If I wasn't sure before, totally sure now... played traditional slivers at fnm tonight and finished 4-0-1 taking an ID in the finals.
Matches were:
Abzan midrange 2-0
Affinity 2-1
Abzan elves 2-1
8 rack 2-1
Kiki-exarch 4-0* we played 4 games for practice, and I won all 4.
Certain now that traditional slivers will be my list of choice for upcoming events.
I see you making very good results lately.
I would very glad (and I think not only me) to see some kind of primer, explaining card choices (specially the manabase), matchups and play tricks.
The main differences between my list and what most of the others on this forum I will list out below. When running traditional slivers, most of everyone is running nearly the same list with a few small changes.
3 Mutavaults & 4 shocks - most of everyone else runs 4 mutavaults and 3 shocks, I tend to lean more toward having a solid source of each color of mana to take the load off the rainbow lands and manaweft slivers. It has caused the rare occasion of only having certain colors available if I dont see rainbow lands but that percentage is so low its hardly worth mentioning.
Homing in the main 1 copy - I have run this the last few weeks and the few matches its come up has realy had a positive effect on the games. This past Friday in round 1 against abzan I hit Homing and Sedge off a CoCo and proceeded to cycle the following 2 turns to ensure I could fly over for the victory.
Dismember in the main 2 copies - I see a LOT of traditional lists not running anything in the way of instant removal in the main preferring to sideboard it. I like being able to interact a little in game 1 just to ensure I dont get comboed out as often.
Darkheart sliver main, 2 copies - I see others playing this card but mostly sideboard. The mainboard life gain in useful especially in my meta where there is quite a bit of matchups where lifegain on a stick is a good thing to have laying around.
Cautery sliver side, 1 copy - I was actually vindicated on this choice this past Friday. I brought it in vs elves. The elf player was dead on board due to my 10 power of flyers and him at 10 life, he then cast CoCo and hit a selfless spirit. That 1 blocker would have kept me from swinging for the kill, but I cast the Cautery I had in hand and activated it to kill the spirit and finished the kill with my 3 flyers. I mainly have Cautery as a finisher for lantern and small creature removal.
As far as I can tell, everything else is the same as everyone else's traditional lists. A lot of my choices are meta based, so they may not work where you are and maybe even less so with today's unbannings of Jace TMS and Bloodbraid Elf. We may have to go back up to 4 Diffusion Slivers to better protect from Jund once again.
So Jace the Mind Sculptor and Bloodbraid Elf are now unbanned... a little concerned that CoCo slivers might be too slow, but can't really tell till we see how much its gonna affect the meta and what decks stay, what new decks come in, and what decks change due to this.
Slivers won't be really effected by either of this. We might even like Bloodbraid Elf getting unbanned as BGx might stop running kalitas. Slivers is pound for pound pretty awesome on a reactive footing while still providing proactive pressure. The main issue of slivers is being able to interact with the stack, but we can fight through removal spell as well as there is little pressure. Playing Jace allows us to put on pressure more and more especially with Blur Sliver. Boardwipe then Jace doesn't solve the Frenetic Sliver problem or the Sedge Regeneration problem or the Mutavault problem.
Slivers will ultimately be fine. Jund might be an issue, but I would rather play Jund than Grixis Deathshadow.
perhaps, the deck i'm worried about is Miracles. In legacy, that was one of the few decks i had trouble with due to Terminus. With Jace and opt, it might just be possible, but guess we will have to wait and see what happens Jund could maybe be a problem due to hand disruption. I've never had any trouble beating grixis though.
why no one uses heroic intervention is so underated for slivers or any tribe that want to go wide? im my opinion it looks so solid against board wipe in some scenario even better than frenetic sliver, i know it has its downside against living end and All Is Dust
why no one uses heroic intervention is so underated for slivers or any tribe that want to go wide? im my opinion it looks so solid against board wipe in some scenario even better than frenetic sliver, i know it has its downside against living end and All Is Dust
Heroic Intervention is a fine card. The downside of it in slivers is that we don't have quite the number of sources as Elves who use it the best. it is easier to get green by turn 4 than by turn 2.
It is also better for slivers to play Slivers due to the mana base and aether vial/coco then use Heroic Intervention.
Whelp that didnt go so well. Results are in from the IQ Sunday...
Match record 1-3, drop.
I played fairly well but fell prey to horrible luck.
Round 1 - red white moon 2-0. So this was the one exception to my luck all day. He dropped a turn 2 blood moon in game 1 only to have me top deck my swamp the next draw step. I had Sedge and Homing in my hand as well so I was able to cast sedge and homing and cycle away any sliver I could not cast into a sliver that I could cast which basically meant just Sedges and blurs. He saw no other interaction that he could use since I droopped a turn 2 Diffusion on him before the moon and his chalice on 1 did nothing. Game 2 he was stuck on 2 basic plains and I turn 3 coco'd on him.
Round 2 - jeskai control 0-2. Here is where the luck just left me. I flooded out hard in game 1, keeping a 4 land hand and ending the game with 11 lands in play. Game 2 I mulliganed down to 5 cards and again flooded out to 8 lands in play.
Round 3 - humans 1-2. Game 1 my opponent mulliganed to oblivion and scooped after a turn 3 coco landed 2 lords. Game 2, I mulliganed to oblivion and was quickly overcome not being able to keep pace with 3/3 flyers. Game 3 was a good game except for my opponent seeing 3 reflector mages and a phantasmal image which copied a reflector mage... I simply could not keep a blocker in play until the mantis riders were too big to block and have my guys survive.
Round 4 - lantern 1-2. Opponent mulliagned to 6 game 1, I kept a greedy 1 lander with a vial 2 predatory 2 manaweft and a necrotic. I managed to draw a 3rd manaweft and used them all to necrotic 3 bridges and eventually got there, won game 1. Game 2, should have mulliganed until I got a Harmonic... Kept a hand I thought would be quick enough to get damage thru before a bridge could come down but it didnt happen, also had a coco only hit 1 creature. Game 3, kept a 6 with 2 lands a manaweft and a harmonic and 2 lords. An Inquisition took the harmonic, but I coco'd into one but the opponent had a welding jar for the bridge save. Lucky guy follows up with a top deck decay to kill the harmonic and mills the 3rd in the deck and mills the 2 necrotics and cautery i brought in, after they went away I just had to concede.
I need some advice, the humans matchup was my first time playing against the deck... from past experience do you leave the diffusions in vs that matchup or do you take them out like I did?
In light of the poor performance last week with traditional slivers at the IQ I spent the week getting up to speed with fast slivers for this weeks IQ and FNM.
3-2 at FNM
R1 - 2-0 vs Jund (BBE)
R2 - 2-0 vs Elves
R3 - 2-0 vs Bant Eldrazi
R4 - 1-2 vs 8 rack
R5 - 1-2 vs Jund Rock
0-4 at IQ
R1 - 0-2 vs 5 color shadow
R2 - 0-2 vs skred
R3 - 0-2 vs lantern
R4 - 1-2 vs blue moon
Match-ups were absolutely horrible at the IQ. Really need some help come dominaria with this new meta.
I think traditional slivers might be better in the current BBE/Jace meta.
CoCo and the slivers that it enables allows stronger late games than Fast Slivers which we will need. Decks are playing more bolt than fatal push which is better for slivers in the long run. BBE decks are ditching discard in favor of bolts which are better on the whole for us. It can still be problematic. Jund and Shadow aren't easy matches, but the trade offs and more focus on creature matches could benefit us.
Crystalline Sliver or a functional reprint would be so so good for Slivers. I think just a Hunter Sliver reprint would be amazing. We would have more game against the fast creature matchups.
Can you tell I played some all-in sliver matchups recently?
I am really hopping for some sort of Sylvan Messenger or even the Ally version of it knock-off
Crystalline sliver would be an amazing reprint for modern, but i'd definitively be happy with Hybernation sliver reprint. hunter sliver would be very good, and wouldn't mind heart sliver for cheaper haste effect.
Also a Thoughtsieze or thought-knot effect would be nice, as would a graveyard hate sliver. Course i would also love to see a Harbinger of the tides sliver or a better costed Constricting sliver effect.
In light of the poor performance last week with traditional slivers at the IQ I spent the week getting up to speed with fast slivers for this weeks IQ and FNM.
3-2 at FNM
R1 - 2-0 vs Jund (BBE)
R2 - 2-0 vs Elves
R3 - 2-0 vs Bant Eldrazi
R4 - 1-2 vs 8 rack
R5 - 1-2 vs Jund Rock
0-4 at IQ
R1 - 0-2 vs 5 color shadow
R2 - 0-2 vs skred
R3 - 0-2 vs lantern
R4 - 1-2 vs blue moon
Match-ups were absolutely horrible at the IQ. Really need some help come dominaria with this new meta.
Why do you ask Dominaria for help when you dont use tools available today?)
I argued Vial and Diffusion Sliver dont fit here and you continue to play them with below average results.
Going from 21 to 19 lands postpones Sliver's Hive average activation from 10.5 turn to 12.5.
Why do you play Darkheart which goes against deck's idea? Its not an aggro card, deck doesnt lose life to lands, Darkheart is a hard to cast 2/2 for 2, his ability is a sideboard tech against Burn and Living End.
Why dont you play Mutagenics which are 0 mana bolt counters, combat tricks nobody expects and most importantly are great tempo plays as we pay 0 mana to fight a card opponent spent mana on.
Humans play Phantasmal Image, why Slivers cant, we dont have a good lord to copy?
Automaton is a good card on its own and a nice out to Blood Moon against which this decks struggles.
Forgot to update tappedout with the list I actually ran. Its updated now with the changes. Still didnt run Mutagenics or Automaton, but Darkhearts were side.
Forgot to update tappedout with the list I actually ran. Its updated now with the changes. Still didnt run Mutagenics or Automaton, but Darkhearts were side.
Well Harmonic and Homing dont differ much, they are sideboard material too. And while Harmonic can be included as a meta call, Homing is too slow, especially for 19 lands, id say it is bad even for sideboard with 19 lands.
I have always loved slivers from afar. I’ve been reading over the last few pages of comments. I always thought slivers was a collected company deck, but it must feel so bad to company into vial. With the success of humans, isn’t just a vial list a good shell? I guess I’d just like to here some input from you guys who have played the deck. I’m considering building the deck, but I’ve learned that I’m an aggro player at heart. Is this a good aggro option right now?
It might be better for a vial only plan to go without Sedge Sliver. Sedge Sliver warps the mana base around him and encourages to some degree Manaweft Sliver/Gemhide Sliver being played. Manaweft Sliver can also encouarge casting spells like Collected Company.
Fast Slivers doesn't play Vial, but it is the type of strategy you would be looking at a CoCo-less build.
You could also take inspiration from Legacy Slivers. There are 2 main legacy slivers build, the one I am talking about is an All-In Sliver build from Daniel Nunes. It runs Vial along with Force of Will or another version is Vial + Fast Mana(Chrome Mox) and Chalice. The reason that Legacy Slivers can do this though that Modern Slivers doesn't have are Crystalline Sliver/Hibernation Sliver. They allow Slivers to have absolute protection and protect their slivers. The closet that Slivers has in modern that are cost efficient are Diffusion Sliver, Sedge Sliver, and Frenetic Sliver. None of them equal the power of Crystalline and Hibernation which limits the options available to us. A subtle level of difference is that they have access to 2 more flying slivers in Winged Sliver and 3-4 more 2 mana lord which allows them to maximize the two-charge vial. They rarely (Syphon Sliver) need to go to 3 mana.
In addition, legacy doesn't have as much removal as Modern including boardwipes which effects mean that Slivers can overpower most tempo or fair decks by being one of the only swarmy strategies that exist that can fully protect against individual removal.
Humans and Merfolk use the vial to help with tempo, but also because they have disruption elements (Kitesail freeboter and other creatures and Counter Spells and Harbinger of the Tides respectifully) that allows them to maintain temp while providing power to the board and holding up more important creatures/spells. Slivers can't really do that effectively outside of maybe warping wail or sedge sliver activation.
CoCo provides us late game card advantage as well s combat tricks since most of our utility and flexibility is within creatures.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Just curious, what is your traditional Sliver list? Is the Vial list in your signature or the coco + vial?
WUBRGCoco/Vial Slivers
WUBRGSlivers of the Void
Pioneer
WUBRGCoco Slivers
Legacy
WUBRGAll in Slivers
I see you making very good results lately.
I would very glad (and I think not only me) to see some kind of primer, explaining card choices (specially the manabase), matchups and play tricks.
3 Mutavaults & 4 shocks - most of everyone else runs 4 mutavaults and 3 shocks, I tend to lean more toward having a solid source of each color of mana to take the load off the rainbow lands and manaweft slivers. It has caused the rare occasion of only having certain colors available if I dont see rainbow lands but that percentage is so low its hardly worth mentioning.
Homing in the main 1 copy - I have run this the last few weeks and the few matches its come up has realy had a positive effect on the games. This past Friday in round 1 against abzan I hit Homing and Sedge off a CoCo and proceeded to cycle the following 2 turns to ensure I could fly over for the victory.
Dismember in the main 2 copies - I see a LOT of traditional lists not running anything in the way of instant removal in the main preferring to sideboard it. I like being able to interact a little in game 1 just to ensure I dont get comboed out as often.
Darkheart sliver main, 2 copies - I see others playing this card but mostly sideboard. The mainboard life gain in useful especially in my meta where there is quite a bit of matchups where lifegain on a stick is a good thing to have laying around.
Cautery sliver side, 1 copy - I was actually vindicated on this choice this past Friday. I brought it in vs elves. The elf player was dead on board due to my 10 power of flyers and him at 10 life, he then cast CoCo and hit a selfless spirit. That 1 blocker would have kept me from swinging for the kill, but I cast the Cautery I had in hand and activated it to kill the spirit and finished the kill with my 3 flyers. I mainly have Cautery as a finisher for lantern and small creature removal.
As far as I can tell, everything else is the same as everyone else's traditional lists. A lot of my choices are meta based, so they may not work where you are and maybe even less so with today's unbannings of Jace TMS and Bloodbraid Elf. We may have to go back up to 4 Diffusion Slivers to better protect from Jund once again.
WUBRGCoco/Vial Slivers
WUBRGSlivers of the Void
Pioneer
WUBRGCoco Slivers
Legacy
WUBRGAll in Slivers
GHardened Steel
WUBRG Slivers
U Merfolk
Legacy
G Hardened Steel
GUWB Counter Slivers
UMerfolk
CG Eldrazi
Commander
WUB Sydri, Galvanic Genius
WUBRGSliver Overlord
Slivers will ultimately be fine. Jund might be an issue, but I would rather play Jund than Grixis Deathshadow.
GHardened Steel
WUBRG Slivers
U Merfolk
Legacy
G Hardened Steel
GUWB Counter Slivers
UMerfolk
CG Eldrazi
Commander
WUB Sydri, Galvanic Genius
WUBRGSliver Overlord
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=488514
WUBRGCoco/Vial Slivers
WUBRGSlivers of the Void
Pioneer
WUBRGCoco Slivers
Legacy
WUBRGAll in Slivers
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=488514
Heroic Intervention is a fine card. The downside of it in slivers is that we don't have quite the number of sources as Elves who use it the best. it is easier to get green by turn 4 than by turn 2.
It is also better for slivers to play Slivers due to the mana base and aether vial/coco then use Heroic Intervention.
Match record 1-3, drop.
I played fairly well but fell prey to horrible luck.
Round 1 - red white moon 2-0. So this was the one exception to my luck all day. He dropped a turn 2 blood moon in game 1 only to have me top deck my swamp the next draw step. I had Sedge and Homing in my hand as well so I was able to cast sedge and homing and cycle away any sliver I could not cast into a sliver that I could cast which basically meant just Sedges and blurs. He saw no other interaction that he could use since I droopped a turn 2 Diffusion on him before the moon and his chalice on 1 did nothing. Game 2 he was stuck on 2 basic plains and I turn 3 coco'd on him.
Round 2 - jeskai control 0-2. Here is where the luck just left me. I flooded out hard in game 1, keeping a 4 land hand and ending the game with 11 lands in play. Game 2 I mulliganed down to 5 cards and again flooded out to 8 lands in play.
Round 3 - humans 1-2. Game 1 my opponent mulliganed to oblivion and scooped after a turn 3 coco landed 2 lords. Game 2, I mulliganed to oblivion and was quickly overcome not being able to keep pace with 3/3 flyers. Game 3 was a good game except for my opponent seeing 3 reflector mages and a phantasmal image which copied a reflector mage... I simply could not keep a blocker in play until the mantis riders were too big to block and have my guys survive.
Round 4 - lantern 1-2. Opponent mulliagned to 6 game 1, I kept a greedy 1 lander with a vial 2 predatory 2 manaweft and a necrotic. I managed to draw a 3rd manaweft and used them all to necrotic 3 bridges and eventually got there, won game 1. Game 2, should have mulliganed until I got a Harmonic... Kept a hand I thought would be quick enough to get damage thru before a bridge could come down but it didnt happen, also had a coco only hit 1 creature. Game 3, kept a 6 with 2 lands a manaweft and a harmonic and 2 lords. An Inquisition took the harmonic, but I coco'd into one but the opponent had a welding jar for the bridge save. Lucky guy follows up with a top deck decay to kill the harmonic and mills the 3rd in the deck and mills the 2 necrotics and cautery i brought in, after they went away I just had to concede.
I need some advice, the humans matchup was my first time playing against the deck... from past experience do you leave the diffusions in vs that matchup or do you take them out like I did?
WUBRGCoco/Vial Slivers
WUBRGSlivers of the Void
Pioneer
WUBRGCoco Slivers
Legacy
WUBRGAll in Slivers
3-2 at FNM
R1 - 2-0 vs Jund (BBE)
R2 - 2-0 vs Elves
R3 - 2-0 vs Bant Eldrazi
R4 - 1-2 vs 8 rack
R5 - 1-2 vs Jund Rock
0-4 at IQ
R1 - 0-2 vs 5 color shadow
R2 - 0-2 vs skred
R3 - 0-2 vs lantern
R4 - 1-2 vs blue moon
Match-ups were absolutely horrible at the IQ. Really need some help come dominaria with this new meta.
WUBRGCoco/Vial Slivers
WUBRGSlivers of the Void
Pioneer
WUBRGCoco Slivers
Legacy
WUBRGAll in Slivers
CoCo and the slivers that it enables allows stronger late games than Fast Slivers which we will need. Decks are playing more bolt than fatal push which is better for slivers in the long run. BBE decks are ditching discard in favor of bolts which are better on the whole for us. It can still be problematic. Jund and Shadow aren't easy matches, but the trade offs and more focus on creature matches could benefit us.
Can you tell I played some all-in sliver matchups recently?
I am really hopping for some sort of Sylvan Messenger or even the Ally version of it knock-off
Also a Thoughtsieze or thought-knot effect would be nice, as would a graveyard hate sliver. Course i would also love to see a Harbinger of the tides sliver or a better costed Constricting sliver effect.
GHardened Steel
WUBRG Slivers
U Merfolk
Legacy
G Hardened Steel
GUWB Counter Slivers
UMerfolk
CG Eldrazi
Commander
WUB Sydri, Galvanic Genius
WUBRGSliver Overlord
GHardened Steel
WUBRG Slivers
U Merfolk
Legacy
G Hardened Steel
GUWB Counter Slivers
UMerfolk
CG Eldrazi
Commander
WUB Sydri, Galvanic Genius
WUBRGSliver Overlord
I argued Vial and Diffusion Sliver dont fit here and you continue to play them with below average results.
Going from 21 to 19 lands postpones Sliver's Hive average activation from 10.5 turn to 12.5.
Why do you play Darkheart which goes against deck's idea? Its not an aggro card, deck doesnt lose life to lands, Darkheart is a hard to cast 2/2 for 2, his ability is a sideboard tech against Burn and Living End.
Why dont you play Mutagenics which are 0 mana bolt counters, combat tricks nobody expects and most importantly are great tempo plays as we pay 0 mana to fight a card opponent spent mana on.
Humans play Phantasmal Image, why Slivers cant, we dont have a good lord to copy?
Automaton is a good card on its own and a nice out to Blood Moon against which this decks struggles.
G Green Stompy
RG Shamans
UB Mill
UG Infect
WUBRG Slivers!
WUBRGCoco/Vial Slivers
WUBRGSlivers of the Void
Pioneer
WUBRGCoco Slivers
Legacy
WUBRGAll in Slivers
G Green Stompy
RG Shamans
UB Mill
UG Infect
WUBRG Slivers!
Moving on...
SCG Dallas is this coming weekend. Anyone else planning to go?
WUBRGCoco/Vial Slivers
WUBRGSlivers of the Void
Pioneer
WUBRGCoco Slivers
Legacy
WUBRGAll in Slivers
It might be better for a vial only plan to go without Sedge Sliver. Sedge Sliver warps the mana base around him and encourages to some degree Manaweft Sliver/Gemhide Sliver being played. Manaweft Sliver can also encouarge casting spells like Collected Company.
Fast Slivers doesn't play Vial, but it is the type of strategy you would be looking at a CoCo-less build.
You could also take inspiration from Legacy Slivers. There are 2 main legacy slivers build, the one I am talking about is an All-In Sliver build from Daniel Nunes. It runs Vial along with Force of Will or another version is Vial + Fast Mana(Chrome Mox) and Chalice. The reason that Legacy Slivers can do this though that Modern Slivers doesn't have are Crystalline Sliver/Hibernation Sliver. They allow Slivers to have absolute protection and protect their slivers. The closet that Slivers has in modern that are cost efficient are Diffusion Sliver, Sedge Sliver, and Frenetic Sliver. None of them equal the power of Crystalline and Hibernation which limits the options available to us. A subtle level of difference is that they have access to 2 more flying slivers in Winged Sliver and 3-4 more 2 mana lord which allows them to maximize the two-charge vial. They rarely (Syphon Sliver) need to go to 3 mana.
In addition, legacy doesn't have as much removal as Modern including boardwipes which effects mean that Slivers can overpower most tempo or fair decks by being one of the only swarmy strategies that exist that can fully protect against individual removal.
Humans and Merfolk use the vial to help with tempo, but also because they have disruption elements (Kitesail freeboter and other creatures and Counter Spells and Harbinger of the Tides respectifully) that allows them to maintain temp while providing power to the board and holding up more important creatures/spells. Slivers can't really do that effectively outside of maybe warping wail or sedge sliver activation.
CoCo provides us late game card advantage as well s combat tricks since most of our utility and flexibility is within creatures.