Sliver cEDH <-- no it's not a typo :)

Theoric
Posts: 107
Joined: 4 years ago
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by Theoric » 4 years ago

Last week ago it occurred to me that I've never seen a good sliver deck. Everyone brags about how amazing theirs is with stories like "OMG this one time on turn 15, I had SO MANY SLIVERS!!!"
Comments like that make me roll my eyes so much I nearly pull a muscle.

Sure, sometimes a sliver deck gets lucky and combos out with stuff like mana echoes or intruder alarm by turn 4 or 5, but that's not a very satisfying win in my opinion. To me, It feels wrong to make a sliver deck that finishes off people with combo instead of aggro, and it's a slow win at that.

My goal was to build a sliver deck that's consistently capable of filling the battlefield with big, flying, untargetable, indestructible monstrosities by turn 2-4 each game, but doesn't have any 'oops, I win' wincons. A deck that wins the way I feel a sliver deck should - by smashing face. I googled for such a deck and couldn't find one.

So this is what I came up with. It may look weird, but I'll explain how it works down below.
Decklist

Commander (1)

Approximate Total Cost:

Essentially, it's a breakfast/hulk deck without the wincons. There's a few paths you can take to unleash a swarm on the battlefield, and none of them require more than 2 mana.

Method #1:
- Use flash to cheat protean hulk on the battlefield so it dies.
- When protean hulk dies, it puts karmic guide and viscera seer into play from the library - karmic guide puts protean hulk back into play.
- sack protean hulk to viscera seer, which cheats Mikaeus, the unhallowed onto the battlefield.
- sack the karmic guide to viscera seer. Thanks to Mikaeus, the guide has undying so it comes back with a counter on it.
- the karmic guide puts protean hulk back on the battlefield. Sack the hulk to viscera seer, and put some slivers in play.
- the hulk comes back one more time (since Mikaeus gave it undying). Sack the hulk to put more slivers in play.
And boom - you have a bunch of slivers to smash people with.

Methods #2 and #3:
Other methods involve dumping your library into your graveyard with hermit druid or cephalid illusionist + nomads en-kor:
- Your library gets dumped into the graveyard and narcomoeba goes on the battlefield.
- unearth fatestitcher and use him to untap a land. (this step isn't necessary if you already have 3 creatures in play)
- cast dread return (by sacking hermit druid, narcomoeba, and fatestitcher) and put karmic guide into play.
- karmic guide takes angel of glory's rise out of the graveyard and puts it on the battlefield.
- the angel puts all the humans in play, including eternal witness, grand abolisher, cartel aristocrat, amoeboid changeling, loyal retainers, and maybe a couple others.
- eternal witness returns Lion's eye diamond to your hand.
- sack the loyal retainers to put mikaeus, the unhallowed into play. (you'll also want to respond to this by sacking angel of glory's rise to cartel aristocrat, just in case she gets destroyed later and tries to remove mikaeus from the game since he's a zombie).
- once mikaeus is in play, sack karmic guide to cartel aristocrat. The guide comes back (since it has undying) and returns protean hulk to play.
- cast the lion's eye diamond that eternal witness returned to your hand, and sack it for uuu.
- cast echo of eons from the graveyard.
- after everyone shuffles their hands and graveyards into their libraries and draws 7 cards, you'll be left with mikaeus, protean hulk, and a bunch of humans.
- sack protean hulk to cartel aristocrat, putting some slivers into play.
- the protean hulk has undying so it comes back. Sack it again for more slivers.

End result
Whichever method you choose results in sacking protean hulk twice. These are some of the options you can get for each of those triggers:
Option 1: sliver hivelord and galerider sliver.
Option 2: Sliver queen and galerider sliver.
Option 3: Sliver legion and galerider sliver.
Option 4: crystalline sliver, cloudshredder sliver, and manaweft sliver
Option 5: amoeboid changeling, cloudshredder sliver, and manaweft sliver*
Option 6: harmonic sliver and necrotic sliver**
*Note: Option 5- if you went with method #2 or #3, then amoeboid changeling will already be in play because it counts as a human. It's also a sliver, so it can turn something else into a sliver - which means you can do shenanigans like turning Mikaeus, the unhallowed into a sliver to protect it, or turning an opponent's creature into a sliver so sliver overlord can steal it.
**Note: Option 6 is particularly nasty if you do that trigger first so the next trigger brings in more slivers to disenchant more stuff. Also, if you have Mikaeus, the Unhallowed in play, then your slivers have undying - which means any sliver that's sacked using necrotic sliver's ability will come back so you can do it again.

Note: it's really not essential to have the overlord as your commander. The deck cheats in slivers on its own so any of the legendary slivers would work well as general.

In playtesting, it's been faster and more consistent than I ever hoped. And resilient too - it rolls with the punches really well. Weaknesses include having protean hulk exiled (which is hard to do since it always dies right away) and having combo pieces in my hand. It'd be nice to have a couple merfolk looter-type cards to pitch stuff I'd rather have in the graveyard.

Any input is welcome.

Return to “Competitive (cEDH)”