[Deck] CounterSliver 2.0 (MeatHooks.dec)

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Originally Posted by Pinder

Except that all of our cantripping only costs 1 mana. If Call costed G (or W) and didn't suck as much as Worldly Tutor, it would be tons better. I suppose the extra mana investment could be written off as the cost of quality, though. I could see them replacing Portent in the list Volt posted before.

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I would recommend replacing one of the Portents with an Eladamri's Call. I wish we could decide this issue and move on. We keep coming back to EC, over and over. Let me rehash the arguments:

1) I think running one EC is ideal. It's Crystalline Sliver #5 in the early game, or Winged Sliver #4 in the late game. I don't like running more than one, because you pretty much never want to draw more than one in the course of a game, and you can't pitch extras to a Force of Will.

2) Pinder doesn't particularly care for EC because it's a bit of a tempo sink, and he usually would rather just have another sliver in his hand than an EC. However, he also feels that if you're going to run it, you should run at least two, because one is just random.

I think about sums it up. Please let me know if I've misrepresented your stance, Pinder.

Call is wonderful as a singleton, or possibly a 2-of; you don't want to ever see more than 1 in a game.
It's also nice to have have 2-3 ways of getting a Harmonic Sliver (which is crucial in several match-ups and wins games you have no business of winning) while running 3+ Harmonic Slivers would compromise your threat quality in matches where they aren't needed.

I love Hanni's list for an open to combo-oriented metagame; elegant and flexible. Personally, I would run 2 Dazes at most though, because when run in small numbers it will often read 'Return an island to your hand: coerce target opponent into making horrible misplays'.

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I love Hanni's list for an open to combo-oriented metagame

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My list wasn't meant for a combo-oriented metagame, I was simply saying that the creature base of Slivers feels combo-ish since it wants to see several different Slivers to function at its optimum. My list is just how I would build the deck and my deckbuilding style is to try and make all matchups as good as possible, since I try to build decks with large event metagames in mind (like GP Columbus).

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Originally Posted by Hanni

My list is just how I would build the deck and my deckbuilding style is to try and make all matchups as good as possible, since I try to build decks with large event metagames in mind (like GP Columbus).

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I think this might be the wrong approach for a big event. Making all of our matchups as good as possible tends to make every matchup a little worse than it could be. I think it would be a better idea to focus on our best matchup, goblins, and deal with things like thresh and iggy in the SB. To this end I would put talon and worship back in the main, and not maindeck things like harmonic sliver and eladamri's call. I suggest mainly preparing for goblins in the maindeck since it is likely to be the most popular deck there.

Well, I always consider the Tier 1 with any deck. Goblins is generally the most popular of the Tier 1, and thus I try to keep that in mind too. That's why I suggested putting 2 Talon Sliver back into the maindeck. 3 might be better but I think that 2 MD with 1 Eladamri's Call MD would be sufficient for game 1... you should be able to play enough tempo advantage (via FoW, Stifle, Daze, etc) to allow you to get to the point of the game where the lone 1-of on Eladamri's Call doesn't seem like it's going to hurt at all, even against Goblins. However, I have not playtested the build I just presented at all, so I'm not really in a position to say that this would be the best approach against Goblins. Just keep in mind that you don't want to sacrifice too much against the rest of your matchups to make 1 matchup the best it can be. Goblins will be popular but if you're playing 12+ rounds of Swiss, your not going to be playing against 12 Goblin decks, more than likely you'll play 5 at the most (and that may be an overstatement). Thus, you'll want to be prepared for Thresh and fast combo, as well as other Tier 2 randomness like FS, AS, and B/r Sui. This is not to say that one can be fully prepared against everything... but you want to reduce the amount of unfavorability as much as possible... if you can keep at least a 50/50 against most of the field (which blue-based aggro/control has the potential for), then you will be in great shape.

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Originally Posted by kabal

Worldly Tutor
Search your library for a creature card and reveal that card. Shuffle your library, then put the revealed card back on top of it.

Eladamri's Call
Search your library for a creature card, reveal that card, and put it into your hand.

Call is strictly better in the deck we are talking about.

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Ah, I believe you misunderstood me a tad. I realize that Call is strictly better than Worldly Tutor for this deck. What I was saying there was that if it costed G (or W) and was still strictly better, then it would be alright for this deck. Basically what this deck needs is a creature tutor that costs as much as Wordly Tutor, but puts it in your hand like Call. Since that doesn't exist, we're a little SOL for right now.


And Volt, you pretty much have my stance pegged. But as for now, I give up. Run a singleton Call if you want, you have my blessing :tongue:.

And as for our matchups, I'd rather go 100% against half of them and lose the rest, than go 50/50 with each of them. Especially if the half we're winning has goblins in it. I'd rather have a few great matchups and a few bad matchups than a lot of mediocre matchups.

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Originally Posted by Pinder

And Volt, you pretty much have my stance pegged. But as for now, I give up. Run a singleton Call if you want, you have my blessing :tongue:.

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Thank you, massah. :wink:

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Originally Posted by Pinder

And as for our matchups, I'd rather go 100% against half of them and lose the rest, than go 50/50 with each of them. Especially if the half we're winning has goblins in it. I'd rather have a few great matchups and a few bad matchups than a lot of mediocre matchups.

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Well, I think the matchup with Goblins is still quite favorable using my latest list. But I understand where you're coming from.

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Originally Posted by Volt

Well, I think the matchup with Goblins is still quite favorable using my latest list. But I understand where you're coming from.

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Oh yeah, I wasn't doubting our Goblins matchup. I was just saying that we probably shouldn't worry too much about improving our Elf/Staff matchup or whatever. As long as we've got Thresh, Gobs, and Solidarity handled, then I think cleaning up most of the lower Tier shouldn't be much of a problem

I would just like to say that these guys have been testing this deck for some time. I know I have been there for most of it. I have helped them test it and it is a solid deck. Granted all decks have weeknesses. Some times it can be some randome ass card or deck that no one would even think of. I have tested my black discard/control deck with it and it gives it problems and may even win a game, but it always comes back to kick my ass. I made a few deck changes to my deck (kept it stright black) thanks to xsockmonkeyx and Galroth I have been able to win at our meta game but I still cant beat Meathooks. Keep it up guys! :cool:

Thanks, JJ.

Here's the list I threw together last night for some testing. It could probably use a bit of tweaking, but overall I found it pretty resilient:

//Land (18)
4 Tundra
4 Tropical Island
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
1 Windswept Heath
2 Island
1 Plains

//Creatures (17)
4 Crystalline Sliver
4 Muscle Sliver
3 Plated Sliver
3 Winged Sliver
2 Talon Sliver
1 Harmonic Sliver

//Spells (25)
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
4 StP
4 Brainstorm
4 Serum Visions
3 Stifle
1 Portent
1 Eladamri's Call


So far the singleton Call hasn't been all that bad, as it's Harmonic when I need to clean up Jitte et al, and not entirely useless when I don't. Still slow, though. 9 Cantrips probably isn't as good as 10, but it seemed okay. More on this list later.

EDIT: So, with Planar Chaos rumor season starting up and all, I figured I'd peruse MTGS to see what they've uncovered so far, right? Well, if you haven't been here, you might want to check it out. There's some pretty kewl stuff in there. One thing in particular caught my (and will probably catch your) interest:

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Originally Posted by MTGS

The following rumors are now partly confirmed (see partial spoiler):
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- a cycle of slivers that give off-color abilities (green gives haste, black gives first strike, red gives sac: draw a card).
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A green sliver that gives haste? Sign me the fuck up. If white (or possibly blue) ends up with some sort of direct damage, I will quite honestly shit my pants with sheer joy.

Now if only they'd errata meddling mage to be a sliver wizard.

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Originally Posted by Maverick676

Now if only they'd errata meddling mage to be a sliver wizard.

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what would the art look like with it being a sliver? :confused:

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Originally Posted by Pinder

A green sliver that gives haste? Sign me the fuck up. If white (or possibly blue) ends up with some sort of direct damage, I will quite honestly shit my pants with sheer joy.

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How about a blue Muscle Sliver? Mmmmm...blue muscle sliver.*drools*:tongue:

EDIT: OMG, appearantly the new muscle sliver is white!!!!#!#!ZOMGZesIMONFIRE!!#!!!

Yup. It seems pretty clear that there is a new white Muscle Sliver. In fact, all the hitherto green abilities are going white in Planar Chaos.

It's the theme:

Green becomes white (like Ligament Sliver, heh not Muscle but Ligament and also Drop of Honey)
Black is going Blue (Funeral Charm so far)
Blue is going Red (think of a Man-O-War Goblin "Goblin o' War" - name)
Red is now Green with a combination Scryb Sprite-Lava Spike called Uktabi Drake
White cards are Black beginning with Black's version of a Circle of Protection

But I see evidence of other color craziness as well.

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Originally Posted by Finn

Yup. It seems pretty clear that there is a new white Muscle Sliver. In fact, all the hitherto green abilities are going white in Planar Chaos.

It's the theme:

Green becomes white (like Ligament Sliver, heh not Muscle but Ligament and also Drop of Honey)
Black is going Blue (Funeral Charm so far)
Blue is going Red (think of a Man-O-War Goblin "Goblin o' War" - name)
Red is now Green with a combination Scryb Sprite-Lava Spike called Uktabi Drake
White cards are Black beginning with Black's version of a Circle of Protection

But I see evidence of other color craziness as well.

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It's not systematic. Blue also has a discard-spell, but the idea is chaos, which means, every colour gets every colour's ability. The green 2/1 Hasty Flying Drake for G with echo of GG1, it's a combination of blue and red. The blue discard-spell has blue and black elements. Then there are just plain crazy effects. Crovax is white, etc. But that's not here, nor now.

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Originally Posted by xsockmonkeyx

How about a blue Muscle Sliver? Mmmmm...blue muscle sliver.*drools*:tongue:

EDIT: OMG, appearantly the new muscle sliver is white!!!!#!#!ZOMGZesIMONFIRE!!#!!!

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...*salivates*...

Okay for some actual discussion, With a white Muscle sliver now, how important is Harmonic sliver and Eladamri's Call? On one hand, Harmonic sliver is really good, but with the ability to take green out altogether, the mana base could be cleaned up tremendously

Either you drop Green and clean up the manabase or you can think about adding another third color (like black or red) to get your other Matchups better.

Alsso, what do you think about the white Drop of Honey? It could help against random decks and is also not too bad against Gobbos, especially, if you have a Crystalline Sliver out. The only problem Creature left, should be Nimble Moongoose, but that should be pretty handleable with Crystalline, the new Muscle Sliver and Talon.

Am I the only one interested in running 8 Muscle Slivers? It is the most powerful Slivar evar, after all.

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Originally Posted by Blair Phoenix

...*salivates*...

Okay for some actual discussion, With a white Muscle sliver now, how important is Harmonic sliver and Eladamri's Call? On one hand, Harmonic sliver is really good, but with the ability to take green out altogether, the mana base could be cleaned up tremendously

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I was just thinking about that. There are a few routes we can go.

1) Keep the UGW mana base, and play with 8 "Muscle" Slivers. Obviously, something would have to be cut.

2) Remove green from the deck altogether, sticking with just UW. Obviously, we would replace the Muscles with Ligaments, and the Harmonics & EC with... something.

3) Remove green from the mana base, and replace it with black. Replace the Muscles with Ligaments. Replace the Harmonics & EC with Duresses. Spend a lot of time arguing about whether Hibernation Sliver and/or Dark Confidant belongs in the deck.

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Originally Posted by Eldariel

Am I the only one interested in running 8 Muscle Slivers? It is the most powerful Slivar evar, after all.

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8 Muscle slivers are definately awesome, but I'm not sure it's right for this deck which is much more control than aggro.