Changeling Tribal - Sliver Hivelord

[TheAmericanSpirit]

@ISBPathfinder

I think you're underrating a number of those interactions imho. Furthermore, none of this analysis properly quantifies MN's ability to smooth out games with too many disparate tribal pieces and too few changelings to captitalize. I also think you're really underselling the token production, considering how frequently you correctly point out the value debt of french vanilla changelings. MN makes these very relevant bodies without costing a card for each one, thus giving you virtual card advantage and/or allowing you to steadily sandbag a few bodies if you smell an exile boardwipe on the horizon. But hey, suit yourself.

[ISBPathfinder]

@ISBPathfinder

I think you're underrating a number of those interactions imho. Furthermore, none of this analysis properly quantifies MN's ability to smooth out games with too many disparate tribal pieces and too few changelings to captitalize. I also think you're really underselling the token production, considering how frequently you correctly point out the value debt of french vanilla changelings. MN makes these very relevant bodies without costing a card for each one, thus giving you virtual card advantage and/or allowing you to steadily sandbag a few bodies if you smell an exile boardwipe on the horizon. But hey, suit yourself.

We don't have to agree I just like debating cards. I have been wrong about a lot of cards that I then found myself playing. I haven't tested Maskwood Nexus as you have said but in large I think that its just not efficient enough of a card is my general argument.

I broke down the mana inputted to bodies below:

• 1st Token: 7 mana / body
• 2nd Token: 5 mana / body
• 3rd Token: 4.33 mana / body
• 4th Token: 4 mana / body
• 5th Token: 3.6 mana / body

This pattern obviously continues to make better input cost / token production over time. My issue with this is that its incredibly front loaded in its cost and its likely that you may need to split the first token up to happening over more than one turn. Its possible that I could argue that drawing cards and thus drawing into changelings and playing them from hand can be simulated very similarly as the efficiency of making the changeling tokens with this card.

My argument against running Maskwood Nexus is that it isn't efficient enough. It's effect when I cast it seems extremely low for a four mana investment and the cost to start making tokens doesn't sound all that appealing either. I struggle to come up with situations where its going to shine and impress me with even on paper and that is something that doesn't excite me towards playing it. I would love to hear a handful of situations in how it has played out for others because most of what I have heard and seen in the other thread has lead me to be thoroughly not impressed with its potential.

Some of my argument here is from the stance of like..... I could instead include Lurking Predators / Rhystic Study (both cards I don't currently run) in my deck instead of that and I see strong potential for very quick turn about results from those cards where as the potential I am seeing in Maskwood Nexus is far less.

[materpillar]

I have seen in the primer that everyone loves Maskwood Nexus. But I also see a lot of decks that run a lot of long term payoffs. I guess maybe there is more removal or something in my meta. I see plenty of cutthroat decks and honestly.... it just doesn't cut it in my meta. I have to move super fast and be brutal in removing things while drawing cards and assume that at every curve I am going to get cut off.

I play with the thought that anything and everything I play will die likely before my next turn so I mostly play on the assumption that anything that the payoff for playing is more than a turn out often isn't worth my time playing it. It isn't to say that things don't ever live for me but as an example.... I believe I have played out The Great Henge in this deck 2-3 times now. I have not once ever untapped with that card but I continue to play it because its payoff for me tends to be on the same turn it is played and while someone could Naturalize it in response to my first creature cast, it generally pays for itself before I would pass my turn.

You've said this several times and I'm curious to know a bit more about your meta. What turn does table-wide lethal usually happen? What are some common generals/strats? What forms of interaction do you find yourself facing? Is it mostly targeted removal/counterspells? Is it Planar Cleansing every other turn? Is it stax-light with something like Grave Pact + aristocrats? Is it repeated removal stabled on generals like The Scorpion God?


I wonder if running less obviously powerful cards would help you? For example, I wouldn't be surprised if Wirewood Savage would draw you more cards than The Great Henge just because it is dramatically less likely to immediately eat a removal spell.

Another good example is Didgeridoo. This card does nothing immediately upon impact, so you steer miles away from it. However, it basically never eats a removal spell. Because of that it generates me some pseudo card advantage because one of my opponents is much more likely to point their Vindicate towards a different enemy's threat than towards my card. It then sticks around to reliably provide it's minor advantages. It doesn't say it has hexproof, but it basically has that. Not saying you should run Didgeridoo just highlighting a difference in philosophy.

I struggle to come up with situations where its going to shine and impress me with even on paper and that is something that doesn't excite me towards playing it. I would love to hear a handful of situations in how it has played out for others because most of what I have heard and seen in the other thread has lead me to be thoroughly not impressed with its potential.

From a powerlevel perspective Maskwood Nexus is one of the strongest cards in my deck. It'd be pretty poor in yours though I think. I'm running about twice as many engine pieces as you. Also, a lot of your engine pieces are just way worse with it. Compare how Dragon Tempest and Omnath, Locus of the Roil interact with it. Dragon Tempest becomes way way scarier, Omnath, Locus of the Roil gets only a tiny bump in strength. It makes Priest of Titania into Gaea's Cradle whereas Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge is unchanged. I also have engine pieces like Moggcatcher and Gilt-Leaf Archdruid that turn into absolute bombs or Wirewood Symbiote that goes infinite fairly easily. It even has a significantly higher floor for me since it is effectively an expensive Helm of Awakening for my non-Changeling creatures because of The Ur-Dragon's mana reduction. The ceiling is just straight winning with The World Tree.

Basically, I'm running around two times more engine pieces that synergize with Maskwood Nexus than you are. A lot of my engine pieces also synergize much better with it than yours do. Once your creatures are slivers/dragons they don't really gain a whole lot from gaining more creature types. My creatures just keep getting noticeably stronger for every creature type they gain.

As for specific stories. The most recent story I have is that I used Shapesharer to copy my opponents Magda, Brazen Outlaw. I made enough treasure tokens to search for Maskwood Nexus. Then I went infinite with Wirewood Symbiote and Harabaz Druid.

Side note: I've never made a token with Maskwood Nexus.

[ISBPathfinder]

You've said this several times and I'm curious to know a bit more about your meta. What turn does table-wide lethal usually happen? What are some common generals/strats? What forms of interaction do you find yourself facing? Is it mostly targeted removal/counterspells? Is it Planar Cleansing every other turn? Is it stax-light with something like Grave Pact + aristocrats? Is it repeated removal stabled on generals like The Scorpion God?


I wonder if running less obviously powerful cards would help you? For example, I wouldn't be surprised if Wirewood Savage would draw you more cards than The Great Henge just because it is dramatically less likely to immediately eat a removal spell.

Another good example is Didgeridoo. This card does nothing immediately upon impact, so you steer miles away from it. However, it basically never eats a removal spell. Because of that it generates me some pseudo card advantage because one of my opponents is much more likely to point their Vindicate towards a different enemy's threat than towards my card. It then sticks around to reliably provide it's minor advantages. It doesn't say it has hexproof, but it basically has that. Not saying you should run Didgeridoo just highlighting a difference in philosophy.

I would say that a breakdown of my meta tends to be towards:

• Token swarm - by far the most common type of wincon I see is token swarm. Swarm of dudes + some sort of buff effect.
• Aristocrats / Direct Dmg (stuff that syphons / deals direct damage)
• Combo - sometimes infinite sometimes pusdo infinite.
• %$#% of Draw - people in my meta LOVE just drawing all the damn cards. Enough so that I felt it was worth mentioning.

In general, its very common that you lose big amounts of life without being able to really defend from it. There are still plenty of situations where a few attackers get in for chip damage but realistically I tend to die to big things that are incredibly hard to assign one or two blockers to stop it. People tend to play more proactive decks but there are a few controlling ones sprinkled in so its hard to say for sure as there are decks with up to 10 wraths in them but I would generally say heavy spot removal interactions are more common than sweepers in my meta.

There are plenty of decks in my meta that can win on turns 5-6 if they have good hands (and don't get disrupted in the right ways) but there are also plenty of games that do go two hours. We had some cEDH decks come out at the end of the night the other night and kind of a weird triangle of a blue deck holding them in check while a Prossh deck killed the combo players first. I did die to a turn 5 or 6 Tatyova, Benthic Druid that got to draw its entire deck though like two weeks ago.

Some of the issue is that I have a perceived perception at this point. There are players who try to murder everything I play sort of going tunnel vision on what I am playing and ignoring a lot of what other players are playing. As an example, I played an Earthcraft with two creatures, no hand, and no means of token production the other day and someone panic smashed it ignoring someone else who had a Guardian Project in a much better situation that then went to kill us a few turns later. Sometimes once you get a perception from opponents its hard to shake it.

Thanks for the insight on Nexus in your list. It does seem like you have more cards that make it work than I do. I tend to be a minimalist as far as card interaction.

[ISBPathfinder]

Well, I am going to highlight two games from last night. They were super rough and I felt like I have very little to take away from them but here goes:

Game 1: 5 player FFA, opponents were: Lord Windgrace, Rakdos, Lord of Riots, Kamahl, Fist of Krosa, and Mathas, Fiend Seeker. I hadn't really played this deck much in a five player situation but I had hoped that the indestructible could help vs wraths but I knew my ability to pressure down another player was going to be bad. Given that this is a short game I am just going to focus on my plays and the player who killed us.

T1: Land nobody really has sol ring or anything
T2: Land not much going on. Rakdos plays a Retreat to Hagra (hes ahead of me in turn rotation).
T3: Land Risen Reef (finds a nonland). Rakdos plays his commander thanks to his enchantment landfall.
T4: Land Omnath, Locus of the Roil mostly for the Reef trigger which finds another nonland but I do kill an Azusa from the Windgrace player. Rakdos player hits me in the air and plays like 2-3 eldrazi. Most of them are chaff but he uses a Sanctum of Ugin with one of the junk eldrazi to get Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger which he also casts and blows up some stuffs. Josu Vess, Lich Knight gets kicked and he finishes by casting a Sire of Insanity and making us discard our hands.

It gets back to me, I topdeck a land and play my commander. Essentially nobody makes any meaningful plays after this though and Rakdos decides due to having psudo draw I am first to die. Nobody finds anything to do anything about what happened and everyone dies within 2-3 turns. This might sound like a lucky weird hand from Rakdos but he actually very intentionally built the deck super weird and he mulligans like crazy to get these kind of hands. It took him 3 hands to find a keepable hand because he has to find lands + enabler to keep because his deck is just chalked full of huge dumb eldrazi kind of things. I unfortunately chose a deck that just doesn't play against this well like ever and I had to just hope he didn't have it (which he did).

Game 2: Most players play back their decks but the Rakdos player moves to an Alesha, Who Smiles and the Windgrace player moves to Oloro, Ageless Ascetic. This was a longer game so I will have a harder time detailing it quite as closely. I don't know what turn exactly it ended on but I think it was probably around turn 9 in retrospect just based on how things went down.

I went first and curved Magda, Brazen Outlaw. My opening hand changelings are a bit awkward though and I am not able to curve well with changelings. I end up playing my commander on turn 4 which ends up getting hit by a
Stingscourger the turn I play him back to hand from the Alesha player.

I replay my commander and slowly get a few changelings into play. Of note I end up playing Unsettled Mariner and Moritte of the Frost as a copy of it (mostly because I didn't have much for options in play) which very briefly does matter but then quickly doesn't.

I end up needing to use essentially all of the treasure I am generating to play to the board. I am lucky in that there is someone who is struggling to have creatures in play which lets me poke him for treasures with Magda herself. There is also some monarch being passed back and forth between the two mardu players primarily which is creating some openings for players to hit each other.

The Oloro player manages to use a Blood Artist and slaps a Celestial Mantle onto it and swing into one of the open players (due to monarch some players have been swinging hard to get draw). He also happens to have a Alhammarret's Archive so his life total goes into orbit.

The Alesha player screws with my commander by hitting him with a Stingscourger and hitting me with a bunch of 3/2s which I have the option to trade with my changelings but that seems just bad so I end up taking like 16 damage and going to 20 from. I had a big turn the turn before of drawing cards and I happened to have stolen the monarch so he wants that draw real bad.

I am trying to set up a Mirror Entity turn but I need to keep some treasure tokens so my plan is to draw some cards and pressure build board state and save up some treasure. Unfortunately though I get hit by a Curse of Death's Hold from Mathas (he pays the two mana) which kills my dwarf and denies me the option of playing the Mirror Entity.

I play Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow and swing with five "ninjas" of which four connect and I reveal a pair of two drops and a pair of lands.... yay. There is a Pyrohemia and Revel in Riches in Mathas' control but he is tapped out. The Alesha player had chump blocked my attacks though so he gets one treasure. Oloro swings and connects to Alesha who chumped my attack and goes to like..... 400 hp or something dumb. Alesha then attacks and Stingscourger bounces my commander for the THIRD TIME!!!! Kamahl spins up a big turn of doing nothing but putting a ton of %$#% in play getting ready to do things with Kamahl but then Mathas just kills everything with pyrohemia and wins via Revel in Riches which we had been pointing at for the entire last turn that it was going to kill us. Unfortunately nobody did anything about it and Alesha made sure that he could win off of it by adding my creatures to the pile.

---

Well takeaway...... I don't really have a lot to take away here. The games were really fast and I lacked the correct interactions to keep myself alive. I was actually doing fairly well at the end of the second game but I think in the end I need to just never play this deck in a five player game as I lack the pressure to kill five players easily and I also don't have enough interaction to stop a lot of the proactive gameplans.

Beyond that though.... Magda, Brazen Outlaw was decent in an opening hand. I did end up getting like 6-8 mana from her before she died I just had to constantly re-invest it into more boardstate. It is mildly concerning that I only have 3 non changeling targets for her to retrieve with her tutor but two of those three are really strong effects so I guess we will keep playing her and see how she feels when I find her later. I honestly didn't feel nearly as impressed as what I was getting the vibe from the primer but I think my meta moves a touch faster than most in the primer page.

Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow was about as underwhelming as I expected her to be. I managed to draw four cards in one turn which for the mana is actually good but the problem is that that board state was cleaner than it will be on average due to monarch going back and forth. I will keep her in for now but honestly I am concerned with just being stonewalled on being able to use her.

Other take aways.... I could potentially use more full sweeper effects like Akroma's Vengeance. Lots of the game getting away from me both games could have been handled by more sweeper effects. Given the power of my commander vs sweepers it might be worth pushing a touch harder on sweepers but I think I do want to hit artifacts and enchantments as well as I do it. Unfortunately there aren't a ton of "destroy all nonland" effects and a lot of them happen to be six mana+ and cost WWW to cast which I had been sort of avoiding due to the intensity of the white mana.

I am going to process the games a bit and think more about where I want to be. The draw did feel decent last night though as a whole. In game one I did happen to have 2-3 card draw effects but then I lacked the ramp to really get online.

[Moonlighter]

I'm looking at the list you've got page one there, and I have some questions based on the games you just described. One of the first is, you were debating Spellstutter Sprite in the other thread, but you're low on interaction overall - do you think this deck could benefit from a stronger interaction package? A single Patron Wizard or one of the other creature-counter things would do a lot of work for you - notably PW does not need haste like some of the others do, so he could counter stuff aimed at him the turn he drops. Or a package of counterspells. The next one is one you note effectively: your commander gives your relevant creature type indestructible, but you're running relatively few boardwipes - plan to fix that? You're already thinking of this one, clearly - Endemic Plague on a changeling when you have your commander out is asymmetrical. Last - I don't see a lot of redundancies around protecting your creatures. I gave the example of Steely Resolve in the other thread as an overkill and not super useful example of this - but are there ways to give your commander a little more safety or your deck a little more protective redundancy? I don't see a lot of ways you've got to keep your board up other than him. Even Hibernation Sliver would grant you a little more breathing room.

I also want to just validate the whole archenemy feeling you get. You got hit hard by the same player over those two games - and it looks like game 2 got lost by the player who was targeting you down, so that says something about his choices in hindsight. You'd probably have had a better set of games, more enjoyable at least, if things like Alesha tagging you with Stingscourger repeatedly hadn't happened. Infuriating.

[ISBPathfinder]

I'm looking at the list you've got page one there, and I have some questions based on the games you just described. One of the first is, you were debating Spellstutter Sprite in the other thread, but you're low on interaction overall - do you think this deck could benefit from a stronger interaction package? A single Patron Wizard or one of the other creature-counter things would do a lot of work for you - notably PW does not need haste like some of the others do, so he could counter stuff aimed at him the turn he drops. Or a package of counterspells. The next one is one you note effectively: your commander gives your relevant creature type indestructible, but you're running relatively few boardwipes - plan to fix that? You're already thinking of this one, clearly - Endemic Plague on a changeling when you have your commander out is asymmetrical. Last - I don't see a lot of redundancies around protecting your creatures. I gave the example of Steely Resolve in the other thread as an overkill and not super useful example of this - but are there ways to give your commander a little more safety or your deck a little more protective redundancy? I don't see a lot of ways you've got to keep your board up other than him. Even Hibernation Sliver would grant you a little more breathing room.

I also want to just validate the whole archenemy feeling you get. You got hit hard by the same player over those two games - and it looks like game 2 got lost by the player who was targeting you down, so that says something about his choices in hindsight. You'd probably have had a better set of games, more enjoyable at least, if things like Alesha tagging you with Stingscourger repeatedly hadn't happened. Infuriating.

Interaction - Its tough to say, its not as if I don't have interaction in my list but so far there have been like 4 cards that have stood out as super good and when I don't have those cards my interaction is worse. I could add more interaction, but a big issue I have been struggling with is that most changelings are like, bad limited cards that have little to no bearing on a game of commander on their own. Its forced me to push hard on lords and card draw to make up for having roughly 20 cards in my deck that are huge negative value in comparison to a normal power level commander card. Its a balance I haven't figured out to be honest.

Commander Choice - Sort of following up from the above discussion I guess I am questioning if I need to adjust my commander to something else. The negative value of the changelings was a little more of a rude awakening to me than I had originally expected it to be. The idea of wrath proofing the changelings has been ok and sometimes its been really good but there are also plenty of games where no sweepers come through and my commander isn't being quite optimal. I was from the get go also interested in seeing how The First Sliver as a commander would play. Its a fairly large change in commander though to name a few things I would probably go for more expensive changelings instead of cheaper ones as you really want to cascade into valuable things so my 3+ mana changeling count would likely rise a bit as casting a changeling and getting a 2 mana ramp card for example sounds like a nice value added situation. Cascade is also weird in that you want to be very light on any situational spells like counterspells or specific target spot removal so you want things that are sort of always good to resolve and potentially some topdeck manipualtion things so you can control what you are doing and setting up for. I go into all of this in part because I think I am far from feeling like I have solved changelings and I want to try out a few things and have some more data as a whole. If and when I explore this idea I will keep this thread intact and I will just temporarily move over to a new thread for testing the new commander option rather than trying to transform this one.

Continuing Here - I think currently my plan is to try out The First Sliver as a commander but I will highlight some thoughts and ideas as to where I am at currently with this deck. For this deck going forward, I don't think that moving into counterspells is the ticket. I think going into more wraths is more likely how I would continue here assuming I come back. I don't actually see any real reason to run Endemic Plague when I could just Wrath of God and not sacrifice a creature. If someone counterspells your plague, you are down a creature but if they would do the same to Wrath of God you are not out anything. Given how artifact and enchantment light I am in here I definitely think that I would want to push harder on the wraths that clear out all nonland permanents. Lots of these cost 3WWW so its possible I would shift to having a little more white mana in my deck. I could also see myself throwing in Boompile as its a sweeper I have enjoyed for some time even though its somewhat random in functioning, its cheap and the colored mana isn't an issue. Its less reliable than Oblivion Stone but with my commander's protection I could see it being easy to curve it into my commander and just leaving people in a weird state of "do I extend into that" which I like. My current plan is to build up another list for First Sliver but I wanted to outline where I am at here for anyone else who follows or if I return here. I don't think that this commander is wrong by any means but I think I need to turn into a deck with more sweepers if I do stay here and that is tricky from the standpoint of the non sliver lords. It likely means that some of the non sliver lords are going to need to be more impactful and or the ones that are lesser might get cut for said sweepers.

Protection - A lot of my issues with protecting my commander is that they are cards that don't do anything else. I have been having that big issue of the changelings being super negative value and something like Crystalline Sliver fits right into continuing that issue. Beyond that, there are a lot of things that get past my commander's protection that don't target like say Toxic Deluge, Tragic Arrogance, Cyclonic Rift, Living Death all of which are kind of common cards run in this format. I chose not to try to protect my commander beyond what they already do because even if someone can interact with my commander they also need a sweeper so the frequency that someone has both has still been fairly manageable for me. With all of the issues needing to hit the gas petal though on card draw / card advantage I have been a lot more careful in some of the do nothing sort of buffs. I was running some of the flying slivers for example but I was having the same issue that they were sort of too minor of buffs to justify.

Target Assessment - I have earned a lot of the hate I receive. I win a lot of games and I often have reactions for people trying to close the games out. There are a number of people who have the motivation of always killing me first and its hard to change that when everyone is playing really linear proactive decks. The options you have against those type of decks is to try to get reactive or out linear them. I don't particularly love feeling like I have to play either way regularly but it is what it is.

[materpillar]

I could add more interaction, but a big issue I have been struggling with is that most changelings are like, bad limited cards that have little to no bearing on a game of commander on their own. Its forced me to push hard on lords and card draw to make up for having roughly 20 cards in my deck that are huge negative value in comparison to a normal power level commander card. Its a balance I haven't figured out to be honest.

I view the Changelings in my decks not as creatures that have an impact on the board state but either as Birds of Paradise or as "Sorcery: Trigger your tribal cards". I feel like my deck is a lot more streamlined in its focus, whereas yours is getting pulled in several directions. Early game I use my Changelings as ramp with stuff like Gemhide Sliver to power into the midgame where I flicker the Changelings to bury my opponents in value and then late game they're lethal threats with Liliana's Contract or whatever. As such, my Changelings aren't "bad limited cards" they're a actively progressing my gameplan at every stage of the game.

You've got a handful of cards that profit off ETB triggers like harmonic sliver but you don't really have any support for that with blink stuff like Hibernation Sliver. You've also got a handful of cards that want to be attacking like Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow, but you don't have anything that grants evasion or size. You've got a bunch of wraths, but those still hurt you a lot because they kill all your non-Changelings because your not running any support like maskwood nexus to protect them. Your deck doesn't seem to have a solid way to close out the game outside of chip damage or Mirror Entity but it also doesn't have enough disruption / control elements for chip damage to be a viable wincondition. You've got all these tiny payoffs with no real support so you just have a bunch of Changelings that don't really accomplish much other than tiny payoffs.

I'm not saying you should build a more blinky build like mine. My decklist is fairly weak to constant waves of creature removal and targeted hate but because I stick to the theme so religiously it makes people really amused watching the deck do its thing. As a result they tend to disrupt me less than they should. It sounds like you might have burned that particular bridge in your metagame as every auto-aggros on you. Also, if you haven't played against my list before threat analysis is pretty hard because the list is so wonky.

I don't think you need to necessarily swap commanders to The First Sliver, I think Sliver Hivelord offers a lot of neat things to this deck that I hadn't considered. I think you just need to commit more heavily to a particular gameplan. I don't think just flipping to The First Sliver will solve your problems actually. You're going to hit the situation where you cast him twice and he dies twice. Then, he's too expensive and you're stuck with a bunch of do-nothing Changelings in hand again.

On a minor aside:
1) Amoeboid Changeling to make The Ur-Dragon lose all creature types.
2) Sacrifice Amoeboid Changeling to Endemic Plague
3) Profit

Also, Endemic Plague blows out Krenko, Mob Boss/Lathril, Blade of the Elves tribal decks pretty nicely with a touch of work. It has a couple of niche applications that are better than Wrath of God from a purely spike perspective.

[ISBPathfinder]

@materpillar I am not saying that I am done with this list so much that I need to test more ideas. I don't have anything hashed out by any means but there are a lot of commander options to be tested out and I think there is different merit to a lot of them. I had planned to have a lot more ramp to my list potentially with the cascade idea so I don't actually think it will be too much of an issue with disrupting my commander. We will see though, I don't have anything worked out yet.