MTG Combo: Ashnod's Altar + Sliver Queen

TCK_Green on Sliver Queen - infinite combo

4 years ago

Fun deck - I like my slivers chunky! Some quick thoughts/suggestions:

• What's your win-con if someone has something like a Crawlspace or Norn's Annex out? Ashnod's Altar + Sliver Queen already gives you infinite ETBs and LTBs, maybe add Impact Tremors/Bastion of Remembrance/etc as an alternative win-con :)
• It might be worth adding Phyrexian Altar alongside your Ashnod's Altar
• Anointed Procession gives you twice as many slivers to work with, meaning the ETB/LTB works with Phyrexian Altar as well as Ashnod's Altar - as well as many other cards
• Be very careful with Harmonic Sliver and infinite slivers - it's not a 'may'! It's fine if you stack your triggers so all of your slivers destroy the same artifact/enchantment, otherwise you might be forced to destroy your own stuff. (Alternatively, you could go super-mean and add a copy of Enchanted Evening alongside Harmonic Sliver to destroy all of your opponents permanents...)
• If you decide that you'd rather go down the non-infinite route, Vanquisher's Banner is a great card to make sure you're always drawing more gas! Cycling lands would also help that draw issue.
• Speaking of - the new triome cycle that is coming up in Ikoria (e.g Indatha Triome) will fit very nicely in your deck! They've also got all of the land types so can be fetched by more types of fetchland - not that you've got those in the deck :)
• Mind if I ask why Hive Stirrings is in the deck?
• FYI Quicksilver Amulet does the same as Belbe's Portal in this deck - though it costs more mana after the first activation :) Since you have Sliver Queen as your preferred 5-drop, it might be worth swapping the artifacts so that you have a 4-drop 'instant summoner' instead of a 5-drop. It also gives you plays even if you're stuck on 4 lands.
• I'm glad you haven't added Cathars' Crusade! It's a very powerful card for this type of deck, but I'll be the first to tell you that it's incredibly painful trying to keep track of all the +1/+1 counters.

You mentioned being unsure about the number of lands/mana rocks - most people operate on a '40 lands minus (number of rocks)/3' basis. Since you've got 7 forms of mana (I'm not counting Gilded Lotus since the top of your curve is 5 mana) this means 38 lands is probably about right. I've got a Narset deck with 36 lands, but that has 14 mana rocks! (Speaking of, Coalition Relic is a really great mana rock, especially when you need different colours of mana.)

(If you're really wanting to optimise your mana base, then it's worth thinking when you're likely to play certain cards. [T1->land, T2->land+rock] means that you'll have 4 mana to play with on T3 instead of the usual 3. If you have loads of 2CMC rocks then that means you'll probably want to have more 4CMC spells instead of 3CMC spells - but I don't think that level of mana optimisation is something you need to worry about in this deck or in casual EDH!)

I notice that you've not got any land-ramp in the deck even though you have green available. I'd really encourage you to add some cards like Cultivate and Kodama's Reach, since they also act like card draw as well as ramp, and mean you're much more likely to hit your 5 lands on T5. Also, people are much less likely to steal or destroy your lands than your artifacts, and using land-based ramp means you're in a much better situation to catch back up if someone Cyclonic Rifts the battlefield.

Hope that's given you some food for thought. Let me know if you want me to clarify any of the above!