Commander Deck Tech: The First Sliver
What makes you want to build or start a new commander deck? For myself sometimes it's a new set coming out with some really awesome legendary creatures. On the other hand, nostalgia can also influence me to start a new commander deck. Over the past several weeks I had been grinding MTGA doing nonstop Dungeons and Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms premier drafts. I really loved how it brought back some of the D&D characters as cards / legendary creatures. I also liked the fact that it used some of the spells from D&D as card names like: Magic Missile, Power Word Kill, Critical Hit and others. I really like the flavor of this set and it influenced me to go back to my roots. At my LGS's we used to play big group games with 60+ card decks on certain days of the week and on Friday nights. This took place way before FNM or Commander even existed. One creature type that was very popular during that time in my life was Slivers. I haven't built a Sliver Commander deck before, but I've seen a few here and there.
For the most part the decks look fun to play and bring back lots of nostalgia for previous or older players. On the other hand the experiences I remember were that the Sliver decks being 5-color had quite a few mana issues. The mana bases can be very tricky in 5-color, and more likely than not you'll have to dedicate quite a bit of money into the mana base.
The whole goal of using The First Sliver as a commander is not to just have a 7/7, but more so the Cascade effect. We want to ramp up and get all 5 colors and play The First Sliver as soon as possible. The next spells will then Cascade other Slivers onto the battlefield for free while adding abilities and buffs to all your other Slivers. Add more buffs and attack with a horde of Slivers to annihilate your opponents!
In my opinion the key buff Slivers are: Sinew Sliver, Sedge Sliver, Predatory Sliver, Muscle Sliver, Megantic Sliver, Cleaving Sliver, and Bonescythe Sliver.
All the other Slivers in the deck mainly give key abilities like Flying, Lifelink, mana production, life drain, Haste, sacrifice outlets, and uncounterable. To add to the amount of buffs, we add in some key artifacts which help with add +X/+X or some type of card advantage so we can draw more Slivers to add to the battlefield. Note that these cards can also get hit with Cascade triggers from the higher casting cost Slivers in the deck.
The other buff spells or permanents are: Coat of Arms, Door of Destinies, Herald's Horn, Vanquisher's Banner, Rhythm of the Wild, and Return of the Wildspeaker.
Like I mentioned before we need to have a crazy mana base and I chose not to add too many artifact mana rocks to the deck. The reason being is that some of the Slivers add the ability to produce mana. It will need play tested a bit before fully landing on a complete mana base as I think some minor changes may need to be made. Also note I feel the mana base would be better if we went on a baller budget and used Dual Lands over the Shock Lands.
The mana fix and ramp spells are: Cultivate, Rampant Growth, Farseek, Kodama's Reach, Sol Ring, Chromatic Lantern, Gemhide Sliver, and Manaweft Sliver.
There are also some extra spells to add haste to all your creatures like Fervor. I also decided to add more card advantage in: Rhystic Study, Kindred Discovery, and Sylvan Library. There is also a random Sensei's Divining Top in the deck to help fix draws, and it also gets hit with low cost Cascade triggers.
It also seems like a lot of decks are running some kind of combo nowadays. So why not add one to the Sliver deck too? A really cool damage combo is Spiteful Sliver + Blasphemous Act.
One weakness the deck may have is zero spot removal spells. I opted to add more protection spells to protect your whole board of Slivers versus wrath effects rather than run spot removal or wrath effects myself. Because of that, this the deck runs Teferi's Protection and Heroic Intervention. The only type of board wipes or board clears in the deck are Blasphemous Act and Cyclonic Rift.
Overall the deck seems like a lot of fun to play, you can basically just jam creatures and play aggro. Keep in mind this deck will set you back roughly $1500 or more. Some of the things you could do to drop the cost of building a similar Sliver deck would be: cutting Sliver Queen for another Sliver, changing out fetch lands for less expensive lands, adding in Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds, and running more basic land with Explosive Vegetation and other basic land search spells.
If there is anything you think could be a great addition to this build please drop a response below. I hope that this First Sliver deck gives you some great ideas for amassing a horde, and crushing your enemies!
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