As seen on The Commander Tavern, here is my First sliver deck. This is my favorite and first commander deck i ever built. Having built it since June 2019 after i put it off for months i finally decided to make my first commander deck. Then modern horizons comes out and changed everything. First sliver got spoiled and from then on i was determined to make it the commander to my sliver army.
Now as for the hurdles for this deck. One of the bigger ones was getting the right amount of everything i wanted in the deck. When i say this, what i mean is, getting the appropriate converted mana cost so the cascade chain doesn't dud and if it duds its not the end of the world. So without further ado here's a detailed explanation of what makes slivers , slivers.
The Mana:
Slivers being a five color deck leads to some issues thats why included the 11 fetchlands and the 10 shocklands to have maximum consistency. The number of times i dont have all my colors by turn 5 is abysmally low. We are running five basics, one of each type, in the case of a blood moon player in the meta and they still enter untapped. From there we have ten lands that tap for any color, given some of them have some restrictions for example Ancient Ziggurat and Exotic Orchard but more often than not with the fecthes you can fix your own colors. Lastly we have one oddball inclusion and its place in the deck is wavering as i keep looking for improvements but the card is Rootbound Crag Considering the two colors i play the most in the deck are red and green i wanted one more way to have that mana available. But given the low amount of lands that can tap for any color and serve in the deck we're working with what we have.
The slivers:
So here we have the meat and bone of the deck. The namesake of the archetype. Slivers. When i first started playing magic i saw slivers and for sure i fell in love with the mechanic that all of em shared, that is, all of them. The ability to essentially give banner effects for free is insane and thus love for these wurm like creatures began. The deck constitutes of 41 slivers, all of them have a reason to be there be it to make our creatures unblockable or close to it ala; Belligerent Sliver,Cloudshredder Sliver, Galerider Sliver, Horned Sliver, Shifting Sliver and Striking Sliver and all of the banner +x/+x slivers we're running that essentially make it virtually annoying as all hell to block. We're running the two slivers that gives us lifelink Syphon Sliver and old lifelink Essence Sliver so if both are out on the field we get even more hit points back from tapping out and going sideways at people.
I'm also running some of the single target sliver like Constricting Sliver and Harmonic Sliver but the keyword i wanna get across with this deck is versatility. We have slivers that protect the others, ala shroud or taxing our opponents for targeting them or straight up making them indestructible. Lastly as is the norm for a sliver deck, all of the legendary five color slivers are in the deck. They're there so our chains can go down from five to get even more slivers in play and overwhelm our opponents. One of the other good additions of modern horizons is the honorary sliver Morophon, the Boundless since it not only makes our other slivers cost one to two colors off it can make our legendary ones cost 0 and making us cascade to new levels. Lastly were also playing the three hast slivers as one of our win conditions since the deck runs 3 recover the board from the graveyard cards and overall accelerates our wins dramatically plus the all star level of power provided with Rhythm of the Wild since it gives us protection from counter spells and gives us haste or even more power if need be.
Ramp:
Deck's running 4 ways to give our creatures the ability to tap for any color these are: Song of Freyalise, Cryptolith Rite, Gemhide Sliver and Manaweft Sliver. This way we can get our commander out as soon as possible before anyone can get the opportunity to do something and we can snowball away with the game. Decks also running some mana reductions such as Herald's Horn and Urza's Incubator for the none legendary slivers so we can cast multiple after our commander is out and get out as many slivers as possible. Other ramp spells we're running consist of our Chromatic Lantern to color fix us in case of worst case scenarios like blood moon, Coalition Relic since with this we can get our commander out a turn earlier and get even more creatures out, Arcane Signet to again fix our color needs if need be and lastly playing Burgeoning since we are playing some wheel effects so we can refuel our hand while making our opponents plays more jittery as they didn't plan to loose that hand, plus its one of the ways we can make some hyper ramp and do some explosive plays for turn two.
Wheels and draws:
The decks running 4 draw spells since the nature of our commander makes it so we always have some sort of card advantage over them and drawing isn't as needed as in other decks where the commander does not give us some amount of card advantage. The two that seem out of place are Ancestral Vision and Wheel of Fate, you might be asking why are we playing suspend cards. Well with the way cascade works we cast these cards we dont have to run through the hoops of suspending them. So playing a one drop with the commander out guarantees that about 2/3 of the time you'll draw about 3 cards. The last two draw spells in the deck are; Windfall and Distant Melody. Windfall is in the deck do to the fact that halfway through i didnt have the budget to buy a wheel of fortune so r.i.p but thus far since in my meta most people have about 5 cards in hand its not as bad but could be better. Then there's distant melody who for 4 mana can draw upwards of 8 to 10 cards at once which def helps the deck by allowing us to get even more fuel from our deck.
Recovery/boardwipes:
Lastly in the deck we have 4 effects that bring our graveyard back to life, these are Living End, Living Death, Dregscape Sliverand Patriarch's Bidding. As we mentioned before in the card draw section we established that about 2/3s of the time you would draw cards well here's the reason why, we're running living end. Living end serves as another way of us recovering our slivers while getting rid of all the pesky buggers our opponents might have. Same goes with living death only that its five mana so cascading into is also very hard thus we don't run as much to this card. Lastly we're playing the bidding because again in commander you wanna run multiple cards that do the same thing over and over so we're running one more. This one however does not pseudo board wipe but is what it is. Then comes technically one of the win conditions of the deck which is dregscape since with a lot of mana this card can settle the game in the final moments when we're missing some damage to cross the winning line.
Other than the pseudo board wipes we're running Kindred Dominance since at 7 mana it's not gonna be cascaded into and can serve as a one sided board wipe a la cyclonic. Cyclonic would be the better card 9/10 but given the cascade nature it stops the chain cold and the negatives outweigh the positives. As for prevention we're running the ultimate no in the format, Teferi's Protection. Card's insane since it keeps us warm and cozy in a protector layer of absolute protection from anything our opponents might do.
Do keep in mind this deck is a midrange deck and typically wins at around turn 4 to 6 if the deck goes longer than that you can still pull ahead out of nowhere since slivers are incredibly resilient especially thanks to the board revives the deck runs. I've dealt over the 1000's on turn 4 and have recovered from being archenemy to being a no one on the board to winning out nowhere. Happy commanding and any suggestions/ questions such as budget alternatives or improvements ill be happy to answer!
