Misconceptions of the Hive: Common Mistakes of Building Sliver Decks

As a creature type with many special traits, Slivers can be easily used to forge many different types of decks. However due to the fact that there are so many different Slivers in existence, new players may become disoriented when starting to construct a deck. A Sliver deck can be made very inefficient if the wrong Slivers are grouped together. In Today's discussion I am going to talk about some common mistakes that players often make when constructing a Sliver deck.

You Don't Always Need the Queen

It may be the biggest misconception that a successful Sliver deck must contain at least one copy of Sliver Queen. Although Sliver Queen is an iconic creature amongst the Slivers, she requires a deck to be specifically built around her and not the other way around. After all the Queen needs proper accommodations.

In general you'd be expecting the newly played Sliver to immediately buff your army with special attributes. Sliver Queen's ability does not directly benefit your Sliver army as she comes into play. With her high mana cost, you may have issues activating her "Sliver birth" ability even once. As a result Sliver Queen very often decreases the aggressiveness of a Sliver deck and may even cause you to  lose the game.

In order to properly make use of Sliver Queen,  we need to build a deck around her special abilities. Cards like Mana Echoes or Intruder Alarm along with mana producing Slivers allow you to gain a significant advantage or even win you the game as the Queen hits the Battlefield. Overall, Sliver Queen is more suited in a well designed combo deck and should not be included in just any Sliver deck.

Not All Sliver Decks have to be Five Color

Slivers are ubiquitous creatures that exist in all five colors of Magic. It is very tempting to jam the best Slivers from all colors into one deck. In reality a five color deck is extremely hard to play efficiently, especially if you have a budget on the land base.

Based on the Sliver decks that I have encountered and constructed, the most powerful decks only consist of 2-3 colors. Making your deck more mana efficient is a much better game plan than having all the Slivers in the world yet not being able to cast them properly.

Do Not Play Colors that Your Lands Cannot Support

Mana producing Slivers enable you to play Slivers of all colors even when you do not have the right land fix in your deck. However, Slivers as creatures are highly susceptible to removal spells when compared to lands. If your deck consists of cards that can only be played with the presence of Manaweft or Gemhide Slivers a well placed removal spell can definitely ruin your game. 

It is important to remember that a good Sliver deck never plays the color which its land base is not able to support. Land is after all  the most reliable mana source of all card types, that was what lands were designed to do in this game in the first place. The mana producing Slivers are good mana accelerators but they should never be treated as your main source of mana to play your spells.

Think Outside the Box, Have Fun Brewing

There are many ways to utilize the power of the Hive. There is no need to run the "Big Threes" (Sliver Queen, Overlord and Legion) or all-five colors in a Sliver deck. The Hive offers many gifts, it is up to us to utilize them efficiently.

Until Next Time

Enjoy the new cards from Journey Into Nyx!