lol didn't realize he was a creature... #RTFCOriginally Posted by Aggro_zombies
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For those wondering about Phantasmal: he helps to set up double crystalline as well as the obvious role of acting as another lord.
For those concerned about evasion or viability of the deck outside of super beatdown plan, I give you the more balanced version:
2 Muscle Sliver
4 Predatory Sliver
4 Sinew Sliver
4 Crystalline Sliver
2 Phantasmal Image
3 Winged Sliver
4 Aether Vial
3 Relic of Progenitus
4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
4 Swords to plowshares
4 Force of Will
3 Mutavault
2 Caverns
15 other lands
Referring to the art on Stasis:
Why do you need to double Crystalline Sliver? They can't target it anyway and if they Wrath you, they Wrath you. I would think you'd run it just to have an effective 16 lords.
Oops I coulda sworn it was Lord style, with all OTHER slivers. Huh, well in that case, it's just for extra lords and FoW fodder.
Referring to the art on Stasis:
Hey I was just dropping in and thought I would chime in on phantasmal image. My main problem with it is that you need to have a sliver to copy and it will only ever copy a muscle sliver, double winged is pointless, and the only reason to want more than one crystaline on the board is in the mirror match for the bigger body. So with the new muscle being printed you would have 12 muscle slivers in the deck, 4 Crystaline and 3 winged which in my pretty extensive experience with slivers is the perfect number of creatures for this deck. While having 16 of the lords sounds good, and probably would be in some matchups (i.e. gobs, aggro / anything with creatures and no boardsweep) it is worse against control decks with boardsweep as it would force you to cut protection. which is generally your most difficult matchup. I'd say it should really only be run in the board if at all, probably not even there as it doesn't really improve any of the problem matchups. Also quick question I notice no daze? I have been out of legacy for awhile so maybe it isn't as good as it used to be, but back in the day I wouldn't have cut that card for anything. Free counters are that decks bread and butter.
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Even with 12 sliver lords, I fail to see why Slivers should be better than Merfolk. The deck is basically the same, but just a bit worse because you can't remove slivers to FoW like you can with merfolk.
Crystalline Sliver is basically the only thing slivers have going for them. And Winged sliver just sucks - a 1/1 for 2 is simply not good enough for legacy.
I think this decklist is the best so far:
4 Muscle Sliver
4 Predatory Sliver
4 Sinew Sliver
4 Crystalline Sliver
4 Phantasmal Image
4 Aether vial
4 Brainstorm
4 Swords to plowshares
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
20 Lands
With 20 blue spells it should be ok with fow. Alternatively you could play Plated Sliver over Images to have a one-drop sliver. The blue spell count will be low again because of this though. :/
Predatory Sliver 1G
Creature - Sliver
Sliver creatures you control get +1/+1.
1/1
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Honestly merfolk is probably better, the deck was built to excel in a goblins dominated meta. If you were to run it today though, not running winged sliver would be a serious problem as flying is rather critical, also not running ponder or top along with brainstorm really hurts your draw engine to the point of making the deck unplayable. As far as phantasmal image he just doesn't help any matchup you don't already dominate.
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The early flavor text references put out by Wizards seems to hint that another Crystalline Sliver could be released, probably hexproof due to recent targeted sliver abilities.
What would Slivers need then, a Ringleader effect?
Slivers need a Ringleader effect or a Silvergill Adept effect that you can play without neutering your army. These things are highly unlikely to happen.
Why would they "need" a ringleader if they have no Lackey? Why would you ever run a sliver deck where you'd tick your vial past 2? why do slivers "have to" have a goblin counterpart? Goblins is a resource denial deck, slivers makes no attempt to do that. Slivers is about evasion and stacking lords ... and with a vial that never moves past 2 - that's a massive advantage.
QFT. Merfolk has a ringleader effect, but they haven't run that card in years since they have discovered how terrible it is in there.
The reason ringleader is amazing in goblins is because they literally run 30+ goblins in their deck. How many dudes do we run? Oh right, around 20 tops and that's pushing it.
We really want a silvergill adept effect, but that will probably never happen. Brainstorm is our adept basically in terms of smoothing out our draws.
Winged sliver isn't remotely bad. It is this decks lord of atlantis/unblockable slivers. Also of note, it ups the blue count for FoW as drawing a second winged sliver is bad short of it being pitched to FoW.
If a hexproof sliver is printed in oncolor mana for 2, this deck be a force. We'll have to wait and see on that one, but I hope they do it.
Why is it a problem that phantasmal image has to copy another creature? That isn't remotely bad. If you have zero other creatures, bravo you are going to lose most likely. Card is amazing against sneak and show and heck you can copy opponents creatures in case you need a goyf or something or another that might be useful. I wouldn't run less than 4 in this deck, the only bad thing about it is not being uncounterable off of cavern of souls.
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What lands are typically run? Can you even afford to run more than 4 colorless lands with a 3-color manabase, and if so, is it Wasteland or Mutavault?
Merfolk played Standstill for a long time, why isn't it a consideration for Meathooks? It seems like it would be a good way to power through sweepers.
Also, if mana-denial is a plan for this deck, is Judge's Familiar right out? It's not an irrelevant clock and Death & Taxes does sometimes run a couple.
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If you can't run wasteland I think mana denial is out the window ... the only thing Slivers have going for them (besides awesomeness) is Shroud and Evasion. You are stuck in 3 colors which also hinders any mana denial strategy you may want to employ. When I ran meathooks pre-Cavern but post image I ran 4 Mutavaults ... and yes I vialed Crystalline in in response to Wasteland for ultimate victory. Maybe with Cavern I would cut to 3.
8 x fetches
3 x cavern
3 x vault
3 x tundra
3 x trop
1 x island
21?
4 x vial
4 x brainstorm
I played daze and force as well ... only non 2CC sliver I played was Sidewinder because he's awesome and people don't understand Flanking. He probably leaves for new Muscle.
I'm surprised no one else mentioned sidewinder sliver until now. He comes down on turn 1, helps the aggro plan, and his ability stacks. The deck would welcome a cmc-1 creature in my opinion to curve into the plethora of options at cmc-2. As far as silvergill adept sliver is concerned, unfortunately it's already been printed as dormant sliver. I'm not a sliver expert by any means but is it possible to drop green for red? The new first strike sliver comes down on turn 1 and curves pretty nicely into heart sliver.
It seems like red doesn't really stack well, so it sucks to draw multiples. Green gets you 2 pump lords. Maybe the correct way to build it is only play Slivers that stack well and like 2-ofs of the other ones?
Cavern helps cast the Slivers, but it makes me nervous to play a bunch of lands that don't play nice with Daze, Brainstorm, and Swords. Nedleeds, was it a problem when you ran them?
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I understand the concern about drawing multiple red slivers but maybe a 2/2 split would be ok. Red also gives access to boros charm in order to protect the slivers from sweepers. Lightning bolt would give the deck a much faster clock than merfolk too. Of course, this comes at the expense of FoW and daze. Wasteland also seems like a potential liability regardless of which 3 colors are being used.
Edit: actually, boros charm might be difficult to cast due to the mana base.
Last edited by nudon; 05-21-2013 at 05:30 PM. Reason: mana issues
Assuming there's a Hexproof sliver, and assuming it's mono-green, this deck might be better off ditching blue and just going Naya Aggro. It would be sufficiently different from most current incarnations of Zoo or Maverick to be worth exploring. You could run enough cheap removal to get small blockers out of the way and Sidewinder, Spined, and Striking Slivers would allow you to dominate combat against other creature-based decks.
Staying in the Bant/blue-based model just means you have a deck that compares very unfavorably to Merfolk no matter how you build it, and the golden rule of playing decks is to never play Deck-X-But-Worse.
(Also, I'm fairly certain that Slivers will only be in Naya this time around. When WotC revisits mechanics, one of the things they do is put them in different colors, or narrow the colors they show up in - see Scry in M12, for example. This makes them more interesting as far as draft is concerned.)
My thoughts:
Phantasmal Image
It's a neat idea, but as others have already mentioned it would really only ever copy either Muscle or Sinew Sliver because Shroud and Flying don't stack. That might have been useful before but now that we know we're getting Predatory Sliver it's just a moot point. The ability to make it copy creatures your opponent control could be situationally useful, but without shroud, Phantasmal is just so fragile. It might be neat to play alongside Virulent Sliver, but at that point it's honestly just a different deck.
Sidewinder Sliver
The deck originally ran Plated Sliver because it needed a 1-mana answer to a turn one Lackey (we designed the deck from the ground up to be a foil for a Goblin-heavy metagame; it originally ran Stifle for that reason as well). Now that that's not a major concern, I could see conceivably cutting Plated for Sidewinder instead but again, we're getting another lord so there likely isn't room and it's probably better to just find Winged Sliver so you don't have to interact with your opponent's creatures much at all.
Cavern of Souls
You would never name anything other than slivers, it taps for all colors, and it doesn't really make your manabase weaker than it already was. A solid include.
Running/Splashing Red
Nope. The cons far outweigh the pros in every conceivable case. The manabase is already the deck's biggest weakness, pushing it into 4 colors just so you can have another 1-drop with an ability that doesn't stack is just bad for you, especially when you already have an on-color first strike sliver that plays nicely with leaving Aether Vial at 2 counters. You can't drop blue because the deck IS blue, and you can't drop white because the deck needs Crystalline Sliver. If (and it's a big if) they print a shroud/hexproof sliver that isn't white, you could conceivably drop white for red but then you have to justify losing Swords/Path and not just running 6-8 shroud guys, and red doesn't give you enough to justify that.
Possible New Shroud/Hexproof Sliver
Highly unlikely, but if it happens I can assume that it would be on-color as hexproof is typically in green, white or blue. A 2/2 "your Slivers get hexproof" foror
would be a godsend for this deck, but the creature slots are already crowded so it would require a lot of testing to get the numbers right. Again though, it's really really really unlikely that they'll do it at all or that if they do, it will be costed anywhere near competitively.
I toyed around with RGW slivers a lot while playing Countersliver. If they print a Hexproof sliver that doesn't require blue, it could be really good. You would want to run at least a couple Hunter Sliver as well. Provoke is just nuts when combined with flanking and Spined Sliver. It's effectively targeted removal at that point.
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Assuming you're correct about naya slivers in m14, I think there's still 1 more chance at a hexproof/shroud sliver at uncommon. Both white and red have 2 commons, 1 uncommon, and 1 rare sliver-related card so far. Meanwhile, the green sliver uncommon is missing. That said, I really think there will be black and blue slivers as well since very few cards have been spoiled in those colors. If that's the case, there's 4 more chances in blue for a hexproof sliver. Ideally, there would be something along the lines of U/G,1 1/1 hexproof sliver. In black, the best thing to hope for is a EtB discard(non-pinpoint)/raise dead sliver at cmc-2.
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