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!   

Tolarian Academy's Burn Deck 101

Burn is a deck type that consists of mostly sorceries and instants capable of dealing direct damage to your opponent. Burn deck has always been a favourite for deck building, however many new players are having difficulties deciding which burn spells should be included to maximize the deck efficiency. Today's article is dedicated to building a cheap yet efficient mono Red Burn deck.

While many burn spells have been printed throughout Magic's history, only a few of them can be considered to be the core spells of a burn deck. 

Let us first take a look at the core spells that can maximize the burn efficiency in this type of deck.

Lightning Bolt, Rift Bolt, Chain Lightning and Lava Spike are the gold standards for burn spells as they have the most efficient damage per mana ratio. Fortunately the only expensive card that does not fit into a budget build is Chain Lightning, the rest of the gold standards are relatively cheap.

Flame Rift, although not as efficient as the gold standards, is the only 2 mana spell that is able to deal 4 damage to a player. The downside of Flame Rift is that it also deals damage to the caster, however it isn't really a problem since in general your opponents' life points will go down much quicker than yours.

Another powerful burn spell that should be auto-included in a burn deck is Fireblast. The fact that you are able to cast Fireblast for zero mana by sacrificing two already tapped mountains makes this spell extremely dangerous for your opponent as it can deal a significant amount of damage out of nowhere.

In addition to instants and sorceries, Grim Lavamancer is a creature that plays a critical role in a Burn deck. The most common problem for a Burn deck is running out of spells while your opponent is still alive. Simply relying on top decking a burn spell is often not enough. Grim Lavamancer allows you to "re-cycle" the cards in your graveyard into damage. This is extremely useful especially when you are running out of spells in hand; the extra damage output from Grim Lavamancer can push you one step closer to victory.

Here is a list of the core spells for a burn deck

4x Lightning Bolt

4x Rift Bolt

4x Lava Spike

4x Fireblast

4x Flame Rift

4x Grim Lavamancer

That is a total of 24 spells, normally a Burn deck only requires 19-20 lands due to the number of low mana cost spells. This gives you room to customize 16-17 cards.

The customization burn spells are selected based on personal preferences and/or the meta game. Using Flamebreak or Volcanic Fallout to deal with decks that have many small creatures can slow down these decks by wiping the board clean. For counter measures against a life gain deck, Sulfuric Vortex can stop the life gain while dropping your opponent's life total down with higher efficiency. Magma Jet is my personal favourite burn spell, the Scry ability lets you to have a higher chance of drawing a burn spell rather than drawing a land.

It is important to note that while some burn spells or creatures may seem to be suitable in a burn deck, they are actually a liability to your deck efficiency. Vexing Devil and Browbeat appear to be great, however they both provide your opponent the choice of which effect will be resolved. A seasoned player will never choose the option that will benefit you in a particular situation. Therefore rather than running these spells that give your opponent the power to choose it will be more beneficial to just run some generic burn spells such as Lightning Strike, or Incinerate.

Until next time, keep the fire pit burning!

The Radiant Heroes

"Heroic" is the most powerful new mechanic that is introduced in Theros. Creatures with "Heroic" ability can certainly benefit from spells that are capable of targeting multiple creatures at once or spells that can be casted repeatedly to target a creature. Amongst all the colors, White has the most aggressive "Heroic" creatures. Therefore, assembling a mono White "Heroic" based deck can be very efficient while allowing you to use White mana heavy spells without out running into mana fixing issues at the same time. Today's deck will be focusing on bringing the "Heroic" mechanic to its fullest potential. Let us examine this Mono White "Heroic" deck list together.

The Radiant Heroes

Creature (26)

4x Boros Elite

4x Champion of the Parish

4x Favored Hoplite

3x Grand Abolisher

2x Mentor of the Meek

4x Phalanx Leader

2x Silverblade Paladin

3x Wingsteed Rider

Sorcery (2)

2x Proclamation of Rebirth

Instant (8)

3x Bathe in Light

2x Dauntless Onslaught

3x Wojek Siren

Enchantment (4)

4x Flickering Ward

Land (20)

20x Plains

As a creature based Human Aggro deck, the special ability of Boros Elite and Champion of the Parish can be easily triggered, making both of these creatures great members of the one-drop team together with Favored Hoplite.

Phalanx Leader is perhaps the most powerful "Heroic"  creature in White. Unlike Honor of the Pure, Phalanx Leader's "Heroic” boost remains even after he has been destroyed. In addition, with enough supportive spells targeting Phalanx Leader, he could easily turn your entire army into a formidable legion. Although Flickering Ward has great interactions with all "Heroic" creatures, it teams up the best with Phalanx Leader. With both Flickering Ward and Phalanx Leader in play you literally gain the ability of "Pay two White mana add a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control". This powerful interaction is further strengthened by Grand Abolisher, where your opponent will not be able to do anything during your turn while you are powering up your army ready for an assault.

Silverblade Paladin is included in this deck as he could buddy up with a powerful Champion of the Parish or the flying Wingsteed Rider to provide them with double strike. You can end the game quickly if you are able to strategically choose which creature you control gets double strike.

As I have mentioned in my previous articles, all Aggro decks need to have a way to counter the effect of board wipe spells. Proclamation of Rebirth immediately brings back three one-mana costing creatures from your graveyard, thus achieving "Battalion" immediately for Boros Elite. 
Mentor of the Meek serves as a draw engine that is able to replenish your hand while at the same time yielding you more creatures to recover from the board wipe.

"Radiance" is the perfect mechanic to apply onto "Heroic" creatures because it targets multiple creatures as long as they share the same color. While "Radiance" spells may backfire if your opponent also controls the same color creatures as you do, with a mono White deck at least we do not need to be concerned about all four other colors. The benefit you receive from "Radiance" spells definitely out weighs the fact that your opponent may also have White creatures. 
Bathe in Light is a potent spell that triggers "Heroic" effects multiple times, and at the same time potentially turns your alpha strike unblockable by your opponent. The inexpensive "Radiance" spell, Wojek Siren, can be easily played with your spare mana to surprise your opponent as it triggers the "Heroic" effects of your army. 
Dauntless Onslaught lacks "Radiance", but it grants a temporary +2/+2 bonus to two target creatures making it a spell worth playing in this deck.

The combination of aggressive "Heroic" creatures, "Radiance" spells and Flickering Ward makes this deck a formidable Aggro deck that can easily run your opponent over by turn four or five. Try this deck out if you enjoy having some cool interactions in a straightforward Aggro deck.

Until next time, do not stop performing heroic acts!!

The Lurking Shadow

Many Black spells in Magic are extremely powerful and with a relatively low mana cost; however the downside is that very often these spells require the caster to also spend their life points in addition to mana. With the printing of Death's Shadow, it turns life loss into an advantage. In fact, the more life you lose the stronger Death's Shadow will become. Today's deck is focusing on the interactions between life costing spells with Death's Shadow. Let us examine this deck list together.

The Lurking Shadow 

Creature (8)

4x Death's Shadow

4x Geralf's Messenger

Sorcery (12)

3x Duress

2x Infernal Contract

4x Night's Whisper

3x Rite of Consumption

Instant (14)

4x Dark Ritual

2x Diabolic Edict

2x Dismember

4x Fatal Frenzy

2x Plunge into Darkness

Enchantment (4)

4x Death's Shadow

Land (22)

4x Dragonskull Summit

3x Sulfurous Springs

12x Swamp

3x  Tainted Peak

This deck is essentially played like a control deck that uses Duress as a hand disruption which at the same time controls the board with creature removal spells such as Diabolic Edict and Dismember. The disruptions clear the way to ensure that Death's Shadow can strike your opponent without any hindrance.

Obtaining key cards to defeat your opponent is vital to the victory of this deck. The combination of Night's Whisper, Infernal Contract and Plunge into Darkness allows you to draw the key spells more efficiently while at the same time making your Death's Shadow stronger.  

The original design of this deck was intended to make use of Berserk which can provide trample and a sudden power surge to Death's Shadow, so that your opponent would be destroyed with one attack. However, Berserk is a very expensive card that does not fit into budget deck building. Instead, Fatal Frenzy is used to replace Berserk. Although Fatal Frenzy costs three mana, it is worthwhile considering the unstoppable effects it is able to grant to your creature. In addition, Fatal Frenzy works extremely well with Rite of Consumption, together they could elicit a massive amount of damage and rejuvenate your life points for casting more life costing spells.

The muscles of this deck consist of Death's Shadow, Lurking Evil and Geralf's Messenger. Death's Shadow is the MVP in this deck as it is able to get very strong with other supporting spells that you are casting. However, it is still possible to defeat your opponent by simply using spells such as Fatal Frenzy on Lurking Evil or Geralf's Messenger.

Lurking Evil is a formidable 4/4 flyer with only three mana. Lurking Evil 's ability may be activated even when it has already become a creature. Which means you are able to repeatedly halve your life total to allow Death's Shadow to reach its full potential. The creature that has the most interactions with the supporting spells is Geralf's Messenger. Its ability to cause pain whenever it enters the battlefield and Undying allow it to interact perfectly with Fatal Frenzy and Rite of Consumption.

The mana fixing for this deck is assisted by an variety of budget Black/Red dual lands. Although this deck is composed of almost entirely Black spells, the Red mana produced by these lands is essential for us to cast Fatal Frenzy at the critical point of the game. Dark Ritual dramatically improves the speed of this deck by allowing you to have a very powerful turn one play by casting Lurking Evil, Geralf's Messenger, Infernal Contract or an combination of 

Plunge into Darkness plus Death's Shadow :).

Though keeping your life total low may be a dangerous play, this deck can often cause a massive amount of damage that is often enough to defeat two players' life total at the same time. A fun deck to pilot if you like to play a game with high stakes.

Until next time keep on surprising your opponent with a frenzied Death's Shadow!!

How to Grow a Voracious Wurm

Voracious Wurm is a creature that feeds on the life you have gained within a turn. A typical life gain deck relying on just Soul Warden and Soul's Attendant simply does not provide enough life gain per turn to make Voracious Wurm big enough. Spells that are able to create a sudden surge of life gain is needed in order to satisfy Voracious Wurm's appetite. Now, let us take a look how to effectively feed the Wurm:

Creature (20)

• 4x Ajani's Pridemate
• 4x Martyr of Sands
• 2x Qasali Pridemage
• 4x Soul Warden
• 2x Soul's Attendant
• 4x Voracious Wurm

Artifact (4)

•  4x Chalice of Life // Chalice of Death

Enchantment (8)

• 4x Flickering Ward  
• 4x Rancor

Instant (8)

• 4x Condemn
• 4x Heroes' Reunion

Land (20)

• 4x Brushland
• 2x Evolving Wilds
• 4x Forest
• 7x Plains
• 3x Sunpetal Grove

For any creature based life gain deck, playing the combo of Soul Warden plus Ajani's Pridemate can never go wrong. Chalice of Life has a great interaction with both Ajani's Pridemate and Voracious Wurm. When gaining enough life, a transformed Chalice of Life can easily assist you to end the game quickly.

The inclusion of Martyr of Sands and Heroes' Reunion are used for the purpose of enabling a sudden life surge that allows Voracious Wurm to grow big while transforming Chalice of Life at the same time.

Voracious Wurm and Ajani's Pridemate are the two main aggressors in this deck. This means that assisting these creatures with the right aura enchantment can be crucial to winning the game. For general protection I have chosen Flickering Ward , not only does it grant the protection of any color of your choice, you may also reattach it onto another creature you control when needed. Another powerful "reusable" aura included in this deck is Rancor. By providing trample to an enchanted creature, Rancor  makes your opponent's chump blockers a lot less effective against your giant Voracious Wurm. With both Flickering Ward and Rancor  even small creatures such as Soul Warden can prove to be very troublesome for your opponent to deal with.

For general enchantment and artifact removal, Qasali Pridemage is the perfect candidate. It is a creature which triggers the life gain from Soul Warden; in addition, Pirdemage's Exalted trigger may prove to be beneficial to give your Wurm or Pridemate an extra bonus when attacking alone. Finally, the creature removal spell Condemn has a dual purpose in this deck. It may be used to remove the tough creature your opponent controls or to enable the life gain trigger by removing a creature you control that would be destroyed. 

Overall, this deck has the potential to put a giant Voracious Wurm out on the battlefield as soon as turn three. Along with the combination of the support auras, removal spells and Chalice of Life, this deck can be a big headache for your opponent.

Until Next time... don't stop feeding the Wurm.

Back to the Hive Part 2

We have looked at all the Magic 2014 Slivers in Part 1 of this series, today we are going to look at some Sliver decks that utilize the ability of the Hive's new recruits.

Muscle Sliver and Sinew Slivers are like the "backbones" of a Sliver deck, not only they are able to ramp up your entire Sliver army's strength; the high redundancy also allows Slivers to be more resilient against spot removal spells. This foundation of the Sliver deck is further enforced with the introduction of Predatory Sliver. As a general rule of thumb I believe an efficient Sliver deck should at least contain eight of these power boosting Slivers.

In order to fully utilize the potential of a Sliver deck we need to rely on more than just one color.  Fortunately, with the help of inexpensive Pain Lands and the Triple Lands we are able to have a very consistent multi-color mana base.

Let us first take a look at this Naya Aggro Sliver  deck (RGW):

Creature (27)

• 3x Bonescythe Sliver
• 4x Manaweft Slivers
• 4x Muscle Sliver
• 4x Predatory Sliver
• 3x Sinew Slivers
• 3x Striking Sliver
• 2x Thorncaster Sliver
• 4x Two-headed Sliver

Instant (8)

• 4x Boros Charm
• 4x Lightning Bolt

Enchantment (3)

• 3x Steely Resolve

Land (22)

• 2x Battlefield Forge
• 2x Brushland
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 5x Forest
• 4x Jungle Shrine
• 5x Mountain
• 3x Plains

This deck is a straight forward Aggro Sliver deck that utilizes the ability of Striking Sliver and Two-Headed Sliver. These Slivers can make your army rather hard to block while delivering fatal blows with the aid of Bonescythe Sliver. There are in total five Slivers that have a mana cost of four and above. The Manaweft Slivers serve as an extra mana source to facilitate casting of high mana cost Slivers.

Board wiping spells or the so called "Wrath Effect" is one of the most annoying challenges that a creature based deck needs to deal with. Fortunately, with the multi-purpose Boros Charm, Slivers will gain a certain degree of resistance against board wiping spells; this potentially allows you to gain significant combat advantage when used at the correct time. Steely Resolve provides further protection for Slivers against spot removal spells, as an attempted replacement for the almighty Crystalline Sliver.

From time to time you may have problems taking out your opponent's last few life points. Thorncaster Sliver is just the solution for resolving this type of issue. Although a bit expensive in terms of mana cost, Thorncaster Sliver makes your alpha strike even deadlier, it can easily take down your opponent's last few life points or simply get rid of annoying chump blockers. If a Thorncaster Sliver powered alpha strike isn't enough, a Lightning Bolt or a Boros Charm to the face can usually end the game right on the spot.

Sideboard wise I highly suggest running four copies of Harmonic Slivers for the purpose of demolishing enchantments or artifacts that may hinder the performance of this deck  (i.e. Propaganda, Ensnaring Bridge, Oblivion Ring and etc).

Now let us move on to the Bant Control Sliver deck (GWU). This deck requires a slightly higher budget but it allows you to enjoy many different interactions of  Slivers

Creature (36)

• 4x Crystalline Sliver
• 2x Dormant Sliver
• 4x Galerider Sliver
• 3x Gemhide Sliver
• 4x Manaweft Slivers
• 4x Plated Sliver
• 4x Predatory Sliver
• 3x Psionic Sliver
• 4x Sinew Slivers
• 4x Telekinetic Sliver

Sorcery (4)

• 4x Armageddon

Land (20)

• 2x Adarkar Wastes
• 2x Brushland
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 3x Forest
• 4x Island
• 3x Plains
• 4x Seaside Citadel
• 1x Yavimaya Coast

This Sliver based control deck can be operated just like any Aggro deck, with the combination of Galerider Sliver, Crystalline Sliver and all the "Muscle Slivers" you can easily overrun your opponent with an unstoppable Sliver army.

On the other hand this deck also packs enough tricks to be played as a control deck. By turning all Slivers into mana producers, Manaweft Sliver and Gemhide Sliver allow you to disrupt your opponent's mana base with Armageddon, while having a relative low impact on yourself. As your opponent is struggling to regain their mana base, you could take this opportunity to make the Sliver army bigger and stronger. In addition, Telekinetic Sliver can easily lockdown newly played lands during your opponent’s upkeep to prevent further non-instant spell casting.

The inclusion of Dormant Sliver is to provide a way to potentially draw more Slivers whenever a Sliver enters the battlefield. The improved consistency of recruiting more Slivers is worthwhile although you are not able to use your Slivers to attack. Of course with the ability of Psionic Sliver you can simply deal damage to the opponent or other creatures without needing to attack. In fact very often, with enough Slivers on the battlefield you are able to bring the opponent's life total down to zero in one go. With enough of a toughness boost, the Slivers are able to activate the "Psionic" ability without killing themselves in the process.

For sideboard, it is best to include a few copies of Ready // Willing to counter the "Wrath Effect". At the same time this also makes the ability of Telekinetic Sliver and Psionic Sliver much more effective. As with any other Sliver decks that utilize both green and white mana, sideboarding Harmonic Slivers is always a good idea.

For players who enjoy winning the game with a variety of interactions packed within one deck try this list out, you will have a ton of fun with it.

That's all for now folks, I hope you enjoy these two Sliver based decks.
Until next time, may the strength of the Hive be with you!