This deck was my response to building a fair slivers deck. Slivers have always been interesting to me as a tribe; they strengthen as you play more slivers, yet they lack crazy functionality that is common among many of the tribal commander decks I play against. Unless you are running the big few in a streamlined combo-win sliver deck, they don't enable explosive turns unless you can find ways to play multiple at the same time, which is always achieved through accessory cards. So, I decided to build a lower power sliver deck subsisting off of the simple buffing slivers in sultai. I purposely avoided five color slivers because that is where you brush dangerously close with combo slivers, and I preferred to avoid mass land destruction in white. Keeping it to a three color combination limited it enough to keep it low power while also keeping it to a fairly diverse set of commanders. Green offers basic power buffs as well as haste, trample, and mana tapping abilities. Black offers a few key abilities, as well as Changeling Outcast and a few tribal graveyard cards. I mainly wanted to include blue because it gave access to card draw, flying, and unblockable, as well as cards like Reflections of Littjara which can give some extra width to the slivers board to make it actually potent.
My final choices for commanders were originally Riku of Two Reflections, Brokkos, Apex of Forever, and Volrath, the Shapestealer.
Riku would be in a more aggressive color combination and would allow me to make copies of slivers naturally, as well as be just a good value engine overall. Black is not very necessary in this deck, so I could add red combat slivers in their place. I decided against it because I thought it would be a little too scary, resulting in a lot of targeted focus if I attempted to play slivers this way. I am still keeping it as my backup plan if I want to rebuild it stronger.
Spacegodzilla was actually the original commander for this deck for a couple of weeks. It was in the colors I wanted and it introduced a new twist to winning with slivers: Voltron. By mutating onto a sliver, I could essentially always have a commander sliver that I was threatening damage with. Also, I enjoyed the thematic "story" it carried with it. There is Godzilla, king of monsters, and I had Spacegodzilla, king of slivers. However, it all fell apart when I discovered that my play group had been using the mutate rule wrong and were combining creature types when they were mutating. Because of this, the deck's power significantly weakened as I could no longer constantly recur a 6/6 "sliver", but rather only turn a basic sliver, generally 1/1s to 3/3s into commander damage. This obviously wasn't worth it.
Volrath was my way of salvaging the deck after it fell apart. Instead of mutating onto the slivers to get their type, I would instead become copies of them at the cost of one mana and the need to have a counter on them. Also, the copy would have base power/toughness 7/5, making it more viable for commander damage. Plus, it could become a copy of some of the buffing slivers, therefore increasing the total power of my slivers even further.
While commander damage is one of the intended win-cons, I didn't aim for pure voltron. I instead went for using mostly slivers to buff the commander. This is wildly inefficient as compared to equipment or auras, but it keeps the deck at a low level while also being able to build a decent board state. Reflections of Littjara, which was mentioned before, helps get the board state a little wider and double up on buffing effects. Unfortunately, a fair amount of the keywords are redundant when stacked, but it is nice to have something like two of Diffusion Sliver on the field. Hivestone was included even though I only have a few non-sliver creatures because I could become a copy of some other creature on the board with Volrath and it still be a sliver. Stoneforge Masterwork is one of the few voltron cards in here, but it is on-theme. Forgotten Ancient and Generous Patron are easy ways to get counters on my own creatures, but hilariously enough they can put the counters on opponent's creatures for Volrath's ability to copy. Forge of Heroes is technically voltorn synergistic, but you can put the counters on ANY commander that enters the battlefield. As for the rest the accessory cards in the deck, they are pretty standard tribal cards, although I did put some stronger ones in because at first it seemed a little weak when it comes to its engine. This goes back to slivers lacking in extra function that a lot of other tribes tend to have.
A few cards that I am currently considering including to help with the win condition (if the deck proves to be lacking in that department) is Triumph of the Hordes and Overwhelming Stampede. Infect makes the lower power board state more likely to kill and overwhelming stampeded takes advantage of my commander as a 7/5 to automatically give a huge boost to my boards power. Infect also has the side effect of putting counters on creatures, which synergizes a bit more with Volrath.
Also, can we talk about how dumb but hilarious the keyword fateseal is? It only exists on two cards: Mesmeric Sliver, which is in this deck, and Spin into Myth. I am glad they did not reprint this ability, but I have a feeling the Mesmeric Sliver will quickly become one the most annoying slivers in this deck.
