Today we're going to talk about W/B Changelings and R/W Slivers, both tribal based decks that try to make the best of having White cards in your deck.
R/W "Slivers"
R/W Slivers is a deck based around the "Sliver" mechanic, where all of your creatures provide some bonus to all slivers. This deck hopes to assemble a few different groups of Slivers in order to enable a specific strategy. I would describe the two groups as beatdown and boardstall. The beatdown Sliver curve involves any 2 mana "Sliver" on turn two, Lancer Sliver on 3, and Cleaving Sliver on 4. This curve enables a difficult block for 8 on turn 4, and unless your opponent can get rid of Cleaving Sliver or Lancer Sliver, and often both, it's pretty easy to secure victory from here by just attacking every turn. The boardstall curve involves Blackback Sliver on 2, Lancer Sliver on 3, and Irregular Cohort on 4. With this curve, rather than attack the opponent your hoping to keep their creatures at bay with a wall of First Strike creatures. As the game drags on and you finish deploying your hand, you can just never attack the opponent and ping them to death with Bladeback Sliver's ability. Ideally, any Sliver deck should be able to take advantage of both gameplans, which is what makes the deck powerful. Lancer Sliver is easily the most important common in any Slivers deck, as while it is nearly useless on its own it enables everything the deck wants to do.
Key Commons: Lancer Sliver, Cleaving Sliver, Bladeback Sliver
Important Roleplayers: Irregular Cohort, Imposter of the Sixth Pride
Every card in a Slivers deck does double duty as both a pay-off card and enabler all at once; this deck thrives on having as many Slivers in play as physically possible so that they'll all become stronger as a result. Diversity is going to be the name of the game here, as having one of each different Sliver is going to be a lot more powerful than having multiples of any, as only Lavabelly Sliver and Cleaving Sliver scale well in multiples.
General Pick Order for Sliver Decks: Winds of Abandon, Serra the Benevolent, Force of Virtue, Cloudshredder Sliver, Giver of Runes, Battle Screech, Firebolt, Sunbaked Canyon, Hollowhead Sliver, Pyrophobia, Magmatic Sinkhole, Cleaving Sliver, Irregular Cohort, Striking Sliver, Bladeback Sliver, Enduring Sliver, Lavabelly Sliver, Spiteful Sliver, First Sliver's Chosen, Valiant Changeling, Answered Prayers, Rhox Veteran, Imposter of the Sixth Pride, Fists of Flame, Settle Beyond Reality
Winds of Abandon is at it's absolute best here, as with Hollowhead Sliver and Striking Sliver in play you can easily churn through your deck until you find it while your opponent has no profitable attacks, and you can often instantly win the turn you cast it as well. If I first pick Winds of Abandon, I generally want to end up here although I know I can be happy to end up in any White deck. Cloudshredder Sliver is also unbelievably strong in this deck, it acts as a must answer threat if cast early and an Overrun type effect when cast later on, it's only lower in the order than Winds and the other White rares as it's so much more committal. Remember that you're generally a base White deck, and as such build your deck around being 9/8 or 9/7 in favor of White, or 8/8. Every non-Sliver card you play comes at a real cost, so keep your creature count high and avoid playing too many Rhox Veterans and Answered Prayers, although the first of each will be strong. Lavabelly Sliver is pretty mediocre in this deck despite being your gold uncommon, it facilitates the "ping you to death" plan enabled by Bladeback Sliver a bit, but it just doesn't stand on its own as a hard to cast 2/2 for 3.
Don't splash here, as your deck is so inherently aggressive you can never afford to stumble even if your end goal is to force a board stall. 16 Lands is my norm although if your curve is high (multiple 5s, usually) or if you have a few Cycling lands, play 17. At the risk of being a broken record, if you're playing cards with WW in their cost, bias toward playing more Plains so that your deck functions effectively.
Takeaways
Slivers was a real homerun in this format; it had multiple distinctive gameplans that worked well together, and played like no other Limited aggressive deck that I've ever seen. This deck is not particularly resilient to removal or it'd be a much bigger player in the format, as is it's just a middle of the pack archetype that you never hope to get into but don't want to avoid, either. Lavabelly Sliver is a weirdly underpowered gold card, especially in the context of this format, as it wouldn't do anything without Bladeback Sliver to incentivize pinging the opponent to death. My first game of this format involved losing to a very diverse Slivers deck although I still initially wrote this deck off as it was incredibly overdrafted in the first few weeks Modern Horizons was available on Magic Online. I really hope Wizards looks at this deck when they design future Limited aggressive strategies, as it's a lot more interesting than the combo of cheap creatures and combat tricks.W/B "Changeling"
In order to succeed with this deck, your best bet is to watch how your mana base will end up during the entirety of the draft. This means that if you decide you want to play Defile, Answered Prayers is out of the question, as is Irregular Cohor. Alternately, if you want to try to play Valiant Changeling early in the game, cheap Black cards can't make the final cut, especially cards like Cordial Vampire and Undead Auger. Pick a base color here and stick to it, your deck is wildly inconsistent otherwise.
Key Commons: Mob, Irregular Cohort
As the synergies in this deck don't pan out, you're looking for cards that are good on their own with a small nod to wanting a bunch of creatures in play. Cards that make multiple bodies are important, and Mob is great when you have cards that generate multiple bodies
General Pick Order: White/Black Mythics and Rares, Battle Screech, Graveshifter, Mob, Changeling Lords (King of the Pride, Undead Auger, Throat Seeker, etc), Changelings
As I advocate for avoiding this deck entirely, I would bias myself toward only taking strong generic White/Black cards early, and only deciding to be this deck after I know I have no other real options. Putting together King of the Pride and Changeling Outcast can be worthwhile, but you're not going to want to do it without seeing King of the Pride 9th+ and essentially getting it for free. Drafting this deck feels like resisting arrest, as you're going to fight to do anything else the entire time, only to ultimately succumb to playing with King of the Pride.
As with any other White deck, try to end up base White as a concession to hard to cast, time sensitive cards like Answered Prayers and Irregular Cohort. These decks are typically slow but have relatively low curves, despite this try to play 17 lands here as a concession to how bad the mana often is.
Takeaways
I regret glossing over this deck in Episode 3 of the podcast, as it's really unfortunate to have such an unusable combination of colors in any draft format. White and Black are both very self-serving in Modern Horizons, and as such they're the hardest colors to put together. Defile, Crypt Rats, and Changeling Outcast just can't easily coexist with Answered Prayers, Segovian Angel, and Irregular Cohort, and that's where this deck generally falls flat. This deck generally takes shape as two separate mono-color decks, which both work great but are hard to draft as they require their respective color to be wide open at the table. Etchings of the Chosen is an interesting card to be sure, but in this format it's rarely strong enough to play unless you're lucky enough to name Bird. This deck is so bad that I'd rather fight over Snow or Ninjas with two other players at the table than know for a fact I was the only Whie/Black drafter at the table.Until next time, where we cover G/W and R/G!
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter
podcast
Episode 3 available now!
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