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Cascade Like There's No Tomorrow

This isn't like other The First Sliver Decks

(This is a work in progress and I'm always looking for help and suggestions on how to improve it. Please comment and every upvote helps for exposure! For the swarm)

Swarming, Fast Recovery, Abuse Suspended Pseudo-Power 9, Abuse ETBs/Cast Triggers. We want to include as MANY Slivers as possible so we can cascade AS MUCH AS possible and we want to finish everyone off AS EARLY AS possible. That's why we have more slivers than other lists you'll encounter (45 total, including changelings). This deck has the speed and swarming ability of Edgar Markov and the ceiling, climax and recovery of Maelstrom Wanderer, (decks which are both played by my friends).

  • Click the 'Playtest Button' to give it a try!

Slivers:

I've researched ALL the slivers to include the ones I most recommend (in terms of mana-cost for cascading and abilities) including: evasion, buffing/damage, protecting your board and general utility. I have considered mana cost in choosing the slivers to ensure maximum cascading. There are also several changeling spells which will also cascade and are powerful inclusions. These are the creatures I have included to ensure utility and aggression; I've excluded many defensive slivers as a result. (Also, 1 Purphoros, God of the Forge is included so that each cascade you undergo ends up doing 6-8 damage around the board).

Non-Slivers:

I've made sure that there are not many non-sliver cards so we can cascade as much as possible, but the ones I have included are extremely powerful enablers (mana-fixing, draw, pump or free casting). A lot of the non-sliver spells are 5 cost so you wont hit them and end the cascade chain (we want to cascade off the 4-5 drop slivers). The 4 and 3 drop non-sliver spells are there because they're too good not to include. Note, Crib Swap is a changeling and is therefore a kill spell that can cascade like a sliver.

Mana base:

A lot of the lands are 5 colour, we have 4 fetches for basics (Prismatic Vista, Terramorphic Expanse, Evolving Wilds), 10 tri-lands and 2 hide-away lands (conditions on which are easy to meet for slivers and also result in cascading as the hide-away card is 'cast'). I also love Volrath's Stronghold in this deck because you can stack the top of your deck with cards from your grave to optimise cascading. Bojuka Bog is great in dealing with decks that can loop fogs/ wipes. I ran Cascading Cataract for a while but after a while I realised it was not that good as it normally provides colourless mana and when you DO use the ability, you lose 1 land worth of mana. In a 5 colour deck, each land drop is crucial and the deck can fix colours pretty well on its own. By the same reasoning Chromatic Lantern was also removed (also it slows the deck down).

I only run 5 basics (one of each colour), though I aim to adjust this, considering we run 4 basic fetches as well as Kodama's Reach and Cultivate. I may replace Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse with Transguild Promenade and Rupture Spire, weighing up whether this issue of limited basics is more restrictive, or the slowness of these two lands is more restrictive.

The mana base was mostly chosen for 2 reasons: budget and consistency. In play-testing, the slow lands haven't been too much of a problem that much because your big payoff turn is 4, 5 or 6; if u sequence the lands correctly it doesn't get in the way that much. Even if you're a bit slow and don't play many slivers early on its fine, because you're mainly building up to those pay off turns. Potential options for the future that are not so budget include: shocks, fetches and duals.

If I had to compare, I'd say that this deck is halfway between Edgar Markov and Maelstrom Wanderer. Like Maelstrom Wanderer, you can have slow starts sometimes, but like vampires, at other times you can have fast starts and swarm the board.

Why do we have so many two drop slivers? Won't this end our cascade chain?:

First, in the case of The First Sliver getting nuked, we also need to be able to play the deck without cascade.

Though, more importantly, having so many makes it likely that we can cascade into a 0 cost spell. We have a base-line of 0 mana cost spells. If you cascade into a 3 drop or lower sliver while the First Sliver is on board, you'll 100% guarantee to cascade into one of the 3 suspend spells: Ancestral Vision, Mox Tantalite *f-etch*, Lotus Bloom. This is because there are no non-sliver spells in the deck lower than 3 mana cost EXCEPT these 3. In doing so (on turn 5, 6 or 7) you'll greatly accelerate, having literally just played power 9. As you may have gathered, we aim to kill our opponents ASAP; this acceleration is one way the deck gets there.

I am also considering and testing:

(Many of these are excluded merely due to a lack of space)

  • Diffusion Sliver: I find that in the late game, Diffusion Sliver does little because opponents usually just pay the extra 2 to hit one of our key pieces or just blow the whole board away. The same reasoning goes for Unsettled Mariner. However, in a spot-removal heavy meta, in the early game these two cards may be crucial in protecting The First Sliver so that you can go off on your cascade chains. After a few games with my friends (and some very explosive wins out of no where) they have caught on to the fact that they NEED to kill The First Sliver as soon as they see it.

  • Mirari's Wake: we have the colours. Not only is this a pump spell but it's also an incredible mana doubler and does not risk being cascaded into at 5 cmc. It's also much cheaper than Zendikar Resurgent. Only downside to this is that, as a top deck, it doesn't do much. We would play this if we could make room for it.

  • Blasphemous Act + Spiteful Sliver Combo: This is an interesting instant kill that could take out everyone at once (given you have enough slivers) and at a cheap cost as well (as Blasphemous Act's cost is reduced for each creature on board). It's important to note that Spiteful Sliver is good for the deck's defensive side and Blasphemous Act can be a good way to wipe out the opponent's board when you're behind/ have protection. There is also no risk of cascading into it, which is also a plus. However, the downside is that if someone has Teferi's Protection or Angel's Grace this could be a big blow out for us as all our creatures will die (unless we have a protection piece). Additionally, you may find Blasphemous Act to be a dead card in hand in a lot of situations. More testing is needed to analyse the risk:benefit of this combo. If this were to be included, tutors would become more necessary to draw out the Blasphemous Act.

  • Yawgmoth's Will: This may be a GREAT means on recovering if we get blown out. Or it can be a quick way to get back key slivers. However, its low cost risks ruining the cascade chain and you might cascade into it when it is not ideal (e.g. if you have no mana to cast any more slivers).

  • Telekinetic Sliver: this can work to stop voltron kills/ kills from big creatures by simply tapping a sliver down. We can also use this card to tap a whole team down and go in for the kill. However, this card encourages playing too safe and (regarding going in for the kill) evasion slivers just simply work better.

  • Door of Destinies: as another pump tool, though it might be too slow, compared to Shared Animosity or Coat of Arms.

  • Phyrexian Reclamation: as a recovery option. This is a cheap enchantment that you can use multiple times. The only problem with this is that, because of its cheap cmc, it might be a risk to ending your chain to a 0 cmc card.

  • Might Sliver and Battle Sliver: These are sliver lords excluded because the benefits they provide are outweighed by their cmc. They do, however, cascade well. In saying that, they rely on The First Sliver abit TOO much. These can be included subject to space.

  • Nihil Spellbomb: Slivers can completely lose to continual loops of field wipes or fogs. The only way to stop this is if we kill the opponent before they set up the loop or if we exile their graves at the right time. Nihil Spellbomb can be cascaded into but has the secondary purpose of can-tripping.

  • Teferi's Protection: This may be one of the best cards in EDH and can protect against all manner of one turn kills/ instant losses. It may be the protection we need from combo decks. However, cascading into it can be very detrimental as it'll end our turn essentially.

  • Homeward Path: The downside is that this land gives no colours, so it's a terrible early draw. The upside is that it'll prevent our deck scooping on the off chance that Sliver Overlord gets stolen.

  • Tutors and Mana Rocks: These increase consistency of colours, ramp, finding situational slivers, and enchantments and can set up cascades. However, they do pose a risk to ending the cascade chain. Cost/Benefits are subject to ongoing tests.

I am open to more suggestions and look forward to testing more cards I haven't previously considered!

What To Do:

Your goal is to overwhelm everyone and end the game as soon as possible. This is done via massive unblockable slivers. You can potentially have a nuts turn and take everyone out at once or just pick each player off one by one and recover in between. How do we get there? If you're going to play The First Sliver, you might as well cascade like there's no tomorrow. Look for windows of opportunities to kill everyone. Don't go off too early and don't go off too late.

This deck is good in a multiplayer game and good against 1 v 1 aggro, but less good against 1 v 1 control.

The deck's strength is its commander. The deck's weakness, however, is also its commander. We can play without The First Sliver, however the commander is what makes this deck unique and powerful. Playing without it slows the deck down drastically. Protect your commander at all costs. Though, if it does die, you do get to cascade again by recasting it.

Note: it's advisable to kill the players who have board wipes first, especially those with Cyclonic Rift or Evacuation because they're instant speed (we lose a lot of tempo and hasty slivers won't save us), regeneration and indestructible don't work.

It's important that you make a strong board, both power-wise and resiliency-wise. The First Sliver is already a good card for this; with so much cascading, you'll end up seeing a large amount of the deck, including all the slivers you need. To increase consistency we have Sliver Overlord, Hollowhead Sliver and Homing Sliver as well as a copy of Bring to Light and Congregation at Dawn. CONSISTENCY IS KEY; the deck needs its protection pieces in case of blow-outs. I cannot stress this enough; the deck needs to consistency do what it's designed to do and weakness comes from only being able to do it SOMETIMES. For utility we have Shapesharer and Dregscape Sliver.

A go-to search is a sliver that gives your team haste (Cloudshredder Sliver, Heart Sliver or Blur Sliver) and a sliver that gives your team mana (Manaweft Sliver or Gemhide Sliver). If you have The First Sliver on board, you'll be able to cast a sliver, cascade, get more hasty mana from your cascades, rinse and repeat. It's also a good idea to fetch for a Crystalline Sliver or any slivers that protect individual slivers from kill spells.

Mulligan:

You want 3-5 lands in your opening hand. Any more than 5 is bad and any less than 3 is equally bad. You also need to make sure your lands hit all the colours (obviously). Best is 4 lands with a piece of ramp and some cheap slivers. When considering mulligans, the land count is the focus.

  • 5 lands is manageable as long as the other 2 cards are playable slivers or enablers (or just great cards for when The First Sliver is on board): it's not critical you play anything before your commander comes down. Like Maelstrom Wanderer the deck can be slow on early turns, though is explosive on later turns. However, any more than 5 lands is bad because you don't want to risk sitting there for 5 turns doing nothing.

  • 3 lands is keepable as long as you have some decent, cheap plays or ramp. 3 lands is the minimum, as if you have 2 lands all the non-sliver ramp you might draw would be offline (the cheapest being at a 3 cost).

If you open with a suspend card it's not the end of the world! In fact, it's great. Cascading into a suspect card may guarantee a pseudo-power card on the spot, but playing them on turn one guarantees the effect on turn 4 or 5 anyway. Sure, you're down a card, but it could be worse. The suspend cards on resolving on turn 4 or 5 might just give you the boost you need to go into The First Sliver. However, please do note that the late game potency of your deck will be reduced.

The Plan:

Turn 1-4/5 get up to 5 mana while playing some cheap slivers. Attack some people while you're at it. Turn 4/5 play your commander. From turn 6 onward, go nuts. In these later turns it might even just be a good option to hold back from attacks and just cascade until you get all your protection and evasion so you can guarantee some kills without risking your board. If you hold back and just cascade you'll also be able to get the full effects of all the 0 cmc pseudo-power cards. If your meta has a lot destruction it might be advisable to play some protection before you cast The First Sliver. You can either wait or search. Alternatively, you can just ignore any threat of destruction and cast The First Sliver to cascade into the protection you need. In the early game the deck is carried by the pseudo-power, while in the late game, its carried by its resiliency, recovery tactics and the advantage you get from high cmc non-sliver spells.

Late Game:

If you haven't killed your opponents yet, it gets a bit rough from here. However, the deck's resiliency and recovery is what will get you ahead in the grind. The deck is fast but can also benefit from being played slow. In fact some of the best plays comes from waiting for the right moment to strike. Quick Sliver shines in the late game where you can get some surprise kills by amassing giant boards at the end of your opponent's turn out of nowhere. Hasty slivers can also work towards surprise kills. Hold these cards in your hand without revealing too much.

  • In a late game without wrath effects, ensure your evasion pieces are protected. This is key in finishing your opponents off. If you can protect these pieces of evasion, just cascade a few times for a big board and swing away. Kill any body capable of killing you quickly first. The damage ceiling of this deck is high and can kill as quick as some of the quickest decks, thanks to Sliver Legion, Magma Sliver, Bonescythe Sliver, Fury Sliver, Mirror Entity, Shared Animosity and Coat of Arms. Combining this with Kindred Dominance can be savage. Constricting Sliver is great here and can remove an opponents whole board within a few cascades, letting you attack relentlessly without fearing backlash. Equilibrium is also good as removal. This can potentially remove multiple creatures or even whole boards with a few good cascades. Better than Harsh Mercy as if you cascade into it you don't necessarily have to use its ability immediately. In a battle of attrition Ward Sliver, Thorncaster Sliver or Brood Sliver is what you need. Ward Sliver is also good in these cases doubling as protection from removal and evasion. Synapse Sliver is great for replenishing the hand and gaining long-term advantage. It's also 5 mana-cost and thus great for cascading. To prevent decks that can one-turn-kill or voltron decks, Sentinel Sliver is very useful, as you'll have blockers after you swing; so is Crib Swap. Against prison decks, you'll need to rely on your disruptive cards such as Necrotic Sliver.

  • In a late game WITH wrath effects, it's much harder. You'll be excessively reliant on the slivers that protect your board. If you can stabilise with these, you'll be fine. If not, you'll be in a bit of a pickle. Strategically it's good to team up with other aggro players to kill whoever's got the wipes (being in the best of all your interests). If you do this, you can then make short work of the players without wipes. If this isn't possible or the remaining player(s) all have wipes, you can rely on Lavabelly Sliver and Purphoros, God of the Forge as well as attempting one turn kills with hasty slivers. Combine this with cascading and graveyard return effects for the best results. This alone can overwhelm opponents. Sometimes it might be better to sit-back and do nothing until you can set-up all your resources to achieve this. Patriarch's Bidding in these circumstances can be brutal for most decks without many creatures. Mesmeric Sliver is useful in the late game if you can do multiple fate-seals against your opponents to remove their wipes. I personally don't play Mindlash Sliver though this is also a damaging card against control decks. Against control decks that are also combo decks, just get as much dps as possible. Apart from that, we can't really interact with their combo. Politically, it should be fine as they will likely just end up as the archenemy anyway.

Blow Outs and Recovery:

Sometimes other players will feel an urge to blow up your board. To counteract that we have Sliver Hivelord, Frenetic Sliver, Crypt Sliver and Hibernation Sliver. Though, even when you don't have these cards, the deck can recover very fast. This can be attributed to the boost you get from the 'power nine cards' as well as the enchantments that draw you cards for each creature you cast/ each creature that enters the battlefield. With a hand full of goodies, you'll be back to full power in no time. Do not overextend your board; that means keep some high cmc slivers in hand as a recovery option and don't always activate your hide-away lands if you don't need to. If worse comes to worse, we also have a copy of Patriarch's Bidding to resurrect everything. We also have other resurrection effects, including Volrath's Stronghold and Graveshifter or even Dregscape Sliver. Phyrexian Reclamation is currently being tested as a recovery option as well.

The worst situations are ones involving non-generic wrath effects such as Cyclonic Rift or Evacuation. As stated above, this is because they're instant speed (we lose a lot of tempo and hasty slivers won't save us), regeneration and indestructible don't work. The former is particularly bad as it bounces your expensive enchantments/artifacts. However, most of the time you can just replay your hand. Regeneration and indestructible also don't work in the case of exiling wraths, such as Winds of Abandon and Merciless Eviction. In these cases it's very hard to recover. What matters is what you do to prepare for these. Do not over-extend your board by wasting your hand and ensure you have the slivers that will save the team, such as Frenetic Sliver and Hibernation Sliver.

Edit (27/06/19): Strategically, I would actually like to correct myself and suggest that in a wrath heavy meta, it is CRUCIAL to wait for your protection pieces before going off with The First Sliver, UNLESS you are certain you can kill people then and there. Sometimes you'll find it very difficult to recover if you over extend. Use your acceleration and dig cards to find your pieces while applying light pressure by summoning a few expendable slivers.

Note: Holding a Quick Sliver and a sliver with recovery or protection is really powerful as it allows you to respond at instant speed to your opponent's wipe while also surprising them. After this, it is not uncommon to be able to punish them the next turn. Wipes can take a while to set up and so it's actually quite likely to have all the pieces you need when the time is right. I am currently experimenting with more tutors in the deck to ensure that this can happen consistently.

  • Syphon Sliver: We don't have many 4 drops in the deck for max cascading, so to fix that I replaced Syphon Sliver with a 4 drop that does the same thing (Essence Sliver). In regards to non-essential sliver effects, such as lifelink, if we have to option of higher cmc we will go with it because we want to cascade into it less as well. Also, lifelink doesn't stack.

  • Root Sliver: With so many cascades, most times it won't matter if a single sliver dies to a counter. Though this may be a tech in a extremely counterspell dense meta.

  • Harmonic Sliver: This card can blow out artifact/ enchantment strategies single handedly. However, its ability is a MUST, so unless you're facing a full artifact based deck, Harmonic Sliver will work to destroy your own enchantments/ artifacts and shut off this deck's acceleration. However, this is a sure include in the sideboard.

  • Dormant Sliver: This deck has been designed to be completely aggressive and less defensive. In the case of problem cards that try kill us too quick, we have one-sided board wipe sorceries, Necrotic Sliver, Constricting Sliver and Crib Swap. In the case of a meta that may be TOO aggressive, Sentinel Sliver and Equilibrium might be a potential include. As for Dormant Sliver, we don't have enough sac effects/kill spells to remove it; this could lead us to potentially missing a window of opportunity to kill everyone.

  • Harsh Mercy: A stunner against other aggro decks. It lets you knock them out without risking your own board. However, in testing it I've found it not to be as good as I thought. I'm not sure if its purely because I'm incredibly unlucky or not, but this card has been turning up at in the wrong situations, as well as ending my cascades prematurely. By wrong situation, i mean this: when I'm facing another tribal deck, I cascade into it and it does nothing. OR when me and other aggro decks team up together to take down a wrath deck, it kills everyone's creatures and slows our plan down. OR when I'm up against a creature-less deck or a deck with few creatures, it ends my cascade chain and achieves nothing. The card is too cheap and is easily cascaded into while also being so situational that you risk cascading into it at the wrong moment.

  • Chromatic Lantern: Worse card to cascade into and, for the most part, the deck is already good at self-fixing its colours.

  • Sliver Queen: This card is too expensive, while its ability does not have much pay-off in the deck. Paying 2 mana to create a vanilla is too expensive; this deck is very conservative on mana. For less mana we can cascade into the same amount of slivers with actual effects.

  • Morophon, the Boundless: This card is too expensive, gives only +1/+1 to all slivers and the cost reduction effect is too narrow. Most of the time it'll only reduce the cost by 1. Some times it'll reduce the cost to 0 (for Crystalline Sliver and our 5 coloured boss slivers), but this assumes you have those cards in hand. Besides, we already reduce costs to 0 via the cascade mechanic. More testing is still needed with this card.

  • Slivers with sac effects: Although some can be quite powerful, e.g. Basal Sliver, we want to mostly maintain our board and go as wide as possible and as aggressive as possible. This is the case even if you have 2 flying slivers and the effect doesn't stack; each sliver on board is important, especially if your opponent can ping some off. Also, again, because our mana base is relatively constrained, we don't want to be spending mana for the sac effects that cost us. Furthermore, I generally avoid slivers with tap effects unless they're REALLY GOOD because it slows down our aggression.

  • Other great slivers: Sedge Sliver is great as a lord as well as a way to protect, but in this build we can't guarantee that it'll be online due to the low number of swamps. Also, the cost to use its protection ability is far too expensive and specific. I like the interaction between Venom Sliver and Striking Sliver, giving all your slivers first strike + death touch is nothing to scoff at. However, each of them on our their own are not so good for our strategy. Striking Sliver is dead when we have a double striker and the sliver being 1 cost reduces our chances of cascading into Galerider Sliver, an important piece of evasion. Each cascade chain, you have 1/4 chance of cascading into Galerider Sliver if you hit a 3 cmc sliver (because there are only 4 cards below 2 cmc in the deck and all cards below 3 cmc, except the 3 power cards, are slivers). We avoid using Venom Sliver because we don't want to play defensively and hold our slivers back as a chump wall. We want to be aggressive and get in. Although at times death touch will help you get in (as opponents won't want to lose their creatures), we for the most part would just like to spend the slot on something that will guarantee evasion. Also, in a pinch, the opponent will end up blocking with their creatures regardless; we don't want to give them that option. Finally, Opaline Sliver is excluded because, despite deterring our opponents from targeting our slivers, it does not completely stop them. Every kill spell they shoot at us might draw us a card, but most of the time this doesn't matter to our opponents when they're taking out one of our key pieces. Although, this does nothing to stop board wipes.

I'll be happy to include why I haven't included some cards as more are brought up in the comments.

Note:

I play in a casual meta and we don't play with powerful stuff such as non-power Moxes, Mana Crypt, Sol Ring or Mana Vault (for balancing reasons), but these are some good inclusions.

I also personally avoid discard effects because some members of my meta don't enjoy them too much. Otherwise I highly recommend Mindlash Sliver as another 1 cost sliver to include (to potentially strip everyone's answers). Mindlash Sliver has great synergy with Mesmeric Sliver to potentially lock players out of the game. Dementia Sliver is also an interesting tech.

  • Coming soon!: Cascade percentage analytics (maybes: tutors/manarocks)

Please upvote to stay tuned! Upvoting also helps with exposure, so we can get feedback and improve the deck. Please feel free to comment with any feedback as well!

  • Happy cascading lads.

Suggestions:

aura shards, kira great glass spinner, shalai, teferi x 2, grand abolisher, inevitable betrayal, profane tutor, sol talisman

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Top Ranked
Date added 5 years
Last updated 2 months
Key combos
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

6 - 0 Mythic Rares

48 - 10 Rares

20 - 0 Uncommons

21 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.40
Tokens Shapeshifter 1/1 C, Sliver 1/1 C
Folders Decks to Make, Main, Ideas, Interesting, Commander, Sliver EDH, Yuh, Aggro Sliver, Sweet Decks, Decks I want
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