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I love Slivers. I don't know why. How do you feel about them? Let's find out. Flashback to a month ago. Right before any preview cards for Time Spiral were revealed. Think back to when Time Spiral was just a promise of the most exciting set to date. Now, remember that day you heard Slivers were returning. Take that same feeling and recall the emotion of putting the words "Sliver" and "Slivers" into the Time Spiral Orb of Insight. In case you don't know what an Orb of Insight is, it's essentially a teaser query tool that Wizards releases before a set. You can use it by putting in a keyword and seeing what returns. The number that returns is how many times that word is printed on cards in the set. You can check out the orb for yourself here. If you try out Slivers and Sliver in the Orb you'll see the sheer massive amount for yourself. I'm not sure about you, but to me this is exciting times. It's a return of many people's favorite creature type and probably just as many least favorite type. ...but what have the Slivers been doing since we last saw them in the Onslaught Block? Well, essentially they have taken over Dominaria. In the wake of the Phyrexian Invasion and the collapsing of the plane, the natural flora and fauna have withered away into shadows of their selves. Slivers on the other hand have thrived; the brood assimilitated creatures and even the very essence of the land. Now a part of the Sliver tribe, many old familiar creatures have a new face.
These two pictures show exactly what I'm talking about with the absorption of parts of Dominara into the Sliver brood. During the course of this article I’ll try to show you where all the new Slivers have come from as well as how to use them. Don’t think the Slivers are just evolving from outside the brood though; many have evolved thier weaker bodies into bigger nastier forms. As well, two familiar friends have Timeshifted in as well. Essence Sliver and Spined Sliver both make a welcome return. In short, the Slivers are here, and brother the Slivering is good.
How do you control the brood to our advantage? Let’s face it. We obviously won’t try to subdue the buggers; countless civilizations have fallen for that same reason. Do you play them like God intended and do nothing but Sliver after Sliver, or do you utilize the most diabolic ones to do your bidding? As you continue on into the article I'll show you that the Slivers can be played many way. I will also explore several vastly different ways to utilize the brood in decks from control oriented to combo and aggro decks. First off, let’s take a look first at the Slivers as a whole tribe and classify them according to their general play-style:
Slivers in the past typically didn't bring as much utility and evasion as they do now. In Time Spiral, the Slivers gain four brand new forms of evasion (including the nasty type that is shadow), which is a great change from Onslaught (which really only had one form of evasion). Aggro is back as well in similar numbers as before, but more refined this go round. However, utility Slivers are swarming about and very strong, strong enough that Sliver Control may become a staple in tournaments again. Also there are four oddballs, that won't make it into many decks unless they are specialized towards them, but still have some usage (especially in the sideboard). Several of the utility Slivers are extremely broken for their capabilities to end a game, so it's pretty much a guarantee you'll see Slivers getting played in Standard. Overall there are many varieties of Slivers in Time Spiral, and Slivers should appeal to many people for their versatility. Okay, now lets look at a few of the Slivers and see what can be done with them in Standard. I won't be examining Extended and beyond today, instead I plan on exploring the new Slivers only and seeing what can be done with them. Hopefully, by concentrating on the new Slivers some light will be shed on how the Slivers can be played. So lets take a look at the new cards, and lead it off with the most unique Sliver in TS, the the Un-Sliver. The Anti-Sliver. Mr. Plague Sliver himself.
The first thing you’ll notice about this Sliver is it’s highly different than any other Sliver out there. For one thing, the ability it brings is negative. This is something that hasn’t ever been seen on Slivers before. Every Sliver, regardless of how bad its ability may have seemed, had a positive ability. Perhaps, it will be this Sliver that finally marks the decline of the unchecked growth of the species and perhaps their destruction. The second thing however, is frightening; they took everything from the Juzam Djinn, including its power and speed. For a mere 2BB we get a 5/5 body, which means some serious problems for anyone who can’t contain it fast.
What a funky deck! It does lots of things, and does them different. It most eerily resembles the Ichorid and Psychatog decks of old, abusing the Madness mechanic while putting forth a creature assault. However, unlike the old Madness decks, we now have more tricks and can call forth many things to accomplish our will. Another Sliver also snuck his way into this deck to help with triggering off our Madness cards. The Mindlash Sliver is suicidal, but in a pinch will bring out the utility of cards like Nightshade Assassin and Call the Nethervoid. It’s hard to place where this little bugger came from, but it seems to be a nastier and more honed version of the old Mindwhip Sliver.
The deck as a whole can be quite difficult to play, because you have to know when you want to discard and when you want to wipe away. However, once you figure that out you’re on the straight and steady. You have several weaknesses, but that is okay. Hopefully games won’t last long enough for them to become apparent to your opponent. The biggest downside of pure Black in the new Standard environment is there is only two mass kill spells with Hex and Plague Wind, the other is the inability to deal with enchants and artifacts. After sideboarding, the deck transforms the overall strategy to throw the opponent for a loop, switching from a Madness core to a more focused pure discard deck. Turning cards such as The Rack and Abyssal Nocturnus into our killer cards will change entirely where an opponent may focus on controlling the deck making them feel stupid for thinking the deck was playing the same instead of entirely different. Since I touched on the Black Slivers, I might as well finish them off and head over towards other color realms of Slivers. The next major Sliver from Black is a familiar face and mechanic in a new Sliver body.
Slivers finally have one of the game's oldest mechanics in their grasp. The vampiric growth on kill has always been a sort of overlooked ability, and if it wasn't for several other Slivers it might be again. To base an entire deck off of this Sliver and that ability would be silly; it needs friends. It's not the Plague Sliver, it can’t act alone, it needs to be part of the brood. So let's get this little fella some friends and recruit two colors to come to its aid: Blue and Green.
Ouch, this deck hurts. First off, the Slivers come out fast. Due to all the dual lands, Gemhide Slivers, and Terramorphic Expanses, it's easy to skip adding Mana fix and acceleration spells. The deck's goal is to stall until one of the three win conditions come up, which will normally happen quite fast. In the meantime, our Slivers use Arena to eat up weaker creatures while growing bigger with Vampiric and Fungus Slivers. Unless the opponent can react fast enough, the Might Sliver comes into play for a quick old-school Sliver finish. If they do manage to survive the basic Sliver tactics, the Slivers can call in the finishers. Basal Sliver, while appearing harmless, should trigger fear and evil thoughts in people’s minds. It foretells the end of the Slivers in play and more importantly the end of the game. With two different X burn spells, Squall Line or Consume Spirit can easily blow the opponent away. In a pinch however, these spells both help for removal, but if Basal is out, it quickly turns the removal target to the opponent's face.
The other nasty Sliver hiding in this deck is something to be feared outright for its self-contained destructive power and its combo nature in here – the Psionic Sliver. Now all of the Slivers can nuke and kill themselves for two damage towards a target. If the Slivers can survive which is highly possibly due to the Fungal and Vampiric nature of the Slivers (let's not even mention the beefiness of Might), they begin to grow even faster while tearing creatures and opponents apart. The return of the Psionic ability marks a definite return of the power of Blue as well. The ability for pure Blue to nuke is something that hasn’t really seen much power in a while.
Coming from the Psionic Sliver lets expand into what is generally deemed the most accepted dual-color Sliver deck. That would be Blue and White, the light Slivers. The Psionic Sliver is a big part of these colors as well as it will allow the Slivers to have removal utility, direct damage, and one new trick. Also making an apperance is the Essence Sliver who rode the Time Shift in. Those two in itself is a worthy combo. Psionic Sliver deals two damage and three to itself for five life gain from a single tap. However, that's a playdough combo. Let's go farther than that with our Sliver friends.
Two of the Slivers bring nasty aggro-type mechanics for all of our Slivers. They aren’t really true evolutions from one creature, but more a general evolution. Sidewinder and its flanking comes out cheap and allows early Slivers to easily pass by even the bulkiest of things like Kird Apes. Shadow on the other hand puts a lot of pressure on any opponent when Slivers become near unblockable creatures. Quilled Sliver and Telekinetic also tap into a color’s generic ability reserves and brings the tapping from Blue and combat pinging from White. For all of these abilities it is really hard to place its origin on one distinct card, but easy to know why it's there. As far as the deck goes, the goal is simple: damage, damage, damage. Psionic and Watcher interact nicely with each other, while Opaline, Quilled, and Telekinetic bring us some virtual card advantage as they remove threats on the board. With the basic protection and draw from white blue, this is more or less a battle of aggro as the opponent is eatting into submission by the sheer utility of these Slivers. This deck can be easily molded into a permission/control deck as well.
Which is what it will evolve into now. To refine it down a little bit more you will see a deck similar to an old Sliver deck - Sliver Control. Playing can only tell how it stacks up to the old version, but my bet is it works just fine. Sliver abilities are entirely different in Time Spiral as compared to Onslaught so Sliver Control will be more or less a namesake and play style instead of a ressurection of an old deck in function.
As with all control decks, the goal is to not amass and swarm our opponent, it is to limit what he or she can and can’t get into play. This is harder in Standard at the moment, because the counter-spells are more expensive or generally different. The Slivers will operate off a few distinct and powerful things. The goal is to keep the few Slivers we have in play alive long enough to do damage before being forced to wipe. Controlling and spot checking will consume most of the time, while a few Slivers peck away. When overwhelmed a Wrath of God fixes things easily.
The major power comes from a combo that is starting to see regular and very annoying usage everywhere. Vanish into Memory and Voidslime can net an amazing amount of cards while permanently removing a creature. Unlike other combos though, these two cards operate extremely well apart from each other. So it’s a win-WIN situation. This is a slower deck to play, so it won’t feel very Sliver-rific, but then again, who cares, Sliver is Sliver no matter how they rock out in a deck.
What’s that you say? You want to get Sliver-rific? You want the pure feel of Slivers growing on top of each other and extinguishing life as they rampage? Hmm, well I guess that's acceptable, so it's time to introduce the final color – the anger and fury of Red. To truly tap into the consuming nature of Slivers we will also bring along Green to unleash a Gruul style assault on the opponent.
The worst part of Standard Green Red Slivers is that they tend to be costly, the best part is that they do truly hurt and build well on each other. However, Gemhide Slivers tend to speed us up alot if we draw them, and the few smaller Slivers tend to be adequate blockers until the big boys show up with haste from Firewake. The premise of the deck is simple. Imagine a Gruul deck. Now imagine all the Gruul creatures instead of acting independently bolster each other. Now laugh and chuckle and put your finger's into the power pyramid.
Okay enough of that, let's check out the standard Gruul tricks. Char and Sudden Shock provide some much needed direct damage, while Moldervine Cloak and Undying Rage are both nice recurring enchants. Like a regular Gruul deck, there is one mode and one mode only – forward charge. If our Slivers have to sit and look pretty, they might as well die. That's my philosophy anyway. This deck can be changed as necessary to accommodate weaknesses in your meta, but generally is a great easy deck to play and can easily integrate in the older Slivers. Next it's time to check out a fun and weird Sliver Deck that makes use of a few fun combos. This thing reeks of casual so I wouldn't advise bringing this to anywhere but the kitch table. That's enough introduction, onto the deck:
The theme relies on Celestial Dawn to make the deck explode. However it can survive without it. The goal is to kill via aggro, while using spells and the Pentarch to systematically drop out threats. Eventually with a Shadow and Fury Sliver in play the Slivers can come across with Rally the Righteous for a massive game ending attack. Of course this relies on Celestial Dawn to get the full effect. The radiance mechanic of Boros coupled Celestial Dawn is a game winning marriage in my book.
I feel dirty, I just bolstered Slivers with non-Sliver cards. Is that natural, is it right? I don’t think so. I suggest you make this deck then burn it. After seeing something so horrid, I’ll show you how Slivers were meant to be played. Tribal Unification. All colors, providing powerful things from all over. Sadly, Black didn't make the cut. Its distinctive edge isn’t forgotten though and it’ll still make an appearance to help out. The Black Standard Slivers don't really provide a whole lot of Sliver-rific power, which is why they aren't here.
Our Sligh Curve looks like this:
This is the ultimate Sliver deck as anything can replace anything. Hate a Sliver in it, replace it with one of your favorite ones, don’t like a spell, chuck it and put something in its place. It’s the ultimate Sliver deck because you evolve it however you want. The biggest part however is avoiding the mana-screw of the Rainbow Decks. In this case, we’re using excessive dual lands and Gemhide Slivers. For support, there is draw in the form of Slivers at Dawn, a big wiper (WoG), spot removal (Mortify), and some land fix (Farseek). I'm excited to see how Slivers continue to fair in the future of magic, but for now, they are great. In Standard, they have enough tricks to make it big and if you throw in their old buddies for an Extended deck you'll actually end up with some seriously evil decks. In an effort to keep the article readable, I purposefully left off some of the new Slivers since to play with them requires a more styled deck, which greatly adds to the length of the article. So in an effort to give them a nod I’ll leave you with their pictures, and maybe just maybe one day I’ll show you how they fit into evolution’s grand design for the species.
You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here. Articles
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Plague
of Madness. 
Vampiric
Slivers. 
Sliver
of Light. 
Grueling
Slivers. 
The
Sliver Connection. 
