Pauper: Slivers Deck Tech & Sideboard Guide

Today's deck is Slivers, and despite having played with a list in the Bant version, I'll start talking about the general or mainly the GW version. As we know, Sliver is the only tribe with 3 different lords in Pauper, where if we run 4 copies of each, we will have 12 lords in the deck and this is very powerful, as we can easily make our creatures 3/3, 4/4 or even more. There are 2 green lords and 1 white lord. One of the things I like most about Slivers is that they don't keep the ability for themselves, but distributes it to everyone. This is excellent because together, they have many things they can do, such as: add mana, have vigilance, poison damage, have flanking, flying, flash, tap to deal damage, regenerate, among other abilities. Then it's up to you to use a color other than green and white on the deck, depending on the keywords you're looking for. In this list, I chose to run Winged Sliver which is blue, to grant evasion and have a way to deal with creatures with flying. A differential in our deck is the amount of draw spells: there are 8, being 4 Winding Way and 4 Lead the Stampede, which isn't common for an aggro deck. This gives us greater consistency of managing to empty the hand and draw more cards to continue pressuring the opponents.

Other Card Choices

I want to leave some options on other colors. As I said, I ended up running blue, but there are also some nice creatures in black and red: Bladeback Sliver, starting with one of the most used at the time when we had a lot of Tron and decks with combat locks, this Sliver's ability made everyone deal damage without attacking - solving this issue. Hunter Sliver is great as a takedown — not only him but everyone else you have in play, as they all have the ability to provoke the opponents' creatures, forcing them to block and lose the entire board. Striking Sliver is really cool if your Metagame has many creature decks. Although Slivers get strong against lords, if the meta is having a lot of combat trades, first trike can be important. Crypt Sliver is not an option I see playing all the time, but I think its ability to save your Slivers is really cool. Great for a Metagame with numerous removals. When we say that we want to play with a deck of 2, 3 or even 4 colors and being aggro, it already gives us a feeling of being a slow deck and a bad manabase. But I think this is the only aggro that shouldn't suffer so much from it, and the reasons are clear: Pauper's manabase has been improving with each release, and Thriving lands like Thriving Grove and Thriving Heath and now also with the arrival Citadel Gate and Manor Gate helps to correct the missing color in the deck. And of course, Gemhide Sliver is a great colorfixing that also speeds up the number of spells we can cast in a single turn. All this I said to be able to explain that we don't usually mulligan with this deck, even if it's 2 or more colors, and if the mulligan is necessary, we still have means to replenish our hand to be good in the game. Our stance is like any aggro deck: make several strong creatures and attack. And at that moment, with the number of lords, we almost always manage to escape the sweepers like Electrickery, Fiery Cannonade, Breath Weapon and now also Arms of Hadar.

vs. Burn

As always, playing against Burn is always a struggle, and here is no different: we have to try to be as fast as possible and win before them. It seems obvious, but it really is like that in Game 1, as we don't have any lifegain. After the sideboarding, this game can be easier with Weather the Storm.

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vs. Affinity

We have a game here that, I think, is good for us. Although Affinity is a great deck it is a bit slow to put creatures on the board and their removals are only 4 Galvanic Blast and Makeshift Munitions, which, if we have 2 or 3 lords, won't be that good. Post-side we don't get too many answers, but we have Masked Vandal which was a really nice addition to the deck as it can exile Affinity's indestructible lands and still counts as a Sliver.

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vs. Faeries

This is a game that is even difficult to explain, being excellent and terrible at the same time: everything will depend on Spellstutter Sprite, knowing how much damage our opponent is going to deal to us by playing it, which also depends on who is on the play, to know who has turn 2 first. But in general, it will also depend on the time we give them because we must be aggressively fast to force bad trades. In general, whether Dimir or Izzet, we have to cast plenty of creatures, including lords, to avoid sweepers and pressure the opponent. On the side we ask another tribe for help with Scattershot Archer, since in my list I'm not running Spinneret Sliver which makes everyone have reach. One more thing that helps us here is to put Quick Sliver into play to cast our threats at their turn.

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vs. Dimir Initiative

Here we have a horrible match for us, we usually want to be fast and put many creatures on the board, and here is what we want and need the most. Our opponent's deck basically intends to make creatures with a huge toughness, keep going through the dungeon and generate value. To get this dungeon, we'll also have to damage the opponent and not lose the creatures, which is quite complicated. Our deck doesn't even interact with the opponent, but on the side we try to have a better game.

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vs. Slivers

And we arrived at the strangest mirror to play; I even wonder if have you played or seen this mirror? It's a weird matchup where you help each other, as almost all the Slivers' abilities are passed on to everyone else, including the opponent's. The only one that only helps us is Predatory Sliver, which makes a huge difference in the game. This matchup is often locked and whoever finds more draws to have more creatures on the board ends up winning. For the post-side, we don't have anything. I know, it's weird, but I feel that taking creatures to put something on the side won't help, so good draws are the difference here. Ending one more article and I want to say that it's a really cool deck to play, it takes many opponents by surprise, and it's a good, fun strategy— I recommend you play with it. Any questions or suggestions, just leave it here in the comments, and I'll come back to talk about it! Thank you very much, and I hope you enjoyed the reading.