5-Color Slivers Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on July 23, 2023

Sliver Overlord | Illustration by Tony Szczudlo

Slivers are one of the most infamous creature types in all of Magic. They're known for giving team-wide buffs to all your other slivers, quickly adding up to create extremely threatening forces. Slivers give each other unique properties like haste, mana ramp, or indestructible. You’ll only need one copy of every kind of sliver to get the buffs thanks to the nature of how this mechanic works.

This works great for highlander formats like Commander where you only play one copy of each card anyway. It also gives you room to include all of the most powerful and synergistic slivers without sacrificing space for combos or unique interactions.

Today I’m going to cover a high-power sliver EDH deck headed by none other than the Sliver Overlord itself: 5-Color Slivers. This deck has a price point in line with its power rating (very high) so be careful if you’re planning on putting this list together. It has high potential as a cEDH deck and can be tuned down in both price and power level to be a midrange creature deck if need be.

So let’s get started!

The Deck

Lavabelly Sliver | Illustration by Mark Behm

Powerhouse Slivers

Of all the slivers you could play, the most powerful for this strategy are Sliver Legion, Bonescythe Sliver, and Shifting Sliver. These three can transform your two or three little slivers into absolute units that one- or two-shot your opponents.

Rhythm of the Wild bolsters this strategy with some extra damage and protection. Being able to resolve slivers without worry is a great feeling, and knowing they’re coming in buffed up is even better.

The Commander

This deck is commanded by Sliver Overlord over other choices like Sliver Queen or The First Sliver. The main reason for this is to have an infinite mana outlet in the command zone as well as some other common interactions you want to take part in. Not to mention that it gives you the run of the rainbow as a 5-color commander.

Overlord works as a tutor engine which helps you assemble other combo pieces much easier and more consistently. This is your primary wincon in most matchups; just tutoring out two or three other creatures and winning on the spot.

The alternative commanders can be used as well, but they bring a much lower power level and win rate to the table compared to Sliver Overlord. This legendary creature just makes them worse off as choices since this is going to be a high-powered deck.

Early Creatures

The nature of slivers means that the more you have, the more threatening and powerful your board state is. It's crucial to this deck’s success to get out a few early slivers and creatures to help maximize individual benefits. Among the most powerful are Cloudshredder Sliver to get haste and flying blockers out, Harmonic Sliver to shut down your opponent’s pesky prison enchantments or early artifacts, and Crystalline Sliver to protect your creatures and commander.

Diffusion Sliver can also be an excellent first sliver to resolve early on. It basically protects your creatures for two or three turns, which is invaluable if your next plays are something like Lavabelly Sliver or Basal Sliver, both important combo pieces in the deck.

Interaction Package

Every high-powered deck needs a way to respond to threats and protect its own strategies. As a 5-color deck this slivers list has a lot of options.

Flusterstorm is a great counterspell and is a strong way to protect your creatures alongside Fierce Guardianship.

Delay is also included, which is a very underrated counterspell in EDH in my opinion. Late in the game when you know somebody is going to win within a few turns, suspending a combo piece for three turns is a very practical solution.

Mana Drain is a superb counterspell despite its cost and can easily ramp you out a Morophon, the Boundless on turn 4 or 5.

You also have Veil of Summer which helps with the ever-so-prevalent blue decks that want to shut down your win conditions with their pesky Force of Wills.

In terms of getting rid of creatures and permanents you have the infamous Cyclonic Rift, a copy of Assassin's Trophy, a Swords to Plowshares, and a Nature's Claim. I've found enchantment removal to be lacking in high-power EDH pods. Having Nature's Claim gets you out of some sticky situations more times than you can count.

Early Enchantments

This deck has access to a few great enchantments to play early that can catapult you ahead of the competition. Rhystic Study and Sylvan Library can generate us a lot of card advantage very quickly.

Then those new cards can be played quickly thanks to acceleration from Mana Echoes, Training Grounds, and Carpet of Flowers.

Powerful Artifacts

Being a tribal deck, there are some must-include artifacts that take this slivers deck to the next level.

Urza's Incubator supplies a cost reduction of to your slivers. While this usually just gives you a discount because of some slivers' lower mana value this is still an excellent inclusion, especially when you manage to get it out turn 1 or 2.

Door of Destinies is a similar artifact that requires you to choose a creature type when it enters the battlefield. You're choosing sliver, if you weren't sure.

Door supplies a team-wide buff for each card with the chosen creature type you’ve played after it resolves. As you can probably imagine this quickly gets out of hand.

Lastly you have Coat of Arms, which is the most powerful of the three. This card gives your creatures +1/+1 for each other creature that shares a type with it. This means that if you have five slivers on the board, each one is getting +4/+4. This is quite frankly insane and an important combo piece I'll touch on later down the line.

Mana Accelerants

You've got loads of mana ramp, so here goes!

In terms of creatures, you're running Birds of Paradise, Ignoble Hierarch, Bloom Tender, Dockside Extortionist, Gemhide Sliver, and Manaweft Sliver. This may seem like a lot but you’re a 5-color creature deck and you need to get your important slivers out reliably. Bloom Tender is one of the best you have in this list since it produces up to five colored mana for you later down the line.

There are six mana rocks in this iteration of the deck, and they’re all very powerful.

At 0 mana value you have Mana Crypt and Chrome Mox. These feel incredible to play on turn 1 and having this kind of mana for free can result in you being a turn or two ahead the rest of the table, which usually results in you also becoming public enemy number one.

The familiar Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and Fellwar Stone are also all included. There isn’t too much to say on these; you own these cards already, and they’re great inclusions.

Finally you have Chromatic Lantern, which doesn’t see too much play in high power EDH decks but is included here since you're on five colors and need as much fixing as you can get.

The Mana Base

Since this is a 5-color deck you're running just about any untapped multicolored land that's legal in the format. This includes all 10 shock lands and all 10 fetch lands as well as one of each basic. There's also a copy each of Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth to further your fixing.

This deck doesn't run any utility lands. You just don’t need them and you should focus your attention on consistently getting five colors instead.

The Strategy

Since this is a slivers list it's officially a combat-matters deck, so you need to keep that in mind when you build around your win conditions. This deck has a lot of 2- or 3-card interactions that just win on the spot either through infinite attacking slivers or infinite unblockable damage.

Value is also the name of the game here since that’s what slivers do best; create more value the more you play. Even if you’re not popping off with a one-shot combo, having a half-dozen buffed-up slivers with just about every keyword in Magic on them is still a formidable force that can draw blood quickly.

At the very core of this deck lies its value engine. Slivers is a value strategy and one that increases in strength as you resolve more slivers. If your combos fail or your opponents counter your largest threats, the age-old strategy of beats is always there. Going in with your team of haste, first strike, flying, and hexproof slivers is a surefire way to reduce your opponents' life total to zero.

Combos and Unique Interactions

This deck has quite a few combos so it comes with a learning curve to play very efficiently and consistently. Knowing what to tutor for or what your best bet is when your back is against the wall has a large impact on how many pods you come out on top on of.

Table-Wide One-Shot Combo

This combo is one of the easiest to assemble and the most powerful. It revolves around the infinite enter-the-battlefield combo between Sliver Queen and Basal Sliver. This lets you sacrifice a sliver for and then use that mana to get a sliver token from the Queen. You can then repeat this process indefinitely, having infinite slivers enter and then leave the battlefield. You've also got yourself an infinite damage outlet if you have Lavabelly Sliver out!

If you have something like Gemhide Sliver or Manaweft Sliver in play alongside a haste enabler like Rhythm of the Wild or Heart Sliver, you have infinite mana. This means you could get your commander into play and then use its abilities to tutor out Lavabelly Sliver and win the game that way.

Other Infinite Mana Combos

Alternatively, Cloudshredder Sliver and Training Grounds can replace Basal Sliver as the mana generators when paired with Sliver Queen and a mana-generating sliver like Gemhide Sliver or Manaweft Sliver. Along with a haste enabler, of course.

Infinite Mana Outlets

If you’re able to resolve one of the above combos but don't have access to Lavabelly Sliver because it was removed or exiled, there are still a few other ways you can win with infinite mana.

Remember, your commander is an infinite mana outlet that grabs you any sliver in the deck. This means you just need to know what the combo pieces are and you're sitting pretty if you get to infinite mana.

Here’s what you have to work with once you get there:

• Lavabelly Sliver combo with Sliver Queen.
• Amoeboid Changeling paired with Sliver Overlord to gain control of all of your opponent’s creatures.
• Create infinite slivers with Sliver Queen, resolve a Sliver Legion, and then send in unblockable slivers with infinite power and toughness thanks to Shifting Sliver.
• Destroy all of your opponent’s permanents with infinite slivers and Necrotic Sliver in play.

Rule 0 Violations

This deck has quite the number of Rule 0 violations. The infinite mana combos and outlets all pose a problem and so do the cheaper counterspells and tutors in the deck. But this list was built with high-power games in mind so you should be fine in terms of your friendships as long as you pair this deck with decks of similar power levels.

As always, have a chat before the game to discuss what everyone’s decks are capable of to keep things nice. If you’re looking for guidance on how to rate this deck, I'd say something like:

I have lots of combos, some tutors, and I’m fairly consistent. Unstopped I'll win by turn 7 or 8 nearly every time, but I have the ability to win earlier than that.

Budget Considerations

Spiteful Sliver | Illustration by Johann Bodin

This deck is very expensive, so you have two options if you can’t afford the current list: either proxy up what you can’t afford or cut both the price and power level down.

Here's what I’d recommend if you’re looking to do the latter: Sliver Queen, Cavern of Souls, and Mana Crypt are all cuttable cards. While Sliver Queen is your primary way of making infinite mana and combo-ing off, it's simply too expensive for some players. Dockside Extortionist and Chrome Mox are also on the chopping block since they’re not necessary but hold up a large portion of the cost for this list.

Since you're removing the main infinite mana generator, you want to focus more on the combat and value aspect of winning with this list. Some cards to replace these cuts worth considering are Syphon Sliver, Spiteful Sliver, and Virulent Sliver. These are all premier sliver creatures that just don’t fit in in the combo/high-power version but do well here.

Wrap Up

Manaweft Sliver | Illustration by Trevor Claxton

That’s the list! What do you think? Do you think this is the best form a high-power sliver EDH deck can be?

I’m always looking to take lists like this to the max, so I’d be looking at adding in some tutors and redundancy to make it even more competitive. What would you change?  Let me know down below in the comments or over in our official Draftsim Discord.

Until next time, sssstay sssafe and sssstay healthy!

… do slivers hiss?