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You're not giving him enough credit. He is a beast. Seriously and the advantage he gives against other tribal decks that affect all of a type as opposed to just your own.
Sliver control is necessary in our current meta. What will you do against all of these combo decks? Or against sweepers?
We also run swords and have shroud so we're fairly immune to much of the aggro hate out there. Merfolk cannot say the same. They struggle against zoo constantly. I should know..I play both decks ;)
I know, that's why I recommended running him more than once;) I run him in my Elf-Survival deck, and he often wins the game for me. That's why I believe that even though you would run a survival list, run at least 2-3 Mirror Entity's. In a regualr countersliver deck, I would recommend running him three times...
Ya I think he is amazing at least as a 2 of. Perhaps not 3, but definitely 2.
Anyway..I've been playing slivers successfully and hopefully I can take it to my next tournament. I'm excited to see how it does with 45+ people.
Mirror entity is amazing, especially with winged sliver, but you don't want to run more than 2 of him. He can really clog your hand in some cases.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aadz0r
Based on Vault's list, with a single copy of Eladamri's Call (post #1010 from this thread) i've been developing a new list with 2 of them.
We don't have better creatures than Merlfolk (and i think we all agree) but we have access to more control/manipulating stuff, not only blue and white spells but we're immune to removals and, for me, since Vault's post, Meathooks has a very very good getwhatyouwant- Eladamri.
("Meta cards/Open Slots" a part.)
2 Mutavault
4 Flooded Strand
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Tundra
2 Tropical Island
1 Island
1 Plains
---
18
4 Aether Vial
---
4
4 Crystalline Sliver
4 Sinew Sliver
4 Muscle Sliver
3 Plated Sliver (Half lord, half mana, half good but still good)
2 Winged Sliver (Search for it with Eladamri)
---
17
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Brainstorm
2 Eladamri's Call
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18
* Meta/Open (more U/W control)
1 Path to Exile (Based on Zoo, Merfolk and recently Vegenvine's frequencies, i think its a good starting point. 2 will add an extra aggressive effect that may work very well)
2 Disenchant/Krozan Grip (not so meta dependant if you think closely. Helps against a miss countered Survival of the Fittest or Vial. Save counters to Standstill-style spells and counter wars. Remove the creatures with the 5 or 6 StPs. Krozan Grip is a better option to fight blue (CBTop), but it has 3CC and is in the green little side of the deck.
---
3
Side
1-2 Path to Exile
2 Disenchant/Krozan Grip)
3-4 Stiffle
.
.
.
17 blues spells, considering 3 FoW's on the count. That means sometimes you will have FoW with no other blue card in your hand. One funny thing happening is Eladamri's fixing it sometimes - I catch a Winged or Crystalline and hold it for a while, until: another blue shows up, the time to fly over and win or use it to counter a hurtful spell.
The ability to choose which Sliver you want (fly, pump, reshroud'em) for 2CC it's an incredible effect at mid-late game. Maybe 3 Eladamri's Call should be tested one day. Now I can hold hands with less mulligans too, since the ability to search for Crystalline if you dont start with him.
I'm moving to a more control role, let's see what happens. If you suggest another control that fits the mana base, i'll test it - creatures we already know that don't have much options, aside Crystalline to protect the horde until muscles start growing ;)
Final comment: One possible movement is -1 Winged, -1 Plated and +2 Meta/Control cards. A lot of removals/protection/counters until the horde has the power to finish the game. Thats my suggestion and is working fine for me.
See ya!
There is no way you can only run 1 winged! Huge mistake. That is the sliver that gives me the alpha strike usually. I also believe that plated sliver isn't worth it. I much prefer sidewinder sliver as it is much more aggressive on the attack.
I think our lords are generally better than Merfolk's. We have shroud, we have 2 two mana lords. Granted LOA is better than winged as he provides a pump bonus as well as evasion, but having an army of fliers can be quite useful.
I also think it is a huge mistake not to use mirror entity. He is our lord 9-10. And he makes everyone HUGE.
P.S. - I think slivers is an aggro control deck, so unless your meta is filled with combo, I'd keep it along the aggro route. The control is worthless without a proper clock on the opponent.
I get Winged every game i need it with 2 of them - plus 2 Eladamri's Call. With one settled Winged in game, I dont want to find another one - just muscles/sinew.
This deck is only better on shroud, giving us a powerfull weapon but that is it.
Agreed in terms about Sidewinder Sliver. The problem is the same as Winged: doesn't stacks. Play together with Plated would be a choice....
Mirror Entity is non sense to me.
If you don't remove tons of creatures on various fields, you will lose easily to the big monsters that pump much faster than us. You are not considering that. Also, a lot of combos are creature combos. Against control I didn't play tested yet. I think control is the way to go.
Mmmm, but I always want myself finding a winged. WORST case is it pitches to FOW.Quote:
Originally Posted by reale
Shroud is a huge deal in legacy...that is why merfolk has so much trouble.
Actually sidewinder sliver DOES stack. If you have 4 out and they decide to block their creature gets -4/-4 before any damage is dealt.
Mirror entity is a huge beater especially with winged in play. It makes your dudes enormous. Do you know how he works?
Imo you can NOT play Slivers without Mirror Entity.
It is you finisher and it is your edge over Firespout. Usually if you can get a Crystalline Sliver and an Entitiy on the board, your in a pretty damn good position. If you then manage to get a Winged Sliver, it can allready be a win....
But that idea with Eladamri's Call -> i really like it. Considering the 3 open slots you have right now (which you entitled to "meta"), i would put in a single Harmonic Sliver and 2 Mirror Entity :)
Now to the harsh part:
I don't think there is any reason to play Slivers in competitive play if you plan to win.
Don't get me wrong , i got a playset of all relevant slivers, and almost all of them are foil ( i think im just missing 1 Sinew and 1 Winged in foil) and i just love Slivers, but they just loose the fight with most of today's good Legacy creatures in other Aggro Decks. Tarmogoyf is bigger, Qasali Pridemage is bigger when attacking, Nimble Mongoose gets bigger faster, Wild Nacatl is bigger, Serra Avenger flies and has vigilance - and now im only talking 1-2 mana, cause it would be unfair to compare to Knight of the Reliquary, Terravore and such. Slivers rely on swarming the board but don't have a Ringleader (like Goblins and Elves have).
IF you have Mirror Entity you can balance these points out more or less, but still i found the deck to have a lot of trouble.
Sure slivers have Shroud (with Crystalline in play), but i would go so far to say that more and more decks can adept to this problem. Merfolk has its Engineered Plague, any Black Deck has their sacrifice effects and good control decks have Firespout.
But my point of view might be a bit outdated.....i think i will go for some testing these days....
Very good points I must say. I view slivers more as U/W merfolk. We have all the necessary control with the removal as well.
The other thing slivers has as a positive is amazing artifact/enchantment destruction (Harmonic Sliver).
Aside from that I'd say our evasion is slightly better, but our pump and secondary abilities are worse compared to merfolk.
There are obviously positives and negatives, but overall I still feel this is a solid, fun deck.
The following thing came to mind while testing:
Slivers should be aggressive, hence the term "AggroControl"
So i wonder if Sidewinder Sliver would be the better Choice over Plated Sliver. Sidewinder gives a bigger advantage (when we attack) than Plated provides.
What do you think?
Slivers, as i stated before, absolutely lack the "regain" of power, like Ringleader provides for Goblins. What can be done to fix that?
Standstill? I somehow don't like standstill.....
It is so situational and has zero aggression (unlike Ringleader, who after all, still is a 2/2 dude with haste and ALLWAYS is an advantage for you, either you get rid of lands or you get goblins, its just nice)
I mentioned sidewinder two posts above you. I love him and he IS very aggressive. It makes people thing twice about blocking.Quote:
Originally Posted by sporenfrosch1411
As for the CA that other decks have...I know it sucks. I play Elves, Soldiers (Best CA), slivers (Worst CA), and Vampires. All have some sort of CA, but by far I think that Slivers has the worst. All we have is basically brainstorm. Standstill has been thought of, but we cannot hope to play under it nearly as well as Merfolk. We have removal we need to cast, less manlands, and no wastes for opposing manlands.
However, the redeeming quality is that we do have a better combo match than goblins and elves. We also have a better aggro match than merfolk (in my opinion). This puts us right in the middle. There are slivers that can give CA themselves, but are way too pricy to run. If you do choose to run standstill let us know how your playtesting goes. As far as I remember I didn't like it most of the time.
Our best CA is invalidating cards in their hand (removal), etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tru3z3rox
About Winged, you are right, unless you get 2 and no Muscle. Or 2 winged and 1 muscle, when it may be 1 and 2 muscles, 1 of them found through Eladamri. When you have a lot of Muscles and NO Winged, but 1 Eladamri, you also get Winged. It works like the Joker.
Sorry my mistake about Sidewinder, actually, I thought it was Quilled Sliver's ability that we were talking about. When I read that it stacks, i had to confirm what the hell you were talking about and search for Sidewinder, LOL.
Now, i'll get Sidewinders up to test them. They turns the deck to an aggressive way that may work and I like the idea.
About Mirror Entity, i'll test it. Both of you are probably right. The reason that I was against it is that usually i didn't need such effect to win - searching for Muscles (Eladamri) plus removing more creatures/enchantment/artifacts is working fine (Bye CB/Top, Survival of the Fittest...). Actually I don't play in a VERY competitive meta, but the decks are ALMOST there, with some cheaper cards replacements by my enemies.
See ya!
Try him as a 2 of and I guarantee that you'll like him. I also run 2 mutavaults just for the extra beaters. Eladamri's Call is good, but I feel it slows the deck down a bit. If you run a tool box of harmonic, etc then I guess it is OK.Quote:
Originally Posted by reale
Hey guys, I'm new to this thread and I'm trying to devise a sliver deck aggro oriented. It would be nice if we had a Sliver equivalent to Ringleader/Messenger. But since we lack it, and because the aggro list runs white and green, shouldn't 3-4 Horizon Canopy be a good idea for some extra card drawing?
Also, about the non-sliver spell part of the aggro version. Can we really hope to run any Sliver deck without a minimum of 4 counterspell/removal/disruption pieces? I think not...slivers can do many tricks, and I'd love to run a land-sliver-only version someday, but for now we can't survive only playing Survival and not jamming the opponent a little. Survival is very good btw! But what if it just gets countered, etc..? Do you just wait for the other 3 while not messing with the other's plan at all? I've made that mistake some days ago. Sneak and Tell, Reanimate and combo decks mostly beat you for good:D
Something that eluded me all this time.. Does the +1/+1 of Muscle/Sinew/Sedge stack with Mirror Entity's pump?? If I have a Crystalline, 2 Muscle and a ME and I pay 3 mana for the latter's ability, does that mean that all my creatures are 5/5 or 3/3? If they are 5/5 then maybe Horizon Canopy isn't so synergistic, but still, it seems one of the best solutions to me for card drawing. Harmonize is a little expensive and has double green.
By the way, Land Grant x2 anyone instead of 2 Fetchlands? The list I'm experimenting with is UWGR and contains Gemhide, Muscle, 1 Root and 1 Harmonic -mainboard. So far LG was almost the same to me. The bad thing with 4 colours is manabase trouble which can be solved with some life-loss from City of Brass, Gemhide Sliver and Vial. 1-2 Ancient Ziggurat / Thran Quarries can help too. No space for more than 1-2 Mutavaults though, but the creature count is higher in the aggro lists.
On the bright side, the three reasons I'm picking up Red are: 1) Sedge sliver (requires 1 Swamp that must be fetched/granted to give the +1/+1), 2)Heart sliver's haste (speedy, and lets you play 1-4 extra slivers at once if paired with Gemhide), and 3) Frenetic sliver (in the slots of Hybernation), which is surprisingly strong against Wrath/Firespout effects. Half your people live -statistically- and you attack right away after the sweep without re-casting them. Another option with Red is to use Homing Sliver as a threat, which is also uncounterable as a cycler, and it's really neat if you face lots of counterdecks (you bring Root=>gg). Probably Survival is generally better than Homing, and surely it is faster but most established lists pack Force of Will. I enjoy it if I can turn counterspells into dead cards.
As you see, I'm taking out the swords, force of will, daze and brainstorm/ponder. Which sounds like a newbie's plan. But 4 Spell Pierce in the place of Daze work well; I can play 4 Duress(tried Cabal Therapy but it was bad sacrificing for the flash back, especially here), and Leylines of the Void+Sanctity in the sideboard (runed Halos or Meddling Magi are some of the rest). Plus, the extra 1-2 Lords with regenerate have proven to be good so far. I don't know yet if I'm gonna trash the list in the end, but it is quite fast.
Yes the pumps stack with ME's ability and that is why he is sooo good for slivers.Quote:
Originally Posted by 0dysseus
Your list is interesting, but wasteland owns your deck. More so than 2-3 color slivers because we can at least fetch basics. Frankly Root Sliver, Frentic, and Gemhide are subpar and not that aggressive. Sedge would be the only reason for R/B. If you're really scared of CT then board Roots. I much prefer my Harmonics in my board and spell pierces in my board. The dazes can hit creatures as well which is important.
I don't think they will reprint slivers for a while, so that Sliver ringleader is a long time coming.
So I've been play testing against merfolk and TES and I've come to realize that both MUs are abysmal. Out of 6-8 games I barely stole away 2 against merfolk and lost every game against TES. I feel the sideboard can solve the TES issue, but merfolk remains a problem. Anyone have any ideas on how to improve both of these matches?
And that was over a year ago. Things have changed since then, but I don't think things have improved for slivers. I wonder if it isn't time to let go. =)Quote:
Originally Posted by Volt
I don't let go of decks that I enjoy playing. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by kirbysdl
I've come to realize that Merfolk is the only bad match that the sideboard cannot fix. I've not come up with ANYTHING that could be done..
Edit:
We could run a few Llawan Cephalid Empress...