Deck Doctor: Sliver 250, v2.0 (Now with Wild Pair!)

[GrimJack]

So last week my six-month-old Sliver 250 deck was accused of being too ?Combo-licious?

Sure I tweaked up the old version with a healthy dose of Future Sight cards, (plus eight of the Power Nine) but come on!
Its just a Sliver deck. And it doesn?t even have thirty Slivers in it.

Seriously though, I was pretty stoked last week that the newest incarnation of this deck seemed to work. I had a feeling it might be decent, I just didn?t know how all of the cards would interact. I loved it. I can see why my opponents wanted me dead. If this goes off, it can do a lot. Quick.

But I would not call it a Combo deck. Its not like I win as soon as I cast Wild Pair.

I would say it?s a synergistic hodge-podge of crap that interacts well. For those who didn?t see it last week, here?s my deck list & a brief explanation of what my deck does & what it is supposed to do.

I?d love your deck-doctor suggestions to make this better...


Wild Pair Slivers, v 2.0 (Dated 5/15/07)
By John Kozlowski

43 WHITE
4 Essence Sliver
4 Lost Auramancers
4 Swords to Plows
4 Whitemane Lion
3 Pulmonic Sliver
3 Wrath of God
2 Auramancer
2 Aven Mindcensor
2 Exalted Angel
2 Exile
2 Karmic Guide
1 Academy Rector
1 Angelic Chorus
1 Balance
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Cloudchaser Kestrel
1 Honden of Cleansing Fire
1 Land Tax
1 Replenish
1 Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendent
1 Serra Avatar
1 Test of Endurance

31 BLUE
3 Palinchron (2 Pending)
3 Crystaline Sliver
3 Synapse Sliver
2 Ancestral Visions
2 Cerebral Vortex
2 Deep Analysis
2 Fact or Fiction
2 Foresee
2 Winged Sliver
1 Absorb
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Future Sight
1 Honden of Seeing Winds
1 Invoke the Firemind
1 Prophetic Bolt
1 Timetwister
1 Trades Routes
1 Windfall
1 Zur's Weirding

20 BLACK
4 Necrotic Sliver
2 Dromar's Charm
2 Pernicious Deed
2 Recurring Nightmare
2 Tainted Pact
1 Debtor's Knell
1 Demonic Collusion
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Diabolic Tutor
1 Kaervek the Merciless
1 Nekrataal
1 Sliver Legion
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain

29 RED
4 Homing Sliver
4 Rakavolver
3 Searing Meditation
2 Arc Blade
2 Kiki Jiki Mirror Breaker
2 Lightning Helix
2 Razia Boros Arch An.
2 Sedge Sliver
1 Arc Slogger
1 Fury Sliver
1 Gamble
1 Honden of Infinite Rage
1 Mindmoil
1 Savage Beating
1 Wheel of Fate
1 Wheel of Fortune

20 GREEN
4 Wild Pair
3 Mystic Snake
2 Privledged Position
2 Seal of Primordium
1 Sliver Queen
1 All Sun's Dawn
1 Dowsing Shaman
1 Recollect
1 Regrowth
1 Sliver Overlord
1 Sterling Grove
1 Tornado
1 Ukatabi Orangutan

27 ARTIFACT
5 Moxes
3 Darksteel Ingot
3 Duplicant
2 Loxodon Warhammer
2 Well of Lost Dreams
1 Azorius Signet
1 Black Lotus
1 Boros Signet
1 Chaos Orb
1 Clearwater Goblet
1 Fellwar Stone
1 Hivestone
1 Izzet Signet
1 Memnarch
1 Memory Jar
1 Skull Clamp
1 Sol Ring

80 LAND
30 Dual Lands
13 Plains
8 Island
8 Mountain
5 Odyssey Dual Lands
3 Forest
3 Swamp
2 Krosan Verge
2 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Karakas
1 Miren the Moaning Well
1 Prahv, Spires of Order
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
1 Tolaria West


SYNOPSIS

Slivers:
This is the obvious part of the deck. There are 29 Silver cards with 12 different abilities. (Queen, Overlord, Legion, Essence, Pulmonic, Crystalline, Synapse, Winged, Necrotic, Homing, Sedge, Fury). Generally, the Sliver effects are defensive or utility abilities, but there are a few cool interactions.
Don?t tell anyone, but I?d have to say the Slivers are mostly harmless.

Life Gain:
This is merely a sub-theme of the deck, as I like Rakavolver a lot. I tried not to have a lot of vanilla-life-gain (Such as Clearwater Goblet). Instead, I tried to have the life gain as a side effect of another purpose. (Such as Exile, Lightning Helix, or attacking with Lifelink creatures, etc.)
What I?m contemplating now is finding more uses of all this life. Life gain for the sake of life gain is just a stall tactic. I want to exploit life as a resource, a la spending the life for a benefit rather than just sitting on it. I want to add more cards like Bargain, or Serra Avatar, or Rune Tail so that it pays well to have a high life total. I have quote a few already, but do you have other brilliant insight?

Wild Pair:
This is the real purpose of the deck. Wild Pair provides almost all the synergies, starting with all of the 2/2 and 3/3 Utility-Slivers. By pairing their ubiquitous P/Ts with other creatures with come-into-play abilities, the deck becomes pretty exciting. It quickly goes into turbo-search mode and makes me public enemy #1 real fast.

I already know Whitemane Lion & Wild Pair is incredible.

Though I haven?t fully explored it yet, I have a feeling Palichron & Wild Pair is too. Palichron is a 4/5, and it self-recurs. There?s a whole subset of splashy creatures in this deck with P+T = 9 to play around with. Each is unique, and change the style of game immediately.

The army of 2/2s & Wild Pair fetches Kiki Jiki, which I absolutely loooove. (Sure Kiki is combo-rific by itself, but it rules in a deck with so many other CIP critters, I couldn?t resist.) I just have to learn that Kiki & Mystic Snake is pretty good.

<font color="#C0C0C0" size="1">[ May 15, 2007 02:48 PM: Message edited by: GrimJack ]</font>

[kerbythepurplecow]

Wild Pair is so nasty (in a good way). Now I want to pick some up. Since the slivers are more of an afterthought, couldn't you do more with CIP critters? Boneshredder, Faceless Butcher, Man-o-War, ect... seem like some hot tech. Once you add the Whitemane Lion, then it's just sick. I think you should trump up the CIP critter idea.

[GrimJack]

Ive thought about it, but I think Jason already has a deck featuring Wild Pair and the CIP Critters. I dont want to copy.

Even though, there are some pretty awesome CIP dudes in my primary colors.
Angel of Despair, Ancestor's Prophet, Bogardan Hellkite, FTK... they all rule

[md22mdrx]

It needs to be more slivery. Slivers and wild pair should be tech ... but ... need ... more ... slivers. 29-30 out of 250 means you're hard pressed to get ONE in your opening hand, let alone more than one and your next one possibly another 8-10 cards down. I can see the enchantment tutors for wild pair. That's fine, but you have WAY too many other cards that don't fit the flava and just paint a bulls-eye. Serra Avatar is going to get YOU killed more often than killing your opponent (Grab the Reins, Ana Battlemage, etc). I dunno. I just don't think I like it much. You're going to be too hard pressed for your wild pairs (even with the search because NO ONE is going to let the Auramancers go off). I dunno. I think I'd have to play it or against it and see. It seems WAY too easy to disrupt and slivers make you target-boy anyways. I guess with all the power in there it may be more viable than it seems ... But then again I stink and my deck is junk!

<font color="#C0C0C0" size="1">[ May 16, 2007 05:35 PM: Message edited by: Haddix.dec ]</font>

[GrimJack]

Hmmm. I have one person saying "Get rid of all the Slivers!" and another saying "Add more Slivers!" What a quandry. I like the slight Sliver theme, but if I go all-out Sliver I found it really screws up the Wild Pair Synergy.

Version 1.0 of the Sliver 250 deck had Muscle & Sinews, as well as the other aggro Slivers. It had maybe 30 more slivers and got going quickly. It had some goofy stuff going on like Psionics & Essence & and the Castle Sliver too. Unfortunately it was just a Sliver deck.

Planar Chaos came out & I added teh Wild Pairs in version 1.1. Better, but I found that all of the Sinew Slivers screwed up the P/Ts of the Slivers, and I wasnt able to search for 4/4s after a few turns of it becuase there are no goo dcheap 4/4 slivers. It messed up the 7/7 Queen/Overlord fetch too.

The problem with pure-sliver 250 though is that if it isnt aggro enough youre going to die before you do anything. And if you dont have Sinews and Muscle your just attacking with a bunch of wimpy little 2/2 bears. Which isnt really aggro.

So I dropped almost all of the Slivers. I kept the few good utility Slivers, and tooled it up with dual lands & power. Hence version 2.0.

[jrr]

I have a BR187 deck, but it abuses crystal shard and its a bit slow and for some reason has a giant target painted on it... I think people hate when I play blue, its not even that good but I have yet to play it and keep more than 1 or 2 critters longer than a turn. I'll prolly scrap it soon.

[GrimJack]

I thought your deck had Wild Pair too.

[jrr]

I meant to say UR and no, my 250 has a wildpair in it, you might have been at that game.

<font color="#C0C0C0" size="1">[ May 18, 2007 11:28 AM: Message edited by: jrr ]</font>

[kerbythepurplecow]

I was thinking the same. I was like "Jason doesn't have a Wild Pair deck".

On another note, why not Tortured Existence or something? Recycling Vindicate Slivers would be good. Survival would be really hot. Then you could turn it into a real toolbox of critters.