Subject: counter-sliver v1.3 Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998 19:43:22 GMT From: andy@mcnish.demon.co.uk (andy mcnish) To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com having pre-qualified at doncaster and blackpool, i didn't make birmingham today - i'm looking forward to simeon's usual thorough breakdown of the qualifying decks... so i thought i'd post the current version of counter-sliver and bord with some notes on alternative cards considered and playstyles against different deck archetypes... any input happily received... counter-sliver v1.3 7 islands 3 gemstones 3 cities brass 2 reflecting polls 2 undiscovereds 2 adarkar wastes 1 brushland 1 stronghold (21 land) this land distribution has been thoroughly tested and is (more or less) spot on - 21 lands in a multi-colour seems light but you can consider any of the 4 portents as land in your opening hand (more than 90% likely to find land if you use one) and the deck is really blue splash rather than true 4/5 colour...also it's casting cost average is <2.00 and you don't want to mana glut if you can avoid it. the only change here from v1.2 (which won the blackpool qualifier) is the swapping of one adarkar waste for the brushland - i don't really like doing this (as i prefer all my lands except the stronghold and 2 pools to be able to run alone with a portent in my opening hand and when casting something protected by counters it's also a pain to have a a non-blue producer to wacth out for) - however the core is now running 7 splash green and 7 splash green so i think the brushland may have to go in...i didn't fancy the alternative blue/green painland as it comes in tapped and speed is my friend ... i'd like to find room for a couple of wastelands but these wouldn't count as mana but as disruption - you could drop say the furnace and a disenchant for them if you felt this was warranted... 4 portents better than impulse in this deck (they replace lands which impulse can't do) - much better then brainstorm - i keep thinking brainstorm ought to be ok but the v1.0 ran with a couple and they never seemed to do anything useful... the 1 cc is crucial - you want something to do on turn 1 - setting up your deck for the 2cc onslaught... whatever modifcation you make to this deck for your own use i would strongly advise dropping the portents - they are the decks consistency engine...later game you often set up a counter or disrupt the opponents draw with them.. slivers (all 2cc) 4 crystalline (2/2 untargetable) (u/w) 4 muscle (1/1 , slivs get +1/+1) (1g) 4 winged (1/1, flying) (1u) 2 hibernation (2/2, pay to life to return sliv to hand) (u/b) after 2 months of playtesting i've concluded that these are the best slivers basically the crystalline sliver is a nightmare for blue control (making your slivs unstealable/unbounceable) and can get you card advantage vs other deck by making their targeted removal useless in stopping your threats (alos ignores scrolls and quicksands of course) the muscle is a gimme obviously the winged are the best way of making sure the slivs get through (shame there isn't a shadow one yet :) - better than talon,spined etc. - and of course they're 1U so ideal for this deck - they are especially important against walls of blossoms - which will become more and more popular as people realise how close to broken they are) the 2 hibernations are protection against mass removal - i also use them to give you card advantage against stuff like bolts/edicts if they're the only sliver out... slivers that cost you mana to use (and involve saccing the sliver) as strictly no-nos for this deck - you can't always use them when you need to and you often lose card advantage -you only have 14 slivs - you need to keep the on the table for as long as you can beating down the opponent- the acidic are a kill card so might be an exception but they're way off colour. victuals and were in v.1.0 but suffer from the mana/saccing point (only really useful against burn decks).mnemonics sere considered but cost 3 for a 2/2 with the same mana/saccing problems. notice the hibs are blue/black - they are better tha the clot as use of regen needs mana and the clot is only 1/1 on it's own. 2 hibs are the right number as they're off colour and using them does cost life...but pulling a crys and a muscle back from a wrath for 4 life is usually a good deal - and if it isn't you don't have to use the ability - with a hib down against a slow deck you can be a lot more relaxed about just laying out the swarm (a bit like a green weenie with a lhurgie in hand :) (14 slivs) the ideal situation is a crys/muscle and winged out together - esp if backed up by a counter or two ... that's 7 pts/ round of untargetable flying beatdown- very tough to handle...the stronghold is nice in mid-game to get just the right sliver back and again makes you less worried about warths and stuff...you tend to drop the crys sliv asap then the muscle and finally the winged - vs a counterspell or mass removal-packing deck if i have a counter/leak in hand i often wait until 4 mana to drop the musclewinged sliv so i can force it through.. of course if you have more than one typr of a sliv in hand you can drop it earlier to force a counter etc.. in the meantime the rest of the deck goes blue counter/bounce to disrupt the opposition (safe in the knowledge that if you meet a blue bounce deck you'll be odds on for a 2-0 win inside 10 minutes - at least that's been my experience so far) control 4 counterspells 2 mana leaks (2 is enough IMHO) (6) anti-enchantment/artifact 3 disenchant 1 sex-monkey (4) (the sex monkey came back in after i saw all the scrolls at doncaster) opponent slow-down 2 walls of blossoms 3 legacies' allures 3 men-o-war (well they're plural:) (8) the walls are new (replacing the fireball and 4th man-o-war from v1.2) the deck had trouble (if it couldn't find enough early slivers to mount it's own rush) against green untargetables - centaurs and scraggies - the walls are cheap and give you a free draw after all and hold up an opposing weenie deck whilst your slivs fly over the top . it also strengthens the deck against classic sligh (not that i expect to see many while WW en-kor,14 and donais are up to 40% of the field) the legacies give card advantage of course (they're especially good at stealing mana birds and annoying shadow weenies:) and if you can cast on turn two and then sit behind a counter or 2 and a wall of blossoms - most weenie decks find life difficult the men-o-war are for anything that's annoying you but especially for emp-armored stuff, rogues , maros and anything that has a comes into play cost - they give you enough temporal advantage to win the beatdown race and deter opponents from geddoning by maintaining on table critter-superiority...they're also 2/2 beatdown themselves and a combo with wall of blossoms vs slower/creatureless decks... that's 57 cards - ther are 3 1cc utility artifacts left: 2 cursed scrolls ( my slivs don't use mana so there's no reason not to run with a couple of these they are superb removal/kill cards and once running give you positive card advantage- i don't want to go with 4 as this isn't necessarily a dump-everything deck, and there are a lot of anti-scroll decks out there - geddon/disks/ orb / null rod etc.) .the downside to them is that you don't get to hold land in hand after you reach 4 if you want to use them. the can be a late-game lockout vs weenie decks though and made it to the core as they're great anti-discard cards... someone tried to beat me with a schneider pox last tourney and the scrolls were very helpful then. i don't tend to play them early unless i'm, facing discard or 1st turn vs blue control... 1 phyrexian furnace this is general anti-recursion - there's a of lot it about - mainly 14 and necro-gnome...(and yes furnaces DO work vs 14 if you slow up the LD's with counters) - it's also an anti-stronghold card ... if it's not needed it's a cantrip and i just blow it for a draw... (that's makes a total of 7 cantrips in the deck - speeding you through to the good stuff) total 60 cards.... the deck is very robust and does seem to combine the strength of blue counter-bounce with the threat of a quick and hard to remove creature beatdown...the untargetabilty gives it a big edge over similar blue weenie/counter decks...as well as the fact that the slivers punch well beyond their weight once a couple of them are down.. the previous versions have gone 14.5/17 (counting the results of ID's played out afterwards 'to see what would happen') over the last two weeks in qualifying tourneys for the nationals - and this is despite being played by an absolute scrub (me:) it's had to paris twice in 17 matches (won both games), has lost twice (both times 1-2 - to a counter-hammer when it drew seven consecutive lands whilst been hammered in the decider and to a WW (one of several) with scrolls when it got locked out by 2 scrolls to one in the decider and couldn't find a crystalline sliver so i could dump the three other slivs in hand and beat him to death ) apart from that it's seen off 2 donais decks (4-1 in games) (which are only going to get more popular), countless weenies -( white, fishy and black) , a couple of unfortunates trying to play blue bounce against it - 10 minutes the pair , a maro-geddon (which came 2nd in the 60+ person tourney). it's 12-1 up in games vs 5cg and 5cb and it beat a good creatureless burn 2-0...it also beat another sliver deck by the expedient of twice drawing a volrath's stronghold in the opening hand (otherwise it would have been tricky) -in short it's very strong against a likely T2 field - and fast flexible and fun to play with... what beats it? hmm...decks with loads (i mean 6+ in core) of mass removal might , a really good sligh deck , 30+ slivers, heavy necro-gnome-disk-discard perhaps (esp if 4 rat bombs in core too), and 14 and LD if they get god-draws... there are no match ups for it as bad as watching a sligh try to beat a WW en-kor or 14 trying to beat donais though... - and the decks that might cause it trouble are just beaten up by the others in the meta-game - the closer to top table i get with this deck, the more havoc i seem to wreak.... sidebord i've tried to keep the bord flexible - only the first 3 are strictly colour-hosers - the rest are of more general application: 2 hydroblasts 1 cop red 1 disenchant 1 sex monkey 2 disrupts 2 propagandas 1 winter orb 1 geddon 1 wrath 1 null rod 1 lobotomy 1 ebony charm i've found this to be a well-balanced bord - you only want to be losing 3-4 from the core deck against most normal creature decks...against non-critter decks you can put in a lot more (- eg donais - 2 disrupts, 2 hydros, botomy, geddon, orb, cop red) - version 1.1 managed to bord in 14 cards vs '14' (all but the null rod - an aura was in for the sex monkey in the bord then) but it could sensibly have kept it down to 5 or 6... the disrupts, sex monkey, geddon and lobotomy could all be considered for the main deck in the right environment... what to take out though? other cards considered/playtested include: vamp tutor (off-colour-costs life) sliver queen (far too slow - but i know someone will suggest it if i don't mention it here) other slivers (see above) cursed totem (for sideboard place good vs gnomes,efreets,rat bombs,sligh - gets in way of hib. slivs though extra - hydros,null rods hon passage (bord) gaia's blessing (no use early game) various lifegainers ( have faith!) force spike (1cc main deck for the furnace- maybe) aura of silence (bord vs disk/discard) (double white) extra mana leaks ( i used to have 3 in v1.0) watstelands scraggie - was in bord- took out -don't need any extra help vs blue and he can't get past wall of bloss in all those flagpole decks - which i beat up on anyway... incinerates/fireball - off- colour/don't often get to 5+ mana impulses - used to have 2 in - they don't work - you've other things to do on 2 mana and your multi-lands cause pain/lose counters/bounce etc.) brainstorm -2 were in , sucked, came out... dwarven miner (off-theme and off-colour-i just rate him in the current environment:) thanx PS previous reports and the portent article are on the dojo and newsgrops... have fun...