turns off their spot removal, cause they'll be removing your acceleration. Hybernation no longer lets you shrug off a sweeper because without that acceleration, you'll be down to playing a sliver a turn or less if you want to genesis back a birds.
Without anger to speed up your mana creatures, your deck is slow as hell.
I dont see how this is better in any respect then a regular non sliver survival list.

Hanni's list atleast only included nonsliver creautres that didnt have a "i need to stay in play to be usefull" clause. A sword on a shriekmaw isnt the end of the world, cause its already done its job, but a sword/bolt on your birds or roffelos is gonna be close to a timewalk.

Without vials, most of your toolbox slivers are a waste, cause you're not gonna search up hibernation/darkheart as your first/second creature after you play survival (you'll need birds/roffelos first) and if you are, then you're playing a deck of 2/2s and vulnerable acceleration. If you start with the crystals, muscles because you're already on turn 4 before you play your first sliver, and need to start beats already, then your whole team is gonna die to a sweeper, and it will take you ages to recover, cause your acceleration (if you genensis it back) is vulnerable to spot removal.
If you start with the hibernation or darkhearts to make sweepers less scary, then your deck has something like a 10 turn goldfish.

If you dont draw a survival your deck is even more horrible. With only 4 muscles, your slivers will basicaly be small. With only 10 slivers TOTAL, you've basicaly lost any hope of abusing their sinergy as a tribe, so you're just playing bears with out of place abilites instead of playing goyfs and other creatures that are just better then single slivers.

Gemhide slivers are the reason that slivers can make a survival deck. It allows you to build your hive faster while making your acceleration protected against removal (via crystal/hibernation/muscles). Without gemhide, slivers suck as a survival tribe.

RoddyVR

07-30-2008, 10:52 AM

I've been doing nothing but critisizing your guys' discard survival lists, so i figured i should atleast try to make my own to see if i can even do something that my own critisisms wouldnt apply to.

19 lands
4 windswept heath
4 wooded foothills
3 savannah
3 bayou
2 tropical island
1 taiga
2 forest

23 slivers
4 Plated
4 Sinew
4 Muscle
4 Gemhide
3 Crystalline
1 Darkheart
1 Heart (you could do anger, but i would not recomend it)
1 Winged (wonder is strictly worse in any situation where either is actualy needed)
1 Harmonic

18 other
3 Aether Vial
4 Survival
4 Thoughtsieze
3 duress/cabal therapy (i dont know which is better here, dont play discard enough to have a preference)
1 Genesis
1 Squee
2 Shriekmaw

I'm not sure the 4th gemhide is realy needed, could be replaced by another toolbox sliver (i like talon or legion cause you dont have much creature removal now that swords is gone).
and one of the crystalines could be replaced by a hibernation if you're not too afraid of all the life loss from fetches, thoughtsiezes and hibernation.
Considering the number of turn 1 plays, cutting a plated or two might be warranted, again i'd probably replace them with some more toolbox sliver 1ofs.

Volt

07-30-2008, 12:50 PM

Pinder

07-30-2008, 03:53 PM

Face it, Gemhide Slivers are slow as fuck.

I'd still run it as a 1-of to fetch with Survival, though. I mean, once you have Crystalline down and a couple of other slivers, you could fetch a Gemhide to drop and then pull a Rofellos-style maneuver and just go nuts now that all of your slivers tap for mana. Definitely not as a set up card, but I could see it in the mid- to late game providing crazy accel.

Of course, by then, if you have Survival, your slivers should be huge, so maybe tapping them for mana isn't the most efficient use of them.

xsockmonkeyx

07-30-2008, 04:22 PM

Anger seriously sucks, especially if you dont have Rofellos. Plus, its a lot worse off than Wing vs Wonder because your manabase is fragile already dammit. Also, how about City of Brass as long as we are 5 colors, dont want/need Anger, and # Forests doesnt matter?

Volt

07-30-2008, 04:51 PM

Hanni

07-30-2008, 05:52 PM

I do like Birds of Paradise in this, actually. Better than what Vial and Gemhide do, anyway. Anger really isn't needed in here, I agree. Stretching the manabase beyond 4c is pretty bad.

-3 Gemhide Sliver
-1 Anger
+4 Birds of Paradise

Gemhide > Rofellos, in here. Rofellos will produce more mana on his lonesome but he's not a Sliver. When you drop Rofellos, he's always going to be a 2/1. With Gemhide, you can drop him as a 4/4 on turn 5. This makes him like Werebear in that respect, except he can grow to large Goyf sizes too, like 5/6 and 6/7 (depending on the length of the game). Except now, all of your creatures are also BoP's. Even if Rofellos would still produce more mana, this deck has a much lower curve than normal Survival decks and doesn't need as much mana. I think Gemhide is a rather strong card to discredit and definitely fits in the Rofellos spot.

I'd rather run creatures as removal rather than StP, though. At least that way, they double over as beaters... consider it a form of card advantage, Fish-style. It works better with the Survival base too. Shriekmaw happens to be the best in that department, so I run 3. I'm not a fan of Big Game Hunter because he kinda sucks without being played via Madness from Survival. If the deck has problems with Tombstalker, it can do so sideboard. The ability to gain flying, as well as the discard, can proactively/reactively answer it.

I disagree with Winged Sliver as a 1-of in there instead of Wonder. If you're able to Survival for it, Wonder is going to be better because it's faster... and you'd rather be playing pump Slivers. As a 1-of, you're never going to see Winged Sliver reliable without Survival, anyway.

Gaddock Teeg is a good option that I didn't think of. I think it would be better as a sideboard card though, since it dilutes your Sliver base even further.

I don't really see lifegain being necessary in here. Most aggro decks cannot really race Slivers because Slivers eventually out-advantages the opponent with overpowered creatures. Think back to Goblins, which was always an easy matchup... you simply block with more and more guys that keep getting bigger until you swing over with flying ftw. In those lists, 3 Winged Slivers were run. In here, 4 Survival and 1 Wonder are ran. Most aggro decks do not run mass removal... some pack EE in the board; that can be answered by discard or simply playing more Slivers via Survival/Genesis.

The only deck where I see lifegain helping out against is Burn, which would be better put in the sideboard rather than the maindeck. Does it even help as only a 1-of, though, since by the time Survival gets online, the lifegain is usually irrelevant? This deck can sometimes race burn anyways with the possible turn 4 goldfish (1 Plated/2 Muscle) and we also run discard as additional disruption vs them.

Actually, I think I'd rather run Duress in the sideboard vs Burn since it also improves other matchups like combo and control.

G/W/B/u SurvivalSlivers

Lands (18)
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Savannah
2 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
1 Scrubland
2 Forest
1 Plains

Creatures (28)
4 Birds of Paradise
1 Gemhide Sliver
3 Plated Sliver
4 Sinew Sliver
4 Muscle Sliver
4 Crystalline Sliver
1 Hibernation Sliver
1 Harmonic Sliver
3 Shriekmaw
1 Genesis
1 Wonder
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob

Spells (15)
4 Brainstorm
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy

Sideboard (15)
1 Cabal Therapy
4 Duress
4 Extirpate
1 Gaddock Teeg
2 Vindicate
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Gigapede

The deck is 61 cards, which I normally don't do with decks. In here though, I'm really not sure what to cut. So for now, it'll stay 61 till I figure out what I wanna drop. This list is a bit more refined than the first one I posted, though. The 61st card is the 18th land.

18 Slivers is still a sufficient amount to abuse the Sliver abilities (CounterSlivers runs 16-20). This deck also has Survival, which means it's going to be seeing creatures more often. When the deck doesn't draw Survival, it plays out like normal Sliver beats except we're using discard in here rather than FoW/Daze.

I think that before in the original list, 17 lands were too few. In this list, though, I think 18 is fine. Between 4 BoP and 4 Brainstorm, the deck should have plenty enough mana sources for the early game. With the 1-of Gemhide Sliver, the deck should have enough mana sources for the mid-late game.

After the early game, Survival comes in as a midgame engine (similar to how Intuition would in U/G/b Intuition Thresh). Survival gets Squee/Genesis/Gemhide Sliver in the yard for you, and now you are protected against mass removal and have the mana production you need to crank out Slivers. Instead of running your own mass removal, you instead just out-advantage the opponent by playing multiple Slivers every turn.

I believe this is the evolution of Slivers, if Slivers are able to be viable in today's metagame. I think the curve that Slivers play on make this a highly competitive Survival variant. It has a faster goldfish, which is relevant against combo and aggro, and gets crazy later on vs control and aggro/control when you're able to play 2 pump Slivers a turn (Squee + Genesis).

GRb Beats and GBw Rock variants of Survival are really strong but I definitely think Slurvival is just as viable.

Volt

07-30-2008, 06:19 PM

xsockmonkeyx

07-30-2008, 07:07 PM

http://www.wizards.com/global/images/magic/general/Faerie_Macabre.jpg

FoolofaTook

07-30-2008, 07:30 PM

@Hanni - Cut 4 Brainstorm for 3 Aether Vial and you are at 60 and you probably also have the Slivival build most likely to dominate at this point.

Volt

07-30-2008, 07:40 PM

Jak

07-30-2008, 07:56 PM

Crystaline and Therapy have horrible synergy. Run Swords.

Nihil Credo

07-30-2008, 08:01 PM

Crystaline and Therapy have horrible synergy.
Lolwut?

Jak

07-30-2008, 08:08 PM

Lolwut?

You can't flash it back...

Zach Tartell

07-30-2008, 08:11 PM

You can't flash it back...

Buddy, have you read Cabal Therapy?

Sanguine Voyeur

07-30-2008, 08:13 PM

Because you don't want to sacrifice you Crystalline Slivers to Therapy. I guess that's a reason to not play it.

Nihil Credo

07-30-2008, 08:22 PM

I prefer to think he misread Cabal Therapy than that he just said "if only I had crappier creatures, Therapy would be good!"

xsockmonkeyx

07-30-2008, 08:43 PM

Plated Sliver is pretty crappy.

Jak

07-30-2008, 08:54 PM

Well, fuck me sideways. Could have sworn it was worded different. Keep your Therapies!

I played the mirror on MWS... His version played Gemhide and Heart Sliver and was exceptionally fast. I might test that too.

RoddyVR

07-30-2008, 10:23 PM

Sorry, but Birds of Paradise >>> Gemhide Sliver. The point of Birds is to accelerate your early turns, which it does very nicely. In particular, a 1st turn BoP allows you to play turn 2 Survival with Daze protection. Gemhide Sliver doesn't do DICK to accelerate the deck. The earliest you can play it is turn 2, at which point it will be just as vulnerable as a Birds. If you want to wait until you have Crystalline in play, then the absolute soonest you can play Gemhide is turn 3, and that seems like a pretty poor turn 3 play to me. Face it, Gemhide Slivers are slow as fuck.

Now, if you want to make an argument that the Birds should be replaced with Aether Vials, then that's an argument worth having.

Prety much agree with all of that reasoning, but not the conclusions you draw from it. The reason i dont like birds is that i think survival needs a LOT of mana, and gemhide provides much more mana then birds does. If you want to accelerate the deck, then vial is "A Numba 1". If you realy want daze protection, put ESG in the deck (sorry, bad joke).
The turn 2 daze thing is prety much the only thing birds has going for it. I want gemhide to allow me to do survivaling eot and actualy using genesis. In the birds lists you will have problems ever actualy using genesis's ability cause you'll rarely have the 5 mana you need to use the ability AND play the sliver you get. When you dont get survival, i also think gemhide is better then birds, as it will both grow along with your hive instead of just being an easy to kill land.

Of course, by then, if you have Survival, your slivers should be huge, so maybe tapping them for mana isn't the most efficient use of them.It takes a few turns till your slivers are large enough to do alpha strikes, and in those turns, with gemhide you can use them as blockers then tap for mana eot to survival.

I disagree with Winged Sliver as a 1-of in there instead of Wonder. If you're able to Survival for it, Wonder is going to be better because it's faster... and you'd rather be playing pump Slivers. As a 1-of, you're never going to see Winged Sliver reliable without Survival, anyway.
are you looking to put Wonder in yard same time as squee? when you've got 1 or 2 slivers on the board at most. Or when you've got a hive large enough to want to swing over their blockers (like a couple muscles plus others)?
if you're looking to be able to do the 1,2 or 3 damage with your first couple of slivers, then ye, wonder is better, but why would you care there? If you need it for the alpha strike type deals when your hive is doing real damage, then winged is better cause it actualy does damage. I personaly think that brainstorm is a horrible idea in this deck cause it adds another color (to G,B,W) that you'd want ot have turn 1, good luck choosing what to get with that first fetch. Without brainstorm, half the time you wont need an island at all (with all the birds/vial/gemhides running around for crystaline). Wonder requires you to get the island and by the time you are at the "have a hive need it to fly" stage, you probably wont have an uncracked fetch left... leaving you to draw it... good luck. Winged can be played with any of your aceleration mana, wonder cant. That's why Wonder sucks compared to winged. And it only costs 1 less mana for wonder, which by this point in your plan shouldnt make much difference (you surival for your flyer, then either play winged for 2, or pay 1 to discard wonder away).

I don't really have a problem with running a single Gemhide, although I think you all are overestimating the usefulness of playing a turn 6 Gemhide Sliver just so you can tap a few slivers for mana. At that point, you're almost always going to want to tap those slivers to beat your opponent's face, or keep them untapped so your opponent doesn't beat your face.
Its the "keep them back for blockers, THEN use them for mana" that makes gemhide good. I think i'd be ok with making gemhide a survival toolbox sliver if it wasnt for the fact that having that one gemhide sworded or countered would realy suck.

I just realized that maybe the reason i like gemhide so much is that i've got a couple 4 and 5 cost slivers in my deck... considering that you guys arent running legion or colossus, that might alter the valuation a bit. Not sure how much though. I think my list tends to lean a bit more to the combo side then most of these lists here do as i usualy win with a single legioned strike.

Volt

07-31-2008, 12:26 AM

Hanni

07-31-2008, 02:32 PM

Faerie Macabre is a strong card that I didn't know about but I don't think I'd run it maindeck. Definitely would try to fit it in the sideboard though... not sure if I'd actually remove all the Extirpates for it or not. Maybe -1 Extirpate, +1 Macabre? I dunno.

StP is a strong card but it isn't as necessary as it used to be. Needing 1cc removal for 1st turn Lackey, for the most part, has become a thing of the past. Nowadays, 2cc removal like Shriekmaw is usually sufficient, considering that the most common and problematic thing you'll need removal for is Goyf. There are obvious short-comings with something like Shriekmaw, but they are overrided by the rest of the synergy the rest of the entire deck has with Shriekmaw. There are other ways to answer what StP would normally answer. I do run 2 Vindicates in the sideboard.

I don't understand how Cabal Therapy is a bad card? It's ran in normal Survival, what's different here? We run 4 BoP, 3 Plated Sliver... how is that any worse? Getting rid of one of your own Slivers to destroy the opponent's hand seems more than worth it to me.

Wonder is more efficient than Winged Sliver as a 1-of, IMO. If you wanna run multiple Winged's instead of 1 Wonder, thats a solid option. However, as a 1-of, Wonder is going to be better. As a 1-of, you pretty much have to see Survival to gain flying. With Wonder, you pay G to give your guys flying and still get another creature in hand. With Winged Sliver, you're paying 1GU for flying and you put a vanilla 1/1 Sliver into play (before counting buffs). For the same mana cost (1GG or 1GW), you can gain flying and put Muscle/Sinew Sliver into play instead (with Wonder).

In my list, I'm running more Slivers total (than Volt's list), so the need to up the Sliver count by running Winged Slivers instead of Wonder isn't really necessary, IMO.

RoddyVR

07-31-2008, 03:10 PM

I don't understand how Cabal Therapy is a bad card? It's ran in normal Survival, what's different here? We run 4 BoP, 3 Plated Sliver... how is that any worse? Getting rid of one of your own Slivers to destroy the opponent's hand seems more than worth it to me.
I dont claim to be an expert on which discard spell is better, but i would think that cabal therapy is iffy because you generaly want to play your discard spells early (it not when opponent is topdecking), and early on you wont have creatures that you wouldnt care about losing. Not sure that's a big enough downside to it or not...

Wonder is more efficient than Winged Sliver as a 1-of, IMO. If you wanna run multiple Winged's instead of 1 Wonder, thats a solid option. However, as a 1-of, Wonder is going to be better. As a 1-of, you pretty much have to see Survival to gain flying. With Wonder, you pay G to give your guys flying and still get another creature in hand. With Winged Sliver, you're paying 1GU for flying and you put a vanilla 1/1 Sliver into play (before counting buffs). For the same mana cost (1GG or 1GW), you can gain flying and put Muscle/Sinew Sliver into play instead (with Wonder).
Your math is off.
If you have survival and one lets say squee in your hand, and you need to gain flying:
with Wonder it would cost:
G to discard squee, find wonder
G to discard wonder, find something else (say muscle)
1G to play muslce.
total 1GGG to gain flying and add one sliver to board
with Winged it would cost:
G to discard sqee, find winged
1U to play winged
total 1GU to gain flying and add one sliver to board.

yes, with wonder, you added a muscle instead of a metalic, but if you're at the point of needing flying then the extra muscle isnt always needed.

On the other side, Wonder REQUIRES you to have a trop island. If you dont have a trop (because you used fetches to get black for early discard and then white to play sinews/swords or whatever) then you cant get flying at all untill you topdeck a fetch or a trop. with winged you can use any of your acceleration (be it vials, birds or gemhide) to play the winged.

Illissius

07-31-2008, 03:39 PM

Someone mentioned using Cities of Brass like 5c Threshold.

For the sake of discussion, here's an attempt at that:

4 Aether Vial
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Brainstorm
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Muscle Sliver
4 Sinew Sliver
4 Crystalline Sliver
1 Winged Sliver
1 Heart Sliver
1 Hibernation Sliver
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Darkheart Sliver
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Genesis
1 Shriekmaw
1 Faerie Macabre
4 City of Brass
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
2 Savannah
1 Taiga
SB: 4 Leyline / Extirpate
SB: 4 Swords to Plowshares
SB: 3 Harmonic Sliver
SB: 2 Krosan Grip
SB: 1 Goblin Pyromancer
SB: 1 Eternal Witness

The mana is insane, but with Vials and Cities, it might just work.

Random thoughts:

- One advantage BoP has over Vial is that it can cast Brainstorm. This is important because Brainstorm is much, much better when you can shuffle after it, and that is easier to do when you didn't just use your only fetchland to find a Tropical to cast Brainstorm with.

- Harmonic Sliver seems, for obvious reasons, absolutely ridiculous in this deck. I see no reason not to play 4 between main and side. (Blowing up your own Survivals/Vials if you're not careful isn't enough, given the wrecking it can apply to opposing decks reliant on artifacts and enchantments.)

- I thought of using Krovikan Horror so you could Survival not only twice, but three times per turn, but in the end I think it's probably win more, and slots are tight. Same with Gemhide Sliver and Legion.

- Darkheart Sliver is indispensible when the deck runs Cities in addition to fetchlands, Thoughtseize, and Hibernation Sliver. Essence Sliver is the other option, but it costs four mana.

- I'm pretty sure Faerie Macabre is worth playing maindeck, if only so that you don't automatically get crushed by Engineered Explosives plus Academy Ruins.

- Is there no hope for Telekinetic Sliver?