Primer - Legacy, Tier 2 - [Counter Sliver]

[seba1983]

There are a lot of casual player who love slivers. slivers are not only casual though. a long time ago when there was no legacy and extended looked a lot liek legacy today there were actualy 2 sliver decks you could play. combo-sliver and counter sliver.

R.I.P. Combo Sliver

yeah that deck did not last long enough to even see the emergance of the legacy format. the combo was not all that spectacular either. it used the following:

Natural Order for a quick Sliver Queen. then you added Heartstone and Ashnod's Altar and got "infinite" sliver token and mana.

for legacy that was too slow, too easy to disrupt and simply not good enough. if your into nostalgy i'm sure you could go to a very small legacy event where lots of people play decks that are not realy legacy worthy and make a decent playcing for old times sake. as it stands the deck can still be played in casual ^^

Counter Sliver

this is the other sliver deck. the one that survived. it already played a lot of cards back then it plays today. Crystalline Sliver, Muscle Sliver, Force of Will, Brainstorm or Daze. the last three are also the backbone of every grow deck that nowerday dominates the format.

when legacy cam to be goblins quickly rose to the top of the pile. turn 1 Goblin Lackey gave them soo much speed that they could often kill turn 3. to have an answer to goblins the deck played Swords to Plowshares as it already did in extended. since that was not enough a very odd inclusion was mage: Plated Sliver. now the plated is not realy good. what it does is it stops the lackey from hitting its mark and that was extreemly important. other than the plated the whole onslaught block did not offer anything other than fetchlands to the deck.

Mirrodin block offered Aether Vial. now you could use the crystalin to counter removal and you protected your slivers against counters. also you could free up mana to play more stuff mid-game. there has been a very long discussion if vial should be played or not. tournament results however have agreed to the choice of vial.

for the nex 2 blocks nothing happend to the deck. then came timespiral block. suddenly you could play 8 instead of 4 muscle slivers. that was a real push in killspeed for the deck. that was when planar chaos was released. just one edition later, futur sight, that increase in killspeed became much more important. and event like legacy had not expirianced befor riped through the format.

Tarmogoyf

a single creature without any special abilitys changed the legacy landscape forever. grow rose to become the dominating deck. (it was good befor playing Werebear). goblins proved to be haveing trouble handling goyf and were played a lot less. that in turn resulted in the demise of rifter, a deck that cycle a lot to abuse Astral Slide and Lightning Rift since it was a deck build to beat goblins. white weeny turned into death and taxes, deck like 43.lands (a deck that plays almost only lands) rose up because suddenly legacy was dominated by two cards more or less alone: goyf + Force of will.

counter sliver kind of was a deck that already looked like it belonged into this new enviroent. it kicked out the plated since stopping lackey was not that important any more. the aera of the agro-control decks began and counter slivers is an agro-control deck.

so where does countersliver stand today ? well somewhere between tier 1 and tier 2. it plays your basic setup that grow runs also with force, daze and brainstrom but it plays more creatures than grow + vial. its a very good deck but like death and taxes from my last primer will probably be tier 2 due to the fact that its not as popular as some other decks so you dont have to specificly prepare for countersliver when going to a tournament. for grow you have to be prepared.

The name

ok its called counter-sliver. but thats not the only name the deck is known by. the most common used name is "Meathooks". why ? because that what slivers look like. freaky creatures made up of razor sharp meathooks.

here's a new name that no one will know yet. Ag.deck. what is that ? well my girlfriend, an avid sliver player, was looking at the periodic table of elements and missread silver as sliver. we had a good laugh but i feelt that deserved a name. hence Ag.deck (Ag the short for silver in case chemestry is not your thing^^)

the deck

ok so what does a sliver decklist look like ? here goes:

creatures

4 x muscle sliver
4 x sinew sliver
4 x crystalin sliver
4 x hybernation sliver
3 x winged sliver

instants

4 x brainstorm
4 x force of will
4 x daze
4 x swords to plowshare

artifacts

4 x aether vial

lands

2 x tropical island
2 x underground see
2 x tundra
4 x polluted delta
3 x flooded strand
3 x mutavault
1 x island
1 x plains

that leaves three slots. these are usualy used for Stifle, Spell Snare or Counterspell. sometimes the numbers above are shaved a little liek only running 2 winged sliver or some tech sliver is included like Darkheart Sliver if there are a lot of deck that play burn in your meta. some decks also run Standstill or even Counterbalance + Sensei's Divining Top. many decks dont run the basic island and plain but i like them so that i can find a solution to Magus of the Moon.

so lets take a look at the cards:

force, daze, brainstorm - you pretty basic agro-control package. grow plays it (all variants), fish plays it, meerfolk plays it. they are just too good not to play in this kind of deck.

mucle/sinew sliver - your agro plan. they let you hit hard very fast.

crystalin/hybernation sliver - your protection plan. if there is one thing sliver does not liek its haveing key slivers killed.

winged sliver - if its that easy to swoop over goyf, mongoose, factory, moat, soldier tokens etc. then do so.

swords - fantastic removal. nt sure if the lifegain bothers at all. you have a good clock so it should not matter. hence no reason to play Path to Exile instead.

vial - was explained above already. does so many things. agro control has alwasy been a fan of this card 8with the exception of grow). death and taxes, meerfolk, fish, faeries and Ag.deck all run it for the same reasons.

mutavault - its a land that turns into a sliver how cool is that ? if you rn lots of lords (muscle/sinew) mutavault is great. the fact that it also gains flying and shroud is even cooler.

Alternative card choices

i talked about those above already. in reality you dont have that many slots to play arround with. sure you would love to play wasteland but the mana base can not take that. the most common cards to use up the last slots are something to strengthen your counter package.

Cards to watch out for

here are some cards that you realy dont want to see. if you ow your opponent has them try to save some counter for them:

magus of the moon, blood moon, back to basics - they all cripple our mana base and unless were already winning on the board that can cost us the game quickly

wrath of god, engenieres explosives - mass removal gets past shroud nicely. and explosive can hit all our slivers at once. if you cant counter try saveing the most important slivers with the hybernation bounce.

counter balance - take a look at our converted mana costs. that card with devinin top can lock us pretty good. dont relie too much on the vial. your opponent will have some means to deal with it and then your locked pretty solid.

humility - makes me shudder to think of one resolving against us. 1/1 slivers with no abiltys. a nightmare.

crucible of worlds - this usualy means wasteland over and over again. not good for us.

there are probably more but those are the ones i can think of now

Side board

that realy depends on what meta you play in. we play a 4-colored deck so we have acces to most stuff out there. here are some sudgestions:

[mtg]Krosan Grip[mtg] - kills counter balance. also helps against crucible, back to basics (not against blood moon) and humilty. if your opponent does not play well it might even hit an engeniered explosives but dont count on it.

Extipate - life from the loam can do the same crucibla can so to us but there is not much used in counterin it. here's where extipate shines. also academy runis can mean repeatable explosived, that must be stoped too. just picking out some key card from thier grave can also win games. its also crucial to have grave hate to have any chance of winning against ichorid. alternatives would be tormond's cryp or relic of progenitus.

darkheart sliver - burn, goyf-sligh any deck that plays burn spells realy

pithing needle - shuts down explosives, wasteland, pernicious deed (forgot that one under cards to watch out for ^^) there are so many useful aplications for this card.

there are soo many more cards you could throw in a sideboard, hydrobalse, harmonic sliver, meddling mage, orim's chant etc.

how the deck plays

it plays pretty much like any other agro-control deck. you dont want to win in the first 3-4 turns but you dont want to get into the lategame. you disrupt early and try to win in the midgame where your creatures are either supirior to the agro player or faster than the control player. counter stuff that is a danger to you either because they are too threatening or because they can ruin your plans. dont be afriaid to used daze early thats where it is best. sure you set yourself a land back but you need no more than 2 lands. turn 1 aether vial is totaly viable.

thats pretty much it.

final words

ok the deck is a lot more expensive tahn death and taxes. the mana base alone summes up to arround 325$ with most people not playing the 2 basics so theres another ~50$ there. arroudn 100$ for the force 10$ for the swords 20-25 $ for the vial same for the crystalin. howevery everything other than the crystalin you will play in other decks. thats the beauty of legacy. your first 1-3 decks seem realy expensive but then you start useing cards over and over and the price for a new deck drops dramaticly.

if you like slivers and want to play a tournament at the same time this is pretty much the only deck that has both. its a powerful deck that you can still bring to a multiplayer casual table. people will moan but not because its a legacy deck. they will moan because its slivers ... funny that ^^.

[Kappu1]

Good read Seba and great write up I don't think I would like Slivers but that is just me, I think mainly cause all the creatures are the same really and I like a variety. I started to talk to some of the Legacy guys and one of them let me play a Death and Taxes deck he had built and it was good fun so I have started investing into that slowly.

Thanks for the Primer I love these things!