In my last article, I took a look at what I found to be the staple Slivers of Time Spiral and gave a bunch of Standard decklists for their usage. At the end, I promised I'd be back with the final set of Slivers, which included the most bizarre Slivers in the set. For purposes here, I'll call them Un-Slivers, because unlike other Slivers, they require tailored decks to work properly. While many people will dismiss some of them outright, it's my feeling that if used properly they can be powerhouse Slivers.

Before I get started into the article, I want to just simply list the six Slivers that I will be discussing:

1) Plague Sliver
2) Venser's Sliver
3) Pulmonic Sliver
4) Screeching Sliver
5) Dementia Sliver
6) Ghostflame Sliver

Sliver #1 - Plague Sliver

In my previous article, I discussed Plague Sliver, but I have changed my mind and opinion on the Plague Sliver. I initially dismissed it as mainly usable to hose other Sliver decks or as a cost-effective aggro monster. I'm sure many of you thought the same things initially and probably still do not see much usage besides as a standalone Black all-star critter. It's important to realize that many cards have dual purposes, Plague Sliver is one such creature, his Spike side is a nasty 5/5'er, his Johnny side sets up a major combo. What makes the Plague Sliver totally a Johnny card is that it says "deals 1 damage to you" in lieu of "you lose 1 life." Now I can't say it's a glass is half empty or full situation here, but I can tell you, the card can be viewed in two ways.

1. Plague Sliver deals damage to stay in play.
2. Plague Sliver gives damage to stay in play.

Gives or deals, one's a present, one's a punishment. Right off the bat, tell me what two cards in Standard seem to love having damage dealt to you? Think of them yet? Okay, here's the answers: Pariah's Shield and Darien, King of Kjeldor. Okay, now think, how do they relate to Slivers? Well, Pariah's Shield doesn't really, but can open the door to combos with things like Phytohydra and Stuffy Doll, but Darien has something dark in him. Something evil. Something begging to get out. That's right, Darien has a Sliver flag he just needs to learn how to wave it, and baby do I have the perfect card for that - Hivestone.
 

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	All the King's Slivers. Standard Sliver Deck
	Lands (22) 4 Godless Shrine 4 Flagstones of Trokair 4 Plains 10 Swamp Creatures (17) 4 Soul Warden 4 Plague Sliver 3 Essence Sliver 3 Paladin en-Vec 3 Darien, King of Kjeldor	Spells (21) 3 Phyrexian Arena 3 Hivestone 3 Wrath of God 3 Faith's Fetters 3 Mortify 3 Disenchant 3 Zombify
	by Cashew

Okay, the first thing you'll notice is that we have a fun Johnny Darien deck. Eat your heart out Streetz, I took your boy and turned him into a Sliver wannabe. We have so many good cards in here that are synergistic. Our spells read as a who's who of White Black Aggro control. The combos are like Voltron, separately they work and then they can make lesser combos, but then Wham! they all get in play at once and bam, Super Voltron is slamming a sword in some intergalactic bad guy's face. Now, who's up for some math?

If we have Darien, Essence Sliver, Plague Sliver, Hivestone, and Soul Warden in play how many Solider tokens come into play and what's our net life gain/loss?

1st Turn: 4 damage from Plague, 4 gain from Essence, 4 Solider Tokens, 4 gain from Soul Warden +4 Tokens +4 Life
2nd Turn: 8 damage from Plague, 8 gain from Essence, 8 Solider Tokens, 8 gain from Soul Warden +8 Tokens +8 Life
3rd Turn: 16 damage from Plague, 16 gain from Essence, 16 Soldier Tokens, 16 gain from Soul Warden +16 Tokens, +16 Life

So the formula is: we gain X Life and get X Tokens per turn where X is equal to the number of creatures we control. That means we're in the money. Do we get hurt if any part of the combos are gone? Yes, if Darien, Plague Sliver, and Hivestone are out, we could find ourselves dying very fast - at a rate of X per turn, but hey, that's part of the fun of being a Johnny.

The next deck using Plague Sliver will utilize the word dichotomy. For those of you who don't know what the word means, the easiest example is a Yin-Yang. Essentially, for every thing there is an exact polar opposite. When the two are juxtaposed together you get a dichotomy because they cannot exist without each other. Plague Sliver's closest dichotomous partner is obviously the Essence Sliver. As such, we shall marry the two into a more serious aggro control deck.

Dichotomy is a fun word. I hope you can remember it and use it in the future. We have several things that represent it besides Plague and Essence. Toxin pairs off with not just one, but two Slivers. Regeneration (Crypt) and Destruction (Toxin), Death (Toxin) and Life (Pulmonic). It's not important for the play of the deck, but having a theme is nice sometime right? Black and White by nature are dichotomous and to play them here you find they are even self-contained in their dichotomy. Cards like Swords to Plowshares and Vampiric Tutor both represent gain and loss. That's enough about dichotomy - last I checked, you were here for Slivers.

This deck plays very simple, an aggro-control style to remove threats while pounding away with the Slivers in the meantime. Our Slivers are naturally death resistant and generally do better than most other Slivers of the other colors in terms of survival. While this deck may not hold up well versus a quick burn deck or a hardcore control deck, it should definitely give any aggro-based deck a firm spank on the butt.

Sliver #2 - Venser's Sliver

First off, this Sliver isn't anything new. In fact, it's even worse than the original.

We are taking a one converted cost artifact Sliver and giving it +2/+2 for 4 mana. No abilities, twice the vulnerability of other Slivers, and feasibly no usage except to really make players question if flavor bleed for a story's sake has to mean a crappy card. The only thing about Venser's that is interesting is the fact that it is an artifact. So to that effect, the only thing I can think of is to show the one way I can think of to use an artifact Sliver to an advantage.

The question is, how can the two worst Slivers, ones that bring virtually nothing to the Sliver tribe, be of use? The only thing I can think of is to abuse their artifact status with an Artificer.

Okay, what the heck is going on? Is this is an artifact or a Sliver deck? Well, I told you artifact Slivers are weird, and as such I wanted to show you how to harness their power. This deck will rely on Arcum Daggson to pull the deck together. His main goal is to turn the little Metallic Slivers and Venser's Sliver into Darksteel Forges and Mycosynth Lattices.

Once the Forge and Lattice are in play all the other pieces can fall into play. Harmonic Sliver at this point literally tears apart an opponent's permanents while Arcum can fetch utility from within the deck bringing out the one count artifacts, aka his utility belt. Hopefully this turns on a light bulb of how the silly artifact Slivers can be used, but I really don't see much else. If you have ideas share them with everyone.

Sliver #3 - Pulmonic Sliver

The Pulmonic Sliver is based off the card Avenging Angel. In my previous article and often in decks I tend to dismiss it in favor of other five converted cost Slivers. It made it here into the Un-Slivers because it has two abilities and one of them can be accomplished with a different Sliver. In case you're wondering, the other Slivers with two different abilities are Sliver Overlord, Firewake Sliver, and Sedge Sliver. As far as Pulmonic's flying ability goes, it can be accomplished much cheaper with the Legacy card Winged Sliver. In Standard or Extended it is your only Sliver option for bringing flying.

What is nice about Pulmonic Sliver is that when I build a Sliver tribe I usually choose one form of evasion and one form of survivability. Pulmonic is nice because it brings both evasion via flight and survivability with its Reclaim-esque ability. The problem with it's form of survivability is it may come into play too late to save the early drop Slivers that are the most vulnerable to spot removal.

Another nifty thing about Pulmonic Sliver is that you can choose whether or not to return a Sliver to the top of your library or your graveyard. Now wait, why is he in here with the Un-Slivers then? Well, Pulmonic is weird and his ability provides something "interesting". That means that your Johnny-sense should be tingling. Do you feel it? Do you feel that combo just out of grasp in your mind? That's why I wanted to give it its own little section here with the Un-Slivers. The first deck I'll share with you for Pulmonic is a pure Johnny deck.

What in the world is this deck? Well, for one thing, it's a combo factory. The amount of sacrifice present here should signify our true intentions - to kill the Slivers ourselves. More on that later; for now the Slivers. The Psionic Trio is in here (Watcher, Psionic, Essence), and any time all three of these are in play your opponent will cringe. Basal Sliver allows for massive mana acceleration into Thrumming Stone or Storm Herd. The Slivers are pretty standard fare, though your opponent won't feel that way. With the recursion and blasting coming from all sides, most opponents will feel pressure from the first one to drop into play. With Opaline and Pulmonic in play together, you'll be able to handle anti-aggro decks easily and put up a formidable defense against aggro decks.

What makes this deck stand out however are two of the spells. The most obvious jaw dropper is Thrumming Stone. How does this deck possibly make use of a card that relies on order or pure luck? Quite easily, with both Basal and Mindlash allowing sacrifice and Pulmonic putting dead Slivers back on top of the library it becomes very easy to ripple eight cards deep into the library. Storm Herd in this deck becomes easily playable with Basal Thrull, and brings that distinct Un-Sliver feel.

The problem with the previous deck was it's not quite a powerhouse. The mana base is extremely skewed to the four - five range making it hard to unleash, but it's a Johnny style deck so it's about the fun more so, than the win. The next deck will be a total reversal however. Instead of being a fun Johnny Deck, we're going to utilize the most frustrating Slivers into a streamlined White Blue deck I call the Untouchables.

Get the name yet? In case you haven't figured it out, almost every single Sliver in this deck offers some form of evasion and survivability. Crystalline is a powerhouse that can make some experienced player cringe. If you couple it with Pulmonic the only thing that can fully remove your army is a Final Judgment. While none of these Slivers may strike you as powerhouses, the sheer resilience that they all bring will frustrate anyone you play against as they become increasingly difficult to control and eventually become untouchable.

The support spells are a handful of the most staple White and Blue cards. If you want to go counter heavy and turn it into a White-Blue Counter Sliver deck it's easily doable, but for the purpose of this article I chose three of the most versatile and powerful white cards along with Tidings for heavy draw. With White and Blue however, it's hard to pick losing cards, almost any card works well in these decks, it's all about making yourself happy with it. It would not be farfetched to tweak this deck into a tournament caliber performer.

The next two decks will play almost exactly alike, but accomplish their goals in two very distinct manners. Much like the first decks Thrumming Stone usage, these will abuse the top of the library.

I hope you get the gist of this deck really fast. You utilize Mirari's Wake and the various top of deck cards to accelerate your creatures into play. If a creature dies you simply recast it anytime you wish. The deck plays off the simple concept of sheer aggro and card advantage without ever increasing the card draw rate. Crown of Convergence helps to filter out what you want to draw and gives a small bonus to your already super-charged Slivers. The play will be slow at first, but after four turns explodes into an all-out stomp fest.

This deck plays very simply, but is very powerful. The cornerstones are Counterbalance and Pulmonic Sliver. It's very easy to lockdown most players utilizing an array of one to five casting cost Slivers. Of course Sensei's Top works well with Counterbalance without the Spawning Pit return to library combo, but with the combination the Top and Pit-Pulmonic combo the game can get shut down for an opponent without much say to the contrary. Meanwhile, some very difficult to handle Slivers are in play tearing away at the opponent's life total. The downside, however, is that to get the super lockdown combo into play will require Spawning Pit for the sacrifice, Pulmonic for the return to the library, and Counterbalance in play as well as the appropriate Slivers. Granted, if you've played against a Counterbalance deck before you know, just how effective it can be.

Sliver #4 - Screeching Sliver

When I first saw Screeching Sliver I wrote it off as pure crap. I mean after all, Slivers are meant to kill via aggro, not deck an opponent. Flash forward a few weeks later, and I realized my mistake - Screeching Sliver is not meant to mill an opponent. Since decks are almost always sixty cards, in order to mill an opponent out of the game would require close to forty Sliver taps, which is a bit excessive. I'm sure there are plenty of ways to go for infinite untaps to screech an opponent's deck from existence, but that's not very interesting to me. Instead let’s explore what other usage Screeching Sliver might bring.

So if the goal is not to mill an opponent out of the game, what else can it be used for?

1. Control an opponent's draw.
2. Filter out bad cards in our draw.
3. Feed a graveyard.

Okay, the first two can be done in tandem since draw control can be accomplished on both ends quite easily. The third one is also easy to do, and since many Sliver decks already run Patriarch’s Bidding, it is highly effective. Since, creature Bidding is something somewhat familiar to a lot of people, let's look at how we can utilize it with Slivers and have Screeching help us out. Since Bidding decks aren't really new territory for even Slivers, I will offer you a single high powered Bidding-centric deck.

Before you even get upset that you can't hard cast most of the Slivers, realize what is happening. The graveyard is getting fed extremely fast and on the fifth turn when Bidding hits, every Sliver in our graveyard will come into play and hopefully Firewake will be amongst them to create a one turn hit. With minimal tweaking you can speed it up to hit faster. I know I cheated, but Screeching Sliver is in there helping by feeding the graveyard and chump blocking early on. Just so you know, this is a feast or famine deck. In my experience, this style of Bidding deck with tweaking can win far more than it loses, especially in Two-Headed Giant.

The other efficient use of Screeching would be the control aspect. So without beating around the bush too much, let's look into a draw control deck. The goal for this deck will be to simulate a very one sided and much cheaper Zur's Weirding style of play.

At a quick glance, you may mistake this for a weak Sliver Control deck, however its control is solid. Whereas normal control decks attempt to handle spells as they come into play, Screeching Sliver will utilize Lantern of Insight to ensure that every draw is to our standard. I call it pre-emptive warfare. Why spend time killing things when you can stop them from occurring in the first place? Once the lockdown happens, it'll be ages and lots of luck before your opponent can break out of it.

I'm not a real big fan of Screeching Sliver doing his job alone, so before I bring another deck out I want to introduce the next Sliver - Dementia Sliver.

Sliver #5 - Dementia Sliver

Dementia Sliver is built off the ancient card Nebuchadnezzar from the Legends set. Its ability is a targeted discard that varies in effectiveness. Unlike other discard methods, you'll need knowledge of your opponent's hand, and the size of that hand is very important. Again, because of how specialized this card is, the deck must be geared for it. If not, then it becomes a waste of space.

The way Dementia and Screeching unite is that Screeching will get your opponent from the front while Dementia from gets them from the back. This double action can keep anyone pinned down for awhile and send anyone's head racing with naughty things to accomplish. So the deck is very similar to the previous deck, but instead of White, we'll be using Black:

What an evil, evil deck this is. On the whole, the Slivers are weaker than the White-Blue version. The goal again is the same, but this is carried out differently as the deck can allow a player to draw a card to simply counter it or force the discard. The majority of the damage will come from pinging away with Spectral Sliver's ability and The Rack. Beyond that, it's control, control, control - stopping the opponent before and after the draw. Mikokoro can be very one-sided as well.

I don't really see a whole lot more usage out of Dementia, so I won't waste time trying to come up with decks that end up only being similar to other decks already discussed, or too weak to even use casually. As with all the Un-Slivers he needs a tailored deck to perform well in. Beyond that it's pure luck if Dementia will be a useful card or a waste. I simply find the usage of Dementia a waste of Slivers that could be attacking or doing other more useful things.

Sliver #6 - Ghostflame Sliver

The last Sliver to discuss is perhaps the most bizarre Sliver choice of all. For a Black and Red mana you get yourself a Sliver that makes all the Slivers colorless. It's an obvious homage to Ghostly Flame, however what is the reason? To figure this out, let's look at why Ghostly Flame came about, and why the designers possibly brought us one of the most bizarre Slivers yet.

Back before the Black Summer when Serra  Angel and Sengir Vampire were power cards, Magic players were playing a variety of decks, and if you played White at all your sideboard probably consisted of at least three Circle of Protection: Red/Black. This single card, wiped out every single Black or Red deck, hands down. In fact, about the only way they could hope to wipe it was a Disk of Nevinyrral (Black and Red to this day still lack enchantment control). Pestilence decks in particular with their geared Protection from Black would be almost guaranteed wins against Black-Red decks. Since Black and/or Red decks had absolutely so few options to handle this common card, Wizards unleashed the Ghostly Flame as a way for Black-Red players to continue dealing damage.

Now in the Standard environment, the situation is similar. White again is decisively anti-Black and Red, with two highly used power cards: Paladin en-Vec and Akroma, Angel of Wrath. These two cards alone can put a Black and/or Red deck into a virtually unanswerable jam. If you were to play against a deck with either en-Vec or Akroma as Black-Red Slivers your chances of winning would plummet. This doesn't even take into account that Whirling Dervish and Mystic Enforcer also Timeshifted in and both have been used in the past to take out Black decks. So again, times are dire, but Black-Red Slivers are given two tools to mitigate these threats - Void and Ghostflame Sliver.

The other approach we can take from Ghostflame Sliver, is that being colorless is a boon. In my books, Black Slivers becoming colorless opens them up to Black spot removal spells like Terror - however with Mortify and Putrefy getting heavy play it probably doesn't matter in Standard anyway. I pondered for a few days on how can colorless be used as an advantage, and in the end I came up with nothing. The loss of color is a loss of identity, and as far as I can tell, the only reason to lose that is to combat the threats that White and Green will bring, especially in Standard. Am I wrong? I'd like to know: is there a reason to abandon color for reasons beyond hosing avoidance?

So in an effort to bring at least something to the table I offer a single deck:

Ouch, ouch, ouch. I'm hurting and they're hurting. Overall, this deck plays the exact same as Satanic Sligh, the difference here is it has some unification under the Sliver flag. It's very hard to use Dark Confidant and anything above four casting cost, so the power Sliver here will be Sedge Sliver. The general idea is to move fast and hard through an opponent, if the deck stalls or falters it'll probably fail, so forward ho! In case you're wondering, I added Hivesetone since it's cheap to come out, and Dark Confidant is meant to attack, not sit pretty, so he might as well get the benefits of being a Sliver.

Is there a reason to play this deck over a regular Satanic Sligh deck? Yes and no. Satanic Sligh is fine on it's own, but if en-Vec drops on turn two or three and Cruel Edict isn't around it's probably a loss, no questions about it. With Sliv-tanic Sligh Ghostflame adds that extra edge against en-Vec as well as something Satanic Sligh lacks - evasion from Two-Headed Sliver.

Now that I've covered all the Slivers in Time Spiral, I'll leave you with one final thought.

If the Time Spiral release of Slivers is comparable to the past release of Slivers, where is the new Legendary Sliver(s)? Will it be like Onslaught and the Sliver Legend is added into the next set, or will the Overlord and Queen remain the two only Legendary Slivers? Only time will tell. Until then you can discuss it here.

~Cashew~

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.

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