Alaska rules. Duress sucks.

As the Extended season wraps up and we move to Limited, with the Planeshift Pre-Release tournament rapidly approaching, I decided to look back at how Extended went for me and what I learned. As previously stated, I learned that Alaska rules. Why? Simple. No Trix. You would think that SOMEONE would have played Trix at the PTQ Tokyo tournament - I mean it's only the deck that has dominated the landscape for two years. People built Trix decks to playtest with and against. But come tournament time? No Trix. People talked about how great Trix was before the tournament. No Trix.

Why? I honestly don't know. This might seem like a pretty darn good piece of info to know before heading into the tournament. And it would have... If only I had had it. I went to the event with a Counter-Sliver deck that I had based off of the "usual"* net deck design. I liked Slivers, I felt comfortable with them, I owned them, and all was looking good. Until I hit no Trix. The "net" version was tuned up to beat Trix and, to a lesser extent, Tradewind-Survival (TS). The Sliver/TS match-up usually comes down more to a Crystalline vs. Tradewind Rider battle. Which ever resolves first usually takes the game. I knew that many of the people who had build Trix decks were looking at TS as an alternate.

I felt good.

I had a good shot at winning.

I did okay with a fifth place finish, but it was a little disappointing because I went in to the Top 8 as the #1 seed. I had gotten some favorable matchups and made some good plays, and it was all working for me. Except for all the creatures I kept facing. Duress sucks when you are facing creatures. Duress sucks when you are facing rogue decks with GIANT creatures that come to punish you. Uktabi Wildcats come to mind. Armadillo Cloaked Uktabi Wildcats come to mind. Oh, and don't forget the hordes of Soltari Shadow dudes with Crusade running around declaring war on me.

I am unsure of the reason why but it seems that most Alaskan tourney players are obsessed with their creatures. My sideboard of Annuls, Aura of Silence, and Seal of Cleansing was laughable against the onslaught of creatures I faced. I basically only used my sideboard for the extra two Swords to Plowshares all day. The majority of my sideboard was worthless for the local metagame.

The only thing I had over the other creature decks was speed. Slivers are damn fast and kill quickly, and I was able apply beatings before the defenses were set. The Winged Sliver always seemed to "pop up" when I needed it most and I was able to fly over to victory once the fatties hit the table.

Then I hit Morphling.

The bastard creature of them all, Morphling, brought me to a halt in the Top 8. Two straight games Morphling was able to turn the tide. Okay, Morphling backed with three (!) counters was able to turn the game. I tried to Counterspell it, Force it, and then Swords it. No way he is going to have three ways to protect it. No way.

Yes way.

So what have I learned from all of this - and more importantly, how can it help you? Pay attention to your local metagame. It is hard up here because we do not have a lot of events for each format but you can still draw conclusions from past years. Do the better players like control or aggression? Have they played combo in the past? Do you expect a lot of people with little experience? Answering these in retrospect, I see that most of the better local players like control; they can play combo but don't usually do it, and there are lots of occasional tournament players. What can we draw from this? These players are smart enough and have the resources to buy, borrow, or trade for basically any deck they want. Since they like control, they will probably play one of the top control decks.

A little bit of listening led me to believe that most of these players did not like Oath. Down to two decks. Okay so we knew the top couple would be playing control, probably TS. What about the less experienced players? Ah, the creature beatdown. I underestimated the amount of casuals that would be showing up. Okay, that is not true; honestly, I didn't even think about it. I was too busy blissfully building my "standard" Sliver deck to worry about the "metagame," and I ignored them. I should have realized that the first few rounds were going to be about speed and creature elimination more than disrupting combos.

So I should have metagamed more against control and creature removal more than Trix. Meaning no Annuls, more Swords, more creatures of my own. That is why I have developed a new deck with the help of the local metagame. I know the concept is not new, but I think revisiting it a little might help players out in smaller tournaments all over the place.

I still liked the idea of Slivers. They are fast, they fly, and the multi-chromatic nature of them allows for many sideboard options. What did the Sliver deck need though to make it "better" than the one before it? More Slivers. More pressure. I think the best way to achieve this is to go with Survival of the Fittest. Combining it with Slivers instead of Tradewind Rider will allow me to play with less of the sub-optimal Slivers but to still get full use of them. A great example of this is Winged Sliver. I only ever need one Winged out. Since it is only a 1/1, there are better Slivers to have multiples of. I also feel that Clot Sliver has a place in an environment where you expect that you might have to do some blocking. A 1/1 Sliver going against a Blastoderm is a recipe for disaster. That is, of course, until our friend the Clot Sliver shows up. Now Blastoderm is just annoying - not deadly.

So we start with 4x Survival and 1x Squee. Now once I hit three land, I can be assured of playing a Sliver each turn during the early game. Speed and repetition kill control. You can mix and match the Slivers you like, but I think the best way to go is:

4x Crystalline
4x Hibernation
4x Muscle
2x Winged
1x Sliver Queen
1x Clot Sliver
1x Acidic Sliver
- 17 - Sliver Dudes

Yes, I put Sliver Queen in the main deck. Once she hits, it is almost always game. Since she costs five you probably won't get her out until after you have a Crystalline and Winged, so we have at the minimum a 7/7 flying untargetable creature that only costs us five mana. This will allow us to save our mana for the opponents end phase instead of casting new Slivers. We can just "yoink" some out of momma when we need more. This allows us to use our Counterspells (or bluff them) much easier.

I figure we need twenty-four mana or so to start testing with and we've used twenty-two slots thus far - which leaves us with fourteen slots for utility cards and ways to protect ourselves:

4x Force of Will
4x Counterspell

How can any controllish deck not have these? We have fifteen cards we can pitch to Force of Will so far (plus the other FoWs), so we should be in good shape there. Six slots left for other cards. We need to make a note of the "UU" required for Counterspell when deciding on our land mix later, because we need to add extra islands to compensate. Standard practice tells us that we should run some creature, artifact, and enchantment defense to have a maindeck chance against Trix, TS, 21, and the rest of the decks out there. Keeping in mind a fairly creature-intensive environment, we will go with:

3x Swords to Plowshares
2x Seal of Cleansing

Hmmm... That's only five cards. One slot left. We could go with a third Seal or another Swords, but I think we would be better off going another direction. The usual Sliver deck runs Demonic Consultations because of their instant speed and the fair amount of redundancy built into to most Sliver decks with lots of "four-ofs"; but we don't want to do that in this case. We want to use our library to cherry pick the best dude for the job. Of course, a great card for this is Vampiric Tutor. It will allow us one more way to find the Survival, grab a Counterspell, or grab the right land so we can cast more Slivers. This could also be a Fact or Fiction, which helps because it is a blue card and can be pitched to FoW on top of the great card advantage; but if you're going with Fact or Fiction, I recommend dropping the "extra" Swords and going with two FoFs. Scroll Rack would be another option, which would be very useful to find the right lands - and also works well with Survival, since we will be shuffling often allowing us to see lots of new cards.

1x Vampiric Tutor

What to do with our twenty-four mana? The color breakdown is like this (counting "UU" as two):

Blue: 27
White: 13
Red: 2
Green: 5
Black: 8

Pretty obvious to see we need mostly Blue and White in the deck. Before we get all dual land happy, we need to remember Wasteland. The quick speed of Slivers and their low cc mean we don't need much land, but it needs to all be colored. Therefore, no Wastelands for us. Since we expect a lot of newer players, the odds of others playing Wasteland are not too high until we get matched up against the more experienced players. We have to hope a little that speed will carry us through. The deck needs too many colors to run too many (or any) basic lands.

4x Tundra
4x Flood Plain
4x City of Brass
4x Tropical Island
3x Underground Sea
3x Volcanic Island
2x Gemstone Mine

Flood Plain works great to both thin the deck out and grab any dual lands we might need. The reason I went with so many Volcanic Islands for so few red cards is because we cannot forget the sideboard. I don't have a full sideboard for this yet but I am pretty sure it will have 4x Pyroblast, which would bring our Red up to six cards - but when you need a Pyroblast, you REALLY need a Pyroblast.

Hopefully this will give some less experienced players and idea of what to think about in choosing or making their decks before they head to a Constructed event. Don't be afraid to modify existing ideas in a new way. Always remember to keep in mind who you expect your opponents to be and you will have a great shot at success!

Thanks for reading this novel,
David P.
cormarrr@hotmail.com

* The "usual" Sliver deck:

Slivers (17)
4x Crystalline
4x Muscle
4x Hibernation
3x Winged
2x Acidic

Spells:
4x Counterspell
4x Force of Will
4x Duress
3x Demonic Consultation
3x Aura of Silence
2x Swords to Plowshares

Land (23)
4x Flood Plain
4x City of Brass
4x Tundra
4x Underground Sea
2x Scrubland
2x Gemstone Mine
1x Tropical Island
1x Volcanic Island
1x Undiscovered Paradise