MTG Salvation

If I take some sea's claim, would I get rid of counter spell or daze? I feel like daze loses it's strength early on. I'm also not sure if I should use disrupting shoal is great. Would foil and counter spell be better?

That's actually a great suggestion I hadn't thought of. Although RG Tron isnt T1 legacy, we play kitchen table and it's still been very strong against my budget themed decks.

The lords in merfolk sound like a good answer to pyroclasm and the only thing left I have to stop is oblivion stone. Not sure what to run aside from counters to get rid of it, as oblivion stone would wipe my spreading seas and he'd be in a good position again. Maybe Pithing Needle?

I was thinking of using ghost quarter and tectonic edge to run even more land hate since I'll be casting primarily from vials. The only downside is that counter spells will be harder to cast when they are needed but I feel like daze and spell pierce aren't as strong as the actual counterspell because of how much mana rg tron gets out quickly.


I was thinking that I'd start off with something like this: It might be a little over my budget but It'll allow room to grow should I later decide to add to it.

Quote from WorstBandNameEver

Goblins, Merfolk, and vial knights are all fun.

I agree that goblin and merfolk are strong, but with both I'm having trouble against RG tron. With goblins, I don't have the budget for a playset goblin lackey to pump out that turn 2 siege commander and my creature board has been getting wiped often with pyroclasm/oblivion stone.

With merfolk, I don't have the budget for FOW and wastelands, and I've found dazes and spell pierce somewhat ineffective because of how much colorless mana rg tron produces. Which means I've had my board wiped by pyroclasms and oblivion stones quite a bit too.

I don't have much experience with soldiers as I find white to play a bit slow for my own tastes, and I imagine they'd have the same issues (budget/weenie wipers) as goblin and merfolk.

Honestly I think Spooky's matyrdom goblins might be my best shot outside of cascade, but it doesn't need vials to be effective - and that's why I'm looking for advice for other decks to make my vials useful

Hi everyone, I haven't visited in a long time but recently my friend and I have gotten back into magic. We play without too many restrictions except extremely broken vintage combo decks and without planeswalkers. (We just don't like them).

I've been looking to create a budget friendly deck and discovered that I have a play set of aether vials lying around from an old and not so great sliver deck. I was wondering if you guys had any suggestions on decks that go well with aether vials.

Some examples I thought of off the top of my head would be goblin and merfolk. Unfortunately, I don't have a very large budget. On top of the already existing vials, I'm not looking to spend more than an additional $50-100, which effectively rules out goblin and merfolk afaik.

Some decks I've play tested and enjoyed:
Casabalance (I like the mechanic of being able to control both lands and creatures)
Dredge (fun mechanic that takes a good deal of thinking)
Goblin burn/aggro (Spooky's version in his super budget primer)

None of these use vial though, so even though I could build a budget casabalance for around $50, I was wondering if anyone had other suggestions that do incorporate vials?

My friends primarily runs RG tron w/ sideboarded pyroclasms and blue/green infect. He also plays a budget burn every now and then.

Affinity, ichorid/dregde, and pox would be good decks. I think pox or ichorid would be better choices as artifact hate can ruin affinity but graveyard hate can be played around (with much skill!) with ichorid.

I would just check deckcheck and other tourney reports. The more frequent you see decks winning, or the more wins it has, the higher tier it is. That's probably you're best bet.

if you guys are playing with original decks, it doesn't sound like anyone else but him is putting a lot of money into their decks. maybe you could impose a budget restriction? that or straight up tell him it's not fun to play against his decks.

if you built a deck to play his, then you'd have a competitive deck everyone else wouldn't like, so talking to the player would be the best bet.

wild pair can't compare to the usefulness that is aether vial for slivers.

in my opinion, compared to other tribes, slivers are one of the slower tribes. They have the most synergies, but take the longest to build up. The best solution to that is to add control elements. That's why players play white (removal) and blue (control). The best slivers are white and blue as well. Crystalline sliver is the best sliver out there. The other viable slivers are Muscle, Talon, Winged, Plated, Hibernation, Sinew. I'd read the legacy primer for more help!

Quote from IXEquilibrium

You could try something like:

4 Aether Vial
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Plated Sliver

4 Sinew Sliver
4 Crystaline Sliver
3 Winged Sliver
3 "First Strike Sliver" (I cannot remember the name off the top of my head, my decks are not here at work)
4 Standstill
4 Daze
4 Counterspell. You could replace this with some other counter, but keep it cheap like Spell Snare or Rune Snag or something.

2 Mirror Entity

20 Land (with 4-8 budget versions of Tundra and Flooded Strand such as the painlands, ravnica shocklands or whatever you have access to). Make sure to include a good number of Islands to utilize daze properly.

so you narrowed it down to two colors? That would definitely make the manabase more affordable. I wish mtg would release tribal lands for slivers, that'd be awesome. I've never seen mirror entity in a sliver deck, seems like an awesome idea with crystalline sliver protecting it. Do you think talon sliver is good enough to not splash black for hibernation sliver or splash green for muscle sliver?

is Foil a decent budget alternative to FOW? or is counterspell a better idea?

besides the lands, the most expensive part would be FOW. so if you have those already, it's not bad at all. The only thing is that the money to build countersliver could be used to make a better deck

slivers has always been my favorite tribe. Although countersliver is a bit weaker since you can't use many tricks with hibernation sliver anymore, meathooks is still viable. Although merfolk usually has more counter, meathooks has more removal usually. True LOA makes merfolk good in most metas, but crystalline sliver makes meathooks a force to be reckoned with as well.

Ancient tomb and umezawa's are unfortunately out of my budget. I figured a white weenie or soldier / kitkhin deck would be the way to go hmm. I was actually trying a budget meathooks as i have a playset of crystalline slivers. FOW and the dual lands are way out of my budget. Is there a way to make meathooks more budget friendly?

Counter slivers tromp faeries. Faeries doesn't have anything to stop slivers once aether vials are out and crystalline sliver is in play. They also can't evade past slivers which grow and grow and grow because of winged slivers.

Burn decks are my favorite budget legacy deck. They aren't doing as well now though because of the huge abundance of counter/top. Because of that, I would go LEDless Ichorid/dredge. I've seen one them play and they are definitely strong. I don't like vial affinity as it seems like the deck that newer sets will add to the least and the cards can't go anywhere else.

*off topic*
I didn't want to make a new thread for this but -
Are there any budget decks that use 4 x swords to plowshares and 4 x aether vial? Those are the best cards I have currently and I was looking for a budget but still competitive deck to build around them.