I agree with your overall statement, though. In my opinion, the focus has recently been too much on Limited and not enough on Constructed (especially Standard and - to some extent - Modern), leading to sets where large amounts of cards are (close to) unplayable outside of Limited and very few cards that are even considerable options for eternal formats.
As I understand it, though, Wizards designs sets primarily based on Limited because their goal is to sell boxes of booster packs. Drafting is the most consistent way that consumers use up those boxes. Many people (myself included) draft at least partially to score Standard-playable cards. That part is gambling, really, because there are so few good cards anymore. I'm not a huge gambler and I don't think I would draft much if the matches were no fun.
So logically, Magic R&D focuses most on how to make those drafts enjoyable, even for the people who don't pull anything decent. Otherwise, a lot of Standard players would stick to buying singles, which makes those singles more expensive and only benefits the secondary market rather than Wizards itself. Sure, a good number of people would probably buy boxes, which is where the singles would come from, but face it, you don't always get your money's worth when you buy a box if there's nothing you want to use and only a few tradable cards and the couple of mythics you get are crap (foil Hythonia the Cruel, looking at you). Not everyone wants to take that gamble. The people who do are the ones who drive up sales; Wizards sells more boxes of each new set because there are fewer Constructed-playable cards in each box.
We just have to accept that Constructed formats aren't of much concern to Wizards, except to throw in enough of an incentive to ensure Standard players will continue to dump money into drafting. The players themselves are the ones who figure out how to make the best of what they have. Modern and other eternal format players are effectively no longer a target market, since they tend to only focus on the few (usually out-of-print) cards relevant to their decks. Tournaments and huge events and promos and all the hype around anything to do with Constructed? The "flavor" of a set? The very existence of "pro players?" It's all window dressing. Or it's sponsored by the secondary market, which profits the most from Constructed.
I hadn't worked out a real sideboard yet, just threw things in there and hoped for the best. Can you tell I see a lot of Jund Walkers? I went 3-1 and 2-2 on Tuesday and Friday, respectively, and two of my match losses were due to play mistakes on my part. It's a fun deck, although a bit inconsistent as-is.
Probably been mentioned already, but Master of Waves in a monoblue version of this deck is very, very funny when Chief Engineer is on the board. Thassa is also fantastic for the scry ability and getting the bigger guys through in the later game although she didn't always become a creature right away.
I'm on the fence about whether or not to splash red back in for Keranos, Shrapnel Blast, and Rabbles. Oddly enough, Generator Servants didn't pull their weight. I replaced my four with Military Intelligence and Bident of Thassa for card draw, and that was far more useful.
Excellent; thanks for the tips! I've only faced down Ashiok in one matchup when I played AIR, and it was ugly.
I don't think this has been addressed, but did you or anyone experiment with Chromatic Lantern as a mana stabilizer/backup for Manaweft? If I'm not entirely out of my gourd, it reduces the burn from Mana Confluence and pain lands since it gives all lands "tap for 5C" in addition to the original ability of "tap for whatever, have some pain." That stays relevant throughout the game even after the Manawefts come out, because it allows more of our guys to deal damage every turn instead of just being mana dorks, and it's less susceptible to board wipes.
Reading over the most useful and informative posts in this thread (meaning the ones containing actual playtesting results), it looks like we've come to a general consensus about which Slivers have a place in most builds, and determined that Chord of Calling is ridiculously good in this deck. So it's now more of a discussion about support cards, sideboards, adjusting for local metagames, magic geek doing his verbose best to insist that he is the expert and everyone else is wrong, and thememan, immapwner, and several others trying to explain to magic geek all the ways in which he is mistaken.
To sum up, the near-unanimous core of the deck is:
Seems like the collective has come up with a solid deck template. Anything crucial that I've missed in this summation?
Personally, I'm curious to learn more about the non-Sliver cards people are using (besides Chord of Calling), and how they've affected matchups with various "competitive" decks. Right now I'm considering adding Boros Charm and/or Golgari Charm to cover my bases, since my local meta is fairly diverse but tends toward black and green. Thoughts?
I took a megajank version of this deck to FNM; it did not go well. Went up against Monoblack and two green decks that had just plain better cards (Nissa, Garruk, Chord of Calling, and Genesis Hydra all made multiple appearances per game and I couldn't get to any of my counters or bounce or even a Generator Servant). Nissa land-beast tokens are horrible, horrible things. Madcap Skills on Ornithopter and Phyrexian Revoker against planeswalkers did more work than anything else tonight. I am definitely adding Pithing Needles to my sideboard.
Jace, Architect of Thought was helpful, as was Goblin Electromancer. I am sad to report that Keranos was dead weight. By the time I got him on the board and dealing damage/giving me cards, I was already too far behind to recover.
I did win one match against an RG deck featuring Hornet Queen and Hornet's Nest, but somehow that wasn't much consolation.
And I'm very surprised with how many U/R artifact build I've seen pop up on Tappedout. I've even seen it played several times on untap.in! I originally wanted to build this deck because I thought it would take people by surprise, but now I am not sure. I'll be sticking to my Grixis Midrange version for a while.
Agreed; given how huge even this thread has gotten, I won't be surprised at all to see a few other Affinity-type decks at FNM tonight. My local meta is about half "competitive," a third "behind-the-curve," and a couple of "oooh shiny" types like me.
I'm thinking about going back to my "F**k You, Everything's Pigs" deck for the night.
Considering how new this deck is, running cards like Inferno Fist over Madcap is not necessarily a bad thing. It provides information to the commmunity towards the performance of things like that for those that really want to focus on "more competitive" builds while other cards are legal.
I don't like the idea of using this deck to play goldfish for "more competitive" decks; if nothing else, I want to at least give them a few WTF moments when we blow them out of the water. Plus Inferno Fist just sucks at the moment.
I just skimmed a thread that reminded me of something worrying: given how many people are clearly trying to brew this deck, what do we do if other decks start hate-boarding in Hellkite Tyrant? Makes me think we should find room for at least a couple of extra counterspells or even a one-of Hellkite of our own. The idea of yoinking a monoblue opponent's Bident or Hammer and sac'ing it to Shrapnel Blast is highly amusing.
I might also keep some creatures in order to use Evanescent Intellect- one mana to either bait out a response or mill the opponent for three cards.
Then again, I have never built a mill deck myself and only started mentally putting one together the other night after getting spanked by a deck featuring Ashiok.
It's insanely good period, no argument there. If it's this good even in a 5C deck, that says something. The annoying part will be finding someone who feels like trading them away, or finding a good deal on eBay. First world problem at its finest.
As I understand it, though, Wizards designs sets primarily based on Limited because their goal is to sell boxes of booster packs. Drafting is the most consistent way that consumers use up those boxes. Many people (myself included) draft at least partially to score Standard-playable cards. That part is gambling, really, because there are so few good cards anymore. I'm not a huge gambler and I don't think I would draft much if the matches were no fun.
So logically, Magic R&D focuses most on how to make those drafts enjoyable, even for the people who don't pull anything decent. Otherwise, a lot of Standard players would stick to buying singles, which makes those singles more expensive and only benefits the secondary market rather than Wizards itself. Sure, a good number of people would probably buy boxes, which is where the singles would come from, but face it, you don't always get your money's worth when you buy a box if there's nothing you want to use and only a few tradable cards and the couple of mythics you get are crap (foil Hythonia the Cruel, looking at you). Not everyone wants to take that gamble. The people who do are the ones who drive up sales; Wizards sells more boxes of each new set because there are fewer Constructed-playable cards in each box.
We just have to accept that Constructed formats aren't of much concern to Wizards, except to throw in enough of an incentive to ensure Standard players will continue to dump money into drafting. The players themselves are the ones who figure out how to make the best of what they have. Modern and other eternal format players are effectively no longer a target market, since they tend to only focus on the few (usually out-of-print) cards relevant to their decks. Tournaments and huge events and promos and all the hype around anything to do with Constructed? The "flavor" of a set? The very existence of "pro players?" It's all window dressing. Or it's sponsored by the secondary market, which profits the most from Constructed.
4 Ornithopter
4 Cloudfin Raptor
4 Scuttling Doom Engine
4 Chief Engineer
3 Frostburn Weird
3 Thassa, God of the Sea
3 Master of Waves
1 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Ensoul Artifact
3 Dissolve
2 Bident of Thassa
1 Hour of Need
Planeswalkers (2)
2 Jace, Architect of Thought
Land (22)
4 Darksteel Citadel
18 Island
3 Phyrexian Revoker
3 Negate
3 Nullify
2 Pithing Needle
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Hour of Need
1 Cyclonic Rift
I hadn't worked out a real sideboard yet, just threw things in there and hoped for the best. Can you tell I see a lot of Jund Walkers? I went 3-1 and 2-2 on Tuesday and Friday, respectively, and two of my match losses were due to play mistakes on my part. It's a fun deck, although a bit inconsistent as-is.
I'm on the fence about whether or not to splash red back in for Keranos, Shrapnel Blast, and Rabbles. Oddly enough, Generator Servants didn't pull their weight. I replaced my four with Military Intelligence and Bident of Thassa for card draw, and that was far more useful.
I don't think this has been addressed, but did you or anyone experiment with Chromatic Lantern as a mana stabilizer/backup for Manaweft? If I'm not entirely out of my gourd, it reduces the burn from Mana Confluence and pain lands since it gives all lands "tap for 5C" in addition to the original ability of "tap for whatever, have some pain." That stays relevant throughout the game even after the Manawefts come out, because it allows more of our guys to deal damage every turn instead of just being mana dorks, and it's less susceptible to board wipes.
To sum up, the near-unanimous core of the deck is:
Slivers/support cards whose numbers vary by deck but are ubiquitous in the 75:
Slivers whose inclusion has been oft-tested and debated but have moderate-to-high levels of success:
Seems like the collective has come up with a solid deck template. Anything crucial that I've missed in this summation?
Personally, I'm curious to learn more about the non-Sliver cards people are using (besides Chord of Calling), and how they've affected matchups with various "competitive" decks. Right now I'm considering adding Boros Charm and/or Golgari Charm to cover my bases, since my local meta is fairly diverse but tends toward black and green. Thoughts?
I took a megajank version of this deck to FNM; it did not go well. Went up against Monoblack and two green decks that had just plain better cards (Nissa, Garruk, Chord of Calling, and Genesis Hydra all made multiple appearances per game and I couldn't get to any of my counters or bounce or even a Generator Servant). Nissa land-beast tokens are horrible, horrible things. Madcap Skills on Ornithopter and Phyrexian Revoker against planeswalkers did more work than anything else tonight. I am definitely adding Pithing Needles to my sideboard.
Jace, Architect of Thought was helpful, as was Goblin Electromancer. I am sad to report that Keranos was dead weight. By the time I got him on the board and dealing damage/giving me cards, I was already too far behind to recover.
I did win one match against an RG deck featuring Hornet Queen and Hornet's Nest, but somehow that wasn't much consolation.
Agreed; given how huge even this thread has gotten, I won't be surprised at all to see a few other Affinity-type decks at FNM tonight. My local meta is about half "competitive," a third "behind-the-curve," and a couple of "oooh shiny" types like me.
I'm thinking about going back to my "F**k You, Everything's Pigs" deck for the night.
I don't like the idea of using this deck to play goldfish for "more competitive" decks; if nothing else, I want to at least give them a few WTF moments when we blow them out of the water. Plus Inferno Fist just sucks at the moment.
/paranoid
Then again, I have never built a mill deck myself and only started mentally putting one together the other night after getting spanked by a deck featuring Ashiok.