Subject: Tourney Report: Counter-Sliver Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 11:12:05 -0500 From: Roy Roberts To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com On Saturday, the 9th, a local shop was running a $500 tourney, split among top 4, so me and the team decided to try our luck at a little pre-regionals action. We had been testing quite a bit lately, and it would be nice to see how our efforts paid off. The day before, I had been looking on the Dojo, seeing what the metagame might be like, and saw D. Williams' post from the Sydney Invitational. He had picked a deck that would do strong against the control decks, especially Donais 5cU, and that was kind of what I was looking for as a test deck for the evening. So, I wrote down his decklist, and took it to my teammate's house, Craig Sivils. We played with it all night, made many changes (documented below) and decided on what to play for the tourney the next day. Craig was doing exceptionally well with our red test deck, while Andrew was pretty much set on the blue test deck. After working on the CounterSliver deck from Mr. Williams, I thought I'd try it out. None of us were locked in on regionals choices yet, but we had been playing a host of different decks, seeing which ones matched up best. The final end product of the pre-tourney testing is as follows: Counter Sliver, original credit going to A. McNish [Core deck, don't change] 4 Crystaline Slivers (Very Anti-Red) 4 Muscle Slivers (Fat) 4 Winged Slivers (Important for evasion) 2 Hibernation Slivers (Anti-Mass Distruction. Two is about right) [The rest is, of course, up to personal taste and local metagame. This is a fairly flexible deck design] 4 Counterspells (Dropped mana leaks. Wanted it less reactive) 4 Impulse (I realize the Austrailians prefer Portent, but I still say Impulse is better) 4 Bottle Gnomes (Key Anti-Red tech. Would have two matches were it not for main-deck gnomes) 4 Man-o-War (Just plain good) 3 Uktabi Orangutangs (I upped the monkey count. Good move, as I used Disenchant only once all day) 1 Disenchant (I would probably go 2-2 monkey/disenchant next time, however.) 3 Legacy's Allure (This and Manowar were the anti-creature cards. Worked well, for the most part) [23 Land. Still not happy with the land mix. If you can make it better and more consistant, please do] 8 Island 4 Reflecting Pool 3 Adarkar Waste 2 City of Brass 2 Undiscovered Paradise 2 Gemstone Mine 1 Skyshroud Forest 1 Volrath's Stronghold [Sideboard. Obviously, depends on local metagame] 2 Tranquil Domain (Never needed em, but never hit ProsBloom either) 2 Propaganda (Creature decks are usually surprised by this) 2 Winter Orb (Key to beating control) 3 Hydroblasts (Anti-red) 1 Disenchant 1 Uktabi Orangutang 2 Disrupts (Very good anti-control) 2 Lobotomy (Ditto) The deck is strong against control, especially the 5cU flavor. Winged Slivers help get around walls, Hibernation Sliver helps get around mass-destruction, and the Crystaline Sliver stops Legacys, Quicksand, Manowar, etc etc. Against Sligh, it can hold it's own, BUT you have to drop a Crystaline Sliver before any other. I didn't play a ProsBloom deck all day, but I suspect Bloom would crush it. If you want to change the sideboard, make it more anti-bloom. Black and White Weenie would also probably give this a hard time. I have no clue about the matchup with MultiColor Tradewind, need to test that this week. The changes from the version D. Williams ran was that I dropped the leaks, the scrolls, the single geddon and torch, and the portents.I added impulses, gnomes, and another land. It slowed the deck down a bit, which is why I upped the mana count and dropped it from 61 to 60, but I had to put gnomes in. Red was just killing me a turn too quickly otherwise. Ok, enough deck construction, on to the tourney. Showed up, registered, started round 1. All three team members showed, me playing C-Sliver, Andew playing blue test-deck, Craig playing red test-deck. Five rounds of swiss, about 45 ppl total. Round 1, vs ??? playing 5cU First game, I can't find a multicolor land, stuck holding 3 muscle slivers in my hand. About 15 minutes into the match, he wisdoms up to 34, and I concede, cause I also can't find the winged slivers, and his walls are holding me off. Side out the manowars and monkeys, side in the worb, disrupt, and lobots. Second game, I drop an early worb, beat him down with some slivers, when he dropped a Humility. So far, this is the first change I've seen in the deck from posted 5cU. (Running exact copies = bad) I legacy his own wall of blossoms, and beat him down with 3 1/1 tokens. Key play is disrupting his Wisdom, because he doesn't drop his Paradise before casting it. With winter orb in play, he can't get back to 4 mana fast enough, and dies in two turns. Third game was all about me hitting him early with a lobotomy, and grabbing two wisdoms from his hand. Record: 1-0 Round 2, vs Bill Macey playing Sligh Bill is a good guy, good player, and I knew it would be tough. First game, I drop Crystal, Muscle, Muscle, Hiber, while he's stuck at one land. Second game, he burns me out before I can get going. Third game is all about bottle gnome saving my ass and letting me live long enough for the Crystal, Muscle, Winged sliver combo to win. All three were close, and I did win every game I went first. Going second against Sligh is so bad. Record 2-0 Round 3 vs ??? playing CounterHammer. Games one and two are not even close. Crystal, Muscle, Winged, kill. Not enough burn to out-race me, not enough control to shut me down. Record 3-0 At this point, both teammates are 3-0 as well. Looks like our playtesting payed off. Andrew has beaten two Bloom decks with the blue deck, which is good, as they probably would have destroyed my deck. Swiss is all about pairings. Round 4 vs Craig Sivils, playing Red test-deck. ID. Go figure. Andrew has to play, and wins. The whole team is still undefeated, and are top 3. Round 5 vs Mason Peatross, playing Bloom I get paired down to a 3-1, as the only 4-0 (Andrew) gets paired with one of the two 3-0-1s (Craig). Mason wants to ID, cause his losses were to Andrew, and he defeated a 3-1, so his tiebreakers are good. As I suspect bloom will hand me my ass, I accept the draw into the top 8. Top 8 Quarterfinals vs Craig Sivils playing Red Sigh, we were hoping to not get paired up until the semis (We were hoping to lock up 3 of the 4 semi slots). We played this out about 50 times the night before, so we both have a good idea how it will go. Game one, he wastelands early mana, beats me up and down with Flunkies and Pups. Game two I beat him up and down with Crystaline Slivers. Game three, he has to double-paris, and then ends up drawing about 5 mana straight. Usually, going first means a win for his deck, I squeek out through luck. Semi-Finals vs Andrew Johnson playing Blue test-deck Now I have to knock out the other teammate. Top 8 pairing were not kind to us. Game one, he shuts me down, countering or bouncing all my threats. Game two and three, however, my sideboard shows up, and my deck really is designed to beat control. I can't be very specific on how the game went, however, as I can't remember. Played this matchup too many times the night before. Finals vs Bill Macey again, playing Sligh I am not surprised Bill made it to finals after I beat him in Swiss. So far, I'm the only person to give him a loss, and I hope I can repeat the performance. Game one, he goes first, and runs me over. I see no crystal slivers at all, which means my guys roast while his come over to play. Game two, I drop early Crystal Sliver and Muscle Sliver, and we trade hits. A bottle gnome again saves the day, as Bill burns me out (except for gnomes) the turn before I kill him. Game three was unusual, as he drops a first turn jackal pup, which I then hydroblast. Next turn he drops a dwarven miner, which makes me go 'Doh!' However, a plan quickly forms in my mind. I drop an adarkar next turn, tap the first turn island, drop Crystal Sliver. He drops land #3, blows up my land. I drop another non-basic, and drop Winged Sliver. He goes, blows up my non-basic land. I keep dropping land targets, and he slows himself down to blow them up long enough for my 2 slivers to hit him enough times. He sees this, and starts dropping the offense, but I drop and island and then another non-basic for a bottle gnome, and he's just too low in life, and has no answer for the Crystaline + Winged combo. He also mentioned that the pup was the only real beatdown he had in his opening draw, so I probably just got lucky. Anyway, I win the match, and end up 6-0-2 for the day, and $250 for my troubles. I like the deck, but of course, have some ideas for changing it again. I was VERY pleased with the changes we made the night before, but I still need to work on the mana. The Volraths really didn't help, so I might try replacing it with colored mana. Obligatory 'Props and Slops' section. Props to: Pretty much everybody there. The tourney was nice, no one was an ass, everyone was cool. Outstanding props to Bill Macey, great guy and great player. Also, to my teammates Craig Sivils and Andrew Johnson. Slops to: The Mad Hatter. Nice guy, but double-elim + old format (Mivilite) = no more free money tourney, aka Semi-Pro tour. Hopefully someone else will take over the job. Roy Roberts Neuro on IRC