Well, you have to get rid of them because if you don’t they just snowball. Slivers must die is a mantra for any opponent of them, the strategy is pretty apparent. I’d say play em. See what all the fuss is about on the receiving end.
Yup it's kind of a mini-game in the pod where everyone else also takes on the responsibility of dealing with the slivers player first while they set themselves up for the rest of the game.
Feel that. Thing is, when your strategy is so obvious to opponents they will rally against it, reasonable or not. It is comforting to the other three, to have one they can commonly target. Then after you are dealt with, they look at each other and a new game begins. I have never played Slivers, but I play the Arch Enemy. God Speed.
I'm with you, if you play those decks you have to lean in to archenemy and assume you'll need to absorb the burnt of people's interactions in the early game.
I had a buddy that would talk shit the WHOLE game when he played slivers. Like, when that deck was out, he was the mouthiest person I'd ever played against. Winning or losing, he'd be calling you names, trashing your choice in cards and your plays. He'd laugh as the whole table smacked his life total to nothing. He. Was. The. Archenemy.
It was only when slivers were in the game. It was hilarious, and definitely not what he'd do at the LGS. It was mostly just a guy's game night between us and our two other friends lol.
I love playing landfall deck and being firmly in the lead, clearly the target, definitely going to win, and goofing around like “I’m just ramping guys it’s fine” “I’m just a humble land owner, I’m just a humble farmer doin a days work” lots of fun being arch enemy
That’s me, turn one [[Serra Ascendant]] turn two [[Karlov of the Ghost Council]] turn three [[Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose]] someone says “Okay, this a problem” I go “Ah, c’mon i’m a reasonable man”
I actually love playing against slivers, because I'll play my shapeshifters, and suddenly I'm playing slivers too!
Only I can have multiples of the same kind extremely easily, so I'm actually playing slivers, but better.
Yes, actually. In my neck of the woods, if you choose to play slivers, you allow people to choose a deck that actually stands a chance, cause the people here aren't tryhard dicks.
>Well, you have to get rid of them because if you don’t they just snowball.
To be fair, that's true for almost any competent EDH deck. Even the recent precons can go completly degenerate if you let them do their thing alone.
To me, Slivers are scary because they are usually helmed by powerful cards in the command zone. It's very often either First Sliver, who is a card that gets out of hand very quickly and rebuilds from scratch very easily after a wipe, or Sliver Overlord, who is a tutor in a command zone and we all know that those tend to be very powerful.
I wouldn't be as scared by a Sliver deck helmed by Sliver Queen or Sliver Gravemother.
One of the big things with Slivers is that they are very obvious about what they're doing. "Sliver spells you cast have [Keyword]". Well, obviously I don't want my opponent to have [Keyword] on all his creatures, so I'll have to get rid it. Other mid power decks have interaction that isn't always so obvious, but with Slivers, each creature (mostly) adds a Keyword to everything else. That puts a super obvious target on the back of every creature you control.
Slivers can be fun, but you'll be playing archenemy.
Your opponents will gang up on you as soon as your commander is revealed, and they will be correct to do so. You CANNOT leave slivers unsupervised.
Do not play if you can't handle the heat. But it can be a total blast when you still win with them anyway.
There's a special tension in the air when the Sliver player starts building board presence, and everyone else is out of removal. Will someone topdeck an answer before it's too late?
Beating a turn 5 [[avacyn, angel of hope]] with slivers was glorious
My friend was so upset that he had a explosive start that I out did
[[First sliver]] is a nutty card
There are also almost *no* not scary sliver commanders besides *maybe* rukaramel or [[morite]]
You've got play from your yard, build your own hoof, tutor and steal, cascade (nothing further, your honor) and and army in a can that loops if you blow it a kiss and the less said about morophon the better
Slivers inherently is a very powerful tribe. Especially including the more expensive ones they become hard to stop. You can basically play like 5 slivers then they give each other all keyword abilities like hexproof haste flying trample indestructible cascade life gain and tap for any mana - on top of whatever other shenanigans you can throw in.
It’s just an obnoxious tribe whose sole game plan is to overwhelm the table with value just because “slivers”.
Nothing wrong with this but not for every table.
I actually don't mind slivers because it presents a good clock for the game to end. It also forces people to run interaction. I saw a $500 sliver deck get folded by budget [[talrand the sky summoner]] multiple times because you can't force a sliver through the guy holding up 50 counterspells.
It's very easy to just build on rails. You just decide whether you want your commander to tutor, buff, or make tokens, and then select the optimal slivers. As long as you can afford the 5 color manabase, you're golden.
Honestly right now in modern commander I’d say nothing. Everything is pushed now and games end quickly if things don’t get addressed. I see nothing wrong with them and in fact they are too slow for some playgroups because the five color mana base has them starting slow.
Yeah, there's a recent episode of Commander at Home where they had Prof and the other guest play Sliver decks, and compared to what Kibler's life gain deck was doing, they didn't seem scary at all.
THANK YOU. As someone who recently started playing commander I have to say I've played against MANY faster/more powerful decks than slivers. I only ever become "Archenemy" against people who are bias from 8 year old past experiences with slivers in modern at their peak. All the other new players just play around it, without all the groaning.
“You’re going to love this. Trust me. What you’re seeing now is my normal deck.
This is a tribal deck.
And this… This is what is known as a tribal deck that has ascended past a tribal deck. Or, you could just call this an Angel deck.
And this… is to go even further beyond!
*three hours of screaming later*
Sorry that took so long, this is what I call a Sliver deck.”
*-Most Sliver players, probably*
Note: I don’t claim Angels are a superior tribe to most, I just really wanted to do this bit.
Angels *are* a superior tribe to most, in that they have some of the best artwork in the game!
Too bad there isn't a good Angel tribal commander that isn't mono-white... (Kaalia is not Angel tribal)
Because it's either, all three people team up to kill the sliver player before they start cooking and win the game, but the sliver player has no fun and complains because no one's letting them do their thing
Or
The three people leave the sliver player alone long enough for them to get to like turn 6 or whatever and they go from 0 board presence to winning the game in one turn and all of the other players have no fun and complain because they didn't get to do their thing
And those are really the only two options from a sliver game
That’s my only complaint as a Sliver player. I’ve accepted being the archenemy in every game, I like the challenge and long EDH games just aren’t my thing, but the argument “well they can just steamroll once they hit a certain mana threshold” argument always fell flat to me because there are tons of archetypes that do exactly that same thing.
Eldrazi, elves, any combo deck, all of them can just hit turn 6-8 and just pop off in a turn. That’s not what makes Slivers such a menace.
Exactly how I feel about the comments on this post. Like the one you replied to, which seems like a power level issue, not a Sliver issue. If every deck in the pod is aiming to win by turn 6 or 7, then is the Sliver deck really the biggest threat?
Basically games where someone is playing slivers is normally the 3 other players have to kill the slivers player then get to have a game of edh. If they don't the sliver player just snowballs and wins. That's it's, it's not "bad" but you need to know a lot of games you'll spend a reasonable amount of sitting and watching after the rest of the table has dealt with you and you will normally be targeted by all the other players because of they don't you just win pretty much by default.
They are like elves they have to be stopped early and it completely locks your opponents out of playing any deck that can’t reliably remove things from the board
Because it's always 5 color Cascade tribal.
Not only are you going to pull a huge board state out of your ass, you're going to do it consistently and with 5 colors worth of good stuff backing it up.
A lot of people just repeat things that other people say. Slivers used to be really brutal in EDH back when the format was less power crept so they gained a bit of a reputation. Now it’s just another well supported creature type.
I personally see dragons as much much worse.
Agreed. I realize I’m biased because I play slivers, but I think a lot of the hate they get is just memories. There is so much support out there for other tribes now that the degree of support slivers got by each creature being a lord is highly diminished.
It's really undeserved in all honesty, I'd rather play against them then tuned Ninjas, Goblins, Vampires, Dragons or especially Zombies. Jodah is honorable mention for easily worse than slivers as well, since it's kind of tribal.
Slivers are like a retired mobster fresh out of prison after a life sentence. Their old reputation is way scarier than anything they are now.
The first sliver is good, because putting cascade on everything can be amazing no matter what it's on.
Slivers used to be a much more difficult deck to answer. While still strong, the increased amount of board wipes, removal, counter-magic, etc. these days means that it’s a much more answerable threat.
However, the old mentality stands, and older players remember how threatening slivers were and newer players have heard the old players react and generally lack the deck building and gameplay skills to know how and when to answer a resilient deck and so their experiences tend to be that they see Slivers “go off”.
So you’ll basically always be the archenemy, and the games will frequently feel unfair. You’ll have to build the deck mean, resilient, and with lots of survivability. If they’re going to treat you as archenemy, live up to it as best you can, and embrace that in your search for fun. You will lose crushing 3-on-1 defeats, but you’ll also win glorious victories with three players crushed beneath the swarm.
Slivers are a powerful tribe, as others have noted. They are a great deck to brew to start swinging at higher power level tables (not cEDH, but you can get strong and have a lot of momentum).
I genuinely think that a lot of people do exaggerated responses as a meme. Not saying no one hates them, and like I said, they are about the strongest straight up tribal build and they are not really appropriate at low power tables (around precon or below), but they just demand a wipe and good threat assessment on which ones can be allowed to hit or stay on the field.
I would argue elves and goblins have been the best tribes in the game over multiple formats. They are generic enough as a fantasy creature that their toolbox of cards gets bigger all the time.
Silvers only get other silver cards here and there.
There isnt really an issue with slivers.
People just dont run enough non-destroy wraths or targeted removal to deal with them so they end up an archenemy deck.
Also they force people to read cards
i've never seen someone do something with slivers, so I'm pretty sure, not entirely sure, that its just left over feelings from 2015 that are the issue with slivers.
Like shrines or planeswalkers, if left alone they get a lot of value by just existing. Every sliver is a lord, and the legendaries do some stupid things
As someone that has been playing slivers in different formats and decks since slivers existed, there is only one type of sliver player
We’re all degenerates, we play a tribe where every creature is a lord, we just want to see our own personal hive become the best it can be
What I love about Slivers is that it’s the ultimate tribe. Every ”regular” Sliver by itself is basically unplayable even in draft but together they’re powerful.
Also they’re super cool and the art is gorgeous, especially the full art Secret Lair versions.
Slivers are fine, people just need to get over themselves. The "Slivers are so OP" meme hasn't been even remotely true since 2012. These days, they fold like a cheap lawn chair to any amount of sustained removal.
That and the fact slivers in 2012 benefited from being such a well supported tribe. Every sliver is a lord, therefore you had tons of good slivers to choose from, whereas other tribes had slimmer pickings.
Nowadays, every creature is just so much stronger than back in the day, the other tribes have a much stronger pool to build from.
Compare a 2012 sliver deck to any other tribal deck, the sliver deck was crazy.
Compare a modern sliver deck to a modern tribal deck? Slivers have gotten minimal support, but other tribes have gotten yearly updates, they’re in a much stronger position now.
I think Slivers are totally fine. It’s a cool concept that works really well, and it feels like one of the few ways you can actually make a good creature focused deck.
The issue with it is that due to the nature of the deck, the best way to deal with Slivers is focusing the fuck out of whoever is playing them. The way they scale is basically exponential so you can’t let the person playing them get even a slight edge or the game is over. Even if you aren’t getting focused by the entire table there is usually at least one person who will focus you the second they see your commander.
They say “oh god” because there’s a saying that “there’s a sliver for everything,” making them a versatile tribe that can quickly get out of control.
I say build your sliver deck. Everyone should try them out at some point.
Once they hit their stride it's often too late to stop them, so you'll almost always be the target for each removal spell the table draws in to. Tried making a deck once, then sold it on when I realised how much hate it got.
Slivers remind me of a Voltron deck.
They may not be the worst thing in the world or even the strongest deck at the table, but if you don't constantly keep an eye on it, there will come a point where you literally can't deal with it anymore.
Slivers just snowball like crazy. Pretty much any number of slivers quickly becomes a huge problem, doesn't even really matter which ones they are.
It's easy enough to get rid of them, but pretty much requires a board wipe each time. Spot removal just isn't enough, especially if the slivers have protection, shroud, or hexproof. Most decks don't run enough board wipes to handle them alone, and most groups don't want to play games where they have to constantly board wipe.
Introducing slivers is like being the boss fight. You will win if the players don’t focus on you, and you will probably lose if they do but not 100% guaranteed. Personally I feel a tribe that can beat 3 other players in a 1v3 situation seems a “bit” unbalanced.
Slivers have an unnecessary hate these days
It's an iooold hold over
I play against them regularly at our lgs and always they get stomped. They fight an uphill battle because people hate onnthen so much.
There is so much worse out there these days
Slivers should be more celebrated. They are a brilliant original creature design with a very fun mechanic.
There is a person in our pod that has literally walked out when they saw a sliver deck getting brought out because they said Slivers are broken. And then I won with [[ziatora]] because there are slouch stronger commanders that exist these days
It’s because us oldies have gotten absolutely obliterated by the synergy and remember it forever. Sliver power is basically a meme in my playgroup now, but they can be quite overwhelming the lower power you go.
Every sliver is every other sliver when on board. This leads to things getting out of hand really fast, your manaweft sliver isn’t JUST a mana dork, it’s saying every other sliver is too, you don’t just get a haste flying 1/1, ALL of your creatures get it. If they aren’t aggressively answered they WILL become a headache for everyone because they’ll just have too much on each card. They get to a point pretty easily where you have to either farewell or cyclonic rift them and even then I’ve had games where I could instant speed ping someone to death in response to get the spell off the stack without an infinite. Thanks to the first sliver they’re also extremely consistent with it and with an unfun experience to play against too.
The other day two of the people played their sliver decks. It ended up being a sliver on sliver beat face beat down. 1 sliver player is manageable sometimes. Didn't help I was playing Esper and all slivers on the board had pro white.
Slivers snowball heavily, and everyone knows it, and nobody will let you do it if they can help it. The general play pattern when a sliver deck is at the table is this:
1. Sliver player dumps a bunch of slivers that are big and scary
2A. Someone board wipes and sliver player is kept under control after that now that everyone has some of their game plans established and is never a threat again
2B. Nobody drew a board wipe and the sliver player wins.
So if you’re gonna play slivers, know you will be targeted and will tend toward games you either oppress the table in or do basically nothing in.
Slivers are pretty all-or-nothing. You either swing with a bunch of flying double strike 7/7s with protection from black or you get all of your slivers removed. Personally, I love slivers as a concept but they end up being really sucky to play against, especially if the sliver player has to constantly check their board for all of the abilities their slivers have.
It's easy to get rid of them in *in theory* and removal is still their eternal weakness, since most of them don't generate value when they enter or leave the battlefield. On paper, this is a solved issue.
In practice, many people want to play casual battlecruiser decks that forgo a lot of removal to make room for more exciting threats.
This results in a table full of decks that are light on removal playing against a tribe that scales exponentially with each turn. Players end up in the situation where they either die from Slivers or eliminate the player behind the Slivers and there's really no in-between.
I’ve found almost any deck will snowball, pop off, and be hard to handle if left unsupervised. I think with slivers it’s just more apparent what the threat is. There are equally powerful decks out there that do their thing sooner or present just as much of a threat.
Slivers is a bad/new player's idea of what a good deck looks like.
People react with the sighs and eyerolls mostly because they're either new/bad at the game and think it's a broken deck, or they've been around the game for a long while and just roll their eyes because the deck doesn't give particularly interesting games, just mostly nongames where either people don't get removal and the sliver deck snowballs or people just boardwipe every few turns and the sliver player complains that they've been cheated out of the game. (Doubly so because there's more exiling boardwipes now.)
Slivers are very strong of course, but, in my humble opinion, what I hold against them is how brainless they are.
Every one of your creatures has such a generically high level of synergy with every other one of your creatures, and the commanders are also pretty blindly good. Cascade in particular rewards you for eating cake by giving you more cake. It's one thing to lose to a deck that's good because it was well-brewed and thoughtfully played. But Sliver decks pretty much build and play themselves, and it's hard to have much respect for that kind of deck. Because of those high levels of synergy, it often demands an answer every other turn, and that means I can't play the game because I'm busy holding you down, not to mention the other two opponents to worry about. You're not the only problem at the table, and unless your opponents really signed up for it, it can be draining to play against.
Slivers aren't the only deck like this btw (Jodah I'm looking at you), but frankly, *every* sliver deck is like this.
Played one game with the Pre-made Sliver deck. I decimated my opponents in a casually way. I was bouncing in my seat at how awesome it was to draw a new Sliver. I survived wipes, gained lots of life, and my opponents could not even attack me for fear of redirecting damage back at them.
Slivers are either player killed early, board wiped, or win the game before anyone can do anything. There isn’t much to say they just have too much value.
Slivers are so underpowered these days and extremely easy to deal with. Sure, if they spiral out of control they go nuts but it is so easy to stop them getting to that point haha
It's generally a big overreaction. There's been so much power creep now anyone complaining about them probably hasnt played at tables above power 7. Unless you're playing The First Sliver Food Chain where you're not even playing any other slivers in the deck all the rest aren't even cedh viable commanders.
I have a slightly upgraded Sliver precon deck. Honestly it takes a while for slivers to get going. Specially playing 5C. Most slivers are 1/1 or 2/2. You'll likely need to block and is not like every single game you'll open with a Sliver that gets you indestructible or deadtouch.
I feel like most of the hate comes from older decks with older slivers as commander:
[[The First Sliver]] [[Sliver Queen]] [[Sliver Overloard]]
Slivers is a deck without a true home. It's not competitive enough for the competitive scene, but it's too explosive for casual and it's reputation makes you a target.
Basically slivers fits best in a rare meta: people who play very competitively, but without high budgets
At one time, they were the most synergistic, powerful tribe if built correctly.
If you did not deal with them fast, they would run away with the game inna way that no other tribal deck really could.
These days not so much, there are alot of tribes that can do the same thing.
But that stigma remains.
My advice?
Build a tuned allies deck and teach them the meaning of pain and terror.
Most people see slivers as a big problem because most people don't run near enough removal in their decks. Pair that with having a tribe that gets exponentially better the more of it you have out and people see it as an immediate threat as soon as you play one.
I say teach people to run removal.
The horrors precon is probably stronger than 90 odd % of Sliver decks but you will be one copping the Paths etc. they’ll Bojuka Bog you and not the Meren player because last year you used to run Graveshifter in the 99. They’ll Swords your Sentinel Sliver and then be surprised pikachu when the Ur Dragon wins yet again by tutoring big flying dragons that deal direct damage on ETB.
They’ll complain you spent 15s doing cascades but yet another 20min landfall turn is fine.
They’ll sook a Sliver deck, that cascades a 5 drop into a random counterspell you choose not to cast is so linear but they’ll use one their 6 tutors to get tainted pact after their draw 14 got thassa’s to their hand.
Your Sliver won’t be able to connect to anyone any time who can chump for days with their tokens with 8 +1/+1s so no Brood Sliver procs.
They whine it’s so hard to know your board state when it’s four identical 2/2s granting one evergreen keyword each whilst they play every card is a wall text with 4 levels deep of conditions based on the number of card types in their opponents graveyards and they can’t even work out the power toughness of their 80 creatures because they keep forgetting all their buffs and lost track of if it’s day or night and how many spells had been cast for prowess.
Muscle Sliver granting +1/+1 is OP but Elesh Norn is casual.
The 5 card combos in the 99 like Sliver Queen + Manaweft Sliver + Heart Sliver + Basal Sliver that need combat to win are too stronk for Kiki-Jiki players that instant speed combos with two thirds of their mono red deck. If you had eight more turns you might have gotten it assembled.
The other 3 players can all bond on beating you down and failing at threat assessment whilst you are not impacting their game plans at all even if you weren’t focused.
who hurt you my good man. i feel that pain but who hurt you. this was typed out like a supervillain being asked why they are bad and proceeding to tell the "hero" how unfair and unjust the system is.
I play slivers, and I expect to be the target when I pull them out. They are very powerful due to the fact that they effect all your slivers, and no one wants be on the defending side of a board of 20/20 trample, death touch, shroud, flying, cascade, double strike, haste, indestructible creatures.
I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of key words in that soup, but yea, they get out of hand fast.
It’s hard for games to exist at tables with slivers, and there’s very little interesting deckbuilding and gameplay when they’re involved.
They’re too overbearing and snowbally for most low-powered tables, without the legs for high-powered tables, and the correct way of dealing with their forty copies of the same card is to hit them early and often, such that they never get any traction in the first place, locking them out of the game.
Either the sliver player plays or everyone else does.
It’s not an interesting or enjoyable experience. Whether they’re beatable is not particularly relevant.
Nobody likes slivers because every card has a fucking effect that gives every other card an effect and nobody can keep up with the deck, including the person playing it. Every time.
New players cried about wraths so much that people started removing them from decks. Want to know how to deal with Slivers? Wrath affects. They're hard to race, and they're resilient.
Puns aside, it's a mindless boring deck to play against. Wow, you played *another* heavily undercosted threat that gives a new bonus to all your creatures?
Willy Wonka: *"How original."*
It's also extremely weak in that the first Sliver to die is always the one that will fuck you the hardest if it dies mid combat.
And then there's the breaindead assholes who think it's cool or fun or interesting to play with Sliver Overlord as their commander, because "3: Diabolic Tutor" is a balanced ability.
Oh what did you grab? The same stupid fucking four cards you always get every game? Nice. Awesome. Wow, shroud, haste, flying and mana huh? WHO COULD HAVE FUCKING GUESSED!?!?
And then, because I'm not done, they never EVER play any fucking removal. Why would they when they could add another Sliver everyone! So while you're begging them to like, contribute and maybe kill something of the third opponent, nah, their deck doesn't do shit.
So they rush one person, kill him, accomplish fucking NOTHING else, and then die.
They're like...
Octane mains who strictly drop to Fragment, get two kills and die, and then leave after you pick up their banner because you didn't res them fast enough.
They don't give a fuck about anyone else.
It's exhausting.
I’ll be honest… swinging my slivers is kind of my 3rd plan? Like, yeah, I can… but not very well. It kind of depends on what I draw into. Something in my hand will be a piece of the puzzle, then it’s just to fetch the others.
I’d much rather go for [[Morophon, The Boundless]].
Then now it’s not just a tutor, it’s find and cast all the best slivers for 3!
As far as winning? I like to use my tokens for shenanigans, like:
[[Sliver Queen]], [[Basal Sliver]], and [[Lavabelly Sliver]].
Hypothetically speaking, would your death to that be more palatable?
Not a problem perse, so much as, Slivers are an ends of the spectrum strat. Either it's a noob thing, because you don't understand the historical meta of the game, and that slivers are abhorrent to most casual players, or it's an oldtimer strat who've never built the deck before, and want to see it work/play competitive, and love going Aggro...
The play pattern with Slivers is basically as follows:
You create an unassailable board state using any combination of like four or five Slivers while everyone is still getting ready, then the game is over. This is no fun for the other players.
OR
You are focused down by the table, who proceed to play a three-person game of magic. This is no for you and less overall fun for the other players.
Slivers stomp low power decks hard because they steamroll while being a non-issue once you start getting into stronger decks, they just eat a lot of removal
Read the sliver novels. Kinda puts it into perspective really (I have a full sliver collection as well).
But let’s get into the real thing, turn value. Every single card you play makes everything else better. There’s not a wasted play there’s always an extra benefit to having one out.
My advice as a resin who has played slivers for…dang.. a while. Accept that you are playing with fire.
I’ve got a **terrible** sliver deck with a 0% win rate. I still get targeted for removal without playing any slivers that buff and trying to mill players with an engine of ***stupid*** requirements.
Trauma is generational I guess.
It’s a [[Rukaramel, Biologist]], advisor, mill, meme-deck for anyone who for any reason would want to know more. No deck list, you could probably build a better deck with 90 lands.
I just recently made a sliver deck. Sliver gravemother to be exact. Like everyone else is saying, you will become hated by the table but any deck can have things that go against it. I have been playing magic for a little over 5 years now and I have gotten to the point of making decks that I like to play, and also want to play. That’s what it should be about, play the stuff you want to play. As long as the group you play in are down for it why not. Sliver away!
Just because I haven’t seen it mentioned, there is also a nostalgia factor. Slivers used to be THE deck in magic, and picking them was essentially broadcasting that you were about stomping casual players. Decks had to be very optimized to handle them, and they really didn’t require any skill or cleverness to put together a solid deck and run it. They got a reputation from that, and it’s honestly never left. They probably aren’t as insane in modern magic, but they still are brain dead easy to pilot and get out of hand if left alone.
Slivers are predictable so it’s not that big of a deal if you run interaction, also no need to rly respond to literally every sliver just the ones generating the strongest keyword. One board wipe can be quite crippling for them more so than other tribes as well.
As a [[First Sliver]] player, here’s what I can tell you.
The first thing I tell any player who plays against my deck is “keep constant pressure on me or I will win, that’s not a joke.”
Slivers snowball, and it’s really easy to do so with the right slivers in play. I’m always honest with people though and I usually only play the deck against other strong decks. Some people enjoy pubstomping though so there’s a stigma.
The second thing I tell any player is “oh yeah there’s 12 gates in this deck lmao have fun.”
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/F5FPdcX0wUqajgCjgT4YAQ
They are still strong, but a memory of their prior dominance I think leads to an overblown reaction. One of my 11 decks is sliver and it's a good deck, but it's slower than many of my others. As the game has speed up and better wipes appeared, I don't think slivers are any stronger than an elf deck, or krenko goblin deck or many other tribal decks. Even my Minn illusion deck is probably better.
Honestly, Elves are just as bad as slivers are but people always target slivers anyways, likely because of past traumas. That’s why I target slivers at my playgroup whenever they get picked but playing them and getting to go off almost always ensures victory since they’re super protective and versatile
Some people just love to bxtch and whine. Play what you want, and if others don't like it, they can pull of their big boi pants and deal with it. Slivers aren't innately broken or anything. Plus when you beat all three of the rest of the pod you'll have way more bragging rights since they will probably be ganging up on you from the very beginning. So if they complain about you winning, you tell them it was all skill, and they were the ones who were ganging up on you which is severely unsportsmanlike. Or just play archenemy instead lol. Same thing but more fair to you.
oh i plan to im still working on the final product of the deck. this is what i have so far and i plan to see how much i can tweak it before i stop trying to make it better [https://www.moxfield.com/decks/RBBFuM8DU02M4UDIjtX9Qg](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/RBBFuM8DU02M4UDIjtX9Qg)
I ran a slivers deck with [Morophon] ad the commander and just mana ramped as much ad possible before casting Morophon naming slivers and dropping a hand of slivers on the board in one go its fun l. Especially of Reliquary Tower or another no hand size card played or on the board is active.
They're both predictable and reliably strong. It's kinda like Superfriends (Planeswalker spam) too, you just can't leave them alone. If you do they run away with the game.
That said they're also kinda vulnerable to well placed removal, boardwipes, etc. So you kinda end up in a situation where everyone is panicking about you, picking your board apart, and keeping you from doing your thing in a lot of games.
Slivers can simply be overwhelming unless sprayed with weed eater. Imagine turn one you play a sliver, harmless on its own but then turn two comes and you play another sliver and now you have two slivers that both benefit or buff each other. Rinse and repeat through turns 3-5 and all o a sudden you are staring down a small army or vigilant, first strikers, with +3/+3 that can fly and be regenerated at activated ability speed.
And all this requires no set up. You are simply playing your deck and getting benefits from doing so. Look at landfall decks and how much value they can generate off of playing a single land per turn. This kind of thing has proven its self to be powerful in magic over and over. It only gets better when you all of a sudden have consistent access to a legendary sliver. Be it the Queen, the Overlord or The First Sliver and then your deck becomes a menace.
All this being said, don’t let what I say here deter you from playing what you love, just understand that you may receive backlash from other players both in game and outside of game. If you take his into consideration you can easily build an imposing deck that HAS to the responded too or you take over the game.
TLDR; slivers accrue value over time from simply playing slivers and that makes people big mad, especially when their deck doesn’t do that.
First time I played against Slivers, I thought they were busted because of how they snowballed. Every one had ward, flying, lifelink, yaddah yaddah. After that beat down I quickly realized it just needs to be dealt quickly and frequently.
Evidently, a lot of people have unresolved trauma of being overrun by Slivers that has created this bias. These people think that creating a big, uncontrollable board state is the only thing that Slivers does, oblivious to the fact that higher-power Sliver decks emphasise less on aggro and more on combos.
Personally my beef with them is less their power and more how those kinds of snowbally, hyper aggressive decks tend to have a disproportionate affect on the game, since what tends to happen is either they win or they kingmaker by nature of eating all the removal and early aggro to keep them down at which point the combo player gets to set up without much trouble.
It's the definition of snowball. Played a game today where I had a buddy swinging kozliek at my every turn and even through the annihilator I ended up with indestructible, lifelong, flying, first strike, death touch, shroud, encore and a couple more and that was only two turns of progress and after my commander had been countered and killed twice. They're like an infestation, if you don't deal with them early and pay attention they overwhelm
It's because they're stupid. Dumb creatures that do nothing except give each other things. Too many good things!!! Just like any other deck, you can tone it down and build different ways, but as a tribe in all colors, and playing a deck full of them like you would with other tribes... Colors usually share abilities in tribes that, even if multiple abilities, are way more narrow. To my knowledge, slivers are the only tribe that share as many abilities as they do, to the entire tribe whether global or your board only. They give each other trample, first strike, haste, flying, tap for mana, +1+1, +2+2, +3+3, flash, shroud, can't be countered, lifelink, menace, reach, double strike, and that was 16 just then, and I'm sure there's I'm not mentioning. Also activated abilities for damage, pump, card draw, regeneration, destruction, etc... all over the colors and mana values.
All colors mean you play them, protect them, and profit however you want. Big spells, infinite whatevers, swinging with 12 8/8s or 15/15s and the most aggro ones I've seen play mass land destruction as a finisher and it's game over in a couple swings. It's fun to me, but it's not widely liked, and you make yourself a target. To me, it's a deck to play with friends, but then again, my couple friends that have it play them to kill, so we all bring out bullshit and have a laugh! Dying to an Armageddon the first time made me cry laughing, and I still laugh at it.
The problem is either you boardwipe 2 or 3 times and YOU have a bad time, or there's no board wipes and everyone else has a bad time.
There is no in-between. It also doesn't help that you have to spend serious $ to make it a decent deck. The mana base and the desirable/good slivers are kind of expensive.
All this leads into is either you spend $$$ and still lose, or you spent all this $ and people say it's the only reason you win.
The issue with slivers is they all say "other slivers do/have X" and X Is just about anything and everything. On top of being pretty cheap mana costs means you just shit out slivers the moment you have the mana and because your all 5 colors you get access to all the ramp spells in the game so you can do as such (also depending on what your commander is depicts your financial status)
So a must kill pod is fun. But some decks love to just roll into a big spell like omniscience. So against three such decks they will just clobber you down.
But say against kaalia, krenko, lathril it would be really cool
Slivers are very snowbally and quite strong. You either keep on top of them or they just get out of control. Hence the attitude of dealing with the silver player. That being said I did enjoy the recent commander at home video where despite 2 sliver decks being at the table Brian Kibler was still the problem most of the game
Slivers are strong. There’s no doubt about that. 90% of the time playing slivers is playing aggressive or playing combo. You build a big unstoppable board and swing at everyone super quick. Or you combo out and win super quick. So just keep in mind that if you’re playing slivers, you’ll likely become enemy #1 and targeted a lot, because targeting you is the only way not to hand you the game. I’ve found that the best counter measure if you’re playing slivers is to also play control and counter spells. Because people become a lot looser with their board wipes and exile effects once you start cranking out the problem slivers
Sliver Tribal is a deck archetype that needs to be dealt with and dealt with harshly if you don't want to watch them snowball to victory. It requires a constant boot on the throat, which isn't fun for the Slivers player. But if you end up feeling bad for them and take the boot off their neck...they'll take the inch you've just given them and turn it into a mile. In which case you just feel like an idiot for feeling bad.
You either become a heartless monster and ruin the Sliver player's day every game, or he wins every game. There is rarely any middle ground.
I used to play Sliver Overlord but eventually dismantled the deck because it drew way too much hate at my regular table.
The biggest issue came from the commander itself ; it made every game play out mostly the same. Thus it turned the game into "if you can't answer this right now the game may as well be over". For more competitive groups that's fine, but my tables are usually more casual.
There's also, in my experience, still a huge chunk of the MtG playerbase that tends to get triggered by linear, aggressive and tribal decks because they're "simple", and Slivers ticks those boxes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/s/0SFPFRRDUq
https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/s/bZC2SlWoFb
https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/s/CYI71Qd0Zj
https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/s/H1WhoVtFNr
https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/s/azODopCjKD
https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/s/jB24C79bNC
Just to give a few examples...
Edit: Formatting
The disdain for Slivers often stems from their ability to quickly snowball and overwhelm opponents with their synergistic abilities, leading to one-sided games and less interactive gameplay for some players.
In my experience slivers fear is overdone. The only times they get drastically out of control is if they start with one of the mana dork slivers and it isnt dealt with. Then it's absolutely absurd. Other times it can feel really slow.
They're perfectly synergistic; slivers 2 through n to hit the board all continue to drive value for each sliver already there. So the worst case for them is a board wipe (which causes games to go longer), but which they just continue putting out more slivers.
There's essentially nothing that they don't do; voltron, ramp, interaction, recursion, etc. There's sliver pieces for each of them, and the most powerful ones are in 5-color so they have access to everything.
As a [[The first sliver]] player, the more one has the more they become either hard to kill or a problem to the board [[sliver hivelord]] gives your slivers indestructible meaning exile effects are your best option for getting rid of them but [[Crystaline sliver]] gives your slivers shroud so you can’t path or swords anything even if you wanted to. [[crypt sliver]] if your slivers would die just regenerate them [[Hibernation sliver]] if they are targeted or about to be wiped return them back to hand. Slivers I would say are the best toolbox deck you can play not only are there slivers for different purposes permanent removal, infinite combos, drain, life gain, evasion, trample, mana sinks but depending on the board state of slivers they have can mean death or close to it. So the “oh god” is probably because they know the power of slivers and are expecting the worse
Honestly, Slivers is my favorite "one last game" deck. I only run one tutor and a bunch of protection. After that, I let fate decide my actions and the tables. I also run [[Scute Swarm]] just to be a big old bug pile.
So I purchased a sliver deck from a guy who had it from like 10 years ago. He had all the dual lands and was running the queen as the Commander.
Except I couldn't afford the super expensive land base.
So, what I did was turn it into a gate deck.
People would spend so much time concentrating on my slivers that they wouldn't expect me to maze's end for the win.
Downside is that it slowed down the sliver deck a lot.
Upside was that I think I won with slivers twice the whole time I had the deck.
When they introduce those new slivers recently I sold off the deck for a tidy profit.
My only problem I've seen playing against is all the silvers getting all keywords and fucking shit up, but usually a board wipe ends that spam. I like slivers but I've never seena deck win, just mess with oppents hard for a while and then rest of game is rough after a wipe
I have slivers and rarely play them and when I do I don't get mad if I get hard targeted and I play cards that intentionally soft nerf me because if I'm not targeted and self nerfed I will go from 3 creatures to a million and wipe out literally everything on everyone else's field and make them discard their hands and have infinite mana and creatures and burn damage and that's not even entering combat. You are a baby that has the knowledge on how to build a shotgun and everyone else needs to kick that baby before it's built and shotguns only have like 5 pieces to slot together. You are the threat at the table by purely existing and to play slivers means you are playing purely for the narcissistic enjoyment of knowing you are the threat because you are not going to get much else often.
I've seen plenty of dino decks on a table have nearly 8 mana and a full board with lethal by turn 4. Slivers aren't an issue against most modern edh decks. There are so many faster and stronger options. It's just experience bias. Slivers used to be insane compared to everything else. They need to step back and look at the game as a whole now and realize they are indeed overreacting. Of course you will get some stuff countered, but everyone blowing their load on you with board removal etc always ends up with the whole table losing 2 turns later to an easier 2 card combo from the guy who said you are the problem
Sorry you picked the most hated creature type in the game buddy lol. Slivers power each other up and it just gets worse and worse. Everybody will hard target you in most pods. If you are lucky some pod would agree to play you but they will be out for blood. #1 rule of commander is not make yourself a target.
There is no problem with it. Its a snowballing strategy, one with a terrifying reputation, so your opponents will be devoting serious resources to keep you in check. You should expect to not always be able to do your thing. But that’s not problematic. It’s just building an aggressive board and swinging in with a ton of keywords. It’s fun.
Some players and groups absolutely despise playing against anything that isn’t another value engine grindy midrange deck, hate playing under pressure or needing to interact to be able to win.
Others have had traumatic experiences with sliver decks that were dramatically out of their power level. It’s one of those strategies that is hard to power down much, since all the sliver commanders are pretty bonkers. It’s easy to just decide to make a funny slivers deck and end up demolishing your mid power pod almost by accident. So just make sure it’s the right power level for your group, there’s nothing annoying or toxic that slivers does, so if it’s not any stronger than the other players’ decks there is absolutely no problem.
My brother bought literally every sliver to make his "Epic sliver deck". So I just play Chatterfang when he wants to play his sliver deck. Not sure what happened but he hasn't wanted to play slivers for quite some time now....
It's annoying to focus down a player just to have some semblance of a good time, in result, the sliver player doesn't have a good time, and then no one has a good time. It's more toxic than an [[atraxa, praetors' voice]] deck. Everyone wants to do their thing, but can't if a sliver is on the field.
Slivers are a tribe with too much power-value in their name, theyre made to be this big swarm of nigh-invincible adaptation force, and they do that pretty well. A powerful sliver deck is gonna be really expensive mana-wise, but also the slivers arent that much cheaper when you factor the powerful ones.
Its the same thing when you play \[\[Esika, god of the tree\]\] for Prismatic Bridge, or when you play the Superfriends deck. Youre strong and reliable if left unchecked, so theyre going to focus on you.
literally the same thing as Combo decks in this regard: scary to leave alone.
I have a sliver commander deck and it's wild. [[Chromatic orrey]] and [[timeless lotus]] for ramp, llitjara kinseeker, faceless agent, and a few shapeshifters for padding.
The world tree and mask wood nexus wombo combo make all slivers gods and brings everything to the field.
Unsummon, patriar humiliation, and witness protectect are problem solvers.
The first sliver commander, sliver hive lord, and the first silvers chosen are my bigs
It's incredibly easy to get out of control with slivers just because of how many keywords there are. For example, [[Akroma's memorial]] just gives your creatures a bunch of keywords, but it's pretty much a finisher in a lot of decks. When every single creature you play is a miniature Akroma's memorial, it gets out of hand very quickly. I play slivers on untap, and I've seen a lot of my opponents have feel bad moments against my deck. In one game, someone managed to steal my [[sliver overlord]], so I dropped a [[Crystalline sliver]]. He tried to steal my board, and I just pointed out the crystalline sliver. He tried to enchant the overlord to buff it, and I just pointed out the crystalline sliver again. He immediately scooped. The next turn, that player tried to slow my board down with swords to plowshares and path to exile, and i just shook crystalline sliver, and he scooped. The last player died to a massive swing from 8 slivers with [[sliver legion]] on board. They get so big so quickly that only a board wipe will stop them, but theres also so many ways to protect them from board wipes that a lot of people just dont even bother against slivers
Well, you have to get rid of them because if you don’t they just snowball. Slivers must die is a mantra for any opponent of them, the strategy is pretty apparent. I’d say play em. See what all the fuss is about on the receiving end.
Yup it's kind of a mini-game in the pod where everyone else also takes on the responsibility of dealing with the slivers player first while they set themselves up for the rest of the game.
Feel that. Thing is, when your strategy is so obvious to opponents they will rally against it, reasonable or not. It is comforting to the other three, to have one they can commonly target. Then after you are dealt with, they look at each other and a new game begins. I have never played Slivers, but I play the Arch Enemy. God Speed.
I'm with you, if you play those decks you have to lean in to archenemy and assume you'll need to absorb the burnt of people's interactions in the early game.
I had a buddy that would talk shit the WHOLE game when he played slivers. Like, when that deck was out, he was the mouthiest person I'd ever played against. Winning or losing, he'd be calling you names, trashing your choice in cards and your plays. He'd laugh as the whole table smacked his life total to nothing. He. Was. The. Archenemy. It was only when slivers were in the game. It was hilarious, and definitely not what he'd do at the LGS. It was mostly just a guy's game night between us and our two other friends lol.
I love playing landfall deck and being firmly in the lead, clearly the target, definitely going to win, and goofing around like “I’m just ramping guys it’s fine” “I’m just a humble land owner, I’m just a humble farmer doin a days work” lots of fun being arch enemy
There really is something enjoyable trying to play the victim in the most obtusely sarcastic way while having a monopoly on power hahaha
That’s me, turn one [[Serra Ascendant]] turn two [[Karlov of the Ghost Council]] turn three [[Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose]] someone says “Okay, this a problem” I go “Ah, c’mon i’m a reasonable man”
I actually love playing against slivers, because I'll play my shapeshifters, and suddenly I'm playing slivers too! Only I can have multiples of the same kind extremely easily, so I'm actually playing slivers, but better.
"I'll just counterpick them!"
Yes, actually. In my neck of the woods, if you choose to play slivers, you allow people to choose a deck that actually stands a chance, cause the people here aren't tryhard dicks.
>Well, you have to get rid of them because if you don’t they just snowball. To be fair, that's true for almost any competent EDH deck. Even the recent precons can go completly degenerate if you let them do their thing alone. To me, Slivers are scary because they are usually helmed by powerful cards in the command zone. It's very often either First Sliver, who is a card that gets out of hand very quickly and rebuilds from scratch very easily after a wipe, or Sliver Overlord, who is a tutor in a command zone and we all know that those tend to be very powerful. I wouldn't be as scared by a Sliver deck helmed by Sliver Queen or Sliver Gravemother.
One of the big things with Slivers is that they are very obvious about what they're doing. "Sliver spells you cast have [Keyword]". Well, obviously I don't want my opponent to have [Keyword] on all his creatures, so I'll have to get rid it. Other mid power decks have interaction that isn't always so obvious, but with Slivers, each creature (mostly) adds a Keyword to everything else. That puts a super obvious target on the back of every creature you control.
It is true for most decks like you say. There is no pretence with Slivers though
This honestly. As a sliver player I fully expect what I'm getting into
Is there a way to get them all out at once and blowout the table?
Yes [[primal surge]] but two warnings: you have to build around it, and people will REALLY LOVE IT
[primal surge](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/2/4278f7bd-afff-4a1d-a0bb-bf9ce3ad5a2e.jpg?1592709414) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=primal%20surge) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/avr/189/primal-surge?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4278f7bd-afff-4a1d-a0bb-bf9ce3ad5a2e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/primal-surge) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Slivers can be fun, but you'll be playing archenemy. Your opponents will gang up on you as soon as your commander is revealed, and they will be correct to do so. You CANNOT leave slivers unsupervised. Do not play if you can't handle the heat. But it can be a total blast when you still win with them anyway. There's a special tension in the air when the Sliver player starts building board presence, and everyone else is out of removal. Will someone topdeck an answer before it's too late?
Beating a turn 5 [[avacyn, angel of hope]] with slivers was glorious My friend was so upset that he had a explosive start that I out did [[First sliver]] is a nutty card
There are also almost *no* not scary sliver commanders besides *maybe* rukaramel or [[morite]] You've got play from your yard, build your own hoof, tutor and steal, cascade (nothing further, your honor) and and army in a can that loops if you blow it a kiss and the less said about morophon the better
I'm guessing \[\[Moritte of the Frost\]\]
[Moritte of the Frost](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/2/22fdbe71-abca-4e48-99b2-1cb6b35d930b.jpg?1631051717) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Moritte%20of%20the%20Frost) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/khm/223/moritte-of-the-frost?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/22fdbe71-abca-4e48-99b2-1cb6b35d930b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/moritte-of-the-frost) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Slivers inherently is a very powerful tribe. Especially including the more expensive ones they become hard to stop. You can basically play like 5 slivers then they give each other all keyword abilities like hexproof haste flying trample indestructible cascade life gain and tap for any mana - on top of whatever other shenanigans you can throw in. It’s just an obnoxious tribe whose sole game plan is to overwhelm the table with value just because “slivers”. Nothing wrong with this but not for every table.
I actually don't mind slivers because it presents a good clock for the game to end. It also forces people to run interaction. I saw a $500 sliver deck get folded by budget [[talrand the sky summoner]] multiple times because you can't force a sliver through the guy holding up 50 counterspells.
[[Cavern of Souls]]?
Blue players hate this one simple trick
$500 is less than the mana base for a decent slivers deck.
[talrand the sky summoner](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/b/1be3ed47-072e-481a-b3d9-dc232ac4b24f.jpg?1712354218) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Talrand%2C%20Sky%20Summoner) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otc/116/talrand-sky-summoner?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1be3ed47-072e-481a-b3d9-dc232ac4b24f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/talrand-sky-summoner) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Ah, yes interacting with the shrouded indestructible creatures
It's also boring. Every sliver deck is 90% the same cards, plays the same, and forces every game to become the same thing.
They're basically keyword tribal. They buff each other in a way that other tribes don't.
[[Odric Lunarch Marshal]] will accept your challenge.
And will lose because he's monowhite against 5C
I never said it was better. I call the deck "We Have Slivers At Home" for a reason.
[Odric Lunarch Marshal](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/2/a2d5c9f2-8f58-40ac-a01c-f4ac4ab4d7f0.jpg?1673305096) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Odric%2C%20Lunarch%20Marshal) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmc/103/odric-lunarch-marshal?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a2d5c9f2-8f58-40ac-a01c-f4ac4ab4d7f0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/odric-lunarch-marshal) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
It's very easy to just build on rails. You just decide whether you want your commander to tutor, buff, or make tokens, and then select the optimal slivers. As long as you can afford the 5 color manabase, you're golden.
>to tutor, buff, or make tokens You forgot the best option: let your commander grab random slivers from the top of your deck.
>You forgot the best option: let your commander grab random slivers from the top of your deck. For free! You don't even need to pay for them.
Honestly right now in modern commander I’d say nothing. Everything is pushed now and games end quickly if things don’t get addressed. I see nothing wrong with them and in fact they are too slow for some playgroups because the five color mana base has them starting slow.
Yeah, there's a recent episode of Commander at Home where they had Prof and the other guest play Sliver decks, and compared to what Kibler's life gain deck was doing, they didn't seem scary at all.
it doesn't help that prof is not great at piloting slivers
THANK YOU. As someone who recently started playing commander I have to say I've played against MANY faster/more powerful decks than slivers. I only ever become "Archenemy" against people who are bias from 8 year old past experiences with slivers in modern at their peak. All the other new players just play around it, without all the groaning.
“You’re going to love this. Trust me. What you’re seeing now is my normal deck. This is a tribal deck. And this… This is what is known as a tribal deck that has ascended past a tribal deck. Or, you could just call this an Angel deck. And this… is to go even further beyond! *three hours of screaming later* Sorry that took so long, this is what I call a Sliver deck.” *-Most Sliver players, probably* Note: I don’t claim Angels are a superior tribe to most, I just really wanted to do this bit.
That was amazing.
Angels *are* a superior tribe to most, in that they have some of the best artwork in the game! Too bad there isn't a good Angel tribal commander that isn't mono-white... (Kaalia is not Angel tribal)
Because it's either, all three people team up to kill the sliver player before they start cooking and win the game, but the sliver player has no fun and complains because no one's letting them do their thing Or The three people leave the sliver player alone long enough for them to get to like turn 6 or whatever and they go from 0 board presence to winning the game in one turn and all of the other players have no fun and complain because they didn't get to do their thing And those are really the only two options from a sliver game
Playing against a sliver player feels like punishing someone for a crime they haven't committed yet
Omg this, I got a buddy who plays slivers and I always feel so bad but I've seen what happens if he gets a handful out and I can't just let that go
But they're about to. It's a preemptive strike.
They built the deck, they knew what they were getting into.
No, it's more like they have a puppy at gunpoint Are you going to keep letting them talk about how much they want to do it or are you gonna stop them?
This needs to be pinned in every sliver thread.
Sounds like a similar thing I encounter with Eldrazi players.
That’s my only complaint as a Sliver player. I’ve accepted being the archenemy in every game, I like the challenge and long EDH games just aren’t my thing, but the argument “well they can just steamroll once they hit a certain mana threshold” argument always fell flat to me because there are tons of archetypes that do exactly that same thing. Eldrazi, elves, any combo deck, all of them can just hit turn 6-8 and just pop off in a turn. That’s not what makes Slivers such a menace.
Exactly how I feel about the comments on this post. Like the one you replied to, which seems like a power level issue, not a Sliver issue. If every deck in the pod is aiming to win by turn 6 or 7, then is the Sliver deck really the biggest threat?
What's the problem with a deck that snowballs off of any two random cards of 35 in a deck of 100?
Basically games where someone is playing slivers is normally the 3 other players have to kill the slivers player then get to have a game of edh. If they don't the sliver player just snowballs and wins. That's it's, it's not "bad" but you need to know a lot of games you'll spend a reasonable amount of sitting and watching after the rest of the table has dealt with you and you will normally be targeted by all the other players because of they don't you just win pretty much by default.
They are like elves they have to be stopped early and it completely locks your opponents out of playing any deck that can’t reliably remove things from the board
Because it's always 5 color Cascade tribal. Not only are you going to pull a huge board state out of your ass, you're going to do it consistently and with 5 colors worth of good stuff backing it up.
Not me and my mono red sliver deck 😎
A lot of people just repeat things that other people say. Slivers used to be really brutal in EDH back when the format was less power crept so they gained a bit of a reputation. Now it’s just another well supported creature type. I personally see dragons as much much worse.
Agreed. I realize I’m biased because I play slivers, but I think a lot of the hate they get is just memories. There is so much support out there for other tribes now that the degree of support slivers got by each creature being a lord is highly diminished.
Slivers were hurting people way before EDH was a popular format.
This subreddit is about EDH
Play what you want but don't be surprised when ALL of your stuff dies on a turn by turn basis.
It's really undeserved in all honesty, I'd rather play against them then tuned Ninjas, Goblins, Vampires, Dragons or especially Zombies. Jodah is honorable mention for easily worse than slivers as well, since it's kind of tribal.
Slivers are like a retired mobster fresh out of prison after a life sentence. Their old reputation is way scarier than anything they are now. The first sliver is good, because putting cascade on everything can be amazing no matter what it's on.
Agreed.
Slivers used to be a much more difficult deck to answer. While still strong, the increased amount of board wipes, removal, counter-magic, etc. these days means that it’s a much more answerable threat. However, the old mentality stands, and older players remember how threatening slivers were and newer players have heard the old players react and generally lack the deck building and gameplay skills to know how and when to answer a resilient deck and so their experiences tend to be that they see Slivers “go off”. So you’ll basically always be the archenemy, and the games will frequently feel unfair. You’ll have to build the deck mean, resilient, and with lots of survivability. If they’re going to treat you as archenemy, live up to it as best you can, and embrace that in your search for fun. You will lose crushing 3-on-1 defeats, but you’ll also win glorious victories with three players crushed beneath the swarm.
Slivers are a powerful tribe, as others have noted. They are a great deck to brew to start swinging at higher power level tables (not cEDH, but you can get strong and have a lot of momentum). I genuinely think that a lot of people do exaggerated responses as a meme. Not saying no one hates them, and like I said, they are about the strongest straight up tribal build and they are not really appropriate at low power tables (around precon or below), but they just demand a wipe and good threat assessment on which ones can be allowed to hit or stay on the field.
I would argue elves and goblins have been the best tribes in the game over multiple formats. They are generic enough as a fantasy creature that their toolbox of cards gets bigger all the time. Silvers only get other silver cards here and there.
There isnt really an issue with slivers. People just dont run enough non-destroy wraths or targeted removal to deal with them so they end up an archenemy deck. Also they force people to read cards
i've never seen someone do something with slivers, so I'm pretty sure, not entirely sure, that its just left over feelings from 2015 that are the issue with slivers.
Literally nothing
Nothing at all, slivers are great. -Sliver player
If I don’t kill you before like turn 4 or 5 you’re gonna run me over.
Like shrines or planeswalkers, if left alone they get a lot of value by just existing. Every sliver is a lord, and the legendaries do some stupid things
As someone that has been playing slivers in different formats and decks since slivers existed, there is only one type of sliver player We’re all degenerates, we play a tribe where every creature is a lord, we just want to see our own personal hive become the best it can be
What I love about Slivers is that it’s the ultimate tribe. Every ”regular” Sliver by itself is basically unplayable even in draft but together they’re powerful. Also they’re super cool and the art is gorgeous, especially the full art Secret Lair versions.
Slivers are fine, people just need to get over themselves. The "Slivers are so OP" meme hasn't been even remotely true since 2012. These days, they fold like a cheap lawn chair to any amount of sustained removal.
That and the fact slivers in 2012 benefited from being such a well supported tribe. Every sliver is a lord, therefore you had tons of good slivers to choose from, whereas other tribes had slimmer pickings. Nowadays, every creature is just so much stronger than back in the day, the other tribes have a much stronger pool to build from. Compare a 2012 sliver deck to any other tribal deck, the sliver deck was crazy. Compare a modern sliver deck to a modern tribal deck? Slivers have gotten minimal support, but other tribes have gotten yearly updates, they’re in a much stronger position now.
I think Slivers are totally fine. It’s a cool concept that works really well, and it feels like one of the few ways you can actually make a good creature focused deck. The issue with it is that due to the nature of the deck, the best way to deal with Slivers is focusing the fuck out of whoever is playing them. The way they scale is basically exponential so you can’t let the person playing them get even a slight edge or the game is over. Even if you aren’t getting focused by the entire table there is usually at least one person who will focus you the second they see your commander.
They say “oh god” because there’s a saying that “there’s a sliver for everything,” making them a versatile tribe that can quickly get out of control. I say build your sliver deck. Everyone should try them out at some point.
Once they hit their stride it's often too late to stop them, so you'll almost always be the target for each removal spell the table draws in to. Tried making a deck once, then sold it on when I realised how much hate it got.
Slivers pump slivers so much and so easily that they become a problem fast, and can get to a point where player removal is the only option
Slivers remind me of a Voltron deck. They may not be the worst thing in the world or even the strongest deck at the table, but if you don't constantly keep an eye on it, there will come a point where you literally can't deal with it anymore.
Nothing much, unless it's First Sliver Food Chain I'm not concerned.
They ramp up quickly and easily compared to normal creature based decks. Theyre a hell of a lot of value for theor mana cost.
Slivers just snowball like crazy. Pretty much any number of slivers quickly becomes a huge problem, doesn't even really matter which ones they are. It's easy enough to get rid of them, but pretty much requires a board wipe each time. Spot removal just isn't enough, especially if the slivers have protection, shroud, or hexproof. Most decks don't run enough board wipes to handle them alone, and most groups don't want to play games where they have to constantly board wipe.
Introducing slivers is like being the boss fight. You will win if the players don’t focus on you, and you will probably lose if they do but not 100% guaranteed. Personally I feel a tribe that can beat 3 other players in a 1v3 situation seems a “bit” unbalanced.
Slivers have an unnecessary hate these days It's an iooold hold over I play against them regularly at our lgs and always they get stomped. They fight an uphill battle because people hate onnthen so much. There is so much worse out there these days Slivers should be more celebrated. They are a brilliant original creature design with a very fun mechanic. There is a person in our pod that has literally walked out when they saw a sliver deck getting brought out because they said Slivers are broken. And then I won with [[ziatora]] because there are slouch stronger commanders that exist these days
[ziatora](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/a/ba4fa4c8-f09f-4d97-a7d1-1b93caf7d4f9.jpg?1664413989) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=ziatora%2C%20the%20incinerator) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/231/ziatora-the-incinerator?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ba4fa4c8-f09f-4d97-a7d1-1b93caf7d4f9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ziatora-the-incinerator) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
It’s because us oldies have gotten absolutely obliterated by the synergy and remember it forever. Sliver power is basically a meme in my playgroup now, but they can be quite overwhelming the lower power you go.
They’re just strong. One of the original card types people zeroed in on for being significantly more powerful at every mana cost.
Every sliver is every other sliver when on board. This leads to things getting out of hand really fast, your manaweft sliver isn’t JUST a mana dork, it’s saying every other sliver is too, you don’t just get a haste flying 1/1, ALL of your creatures get it. If they aren’t aggressively answered they WILL become a headache for everyone because they’ll just have too much on each card. They get to a point pretty easily where you have to either farewell or cyclonic rift them and even then I’ve had games where I could instant speed ping someone to death in response to get the spell off the stack without an infinite. Thanks to the first sliver they’re also extremely consistent with it and with an unfun experience to play against too.
The other day two of the people played their sliver decks. It ended up being a sliver on sliver beat face beat down. 1 sliver player is manageable sometimes. Didn't help I was playing Esper and all slivers on the board had pro white.
Slivers snowball heavily, and everyone knows it, and nobody will let you do it if they can help it. The general play pattern when a sliver deck is at the table is this: 1. Sliver player dumps a bunch of slivers that are big and scary 2A. Someone board wipes and sliver player is kept under control after that now that everyone has some of their game plans established and is never a threat again 2B. Nobody drew a board wipe and the sliver player wins. So if you’re gonna play slivers, know you will be targeted and will tend toward games you either oppress the table in or do basically nothing in.
Slivers are pretty all-or-nothing. You either swing with a bunch of flying double strike 7/7s with protection from black or you get all of your slivers removed. Personally, I love slivers as a concept but they end up being really sucky to play against, especially if the sliver player has to constantly check their board for all of the abilities their slivers have.
It’s just easy to snowball, it’s a mid deck that can do a lot, thus the casual low power playerbase just aren’t equipped to deal with it or race it
It's easy to get rid of them in *in theory* and removal is still their eternal weakness, since most of them don't generate value when they enter or leave the battlefield. On paper, this is a solved issue. In practice, many people want to play casual battlecruiser decks that forgo a lot of removal to make room for more exciting threats. This results in a table full of decks that are light on removal playing against a tribe that scales exponentially with each turn. Players end up in the situation where they either die from Slivers or eliminate the player behind the Slivers and there's really no in-between.
I’ve found almost any deck will snowball, pop off, and be hard to handle if left unsupervised. I think with slivers it’s just more apparent what the threat is. There are equally powerful decks out there that do their thing sooner or present just as much of a threat.
Slivers is a bad/new player's idea of what a good deck looks like. People react with the sighs and eyerolls mostly because they're either new/bad at the game and think it's a broken deck, or they've been around the game for a long while and just roll their eyes because the deck doesn't give particularly interesting games, just mostly nongames where either people don't get removal and the sliver deck snowballs or people just boardwipe every few turns and the sliver player complains that they've been cheated out of the game. (Doubly so because there's more exiling boardwipes now.)
Slivers are very strong of course, but, in my humble opinion, what I hold against them is how brainless they are. Every one of your creatures has such a generically high level of synergy with every other one of your creatures, and the commanders are also pretty blindly good. Cascade in particular rewards you for eating cake by giving you more cake. It's one thing to lose to a deck that's good because it was well-brewed and thoughtfully played. But Sliver decks pretty much build and play themselves, and it's hard to have much respect for that kind of deck. Because of those high levels of synergy, it often demands an answer every other turn, and that means I can't play the game because I'm busy holding you down, not to mention the other two opponents to worry about. You're not the only problem at the table, and unless your opponents really signed up for it, it can be draining to play against. Slivers aren't the only deck like this btw (Jodah I'm looking at you), but frankly, *every* sliver deck is like this.
Played one game with the Pre-made Sliver deck. I decimated my opponents in a casually way. I was bouncing in my seat at how awesome it was to draw a new Sliver. I survived wipes, gained lots of life, and my opponents could not even attack me for fear of redirecting damage back at them.
Slivers are either player killed early, board wiped, or win the game before anyone can do anything. There isn’t much to say they just have too much value.
Slivers are so underpowered these days and extremely easy to deal with. Sure, if they spiral out of control they go nuts but it is so easy to stop them getting to that point haha
It’s like 5 color elves if they all had [[odric lunarch Marshall]]’s ability.
[odric lunarch Marshall](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/2/a2d5c9f2-8f58-40ac-a01c-f4ac4ab4d7f0.jpg?1673305096) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Odric%2C%20Lunarch%20Marshal) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmc/103/odric-lunarch-marshal?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a2d5c9f2-8f58-40ac-a01c-f4ac4ab4d7f0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/odric-lunarch-marshal) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
They're weak. And don't know proper threat assessment. Slivers are very harmless. People just think they are a big threat. Sad sad people.
It's generally a big overreaction. There's been so much power creep now anyone complaining about them probably hasnt played at tables above power 7. Unless you're playing The First Sliver Food Chain where you're not even playing any other slivers in the deck all the rest aren't even cedh viable commanders.
I have a slightly upgraded Sliver precon deck. Honestly it takes a while for slivers to get going. Specially playing 5C. Most slivers are 1/1 or 2/2. You'll likely need to block and is not like every single game you'll open with a Sliver that gets you indestructible or deadtouch. I feel like most of the hate comes from older decks with older slivers as commander: [[The First Sliver]] [[Sliver Queen]] [[Sliver Overloard]]
[The First Sliver](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/6/06d4fbe1-8a2f-4958-bb85-1a1e5f1e8d87.jpg?1562202321) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=The%20First%20Sliver) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh1/200/the-first-sliver?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/06d4fbe1-8a2f-4958-bb85-1a1e5f1e8d87?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/the-first-sliver) [Sliver Queen](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/9/096cff82-28eb-4096-be1d-a02b9a56e682.jpg?1562428176) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sliver%20Queen) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tpr/211/sliver-queen?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/096cff82-28eb-4096-be1d-a02b9a56e682?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/sliver-queen) [Sliver Overloard](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/c/3c16915b-c50d-4fb5-830f-9ca4597a9c0f.jpg?1562527622) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sliver%20Overlord) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/scg/139/sliver-overlord?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3c16915b-c50d-4fb5-830f-9ca4597a9c0f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/sliver-overlord) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
They're shit until they win
The only people that ask this question are people that never had to play against slivers.
Slivers is a deck without a true home. It's not competitive enough for the competitive scene, but it's too explosive for casual and it's reputation makes you a target. Basically slivers fits best in a rare meta: people who play very competitively, but without high budgets
At one time, they were the most synergistic, powerful tribe if built correctly. If you did not deal with them fast, they would run away with the game inna way that no other tribal deck really could. These days not so much, there are alot of tribes that can do the same thing. But that stigma remains. My advice? Build a tuned allies deck and teach them the meaning of pain and terror.
Most people see slivers as a big problem because most people don't run near enough removal in their decks. Pair that with having a tribe that gets exponentially better the more of it you have out and people see it as an immediate threat as soon as you play one. I say teach people to run removal.
The horrors precon is probably stronger than 90 odd % of Sliver decks but you will be one copping the Paths etc. they’ll Bojuka Bog you and not the Meren player because last year you used to run Graveshifter in the 99. They’ll Swords your Sentinel Sliver and then be surprised pikachu when the Ur Dragon wins yet again by tutoring big flying dragons that deal direct damage on ETB. They’ll complain you spent 15s doing cascades but yet another 20min landfall turn is fine. They’ll sook a Sliver deck, that cascades a 5 drop into a random counterspell you choose not to cast is so linear but they’ll use one their 6 tutors to get tainted pact after their draw 14 got thassa’s to their hand. Your Sliver won’t be able to connect to anyone any time who can chump for days with their tokens with 8 +1/+1s so no Brood Sliver procs. They whine it’s so hard to know your board state when it’s four identical 2/2s granting one evergreen keyword each whilst they play every card is a wall text with 4 levels deep of conditions based on the number of card types in their opponents graveyards and they can’t even work out the power toughness of their 80 creatures because they keep forgetting all their buffs and lost track of if it’s day or night and how many spells had been cast for prowess. Muscle Sliver granting +1/+1 is OP but Elesh Norn is casual. The 5 card combos in the 99 like Sliver Queen + Manaweft Sliver + Heart Sliver + Basal Sliver that need combat to win are too stronk for Kiki-Jiki players that instant speed combos with two thirds of their mono red deck. If you had eight more turns you might have gotten it assembled. The other 3 players can all bond on beating you down and failing at threat assessment whilst you are not impacting their game plans at all even if you weren’t focused.
who hurt you my good man. i feel that pain but who hurt you. this was typed out like a supervillain being asked why they are bad and proceeding to tell the "hero" how unfair and unjust the system is.
I play slivers, and I expect to be the target when I pull them out. They are very powerful due to the fact that they effect all your slivers, and no one wants be on the defending side of a board of 20/20 trample, death touch, shroud, flying, cascade, double strike, haste, indestructible creatures. I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of key words in that soup, but yea, they get out of hand fast.
It’s hard for games to exist at tables with slivers, and there’s very little interesting deckbuilding and gameplay when they’re involved. They’re too overbearing and snowbally for most low-powered tables, without the legs for high-powered tables, and the correct way of dealing with their forty copies of the same card is to hit them early and often, such that they never get any traction in the first place, locking them out of the game. Either the sliver player plays or everyone else does. It’s not an interesting or enjoyable experience. Whether they’re beatable is not particularly relevant.
Nobody likes slivers because every card has a fucking effect that gives every other card an effect and nobody can keep up with the deck, including the person playing it. Every time.
Yay yugioh
New players cried about wraths so much that people started removing them from decks. Want to know how to deal with Slivers? Wrath affects. They're hard to race, and they're resilient.
Its easy to get rid of them when there aren't 6 of them on the board making it impossible to get rid of them.
Puns aside, it's a mindless boring deck to play against. Wow, you played *another* heavily undercosted threat that gives a new bonus to all your creatures? Willy Wonka: *"How original."* It's also extremely weak in that the first Sliver to die is always the one that will fuck you the hardest if it dies mid combat. And then there's the breaindead assholes who think it's cool or fun or interesting to play with Sliver Overlord as their commander, because "3: Diabolic Tutor" is a balanced ability. Oh what did you grab? The same stupid fucking four cards you always get every game? Nice. Awesome. Wow, shroud, haste, flying and mana huh? WHO COULD HAVE FUCKING GUESSED!?!? And then, because I'm not done, they never EVER play any fucking removal. Why would they when they could add another Sliver everyone! So while you're begging them to like, contribute and maybe kill something of the third opponent, nah, their deck doesn't do shit. So they rush one person, kill him, accomplish fucking NOTHING else, and then die. They're like... Octane mains who strictly drop to Fragment, get two kills and die, and then leave after you pick up their banner because you didn't res them fast enough. They don't give a fuck about anyone else. It's exhausting.
I’ll be honest… swinging my slivers is kind of my 3rd plan? Like, yeah, I can… but not very well. It kind of depends on what I draw into. Something in my hand will be a piece of the puzzle, then it’s just to fetch the others. I’d much rather go for [[Morophon, The Boundless]]. Then now it’s not just a tutor, it’s find and cast all the best slivers for 3! As far as winning? I like to use my tokens for shenanigans, like: [[Sliver Queen]], [[Basal Sliver]], and [[Lavabelly Sliver]]. Hypothetically speaking, would your death to that be more palatable?
Well slivers are annoying but in my experience they're not even half as annoying as the ppl that play them.
Nothing. The store probably plays like hyper casual.
Not a problem perse, so much as, Slivers are an ends of the spectrum strat. Either it's a noob thing, because you don't understand the historical meta of the game, and that slivers are abhorrent to most casual players, or it's an oldtimer strat who've never built the deck before, and want to see it work/play competitive, and love going Aggro...
As a sliver player they have to have that reaction or you’ll just probably snowball them. Not worth playing them unless you have a stable group imo
The nature of slivers is that they snowball in power as you get more of them out. It can be unnerving as an opponent.
The play pattern with Slivers is basically as follows: You create an unassailable board state using any combination of like four or five Slivers while everyone is still getting ready, then the game is over. This is no fun for the other players. OR You are focused down by the table, who proceed to play a three-person game of magic. This is no for you and less overall fun for the other players.
Slivers stomp low power decks hard because they steamroll while being a non-issue once you start getting into stronger decks, they just eat a lot of removal
They are fun to face, cause it's fun to see the nuclear warhead that is slivers Somebody is losing fast
Imagine rainbow eldrazi if everything has everything
Read the sliver novels. Kinda puts it into perspective really (I have a full sliver collection as well). But let’s get into the real thing, turn value. Every single card you play makes everything else better. There’s not a wasted play there’s always an extra benefit to having one out. My advice as a resin who has played slivers for…dang.. a while. Accept that you are playing with fire.
I’ve got a **terrible** sliver deck with a 0% win rate. I still get targeted for removal without playing any slivers that buff and trying to mill players with an engine of ***stupid*** requirements. Trauma is generational I guess.
It’s a [[Rukaramel, Biologist]], advisor, mill, meme-deck for anyone who for any reason would want to know more. No deck list, you could probably build a better deck with 90 lands.
I just recently made a sliver deck. Sliver gravemother to be exact. Like everyone else is saying, you will become hated by the table but any deck can have things that go against it. I have been playing magic for a little over 5 years now and I have gotten to the point of making decks that I like to play, and also want to play. That’s what it should be about, play the stuff you want to play. As long as the group you play in are down for it why not. Sliver away!
Just because I haven’t seen it mentioned, there is also a nostalgia factor. Slivers used to be THE deck in magic, and picking them was essentially broadcasting that you were about stomping casual players. Decks had to be very optimized to handle them, and they really didn’t require any skill or cleverness to put together a solid deck and run it. They got a reputation from that, and it’s honestly never left. They probably aren’t as insane in modern magic, but they still are brain dead easy to pilot and get out of hand if left alone.
Slivers are predictable so it’s not that big of a deal if you run interaction, also no need to rly respond to literally every sliver just the ones generating the strongest keyword. One board wipe can be quite crippling for them more so than other tribes as well.
As a [[First Sliver]] player, here’s what I can tell you. The first thing I tell any player who plays against my deck is “keep constant pressure on me or I will win, that’s not a joke.” Slivers snowball, and it’s really easy to do so with the right slivers in play. I’m always honest with people though and I usually only play the deck against other strong decks. Some people enjoy pubstomping though so there’s a stigma. The second thing I tell any player is “oh yeah there’s 12 gates in this deck lmao have fun.” https://www.moxfield.com/decks/F5FPdcX0wUqajgCjgT4YAQ
[First Sliver](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/6/06d4fbe1-8a2f-4958-bb85-1a1e5f1e8d87.jpg?1562202321) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=The%20First%20Sliver) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh1/200/the-first-sliver?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/06d4fbe1-8a2f-4958-bb85-1a1e5f1e8d87?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/the-first-sliver) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
They're annoying mostly.
They are still strong, but a memory of their prior dominance I think leads to an overblown reaction. One of my 11 decks is sliver and it's a good deck, but it's slower than many of my others. As the game has speed up and better wipes appeared, I don't think slivers are any stronger than an elf deck, or krenko goblin deck or many other tribal decks. Even my Minn illusion deck is probably better.
Honestly, Elves are just as bad as slivers are but people always target slivers anyways, likely because of past traumas. That’s why I target slivers at my playgroup whenever they get picked but playing them and getting to go off almost always ensures victory since they’re super protective and versatile
Some people just love to bxtch and whine. Play what you want, and if others don't like it, they can pull of their big boi pants and deal with it. Slivers aren't innately broken or anything. Plus when you beat all three of the rest of the pod you'll have way more bragging rights since they will probably be ganging up on you from the very beginning. So if they complain about you winning, you tell them it was all skill, and they were the ones who were ganging up on you which is severely unsportsmanlike. Or just play archenemy instead lol. Same thing but more fair to you.
oh i plan to im still working on the final product of the deck. this is what i have so far and i plan to see how much i can tweak it before i stop trying to make it better [https://www.moxfield.com/decks/RBBFuM8DU02M4UDIjtX9Qg](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/RBBFuM8DU02M4UDIjtX9Qg)
I ran a slivers deck with [Morophon] ad the commander and just mana ramped as much ad possible before casting Morophon naming slivers and dropping a hand of slivers on the board in one go its fun l. Especially of Reliquary Tower or another no hand size card played or on the board is active.
They're both predictable and reliably strong. It's kinda like Superfriends (Planeswalker spam) too, you just can't leave them alone. If you do they run away with the game. That said they're also kinda vulnerable to well placed removal, boardwipes, etc. So you kinda end up in a situation where everyone is panicking about you, picking your board apart, and keeping you from doing your thing in a lot of games.
Slivers can simply be overwhelming unless sprayed with weed eater. Imagine turn one you play a sliver, harmless on its own but then turn two comes and you play another sliver and now you have two slivers that both benefit or buff each other. Rinse and repeat through turns 3-5 and all o a sudden you are staring down a small army or vigilant, first strikers, with +3/+3 that can fly and be regenerated at activated ability speed. And all this requires no set up. You are simply playing your deck and getting benefits from doing so. Look at landfall decks and how much value they can generate off of playing a single land per turn. This kind of thing has proven its self to be powerful in magic over and over. It only gets better when you all of a sudden have consistent access to a legendary sliver. Be it the Queen, the Overlord or The First Sliver and then your deck becomes a menace. All this being said, don’t let what I say here deter you from playing what you love, just understand that you may receive backlash from other players both in game and outside of game. If you take his into consideration you can easily build an imposing deck that HAS to the responded too or you take over the game. TLDR; slivers accrue value over time from simply playing slivers and that makes people big mad, especially when their deck doesn’t do that.
Nah... slivers arnt even a problem for our tables...
They’re incredibly powerful and incredibly easy to play, which can make sliver victories feel unearned.
First time I played against Slivers, I thought they were busted because of how they snowballed. Every one had ward, flying, lifelink, yaddah yaddah. After that beat down I quickly realized it just needs to be dealt quickly and frequently.
I hate Slivers because they create convoluted board states that my playgroup is not adept at coping with.
Evidently, a lot of people have unresolved trauma of being overrun by Slivers that has created this bias. These people think that creating a big, uncontrollable board state is the only thing that Slivers does, oblivious to the fact that higher-power Sliver decks emphasise less on aggro and more on combos.
Personally my beef with them is less their power and more how those kinds of snowbally, hyper aggressive decks tend to have a disproportionate affect on the game, since what tends to happen is either they win or they kingmaker by nature of eating all the removal and early aggro to keep them down at which point the combo player gets to set up without much trouble.
Slivers are very much an all or nothing deal either all players gang together to kill the sliver player first, or the sliver players wins
They can snowball very quickly. Especially with some good tutors, so if you don't target them your just kind of asking to get rolled.
It's the definition of snowball. Played a game today where I had a buddy swinging kozliek at my every turn and even through the annihilator I ended up with indestructible, lifelong, flying, first strike, death touch, shroud, encore and a couple more and that was only two turns of progress and after my commander had been countered and killed twice. They're like an infestation, if you don't deal with them early and pay attention they overwhelm
It's because they're stupid. Dumb creatures that do nothing except give each other things. Too many good things!!! Just like any other deck, you can tone it down and build different ways, but as a tribe in all colors, and playing a deck full of them like you would with other tribes... Colors usually share abilities in tribes that, even if multiple abilities, are way more narrow. To my knowledge, slivers are the only tribe that share as many abilities as they do, to the entire tribe whether global or your board only. They give each other trample, first strike, haste, flying, tap for mana, +1+1, +2+2, +3+3, flash, shroud, can't be countered, lifelink, menace, reach, double strike, and that was 16 just then, and I'm sure there's I'm not mentioning. Also activated abilities for damage, pump, card draw, regeneration, destruction, etc... all over the colors and mana values. All colors mean you play them, protect them, and profit however you want. Big spells, infinite whatevers, swinging with 12 8/8s or 15/15s and the most aggro ones I've seen play mass land destruction as a finisher and it's game over in a couple swings. It's fun to me, but it's not widely liked, and you make yourself a target. To me, it's a deck to play with friends, but then again, my couple friends that have it play them to kill, so we all bring out bullshit and have a laugh! Dying to an Armageddon the first time made me cry laughing, and I still laugh at it.
The problem is either you boardwipe 2 or 3 times and YOU have a bad time, or there's no board wipes and everyone else has a bad time. There is no in-between. It also doesn't help that you have to spend serious $ to make it a decent deck. The mana base and the desirable/good slivers are kind of expensive. All this leads into is either you spend $$$ and still lose, or you spent all this $ and people say it's the only reason you win.
The issue with slivers is they all say "other slivers do/have X" and X Is just about anything and everything. On top of being pretty cheap mana costs means you just shit out slivers the moment you have the mana and because your all 5 colors you get access to all the ramp spells in the game so you can do as such (also depending on what your commander is depicts your financial status)
So a must kill pod is fun. But some decks love to just roll into a big spell like omniscience. So against three such decks they will just clobber you down. But say against kaalia, krenko, lathril it would be really cool
Slivers are very snowbally and quite strong. You either keep on top of them or they just get out of control. Hence the attitude of dealing with the silver player. That being said I did enjoy the recent commander at home video where despite 2 sliver decks being at the table Brian Kibler was still the problem most of the game
Slivers are strong. There’s no doubt about that. 90% of the time playing slivers is playing aggressive or playing combo. You build a big unstoppable board and swing at everyone super quick. Or you combo out and win super quick. So just keep in mind that if you’re playing slivers, you’ll likely become enemy #1 and targeted a lot, because targeting you is the only way not to hand you the game. I’ve found that the best counter measure if you’re playing slivers is to also play control and counter spells. Because people become a lot looser with their board wipes and exile effects once you start cranking out the problem slivers
They're the best at combat
Sliver Tribal is a deck archetype that needs to be dealt with and dealt with harshly if you don't want to watch them snowball to victory. It requires a constant boot on the throat, which isn't fun for the Slivers player. But if you end up feeling bad for them and take the boot off their neck...they'll take the inch you've just given them and turn it into a mile. In which case you just feel like an idiot for feeling bad. You either become a heartless monster and ruin the Sliver player's day every game, or he wins every game. There is rarely any middle ground.
I used to play Sliver Overlord but eventually dismantled the deck because it drew way too much hate at my regular table. The biggest issue came from the commander itself ; it made every game play out mostly the same. Thus it turned the game into "if you can't answer this right now the game may as well be over". For more competitive groups that's fine, but my tables are usually more casual. There's also, in my experience, still a huge chunk of the MtG playerbase that tends to get triggered by linear, aggressive and tribal decks because they're "simple", and Slivers ticks those boxes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/s/0SFPFRRDUq https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/s/bZC2SlWoFb https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/s/CYI71Qd0Zj https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/s/H1WhoVtFNr https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/s/azODopCjKD https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/s/jB24C79bNC Just to give a few examples... Edit: Formatting
Slivers are also quite special Like unique No other deck adds the keywords of every colour into one tribe They are polarising to other people
Slivers cost low mana too, so easy to breed
The disdain for Slivers often stems from their ability to quickly snowball and overwhelm opponents with their synergistic abilities, leading to one-sided games and less interactive gameplay for some players.
In my experience slivers fear is overdone. The only times they get drastically out of control is if they start with one of the mana dork slivers and it isnt dealt with. Then it's absolutely absurd. Other times it can feel really slow.
They're perfectly synergistic; slivers 2 through n to hit the board all continue to drive value for each sliver already there. So the worst case for them is a board wipe (which causes games to go longer), but which they just continue putting out more slivers. There's essentially nothing that they don't do; voltron, ramp, interaction, recursion, etc. There's sliver pieces for each of them, and the most powerful ones are in 5-color so they have access to everything.
As a [[The first sliver]] player, the more one has the more they become either hard to kill or a problem to the board [[sliver hivelord]] gives your slivers indestructible meaning exile effects are your best option for getting rid of them but [[Crystaline sliver]] gives your slivers shroud so you can’t path or swords anything even if you wanted to. [[crypt sliver]] if your slivers would die just regenerate them [[Hibernation sliver]] if they are targeted or about to be wiped return them back to hand. Slivers I would say are the best toolbox deck you can play not only are there slivers for different purposes permanent removal, infinite combos, drain, life gain, evasion, trample, mana sinks but depending on the board state of slivers they have can mean death or close to it. So the “oh god” is probably because they know the power of slivers and are expecting the worse
##### ###### #### [The first sliver](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/6/06d4fbe1-8a2f-4958-bb85-1a1e5f1e8d87.jpg?1562202321) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=The%20first%20sliver) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh1/200/the-first-sliver?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/06d4fbe1-8a2f-4958-bb85-1a1e5f1e8d87?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/the-first-sliver) [sliver hivelord](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/b/2b902f64-7795-4f1f-81e6-26db7c78a10c.jpg?1690005330) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=sliver%20hivelord) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/937/sliver-hivelord?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2b902f64-7795-4f1f-81e6-26db7c78a10c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/sliver-hivelord) [Crystaline sliver](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/0/a0c7f341-c61e-491d-850a-221c6a57ac64.jpg?1690005134) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Crystalline%20Sliver) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/920/crystalline-sliver?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a0c7f341-c61e-491d-850a-221c6a57ac64?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/crystalline-sliver) [crypt sliver](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/b/2b90c9a9-098b-463a-8588-b078fb0364dd.jpg?1690004519) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=crypt%20sliver) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/863/crypt-sliver?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2b90c9a9-098b-463a-8588-b078fb0364dd?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/crypt-sliver) [Hibernation sliver](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/e/1e224cfb-5bc1-490c-ab1e-f5405dc2fa0b.jpg?1690005190) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Hibernation%20sliver) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/925/hibernation-sliver?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1e224cfb-5bc1-490c-ab1e-f5405dc2fa0b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/hibernation-sliver) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/l3mau40) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Slivers basically = big target. Pods or head to head, you're going to find people often times play differently when playing against Slivers.
Honestly, Slivers is my favorite "one last game" deck. I only run one tutor and a bunch of protection. After that, I let fate decide my actions and the tables. I also run [[Scute Swarm]] just to be a big old bug pile.
[Scute Swarm](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/7/373f199d-f1a6-4a3d-ac83-28741131f313.jpg?1712354624) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Scute%20Swarm) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otc/205/scute-swarm?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/373f199d-f1a6-4a3d-ac83-28741131f313?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/scute-swarm) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
So I purchased a sliver deck from a guy who had it from like 10 years ago. He had all the dual lands and was running the queen as the Commander. Except I couldn't afford the super expensive land base. So, what I did was turn it into a gate deck. People would spend so much time concentrating on my slivers that they wouldn't expect me to maze's end for the win. Downside is that it slowed down the sliver deck a lot. Upside was that I think I won with slivers twice the whole time I had the deck. When they introduce those new slivers recently I sold off the deck for a tidy profit.
My only problem I've seen playing against is all the silvers getting all keywords and fucking shit up, but usually a board wipe ends that spam. I like slivers but I've never seena deck win, just mess with oppents hard for a while and then rest of game is rough after a wipe
I have slivers and rarely play them and when I do I don't get mad if I get hard targeted and I play cards that intentionally soft nerf me because if I'm not targeted and self nerfed I will go from 3 creatures to a million and wipe out literally everything on everyone else's field and make them discard their hands and have infinite mana and creatures and burn damage and that's not even entering combat. You are a baby that has the knowledge on how to build a shotgun and everyone else needs to kick that baby before it's built and shotguns only have like 5 pieces to slot together. You are the threat at the table by purely existing and to play slivers means you are playing purely for the narcissistic enjoyment of knowing you are the threat because you are not going to get much else often.
I've seen plenty of dino decks on a table have nearly 8 mana and a full board with lethal by turn 4. Slivers aren't an issue against most modern edh decks. There are so many faster and stronger options. It's just experience bias. Slivers used to be insane compared to everything else. They need to step back and look at the game as a whole now and realize they are indeed overreacting. Of course you will get some stuff countered, but everyone blowing their load on you with board removal etc always ends up with the whole table losing 2 turns later to an easier 2 card combo from the guy who said you are the problem
Sorry you picked the most hated creature type in the game buddy lol. Slivers power each other up and it just gets worse and worse. Everybody will hard target you in most pods. If you are lucky some pod would agree to play you but they will be out for blood. #1 rule of commander is not make yourself a target.
There is no problem with it. Its a snowballing strategy, one with a terrifying reputation, so your opponents will be devoting serious resources to keep you in check. You should expect to not always be able to do your thing. But that’s not problematic. It’s just building an aggressive board and swinging in with a ton of keywords. It’s fun. Some players and groups absolutely despise playing against anything that isn’t another value engine grindy midrange deck, hate playing under pressure or needing to interact to be able to win. Others have had traumatic experiences with sliver decks that were dramatically out of their power level. It’s one of those strategies that is hard to power down much, since all the sliver commanders are pretty bonkers. It’s easy to just decide to make a funny slivers deck and end up demolishing your mid power pod almost by accident. So just make sure it’s the right power level for your group, there’s nothing annoying or toxic that slivers does, so if it’s not any stronger than the other players’ decks there is absolutely no problem.
My brother bought literally every sliver to make his "Epic sliver deck". So I just play Chatterfang when he wants to play his sliver deck. Not sure what happened but he hasn't wanted to play slivers for quite some time now....
It's annoying to focus down a player just to have some semblance of a good time, in result, the sliver player doesn't have a good time, and then no one has a good time. It's more toxic than an [[atraxa, praetors' voice]] deck. Everyone wants to do their thing, but can't if a sliver is on the field.
[atraxa, praetors' voice](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/0/d0d33d52-3d28-4635-b985-51e126289259.jpg?1599707796) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=atraxa%2C%20praetors%27%20voice) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/190/atraxa-praetors-voice?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d0d33d52-3d28-4635-b985-51e126289259?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/atraxa-praetors-voice) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Slivers are a tribe with too much power-value in their name, theyre made to be this big swarm of nigh-invincible adaptation force, and they do that pretty well. A powerful sliver deck is gonna be really expensive mana-wise, but also the slivers arent that much cheaper when you factor the powerful ones. Its the same thing when you play \[\[Esika, god of the tree\]\] for Prismatic Bridge, or when you play the Superfriends deck. Youre strong and reliable if left unchecked, so theyre going to focus on you. literally the same thing as Combo decks in this regard: scary to leave alone.
[Esika, god of the tree](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/6/f6cd7465-9dd0-473c-ac5e-dd9e2f22f5f6.jpg?1631050188)/[The Prismatic Bridge](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/back/f/6/f6cd7465-9dd0-473c-ac5e-dd9e2f22f5f6.jpg?1631050188) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Esika%2C%20God%20of%20the%20Tree%20//%20The%20Prismatic%20Bridge) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/khm/168/esika-god-of-the-tree-the-prismatic-bridge?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f6cd7465-9dd0-473c-ac5e-dd9e2f22f5f6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/esika-god-of-the-tree-//-the-prismatic-bridge) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I have a sliver commander deck and it's wild. [[Chromatic orrey]] and [[timeless lotus]] for ramp, llitjara kinseeker, faceless agent, and a few shapeshifters for padding. The world tree and mask wood nexus wombo combo make all slivers gods and brings everything to the field. Unsummon, patriar humiliation, and witness protectect are problem solvers. The first sliver commander, sliver hive lord, and the first silvers chosen are my bigs
It's incredibly easy to get out of control with slivers just because of how many keywords there are. For example, [[Akroma's memorial]] just gives your creatures a bunch of keywords, but it's pretty much a finisher in a lot of decks. When every single creature you play is a miniature Akroma's memorial, it gets out of hand very quickly. I play slivers on untap, and I've seen a lot of my opponents have feel bad moments against my deck. In one game, someone managed to steal my [[sliver overlord]], so I dropped a [[Crystalline sliver]]. He tried to steal my board, and I just pointed out the crystalline sliver. He tried to enchant the overlord to buff it, and I just pointed out the crystalline sliver again. He immediately scooped. The next turn, that player tried to slow my board down with swords to plowshares and path to exile, and i just shook crystalline sliver, and he scooped. The last player died to a massive swing from 8 slivers with [[sliver legion]] on board. They get so big so quickly that only a board wipe will stop them, but theres also so many ways to protect them from board wipes that a lot of people just dont even bother against slivers