MTG Salvation

Sliver tribal is certainly not tier 1, but people do threat assessments as though it is.

I'm trying to make my Sliver overlord deck as strong and fast as possible and I got a foil the first sliver for a great price. The deck is essentially all slivers, ramp, tutors, and removal. I love what the first sliver does, especially if I cast congregation at dawn first, but I find it's slow and clunky most of the time. I haven't gotten a morophon, the boundless yet but I'm guessing I'll feel the same way about that too. The deck is relatively slow and those cards slow it down more. They're really cool with hibernation sliver: pay 2 life, recast your general for free with cascade - but it's hard getting those three cards in play.

I've been trying to figure out good ways of getting those cards on the battlefield quickly, such as getting them into the graveyard with stuff like buried alive or survival of the fittest and cheating them into play. But everything I come up feels slow and clunky compared to my other decks and I feel like I should trade or sell the first sliver. Does anyone have any ideas or can link me to a cedh decklist using either/both of these cards?

I'm in the same boat as you with these two. I love the concept of them so much and I want them in my overlord deck. After loads of testing, I can justify first sliver in my deck because I run so heavily on artifact and sliver ramp. I consistently have overlord out by turn 3, but I find it very situational for myself to grab first sliver over queen. With forcing myself to play first sliver, however, I've noticed it's beyond busted when you can get sensei's top out or soothsaying. Top allows for a quick look and if you've got a sliver with cost two or greater, all you need to do is draw with top and get it back off the cast, rinse and repeat. Morophon is just so high of a cost that it's hard for me to see he benefit of his WUBRG reducer. It's amazing in situations where you've got cloudstone curio out and can just bounce and play slivers for cast and etb effects tho. I think it really boils down to personal preference, but I'm surely gonna give both a try.

I think it depends a little bit about what you are trying to do with your Slivers deck. With Slivers now having 5 different options for a Commander, builds of the deck can now really diverge. It used to be that Sliver Overlord was the "combo general", Sliver Queen was the "control general", and Sliver Legion was the "aggro general". When they printed Sliver Hivelord, I pretty much saw it less as an option for being a general and more as an option to include in the maindeck to avoid Wrath effects.

With The First Sliver, you have a card that is useful in pretty much any version of the deck that you might come up with outside of 'Counter Slivers' or some really dedicated control lists. Since you describe your deck as all "Slivers, tutors, ramp, and removal", then there is zero downside to running it. Your ramp should be fixing your colors and getting you to 5 mana fast enough that it shouldn't be an issue to cast it when it matters, and when you do you can go from a clear board to an embarrassment of riches in a hurry (perfect for recovering from a board wipe). With that in mind, I think that the First Sliver would be amazing in aggro builds and would allow you to go off in combo builds with Aluren, Mana Echoes, Earthcraft, or Intruder Alarm shenanigans where casting free Slivers or netting mana from casting Slivers is a thing. If you are a more controllish build, then it might not be worth it but it doesn't sound like you are.

As for Morophon, the Boundless, I think that the card is great once it is in play but 7 mana is a lot unless you are ramping hard. And even then, once you get it out you have presumably already played the other cards in your hand and/or you have plenty of mana in play to cast whatever you may draw so the mana savings ability is somewhat moot. I think that you are right in looking at ways to cheat it into play, but I think that a Slivers deck really doesn't need what Morophon provides. On top of that, there are just plenty of other ways to cheat on mana in a deck like this when you combo out, so I would just skip it.

Quote from logo79 »

With forcing myself to play first sliver, however, I've noticed it's beyond busted when you can get sensei's top out or soothsaying. Top allows for a quick look and if you've got a sliver with cost two or greater, all you need to do is draw with top and get it back off the cast, rinse and repeat.

Hey I was thinking of adding this card: ancestral knowledge. Thoughts? And do you have a decklist posted anywhere? And congregation at dawn is insane with the first sliver too.
Also, one cascade trick I like is having galerider sliver because the only 0 cmc spell is mana crypt so I'm guaranteed to cast it when I cascade with the galerider.

Quote from Forgotten One »

As for Morophon, the Boundless, I think that the card is great once it is in play but 7 mana is a lot unless you are ramping hard. And even then, once you get it out you have presumably already played the other cards in your hand and/or you have plenty of mana in play to cast whatever you may draw so the mana savings ability is somewhat moot. I think that you are right in looking at ways to cheat it into play, but I think that a Slivers deck really doesn't need what Morophon provides. On top of that, there are just plenty of other ways to cheat on mana in a deck like this when you combo out, so I would just skip it.

I agree. I see it as a winmore card that only slows the deck down.

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/06-05-19-sliver-me-timbers/
That's my deck, I definitely think there's room for improvements, but it's getting there.

If you are running sliver but not going for tier 1, I say run all 5 legendary slivers (if you can, queen is around 200 bucks)

What annoys me is they have yet to reprint queen. They can, they reprinted reserved list cards before (granted it was from the vaults, but still a reprint)

Hey I was thinking of adding this card: ancestral knowledge. Thoughts?

As for this, it pairs extremely well with the first sliver as your commander. Even just having him on the battlefield it makes a great synergy. But with how high you can ramp in slivers, my personal preference is soothsaying. More than likely you'll be able to have more than 10 mana to stack your deck as high as you want.

Quote from Gashnaw II »

If you are running sliver but not going for tier 1, I say run all 5 legendary slivers (if you can, queen is around 200 bucks)

What annoys me is they have yet to reprint queen. They can, they reprinted reserved list cards before (granted it was from the vaults, but still a reprint)

They have since stated that they will no longer do this as of 2010 (last announcement can be found here), making any further reprints of Reserved List cards an extremely unlikely scenario going forward. It's sad; the Reserved List is an abomination that should be revoked, but I doubt that it ever will.

Wizards have already been “printing” reserved list cards on magic online for a while now. If Magic goes primarily digital in a decade or two, it may become a moot point.

Quote from Necr0maNc3R »

Wizards have already been “printing” reserved list cards on magic online for a while now. If Magic goes primarily digital in a decade or two, it may become a moot point.

It won't, the vast majority of MTG players play primarily physical MTG rather than digital.

I updated my sliver deck here in case anyone wants to check it out and offer suggestions.

How are you able to consistently get overlord out by turn 3? In my play group I'm playing against combo decks and Superfriends.

The First Sliver is very much cEDH viable. Decklist here: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/food-chain-sliver/

One thing you will notice here is that this is NOT a sliver Tribal deck.

The reason the First Sliver works here, is because of the cascade ability that he holds. When paired with food chain, it makes an incredibly powerful combo deck that can kill very quickly.

cEDH is a very different beast than regular EDH/Commander. There is no "chair tribal" or Pheldagriph group hug. It's "be completely relevant on t3, or loose". We cEDH players are a nice bunch of people, but we also like to win.



If you are looking at a powerful tribal deck, then The first sliver is probably your best bet for the casual tables.