MTG: Hive Tactics – Top 5 Sliver Commanders
These five Commanders are here to prove that conformity is only boring when you aren’t a horrible hive of deadly worms.
Welcome Planeswalkers and Praetors to our ongoing series about the best casual experience in Magic: Commander. For the uninitiated, Commander is a semi-casual format for Magic: the Gathering. You use a deck of 100 cards led by a legendary creature, aka, your Commander.
Aside from basic lands, you are only allowed one copy of each card in the deck. Moreover, you can only include cards in your Commander’s “color identity” or artifacts. Each color and color combo has a unique playstyle and a wealth of mighty generals to lead your deck to victory. EDHRec.com is an excellent source for Commander info and can give you ideas to build your next Commander deck or tune an existing one.
Slivers have been around for a long time, and they’ve always carried a bit of stigma of being unfair. With each creature hitting the field, making ALL your creatures stronger, they can get out of control very fast. However, in the modern era of Commander, they seem to have been tamed a little, thanks to all the anti-typal tech. They are still one of the most powerful creature types around, however, and these five Commanders can take them to new heights of nastiness.
The First Sliver
Any time you can cast spells for free, it’s a good day. The First Sliver gives every Sliver in your deck the ability to dig for MORE Slivers of lower cost. This will multiply your board state with only a little mana as every piece you cast pulls out more…and more…and more.
Sliver Gravemother
This is an interesting leader piece. You get to generate extra tokens of dead Slivers, even your legendaries, and chuck them at your opponent. While that is what it says on the tin, most of these decks focus on the ETB effects of said Slivers to overwhelm the opponent with unavoidable damage.
Sliver Overlord
This is one of my favorite Sliver Commanders and the one I used back in the day when I theorized a Sliver deck (that I never actually built). The ability to dig through your deck for whatever Sliver you need was powerful enough, but the ability to STEAL Slivers was even better, especially with all the ways to change a creature’s type. This is a great way to play a “theft” typal deck while still getting all the Sliver buffs.
Sliver Hivelord
The biggest weakness Sliver decks have is board wipes. After all, it doesn’t matter how nasty your creatures are if none of those creatures exist. Hivelord helps you get around all that silliness but making them all indestructible. They can still be exiled, but mass exile isn’t super common, so you might be in the clear. Just watch out when you play into White.
Rukarumel, Biologist
Not a Sliver herself, Rukarumel doesn’t actually run a Sliver Typal deck; she MAKES one. Whatever your favorite creature type is, you get to make them into Slivers. Alternatively, you can make your Slivers into something else. Eldrazi, Elves, or Dragons can get all the Sliver buffs, or your Slivers can get access to other typal spells, like Crux of Fate. It might not be the strongest option, but it’s certainly a fun one.
What do you think of these Commanders?
