Pauper Commander - Homing Sliver as a Secret Commander?

Revisiting an Old Deck

Over a year ago, I attempted to make a pEDH Sliver deck. It seemed like it would be a perfectly viable deck as roughly half of all Slivers printed are common, making them legal in Pauper. I figured if I had access to Gemhide Sliver, arguably the best Sliver, then I would have enough good creatures to make a strong deck.

I don't think that reasoning was incorrect, but I made a few other mistakes that definitely took away from the full potential of the deck. Today, I'm going to try and rectify those errors and make a pEDH Sliver deck that can actually win games.

Slivers are known to be an incredibly powerful creature type, and I don't think their power has been truly unlocked anywhere in Pauper, so let's do that right now. 

All The Slivers of The Rainbow

The first mistake I made was my selection in commanders. In regular EDH, you have three real options: Sliver Overlord is almost certainly the best in terms of competitive gameplay, as it can just tutor for whatever you need, providing every answer.

Then there's The First Sliver and Sliver Gravemother, who are probably a bit more fun to play given that they don't just let you replicate the same play pattern over and over again. All of these commanders have two things in common. The first is that they're Slivers themselves, and the second is that they have all five colors. Last time I built this deck, I made the mistake of thinking the creature type was the important thing.

I picked Firewake Sliver as my commander because it synergized with the rest of the Slivers and gave me at least two colors. But unfortunately, two colors just isn't enough. The whole idea behind Slivers is that they're stronger the more of them you have, and two colors is not a full hive. 

So this time, we're running Fusion Elemental as our commander. It's not a Sliver, but that doesn't matter at all. You could run Composite Golem or Worldheart Phoenix in the command zone, and it wouldn't make a difference, because we're not going to play our commander at all.

We just need the color identity so that we can run every Sliver possible. Yes, it's unfortunate we're losing out on an actual commander, but Sliver decks have always been about the swarm, not the leader. A Sliver deck is nothing without its full hive, so we absolutely need that. 

Homing in on a Secret Commander

But don't think that this deck is entirely commander-less. There's a Sliver that's very similar to Sliver Overlord that's also Pauper-legal: Homing Sliver gives each Sliver in our hand slivercycling.

Essentially, that means we can pay three mana to discard any Sliver in our hand and tutor for a different one, which is more or less the same ability that Sliver Overlord has. If we can reliably find this one Sliver, we'll have a strong commander, despite our command zone slot being taken by Fusion Elemental. 

Now, it might seem like tutoring for cards in Pauper is extremely difficult, but there are actually a number of cards we can put into the deck to make the task of finding Homing Sliver fairly simple. The first mechanic we're using to make it happen is transmute. I'm not entirely sure why they decided to print all these cards at common, as they're all extremely potent, but we have them, so we'll use them.

There are only two transmute cards that find Homing Sliver directly, Drift of Phantasms and Perplex, but we're gonna be running more than just those. While Muddle the Mixture, Dimir Infiltrator, Dimir House Guard, and Shred Memory can't find our secret commander themselves, they can find either Merchant Scroll or Mystical Teachings, which can then find Perplex, which can find Homing Sliver.

Does that mean we have to go through three cards and ten mana before we even get Homing Sliver in our hand? Yes, but I believe it's worth in order to have a pseudo-Sliver Overlord on the battlefield. Trust me, a card of that caliber in a Pauper game is absurd and will likely carry us to victory if we keep it around.

Undercover Agent

And we should have no problem keeping our commander on the battlefield, or at least getting it back if it's taken down. Gods Willing, Emerge Unscathed, Ranger's Guile, Mizzium Skin, and many more like these will keep our commander safe from almost everything, but in the event that removal slips through our protection and Homing Sliver ends up in the graveyard, we can return it easily.

Revive the Shire, Tortured Existence, and Raise the Draugr will get it back for just two mana. As a bonus, Return from Extinction has Slivers in the art, making it perfectly on theme. 

The Hive

The rest of the deck is exactly what you would expect it to look like. All the best Slivers crammed together in the deck, ready to be pulled out at the command of Homing Sliver. We have mana generation in the form of Gemhide Sliver, a team boost with Cleaving and Bonesplitter Sliver, trample from Groundshaker Sliver and Battering Sliver, and evasion with Winged Sliver.

Not every Sliver is worth playing, as I don't think we can justify paying five mana just to give our team absorb 1 with Lymph Sliver. Lluckily, there's a few good changelings to fill in empty slots. Changeling Outcast is an unblockable creature that gets all the benefits from the other Slivers.

Masked Vandal acts as removal. Irregular Cohort creates two Slivers upon entering the battlefield. Point is we have more than enough to work with now that we have all five colors. 

An Improvement?

This deck is a huge improvement on my last pEDH Sliver deck. With all five colors, not only do we get access to every Sliver we need, but we also have the tutors necessary to find a real commander, one even better than Firewake Sliver.

Honestly, it's less of a Sliver deck than a secret commander deck, as a significant portion of it is committed to finding Homing Sliver, but once you do that, the Sliver swarm is there. I think the lesson learnt here is that there's no need to be locked into any requirements when building a deck, even one as logical as having a Sliver at the head of a Sliver deck.

Pay attention to what the deck needs, and don't be afraid to build outside of the box.