Subject: YodelSliver Date: Sat, 06 Jun 1998 09:59:19 -0400 From: Otter To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Here's something I've been noodling around with for a while. Before I realized I would be missing Regionals entirely to pay rent, I threw together the Weissman KirdSliver as a tester. A single huge problem showed up -- might as well scoop vs. pro-red w/Armor. I also had issues with the inclusion of two Fireballs and three Barbed Slivers, as the deck can otherwise hum along quite nicely on one Forest and one Mountain -- I thought that potential for amazing speed should be exploited. But I liked the basic concept, and the synergy between the pingers, direct damage, and the pseudo-rampage Sliver... not much can safely block a Sliver in that deck. So I decided to preserve the core and overhaul the support cards to optimize them for my personal play style. This is the deck as it stands now. YodelSliver Creatures (29): 4 Granger Guildmage. Coming out a turn earlier makes it a better choice than Slinger in this deck, even if its ability requires mana. Can also kill Priests. 4 Heart Sliver. Celerity gets through a few extra points here and there, which is key in the deck's speed incarnation, and works well with extremely cheap critters + Song of Blood. 4 Mogg Fanatic. Very nice on its own, doubly nice with Spined Sliver as a wall-killer. 4 Muscle Sliver. No-brainer. Especially good with Heart Sliver out. 4 Spined Sliver. If rampage had been this good all along, we might have played it. 3 River Boa. Utility. 2 Birds of Paradise. Mainly Yodel bait. 2 Metallic Sliver. Curve filler, works well with celerity + Yodel. 2 Uktabi Orangutan. Utility. The only 3cc spells main-deck. Miscellaneous (11): 3 Incinerate. 3 Shock. 3 Song of Blood. The Yodel. Must yell "Riiiiiiiiicola." 1 Firestorm. Worth it vs. Sligh, anti-Living Death measure. 1 Goblin Bombardment. Squeezes out extra utility, anti-Living Death measure. SB: 1 Detonate. An extra point or two of damage. 2 Tranquil Domain. 2 Tranquility. Enough locals are being played (Unholy, Armor, Animators) to make it useful. Domains don't do much against Godzilla. 2 Ruination. Not as good a card as it was three weeks ago, but still nice. 2 Uktabi Orangutan. More Scroll/Disk/Bridge control. 4 Pyroblast. 2 Thunderbolt. Anti-Tradewind, etc. Might become Wastelands. Weaknesses I've seen already... early Quakes, Firestorms, post-SB Perishes. I basically have to hold back a critter or two against those situations, which isn't always a killer since the deck doesn't rely on Scrolls. But the deck deals well with Walls, it doesn't rely heavily on non-basic land, and I've outraced 3rd turn Armor with it with average Yodels, so I think it stacks up well against a lot of the field. Most importantly for tourney purposes, if your opponent is mana-screwed, this deck capitalizes very quickly. The anti-black SB cards are Tranquilities and Tranquil Domains as opposed to hosers... most of the popular black decks (besides Pox -- Pox is a whole damned color to itself) either invest heavily in enchantments, both global and local, or use Necro/artifact, against which this deck has done fairly well in testing. I've been very pleasantly surprised by the deck's effectiveness in testing, and I think it's getting close to optimal for what it does. If anyone has any input they'd like to share, I'd surely be happy to get it. Thank you for your time. =) Otter Driver otter@labyrinth.net MarchHare on IRC