The Changeling Cascade

[ISBPathfinder]

This is my second take on changelings. My first take was utilizing Sliver Hivelord as the commander which was a more controlling style of commander but I had some issues with how undervalued the changelings were in that approach. I found myself constantly pushing to get more card draw because I had so many random limited level creatures in my decks and I often found my payoff cards getting answered before I could get much traction.

So, here I am having shifted to another variant. From the start I considered The First Sliver as a possible option for the commander but I felt like the deck was going to be a lot harder to approach from a deckbuilding perspective (which it is and was) given that the spells you cascade into are important and it makes a lot of cards with X mana or responsive spells like counterspells and such much worse.

So, I guess the general mindset here is I went a lot more proactive with my approach here. In general I hope to be more of an aggressor with this build. I know that its kind of heavy on the slivers but I still am not convinced that I want to just be a sliver deck considering there aren't many slivers I didn't include that I actually had interest in.

Decklist

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

COMMANDER (1)

1 The First Sliver

CHANGELING CREATURES (22)

1 Masked Vandal

1 Avian Changeling

1 Bloodline Pretender

1 Gladewalker Ritualist

1 Mirror Entity

1 Mistwalker

1 Moonglove Changeling

1 Realmwalker

1 Taurean Mauler

1 Venomous Changeling

1 Chameleon Colossus

1 Graveshifter

1 Irregular Cohort

1 Littjara Glade-Warden

1 Littjara Kinseekers

1 Orvar, the All-Form

1 War-Spike Changeling

1 Cairn Wanderer

1 Moritte of the Frost

1 Webweaver Changeling

1 Morophon, the Boundless

1 Valiant Changeling

NON CHANGELING CREATURES (14)

1 Cryptbreaker

1 Crystalline Sliver

1 Gemhide Sliver

1 Manaweft Sliver

1 Harmonic Sliver

1 Risen Reef

1 Syphon Sliver

1 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

1 Essence Sliver

1 Oracle of Mul Daya

1 Sliver Hivelord

1 Sliver Legion

1 Silumgar, the Drifting Death

1 Unesh, Criosphinx Sovereign

ARTIFACT (3)

1 Sensei's Divining Top

1 Herald's Horn

1 The Great Henge

ENCHANTMENT (3)

1 Mirri's Guile

1 Mystic Remora

1 Dragon Tempest

INSTANT (4)

1 Eladamri's Call

1 Growth Spiral

1 Nameless Inversion

1 Crib Swap

SORCERY (17)

1 Ancestral Vision

1 Inevitable Betrayal

1 Demonic Tutor

1 Explore

1 Farseek

1 Glimpse the Cosmos

1 Nature's Lore

1 Three Visits

1 Toxic Deluge

1 Bounty of Skemfar

1 Savor the Moment

1 Wargate

1 Crippling Fear

1 Widespread Brutality

1 Bring to Light

1 Volcanic Torrent

1 Rishkar's Expertise

PLANESWALKER (0)

LAND (36)

1 Arid Mesa

1 Badlands

1 Bayou

1 Bloodstained Mire

1 Breeding Pool

1 Cavern of Souls

1 Command Tower

1 Exotic Orchard

1 Flooded Strand

1 Gaea's Cradle

1 Indatha Triome

1 Krosan Verge

1 Marsh Flats

1 Misty Rainforest

1 Mystic Sanctuary

1 Overgrown Tomb

1 Polluted Delta

1 Plateau

1 Savai Triome

1 Savannah

1 Scalding Tarn

1 Scrubland

1 Sliver Hive

1 Taiga

1 Temple Garden

1 The World Tree

1 Tropical Island

1 Tundra

1 Unclaimed Territory

1 Underground Sea

1 Verdant Catacombs

1 Volcanic Island

1 Windswept Heath

1 Wooded Foothills

1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

1 Zagoth Triome

Approximate Total Cost:

[materpillar]

I'm really worried that when you play this deck The First Sliver is just going to get killed twice, cost 4WUBRG and you're going to have a deck that does almost nothing (with the amount of hate you receive this sounds almost guaranteed). Outside of Silumgar, the Drifting Death, Harmonic Sliver, Risen Reef and Sliver Legion your Changelings are going to be pretty awful. Even with those cards I'll be very surprised if your Changelings do enough work. Do you think Littjara Kinseekers being a 3U Reclamation Sage is even worth it? Pretty sure the first time you draw Game-Trail Changeling and don't have access to The First Sliver you're going to shelve this deck. I very much enjoy being proved wrong, so I await your testing results. I find your metagame experiences to be quite interesting.

The First Sliver + Harmonic Prodigy + Changelings is amazing. 10/10 do want to hear you assembling that combo.

[ISBPathfinder]

I'm really worried that when you play this deck The First Sliver is just going to get killed twice, cost 4WUBRG and you're going to have a deck that does almost nothing (with the amount of hate you receive this sounds almost guaranteed). Outside of Silumgar, the Drifting Death, Harmonic Sliver, Risen Reef and Sliver Legion your Changelings are going to be pretty awful. Even with those cards I'll be very surprised if your Changelings do enough work. Do you think Littjara Kinseekers being a 3U Reclamation Sage is even worth it? Pretty sure the first time you draw Game-Trail Changeling and don't have access to The First Sliver you're going to shelve this deck. I very much enjoy being proved wrong, so I await your testing results. I find your metagame experiences to be quite interesting.

The First Sliver + Harmonic Prodigy + Changelings is amazing. 10/10 do want to hear you assembling that combo.

Most commanders aren't that great if they get immediately answered multiple times. I get what you are saying but The First Sliver also cascades himself so there is some additional value on casting him. Its also possible that the amount of ramp could go up potentially depending on how important I find casting / recasting my commander to be. The upside of the commander is that as soon as you cast a changeling you sort of already get the guaranteed value of the commander out of them as they can't stop the cascade from going on the stack. Its possible that in response to that they could answer him and I wouldn't potentially chain value but I think it also might remedy some of the issue I was having of the changelings being such negative value in the deck.

I do have some concerns with how much of a sliver deck this build did sort of appear to be. There weren't many slivers I really wanted beyond what I added though and I felt like a number of my payoffs still feel strong for changelings but to some degree I could throw some bad slivers in for the changelings and it might not play all that differently. I would potentially like to push up my tribal aspects some but my commander choice pushed me a bit deeper on slivers than I felt like I had incentive for when I was playing Sliver Hivelord.

Littjara Kinseekers - I started out with literally every changeling that was 3+ cmc and ended up shaving a few out when I was cutting to 100 cards. My goal in going with some bigger cmc changelings was wanting to be able to cascade into and out of them again. I felt like the 1-2 cmc changelings were sort of a dead end on cascading and I would rather cascade into real cards still after that so I took a hard line of not running any changelings that had a 2 or less cmc so I could get some ramp and stuff still. There are a few 2 cmc slivers but I felt like they were still reasonable cards where as a lot of the cheap cmc changelings that I ran in my previous build I was running because the value of changelings is so low that I just wanted the cheapest ones I could get where as the cost of them matters a lot more when you are looking at cascade concepts. In a good situation I might cast a 4+ cmc changeling and do some cascade shinanigans where I get more than one or two beyond. I actually might have to contemplate Goblin Recruiter / the dwarf version because I could easily cast something like 4 changelings starting with a potentially two mana Valiant Changeling starting the chain. I am not expecting much out of a card like Littjara Kinseekers but it can cascade into a 3 cmc changeling still as well as a number of other real cards in the deck. Lots of the deck was designed with the idea of having things that can cascade off of and or into other things with very little to no dead cards in the mix.

I get that a lot of the changelings are bad without my commander but even when I was playing Sliver Hivelord I tended to prioritize casting him over casting changelings. I don't really see that changing with this list and the fact that my commander itself gives value on cast helps me some here. There are a lot of decks that are bad without their commander and while I agree with you that I fit the same bill here, I felt that the concept of The First Sliver as a commander felt like someone I would need to build around quite hard if I was going to attempt them as a commander.

[ISBPathfinder]

Ok, I ended up playing a few 1v1 games with this deck today, I can't really walk away with the same level of testing from those sort of games but I will say I really enjoyed how this deck played. There was one game where I played against a control deck and I ended up casting my commander for 11 having cast them essentially every turn that they died managing to play lands and ramp and still having gas to get to that point which felt good. Of all of the games I will say I was very surprised with Volcanic Torrent and Bring to Light. I often ended up casting Bring to Light to get Volcanic Torrent and 2/3 of the times I ended up getting the Torrent for 6+ damage which was crazy.

I will mention a few notes on a few cards I have / saw and highlight a few I suspect are coming in.

• Harmonic Prodigy - He was literally insane. I have to be very careful because EVERYONE is going to want to kill this guy. The upside though is he is cheap as hell to cast and you get the option to cast another spell after and trigger the 2x cascade before opponents can spot remove him. So, I guess I really like this guy.
• Hunter Sliver - He is still alright but it felt like I was somewhat reliant on my commander being in play for him to be somewhat ok. He still works with the slivers and the changelings but I felt like I liked him more when I was playing Sliver Hivelord.
• Averna, the Chaos Bloom - I like what she does in theory, the problem is that it feels a bit like I need to topdeck manipulate or get lucky a bit too much with her. Like, I don't want to cascade into her because she doesn't do anything herself and takes multiple cascades after to pay for herself. Its on theme, but I think I am likely going to cut it as some sort of.... extra setup required sort of thing.
• Ancestral Vision - Ohhhhhhh man this was constantly like the best thing to cascade into. I just wish there were more suspend cards that I felt I unconditionally wanted to cast. There is the new Demonic Tutor but honestly it doesn't seem as amazing when it does happen as a draw three has been for me. I probably will just hang tight where I am at but I just wanted to say how happy with this effect I have been.
• Wargate - its been really nice in that its a good tutor for utility lands / Cradle and can tutor a bunch of other stuffs when drawn.
• Bring to Light - I have thus far mostly tutored for Volcanic Torrent but man that card has been great for me.
• Volcanic Torrent - Its been really strong. At its worst its still a pyroclasm that doesn't hit my board that cascades into some other value. I have scaled it up so many times though man its been amazing.

I have been strongly considering a few cards. Of note are:

Mirri's Guile - I could use a few more one mana spells in the deck. I also noticed the tax of Top a few times especially early on so doing it for free and having more consistency in getting it might be good.
Aura Shards - I think I need a touch more artifact / enchantment removal in the deck and cascade actually works well with it.
Kenrith's Transformation - It cantrips and it locks up someone's commander. It could be kind of nice and I really like boosting my 2 mana spell count for cascade targets.
Relic of Progenitus - I could also consider some other grave hate but I don't have that much grave interaction and I like how it can blow and draw. I could consider a few other options on grave hate though too.

[Mookie]

Re: Harmonic Prodigy - I'm somewhat skeptical that it actually works the way you think it does and copies cascade triggers. I don't believe that a spell on the stack counts as a shaman or wizard - instead, it's a shaman or wizard spell, which isn't quite the same thing. Release notes coming out in a few days, at least, so hopefully that will clarify things.

[ISBPathfinder]

I had a few other projects I was working on and some of these changes sort of slowly filtered into the list. I figured I would update the list finally with some of the changes I have been making to it though. I do like some of the interactions of this cascade version but I also didn't like how it felt closer and closer to being an actual sliver deck so I made a few adjustments to tone back some of the sliver tribal feel and bounce it back towards feeling more changeling based.

DECK CHANGES:

• Harmonic Prodigy → Mirri's Guile in my mind, I saw no reason that Prodigy wasn't going to work here but I was wrong. I guess he has to go since he doesn't actually work with cascade. I wanted to bring in a little more topdeck manipulation as it has been good for me so far but I don't really like paying mana to do it so instead of Scroll Rack I am going with Guile. I also wanted another one drop or two as I did run out of them one game where I happened to draw too many of them.
• Gaddock Teeg → Aura Shards Teeg is a favorite card of mine. That said, I wanted a little more interaction myself. I like how with cascade I could cascade into the shards and then immediately trigger it from the creature that I cascaded into the shards with.
• Hunter Sliver → Crystalline Sliver more or less I want to keep my sliver count at a reasonable count. I think that Hunter Sliver can still be ok but it feels heavily deponent on my commander to work which I have noticed I am having more issues with spot removal on. Crystaline defends my commander which is a nice thing to pick up.
• Averna, the Chaos Bloom → Oracle of Mul Daya with all of the topdeck manipulation I think I would rather just have Oracle in the deck. Averna feels like it takes more setup to get the payoff and even then its feels harder to make it work.
• Lyra Dawnbringer → Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves I had issues with Tolsimir in my previous version but I have bigger more expensive changelings in this version and I put more creatures into play now. I think he fits better into this build so I want to test him out.
• Widespread Brutality → Herald's Horn Brutality will "probably work" in this deck as a means to kill small creatures but that said I wanted to push a bit more on some cost reduction effects. I like that the Horn works with topdeck manipulation and the cost reduction is something that I want to test out more.
• Megantic Sliver → Urza's Incubator just shifting to pushing more guys out the door. I felt like the deck was getting a bit too sliver based so I wanted to shift off some of the sort of medium ok slivers and try out cost reduction.
• Shifting Sliver → Purphoros, God of the Forge trying to lower my sliver count and I think Purpheros could do some work in here given the cascade effects. Its also a decent setup for World Tree and the buff from purphy could be relevant as I seem to be a bit of a swarm based tactic.
• Lim-Dul's Vault → Unesh, Criosphinx Sovereign I thought I would like Lim-Dul's more but a lot of this deck is largely redundant. The only real thing I found myself interested in was tutoring for Volcanic Torrent. I want to put some serious testing into some of the cost reduction effects and while six mana is a bit hefty and I can't cascade into it, I think that it can set up some really big turns of value town.
• Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth → Mystic Sanctuary It seems odd to do but I did a little looking at my list and I have no cards that require BB to cast them. Black is my second least used color behind red in this list and with those facts I decided to cut Urborg. Its possible I might want the new Yawgmoth land but for right now I was figuring out how to include Mystic Sanctuary in the list more so. I really like how it could set me up for another cascade or reload Volcanic Torrent for use.

Depending on how the cost reduction effects go I still think that Starnheim Aspirant, Animar, Soul of Elements, and Dragonspeaker Shaman are some cost reducers I am still interested in. I noticed in several games that with the cascade effects that I end up ramping or drawing cards off of the changelings which has been maintaining my card draw in an acceptable manner.

I have also had Rishkar's Expertise in for some testing and I think it could also find a space in here given how many cards my commander can set up to draw plus free casting a five drop after the draw and cascading them off has all been very good. I just don't know how to include it right now so while its been testing well for me I will leave it out for right this second with a high chance that I try to make room for it moving forward.

[materpillar]

Have you gotten many games in with this list? I'm curious to know how it's playing out for you.

[ISBPathfinder]

Have you gotten many games in with this list? I'm curious to know how it's playing out for you.

It's a lot more proactive / linear than my other version but it aggressively plays to the board where I was having issues doing that previously. Giving cascade to my changelings adds a lot of value when you staple a Farseek to a changeling they don't seem half bad. The top deck manipulation has felt really good in setting up my turns and cascade triggers. If anything I need to find more 0-2 mana cards to cascade into.

People do target my commander and I usually do have to cast him more but the value when he is in play has felt really good.

[ISBPathfinder]

Sorry my previous post came from my phone as I was off to see family. I can talk a bit more in depth now.

I definitely do take some flack on my commander. I often get killed a few times a game but even then I am still mostly doing ok. Sometimes it causes me to jam up on changelings in hand though as it can be hard to process multiple a turn on top of my commander getting killed on occasion. Cascading into ramp effects has felt really good and the topdeck manipulation cards have been one of my favorites given the ability to get me access to lands to play as well as setting up my turn in better ways as I know how I can cascade through the top few cards.

I added some of the cost reduction because its really hard to resolve a few 3-5 changelings in a turn. Lots of them aren't very color intensive either so the cost reduction effects seem fairly valuable. I haven't gotten to do much of any testing on this yet but am moving to try to do more of it.

Contested Cliffs - I managed to draw it in the early game once recently and HOLY CRAP it was bad. It stalled me on playing my commander a whole turn. That said, I am not ready to throw in the towel yet as I like the size of some of the changelings here for it. Its just that I guess I would mention that I did the whole trip and fall on my face because of it once now.

1-2 Drops - I want to find some additional cheap cards to cast that are always good to cast. I really like some of the ramp I have but I keep feeling like I could use just a few more spells. Brainstorm has been ok but I have also had it be a bit underwhelming when cascading into it as one of the final things of my turn. It can do some nice setup when I anticipate it or get to cast it though but I have noticed more and more that the one drops tend to get cascaded into far more often especially given that I have some two drop slivers that for sure will find a one drop. I wont delve into it but my current thoughts are potentially towards expanding my one or less mana spells in the deck as it seems that in my so far testing that I on occasion cast literally all of my current ones lol. I have been working on a list of potential ones. The trick is that a number of answers can be like.... decent but firing them whenever they come up is a little awkward. There is also some tempo type effects but I may need to test my draw a bit more to tell if that would be an issue or not.

So far this deck has felt like its a lot more proactive. The games where I lose someone either goes a lot faster or I stumble too much over disruption. This deck is really good at trecking along but not so great at disrupting opponents proactive gameplan.

[ISBPathfinder]

Having a deck really heavily based in cascade really brings some interesting things to light. Lets start by talking about one drop spells. In this deck I have had numerous times now where I have stripped all of my one drops from my deck because whenever I hit a 2 mana cascade effect it can only find a one drop but when I cast a 3+ mana cascade spell I can still run into those same one drop spells. Those three mana cascade spells have to find a two or less mana card though and even when they find a two mana card that card might have cascade so there is a trickle down effect that pushes my one drops to have a much higher find rate than anything else in my deck with cascade. I don't think its a problem yet but its something I need to keep an eye on as its seemed potentially too easy to strip my entire deck of one drops.

The immediate thought is just to add more one drops as I could easily add things like Preordain, Ponder, Exploration, and Vampiric Tutor to my deck. Adding more hits will help alleviate some of the issue of running out of targets but it also dilutes the pool of selection for my higher mana cascade spells. I also think its very important to talk about the value of a lot of cards even when they are always a positive outcome. I think cards like Preordain, Ponder, and Brainstorm are very reasonable cards when drawn but I have to compare their value against my other one drops when it comes to being cascaded into. Ancestral Vision has been an absolute BOSS card in this deck as so far I have managed to cascade into it almost every game at this point with one single game where I opening handed it which was also very acceptable. Obviously the worst case scenario would be if I drew it later in the game but with the topdeck manipulation that hasn't really happened much of at all to me yet but with some draw it could(will) happen. My point being that I have some really good one drops and I have to balance the idea of keeping a small pool of powerful cards that runs out vs expanding it and diluting said pool of cards. Also whenever there is a card that I cascade into and am less pleased than if it were another card of the same mana it makes me wonder about those cards.

So, yea that got a little long winded. I guess what I am saying though is that my mana costs are sort of an inverted pyramid where the cheapest cards in my deck I see far more often due to chaining cascades. My one mana spells I almost always strip entirely and my two mana spells I often end up playing something like 60-70% of in a prolonged game. Once we get to three mana my chances of cascading into them start to get a little fuzzy but I still do a decent bit due to topdeck manipulation and sheer number of them in the deck. At four and higher mana spells the frequency of cascading into those cards starts to slow down fast. Anything that costs 5+ is generally speaking low priority in assuming I will cascade into them as I only have two cards in the deck currently that costs more that can cascade into them. The point of saying this is essentially that cards that I don't want to cascade into can cost 5+ and I essentially won't accidentally fumble my way into them thus I could run some weird wraths and such if I wanted to and I wouldn't accidentally cast Austere Command for instance. I don't know how relevant this is offhand but it was just sort of my observation after having played a bunch of games with the deck.

DECK CHANGES:

• Brainstorm → Inevitable Betrayal I found myself cascading into Brainstorm a number of times and I realized that it was one of my worst one drops. Its a card that I appreciated drawing but the frequency of cascading into one drops rather than drawing them was really heavily in favor of them being cascaded into rather than drawn to the point that it feels (unscientific guessing data) like 70% chance of cascade and 30% drawn. It has lead me to favor my one drops to have more of an emphasis on being cascaded into rather than being cast. I looked through all of the suspend zero mana spells and of them I felt like a suspend Bribery was still something I would always want to try and cast. If anyone is playing tribal I can potentially pull out a tribal buff and even if they aren't there are plenty of good value creatures that are worth way more than a zero mana cascade. Lots of the other cascade spells felt like they might be very situational or the ones that weren't were only in my mind worth a few mana if they were cascaded into. Bribery is normally a five mana spell and it didn't feel situational which the Living Death and Wheel of Fortune variants did.
• Aura Shards → Masked Vandal this is a REALLY hard change that I will be honest I 100% don't know that I can actually back the change of adequately. I think that I have to be very considerate of what 1-3 mana drops I run though and while I like Aura Shards quite a bit its a dead end to my cascading. Increasing my chaining by including another changeling and making it one that will force one of my hand picked one drops out is decent. I don't want to go too deep into the two drop changeling / slivers but the reason I felt it was appropriate was that it still gives me some removal. Vandal is probably the best two drop changeling in that he is sort of Reclamation Sage like. Taking a card that would stop my cascading and turning it into another cascade effect seems worth testing. I can always come back later but for now I need to do a little more testing of the low parts of my curve.
• Rhystic Study → Rishkar's Expertise Rhystic is still a fine card to cascade into but I think that when I don't more or less start with it in play Rhystic does get a little worse as the game goes on. Rishkar's drawing me a bunch of cards immediately and letting me kick off a changeling is all really nice for both refill and playing to the board. If I were to explain this change its more that I feel like Rhystic is a superior early game card but when looking at drawing either later I prefer Rishkar's not to mention that I don't know that I want to cascade into Rhystic as a three drop all that much where as I can bypass Rishkar's mid cascade to keep chaining. I also...................... might kind of hate asking players "did you pay 1" repeatedly all game from rhystic so.... I won't lie, I kind of always look for a reason not to run it lol.
• Game-Trail Changeling → Nameless Inversion I don't really hate the Game-Trail but I just added a bunch of cost colorless cost reduction and the fact that it has a GG casting cost is something that didn't go unnoticed for me. I do have a few fight kind of effects in the deck and that statline can be useful for that but I felt like for the most part my four drop changelings achieved mostly the same thing as my five drops. I did count something like 11 four drops in the deck but even then the cost of casting a five drop as well as another play in the same turn can be a pain in the ass so I felt like lowering the curve a little. Also I felt like there is often something that Lightning Bolt can kill that makes me willing to run Nameless and cascading into a high powered one drop on top of that seems just fine.

On my radar:

• Sylvan Library - It might seem odd given how good topdeck manipulation is here but I have a lot more consistency getting the one drops into play and this effect does have a diminishing return in duplicate. I also don't have much for lifegain so using library as draw isn't something I try to resort to. Its possible I might cut this because its often not the first of the bunch to play and duplication isn't great on this front. I still definitely want both of the one drops but library might get cut.

[SaintRumpterfrabble]

Yeah, Inevitable Betrayal is fantastic here. I had noticed the same thing about Brainstorm and was glad to see it's replacement. Also going to agree with the inclination to replace Sylvan Library as I'm rarely happy to cascade into it. I'm also not often thrilled at cascading into Mystic Remora as my meta is very creature heavy and it rarely does anything.
I've only cast Volcanic Torrent once and it was awesome. This might finally be the deck that my copy of Urza's Incubator can finally call home. I almost always am able to cast multiple creatures a turn with it in play.
What made you select the triomes that are currently in your decklist? I find myself wanting to replace any non-island one with Ketria Triome. There have been a number of times I haven't been able to use Mystic Sanctuary from not having enough islands in play. I also realized, via my opponent's Path to Exile, that there aren't any basic lands in this deck. I'll likely add one somewhere.
The deck is a lot of fun. I've been trying to create a sliver deck for a long time (Sliver Queen was the first "expensive" card I purchased back in the day - my friends couldn't believe I would spend $15 on a single card) but due to their maligned reputation among the more casual crowd, I've never felt able to do so.

[ISBPathfinder]

Yeah, Inevitable Betrayal is fantastic here. I had noticed the same thing about Brainstorm and was glad to see it's replacement. Also going to agree with the inclination to replace Sylvan Library as I'm rarely happy to cascade into it. I'm also not often thrilled at cascading into Mystic Remora as my meta is very creature heavy and it rarely does anything.
I've only cast Volcanic Torrent once and it was awesome. This might finally be the deck that my copy of Urza's Incubator can finally call home. I almost always am able to cast multiple creatures a turn with it in play.
What made you select the triomes that are currently in your decklist? I find myself wanting to replace any non-island one with Ketria Triome. There have been a number of times I haven't been able to use Mystic Sanctuary from not having enough islands in play. I also realized, via my opponent's Path to Exile, that there aren't any basic lands in this deck. I'll likely add one somewhere.
The deck is a lot of fun. I've been trying to create a sliver deck for a long time (Sliver Queen was the first "expensive" card I purchased back in the day - my friends couldn't believe I would spend $15 on a single card) but due to their maligned reputation among the more casual crowd, I've never felt able to do so.

Brainstorm - I still think that drawing brainstorm was good but the chances of cascading into spells rather than drawing them when it came to one drops was heavily favoring cascading into them. Its a bit unfortunate as my one drop count is a bit lighthter than I would like it to be given that I do run out of one drops but its so powerful to front load the value of getting the powerful ones and getting them early in the game. I look forward to testing out Inevitable Betrayal in its place but it might also be a few weeks before I can get any more testing in with my decks unfortunately.

Sylvan Library - The more I think about it the higher the liklihood that I end up cutting it is. I just don't know what is coming in for it. I could revert some of my recent three drop cuts or go with something else. I just haven't figured it out yet but its probably going to happen.

Mystic Remora - Its tough from the standpoint that its a very powerful one drop. I could see it performing a bit different based on your meta though. I have had some games it has drawn me a bunch of cards and others where I let it die without drawing any. I think that your opponents choice of deck makes a lot of difference in what this is going to do for you. Its usually not worth an opponent losing a turn to not do things but if they have a bunch of creatures they might just do those instead. My challenge is just that I can't find many other one drops that feel like they situationally perform like much stronger cards. I looked at a few others like Carpet of Flowers, Exploration, Swords to Plowshares, Vampiric Tutor, Preordain, and Ponder as well but lots of these feel like they might be situational and in a lot of cases didn't feel like they would always measure up to the power of the other one drops I was running. Mystic Remora really punishes some decks that run low curve cantrips and draw effects like Sign in Blood. Its also a relatively cheap to maintain it for a few turns and if someone wants to do little to nothing for a few turns to keep me from drawing a few cards its often useful as well.

Volcanic Torrent - Yea its been REALLY good for me. I also really like that Bring to Light can tutor it while drumming up more spells cast for me. Like, every time I have seen this card it has been super impressive for me in this list.

Ketria Triome - It had a lot of overlap with Zagoth Triome both being UG triomes and I originally wanted more variance in my coverage. Black and Red are the two colors I use less of and primarily I just need one mana of those colors a turn for the most part. Its possible that due to including Mystic Sanctuary I may want both but I haven't gotten to do any testing with sanctuary yet myself. As a random side note as I am talking about lands, I should probably consider making room to include Krosan Verge given that a lot of the pain of a colorless ETB tapped land is primarily finding it early but finding this one early would help me ramp into my commander.

Basics - You can run one or two if you want. Its edge case enough I haven't seen the want to hurt my landbase by doing it but I think its fine if you see a lot of Path to Exile specifically. There aren't many other cards that result in opponents giving away a land that see much play in this format and I personally felt it wasn't worth edge casing for it. If you do I would probably make it a bant basic given where more of our colors tend to be.

Feel free to provide any other feedback you might have. I have only managed something like 3-4 games with the deck so far due to a somewhat busy summer schedule.

[ISBPathfinder]

I wanted to do a deep dive on two drops as while I did look through them to some degree I felt like my one and two mana spells are my most important and I wanted a fresh take on two drops available so I did quite a bit of digging through them. BTW there are a LOT of two drops so while I didn't look at everything I ended up looking at a lot of them with a most popular filter on looking into the first 1500 results (of 10,000 results).

--------------2 drops -----------
Gilded Drake - Its one of those cards that you probably could get away with casting on most boards so long as the guy before you didn't wrath and its like the first thing off your commander. Its a good card and there is usually something worth trading with. I personally like being able to time it a little bit more than just at random time which is why I haven't included it yet but I think its totally reasonable and something on my list.
Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger - I tend to move through a good number of cards and I have fetches as well so escaping is reasonable.
Manamorphose - Casting it is.... fine but cascading into it seems very reasonable. Its sort of a one shot cost reduction to whatever I was doing but it also cantrips so it seems fine as something to bump into.
Arcane Signet - Its probably the next ramp effect I would run. I like it more than the basic ramp effects and while its technically stronger than Farseek, I like ramping lands over artifacts when I can but this effect is strong and probably the next ramp I would consider.
Selfless Spirit - Its an anti wrath card that is cascade friendly.
Baleful Strix - Good anti aggro tool that cantrips. I don't run it because well, that isn't really what my deck seems to need nor what my meta does.
Kenrith's Transformation - Its a nice answer that cantrips.
Gaddock Teeg - anti control card. I considered running it before but my issues tend to be spot removal rather than sweepers as spot removal can still allow my opponents to continue to build up.
Cloudshredder Sliver - an option if I wanted to be more aggressive. I am trying to keep from getting my sliver count too high though and I don't really need more two drop cascade effects as I already hit my one drops too hard.
Tibalt's Trickery - Its funny in that cascading into it allows you to throw back the card that cascaded into it and try for another card. Lots of the cheap counters are awkward with cascading so I felt like mentioning that its slightly more friendly.
Dragon Tempest - Its low cost and option of giving repeat control actually seems sort of appealing. Its also cascade friendly in that if you cascade into it if you had changelings up the cascade stack they resolve after it which is cool.
Regrowth - It can be similar to a cantrip but it gives me more control over what I am getting back. Recovering Volcanic Torrent would be sweet.
Witherbloom Command - I think the first two modes are reasonable but my issue is the last two modes don't really seem good. Its interesting but probably a little lacking as if I can't execute the first two modes well the card isn't going to be good.
Dromoka's Command - Similarly to Witherbloom Command there are two modes I like about this one. The fight and sac enchant both seem good to me but sac an enchantment isn't always effective. Also when it comes to fighting I generally have one big creature (my commander) and giving people a positive reason to remove him in response to something like this isn't really what I want to do.

---

Lets talk a bit more about this list. The first card that peaks my interest is Dragon Tempest. I have seen this card in materpillar's list previously and I wasn't excited about it previously but that was when I was playing slower with Sliver Hivelord as more of a control deck. This deck can move through a lot more cards in a turn and the cascade effect can result in me playing a lot more changelings in a turn as well as having wider boards. My excitement over this card is more that its cheap and easy to cascade into though as I still don't want to run Scourge of Valkas even though they are very similar given its cost to cast. I feel like it has some similarities to Aura Shards but its cheaper and interacting with commanders for me at least is often more important than artifacts and enchantments.

Manamorphose is the second card that I came across that surprised me a bit. Its a one shot cantrip that makes a bit of mana but if you cast a changeling / sliver and you get two mana back and cantrip that seems like a good return for me. If I am totally tapped out it might not be as useful but the idea of looking at the top of my deck and seeing this card then casting a 3 mana changeling and getting two mana back plus drawing a card seems really good.

After those two I thought that both Kenrith's Transformation and Selfless Spirit were both reasonable effects as well. They were a little less interesting to me but I felt like both of them were very reasonable effects that I wouldn't dislike cascading into.

DECK CHANGES:

• Sylvan Library → Dragon Tempest I think that Sylvan Library is a good effect and its an effect I like in this deck but it was too redundant with the one drops of Sensei's Divining Top and Mirri's Guile. Library is generally a stronger effect than Mirri's Guile but given how cascade works and how much more prevalent my one drops are to being found I often found my library after finding one or more of these one drops making it a bit too redundant. Dragon Tempest also has some fun World Tree synergy assuming I could set up Dragon Tempest and untap to Tree my opponents.

I unfortunately haven't gotten to play this deck recently as I haven't been able to make it to play commander in most of a month now. Its also going to be another two weeks probably before I can make it sooooo that kind of sucks. I did get all of the changes ordered so hopefully I can test them soon.

[materpillar]

I'm curious to know how tempest will work out for you. Have you considered Mistveil Plains as a way to not run out of 1-drops to cascade into? I haven't checked to see if you have enough white permanents. It's fetchable and taps for non-colorless. Worth considering.

[ISBPathfinder]

I'm curious to know how tempest will work out for you. Have you considered Mistveil Plains as a way to not run out of 1-drops to cascade into? I haven't checked to see if you have enough white permanents. It's fetchable and taps for non-colorless. Worth considering.

I hadn't really thought about it but it could be a thing from the standpoint of being easier to fetch later and not taking up a bunch of space. I will probably hold off for now and see if I have issues of running out and not being in a good place due to it. For now its only really something I would worry about if I strip all of my one drops (which does happen but I am usually in a fairly good spot after stripping all of them). In a lot of ways using up all of my one drops usually puts me in a fairly good place because well.... two of them are strong draw and the topdeck manipulation really helps me get the best out of my turns. I guess what I am saying is that I don't know that its really worth reloading the cards into my deck or not. Usually speaking having a small but powerful set of one drops gives me a strong upfront value as I pull them out of my deck. Its true that it would give me more sustain to reload them but it also comes at a cost. I could likewise consider something like Gaea's Blessing which is interesting in that its still a cantrip effect and it can reload some of the one drops for me or be psudo grave hate.

In short though, I think I need more testing before I can really say where I stand on reload effects. I think its more reasonable here than I normal given our ability to sort of surgically extract specific spells. The flip side of the argument is sort of that reloading takes up some space and time to do and is more of a long term sustainability thought. This deck can be somewhat explosive due to these effects but if I had to do a long grind it might be a problem.

Depending on how well the cost reduction effects go (I haven't run the list since including them) I could also potentially see Wirewood Symbiote maybe being a thing to consider in here as well. The tricky part of it is that its really only something I would want to do if I have good cost reduction online and can't maintain enough draw. Lots of my cascades run into ramp and or cantrip effects as is so it hasn't really been a thing for me yet but I also haven't assembled cost reduction in play yet. I would rather just continue to play more things out but the Symbiote could be good but seems a bit dependent on me running out of action in hand for it to really be reasonable. I guess it also gives a little bit of protection for my changelings as well but I can't think of many changelings I would want to protect.

[ISBPathfinder]

Well, here I am forgetting to make another change lol. I haven't gotten to play games in a while and I hate to say it but I think like, the whole next month probably is a no go for playing super unfortunately. So.... looks like I keep to just update my list without a chance to have any play data :/

DECK CHANGE:

• Path of Ancestry → Krosan Verge Path is ok fixing but it enters tapped and the value it generates seems to not be really where I need my value. Its true that it could help me scry but this deck has been really good at finding the one mana topdeck manipulation effects. Verge seems like a much better early game land given the fix and ramp elements of it.

[Ulka]

I was looking at your list and it finally hit me what I kept wanting to ask you about. With how central your commander is to the decks function have you considered running Command Beacon? I ask because earlier you had chatted about when it gets removed too much it becomes harder for the deck to function.

Otherwise just gotta say I love the chaos this list brings

[ISBPathfinder]

I was looking at your list and it finally hit me what I kept wanting to ask you about. With how central your commander is to the decks function have you considered running Command Beacon? I ask because earlier you had chatted about when it gets removed too much it becomes harder for the deck to function.

Otherwise just gotta say I love the chaos this list brings

I have always been skeptical of Command Beacon from the standpoint that you sacrifice a land to do it. Beyond that colorless lands have been REALLY bad for me and I have also had a time or two where I was lacking a color to cast my commander on curve. With how dependant on the commander my deck tends to be I really don't like the idea of more lands that might screw up my potential to cast my commander on curve. I just added Krosan Verge but its really only a bad land to draw as my 4th or 5th land plays as outside of those situations I probably can manage it just fine. I had a game where I was forced to play Contested Cliffs on like turn 3 or 4 and I almost threw the land out after that experience. I am forcing myself to continue to test it from the standpoint that I knew beforehand that that would be the weak end of that land and I haven't seen it much outside of that one situation in this current build.

I guess I have never been overly fond of Command Beacon to be honest but I think a real reason to be concerned is that colorless lands can really disrupt playing the commander on curve. I have been extremely leery of utilizing utility lands in this deck (especially the colorless mana ones) because of how it can stall out casting our commander. The deck is extremely commander centric with this commander unfortunately and I more or less don't see a reason to deploy most of my changeling / slivers without the option to cascade them given how if I do that I likely will run out of hand for after I cast my commander.

I almost always prioritize having at least one Strip Mine effect in a deck but I have passed on that utility in this list due to how much of a concern I have over having all of my colors and having them on curve.

[Ulka]

I was looking at your list and it finally hit me what I kept wanting to ask you about. With how central your commander is to the decks function have you considered running Command Beacon? I ask because earlier you had chatted about when it gets removed too much it becomes harder for the deck to function.

Otherwise just gotta say I love the chaos this list brings

I have always been skeptical of Command Beacon from the standpoint that you sacrifice a land to do it. Beyond that colorless lands have been REALLY bad for me and I have also had a time or two where I was lacking a color to cast my commander on curve. With how dependant on the commander my deck tends to be I really don't like the idea of more lands that might screw up my potential to cast my commander on curve. I just added Krosan Verge but its really only a bad land to draw as my 4th or 5th land plays as outside of those situations I probably can manage it just fine. I had a game where I was forced to play Contested Cliffs on like turn 3 or 4 and I almost threw the land out after that experience. I am forcing myself to continue to test it from the standpoint that I knew beforehand that that would be the weak end of that land and I haven't seen it much outside of that one situation in this current build.

I guess I have never been overly fond of Command Beacon to be honest but I think a real reason to be concerned is that colorless lands can really disrupt playing the commander on curve. I have been extremely leery of utilizing utility lands in this deck (especially the colorless mana ones) because of how it can stall out casting our commander. The deck is extremely commander centric with this commander unfortunately and I more or less don't see a reason to deploy most of my changeling / slivers without the option to cascade them given how if I do that I likely will run out of hand for after I cast my commander.

I almost always prioritize having at least one Strip Mine effect in a deck but I have passed on that utility in this list due to how much of a concern I have over having all of my colors and having them on curve.

That's very fair. I guess I wasn't sure if you were considering replacing Contested Cliffs as you had reported feeling very meh with it but i figured I'd raise this as an alternative for the aforementioned commander centricity of the deck.

I guess my only other consideration for the deck would be the already mentioned Goblin Recruiter to set up cascade chains or Munda, Ambush Leader for similar reasoning. Harabaz Druid also could be considered if you want a way to generate more mana one your engine of a deck has started but I could see not being too interested in it.


While writing this I did get reminded that See the Truth is a card which i know you were looking for more Ancestral Vision like cards and this is the closest I have.

[ISBPathfinder]

That's very fair. I guess I wasn't sure if you were considering replacing Contested Cliffs as you had reported feeling very meh with it but i figured I'd raise this as an alternative for the aforementioned commander centricity of the deck.

I guess my only other consideration for the deck would be the already mentioned Goblin Recruiter to set up cascade chains or Munda, Ambush Leader for similar reasoning. Harabaz Druid also could be considered if you want a way to generate more mana one your engine of a deck has started but I could see not being too interested in it.


While writing this I did get reminded that See the Truth is a card which i know you were looking for more Ancestral Vision like cards and this is the closest I have.

I am far from convinced that Contested Cliffs is where I want / need to be but I need to get more testing in with it. I ended up cutting it from my previous build when I was running Sliver Hivelord but a lot of the reasons for cutting that were that I was focusing a lot more on the 1-2 mana changelings rather than the higher mana cost ones so the statlines sucked and they couldn't fight even utility creatures in most cases. I have only managed to test this deck for maybe four games so far and its been almost a month since I last got to play it annoyingly.

I might consider some other things but I likely won't go up in utility land count for this deck. Cliffs is in for now until I can get more testing and see if its relevant or not.

I did think about some of the cheap selection / cantrip effects but ultimately I think they are a touch weak for the ones that draw me just one card. Sensei's Divining Top and Mirri's Guile already do a fairly good job of giving me selection as needed so I tend to favor some of the strong utility that cantrip like the Explore effects. Glimpse the Cosmos is one of very few of these type of effects that I gave a passing grade to and that was primarily due to the fact that it has that psudo flashback thing. There are a bunch of them I could consider such as Impulse but ultimately I haven't wanted to go deeper on them as I have a lot of redundancy on the effects I actually want so selection hasn't been as big of a deal for me so much as just draw quantity.

[ISBPathfinder]

So I have played a few more games with this deck. I thinnk its fare to say that this deck is commander centric and it kind of hates when people spot remove the commander. I actually don't mind full sweepers taking my board out but when I get excessively spot removed its a lot harder as I am often recieving pressure while getting set behind. Also for what its worth people are REALLY freaked out by my commander / deck for whatever reason which I get that its 5c but I feel like its more of a flavorful and somewhat fair 5c deck all things said and done. I considered if I wanted to delve into some anti spot removal tech such as Steely Resolve, Dense Foliage, Spellskite kind of ideas but ultimately I felt like they were a bit lackluster mostly in that they don't technically do anything and are bad in duplicate. I have Crystalline Sliver currently but being a sliver means it does cascade for me which is good enough for me to give it a pass. I decided instead to try to reduce some of my winmore kind of effects and add a few more sweepers and lifegain instead as I think it may help me out. I was staying away from sweepers before but given the number of disruptions I have been seeing on my commander I really need to slow the board a bit more than I am currently and I think there are a few sweepers that still don't kill my commander which I should probably run.

DECK CHANGES:

• Necrotic Sliver → Syphon Sliver I have found Necrotic ok in a few cases but its expensive to use and I am trying to keep myself from becoming too heavily sliver based so it means that I generally move my slivers around rather than increasing their count. The hard part with Necrotic is how mana hungry this deck is. If I didn't find myself using all of my mana almost every turn it probably would be better but outside of situations where I run out of things to do (aka short on card draw) I haven't really seen situations that I feel I can stop moving forward with proactive plays to keep this up. Some of my issue has been just getting nickle and dimed all game without good recovery mechanics. I looked at a lot of options for lifegain and I felt that in the end putting it on a cascade target was going to be the best option.
• Bonescythe Sliver → Essence Sliver I do like the pressure of Bonescythe but generally speaking its more of an offensive sliver than something that works on defense or early in the game. That sort of makes it a bit odd as before I am ready to push for damage its a bit so so. I have also been looking for more means of sustaining and not dying to damage especially given that I don't put a lot of emphasis on having anything vs flyers it means I need a means to not die so more lifegain seems good.
• Omnath, Locus of the Roil → Cryptbreaker I honestly have no clue if Cryptbreaker is going to work at all but its another one drop and seems interesting. Omnath was really hard to make use of given his cost to play him and not being a sliver / changeling but he had some sort of draw / removal so I wanted to fill his position with some additional draw as well. I have been saying for a while that I could possibly use another one drop so I guess lets test it out.
• Purphoros, God of the Forge → Widespread Brutality Purpheros is a bit winmore. Its hard to find time to deploy him and even then he is only good when the deck is working or if I can get to huge mana with The World Tree. I have been really impressed with Volcanic Torrent and while I can't run more copies of it I guess I can run some more sweepers that don't affect me too badly and generally won't kill my commander. Brutality will kill most of my utility non changelings but keeping my commander and changelings seems alright for what it might do to my opponents boards.
• Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves → Toxic Deluge I drew Tolsimir a few times and was really not impressed with him. I don't actually know if I ever cast him because in the 3-5 times I did see him he was worse than doing about anything else. Toxic is going to kill most of my board except my commander in most cases and its nice in its versatility and low mana cost allowing me to cascade into it more than most of the sweepers I was considering.
• Urza's Incubator → Crippling Fear I went back and forth on cutting Incubator. To be honest I have not tested it sufficiently but I have seen a lot of need for me to have more sweeper effects. My opponents have been killing my commander a lot while pressuring me with swarms of crappy little creatures and I need to put more pressure on my opponents board I think. I like crippling because I can pick my utility creatures to keep alive based on what I have in play. Its probably the best of the three sweepers I am adding at keeping my board alive but it also has the least scaling capability for the size of the sweeper. I still thinnk that -3/-3 is really strong though and if I was only adding one or two sweepers its likely that Crippling Fear should have been the next add outside of the fact that Toxic Deluge is cheaper and thus easier to cascade into. I went back and forth on which cost reducer I wanted to keep between Urza's Incubator and Herald's Horn but I think that the topdeck selection cards pushes Herald's Horn slightly to my favor right now without enough testing on either.
• Contested Cliffs → Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth I have yet to ever activate Cliffs as a utility effect but it has thrown my curve off more than once. Its time to cut it for more fixing. Colorless lands in a 5c commander centric deck is a problem. I want to hit my commander on curve EVERY time and its enough of a problem I am going to drop cliffs. I am aware that I can mulligan hands with cliffs and insiufficient lands but I have had the 3ish land keep where I draw cliffs and not enough other lands problem and its such a minor use utility land I am not willing to screw my deck up for it. Maybe if there was a utility I felt like I needed but offhand, ehhh. I could include a Strip Mine or something like Yavimaya Hollow but I just think I want to fix and do it every time over having any utility right now.

Of these changes I am sort of uncertain on Cryptbreaker coming in. I feel like I probably just have to throw him in and get some testing to have more on how I feel about him. I also went back and forth quite a bit on cutting Urza's Incubator or Herald's Horn but I felt like I wanted to still test cost reduction a bit for now. I could make additional changes on that front given more testing. Adding three sweepers in one shot is kind of a big change too and we will see how that feels as I am going from having like two psudo situational sweepers up to having five. Silumgar, the Drifting Death and Volcanic Torrent were also expensive enough that cascading into them wasn't very realistic given that I only have two cards that cost more than them with cascade so having three new targets at 3, 4, 4 gives me at least some option to cascade into sweepers even if it isn't a huge chance.

I also have no means of interacting with problem lands or graveyards currently. I did just add more sweepers to the list which does make me think a bit more on graveyard abuse but I really don't like the idea of cascading into most of the one mana artifacts I would normally use for that. Strip Mine lands have the issue of being colorless when I am pushing so hard to get all of my colors on curve consistently but anytime someone drops something like a coffers / cradle / nykthos and abuses the hell out of it I often want the option to at least tutor an answer which I don't really have currently. Its something I am mulling over at the least but for now I don't feel like it benefits the deck to run the answers I would normally run for these problems. I will continue and monitor these type of concerns in future games.