Editing Slivers (section)

==In Game==
Slivers... where to even begin on this monster of a deck?

Alright, so first off, if you're building a Sliver deck, be prepared for people to hate you. '''A lot'''. Though they may not seem like much at first, usually being about 3 Mana or less and having fairly standard stats, the strength of the Slivers is in the whole, not the parts '''(EVERYTHING IS A LORD THAT IS USUALLY 3CMC OR LESS, OH GOD I CAN TASTE THE VALUE  [[/d/|GIVE ME MORE WIZARDS SENPAI!]])'''. With enough optimization you will have a nigh unkillable board of gigantic unblockable creatures with a Staggering number of abilities. The more modern Slivers aren't quite as powerful, so you can build a very fair deck if you stay more recent, but the further you go back the more broken shit you can pull off.

As such be prepared to shell out some cash for a stronger Sliver deck. Not only are these cards older, they are also iconic and quite popular. If building the EDH/Commander version you're going to be paying a lot more for total optimization (but who makes a competitive EDH deck? You do, you filthy Sliver mage! The hive feeds on the tears of its victims). 

When picking a sliver commander, <s>we recommend STRONGLY that you go with overlord.</s> Who the fuck is "we", asshole? The Queen is the one you keep seeing in infinite-mana, infinite-sliver-token combos, and the Overlord's ability is a lot less impressive now that Homing is an option. Nonetheless, Overlord is one of the more useful ones thanks to HAVING A BUILT-IN SLIVER TUTOR, and stealing other slivers.

When building your deck, after deciding how far you're going to take them, set the slivers into 5 categories:
*Auto-includes (gemhide, muscle, sinew, manaweft, predatory, any of the 5-color legendary badasses)
*Not Mandatory But Still Pretty Fucking Scary (shit like harmonic ''Which is literally sliver equivalent of aura Shards''; necrotic to make all your slivers into Vindicate; Dormant, which is basically the Yawmoth's Bargain of slivers; and Homing, which lets you tutor for any sliver, just like Overlord, but is much easier to get into play)
*The ones that can prevent your important slivers from getting nuked (Clot, Crystalline, Hibernation, Ward, Crypt, Frenetic, Diffusion, etc. but don't combine Crystalline with Crypt. Root also goes here if your opponent is playing with counterspells)
*Miscellaneous sac-utility and tap-utility slivers (Mnemonic, Mindwhip, Victual, Acidic, Darkheart, Telekinetic, Screeching, Basal, Hollowhead)
*The ones with neat combat abilities that aren't very useful against non-creature-based decks (winged, talon, shifting, hunter, vampiric, fungal, fury, bonescythe, sentinel, sidewinder, two-headed, venom, spinneret, spined, quilled, jesus christ there's a lot of these)
*The ones with random theoretically useful utilities that are just too expensive to put in what is basically a weenie deck (Psionic, Brood, Constricting, Dementia, Magma, Synapse, First Sliver's Chosen, Lymph, Thorncaster)
*The ones that do absolutely fuck-all for the board situation but help your opponent die very slightly faster (frenzy, leeching, heart, spiteful, virulent, lavabelly)
*The ones that do the exact same thing as another sliver, but worse in every way (examples: Reflex and Blur are shitty overpriced reprints of Heart; Synchronous is a shitty overpriced version of Sentinel; Essence is an overpriced Syphon; Toxin is an overpriced Venom; Armor and Barbed are strictly inferior to Spectral; Belligerent is an overpriced Two-Headed; Battle, Blade, Bonesplitter, Cleaving, Megantic, Might, and Watcher all wish they could be as good as Muscle/Sinew/Predatory; and by the way, if you're an old-school player who hasn't been paying attention to the new sets, you should throw out your Winged Slivers for Galeriders and your Talons for Striking Slivers.)
*The ones that are legitimately 100% fucking useless (shadow, plague, ghostflame, mistform)
*WTF (Dregscape, Enduring, Mesmeric, Quick, Bladeback, Scuttling, Sedge)
*The artifact slivers (Metallic, Venser's, Construct)
*The ones that combine several of the above, like how Groundshaker is just a shitty overpriced Battering, which itself was a shitty overpriced Horned, which was useless against creatureless decks AND did fuck-all for the board situation.

then get utility spells, the plan is simple: ramp into slivers and ramp into more slivers. get some removal, some powerful enchantments, some ramp spells, mana rocks etc and you have the beginning shell. (or you can just watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYRQyBV263c )

when you're making a sliver deck built around combing out, your focus is going to usually be powering out either Sliver Overlord or some other game-ending combination, usually requiring a ton of mana (might i suggest involving sliver queen?) This is more viable in EDH but can be moderately effective in 60 card decks. Keep the same process in mind as the aggro plan: a solid focused core with supporting utility. In this case you'll also be looking for cards to keep your combo safe.

For those seeking an infinite combo, you're in luck: Sliver Queen, Ashnod's Altar, Heartstone. Well, that was the original combo. After Legions came out, you could also go Queen + Gemhide Sliver + Intruder Alarm (IA is a bit infamous for its use in token-creation combos. In fact, you could have just as easily done Queen + IA + mana elves or something equally retarded back in the day). Or you could cut out all the middlemen and just use Queen + Mana Echoes. Then Time Spiral gave us Basal Sliver, which was Ashnod's Altar on a stick.... a 10/10 flying trampling double-striking indestructible every-other-ability-you-can-think-of-because-it's-a-fucking-sliver stick. Now all we need is a Sliver that says "Activated abilities of Slivers cost 1 less to activate" and we can get rid of the heartstone too. But anyway, you can't walk more than two meters in any direction without accidentally stepping on something that can combine with Sliver Queen to shit out infinite sliver tokens and mana, so feel free to gain infinite life, deal infinite damage, whatever rocks your proverbial socks.

[[Category:Magic: The Gathering]][[Category:Monsters]]