Much Abrew: Morophon Sliver Combo (Modern)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. This week, we have a fun one! Right after the original Modern Horizons was released, there was a deck floating around that looked to cheat Morophon, the Boundless into play with Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord and then combo off with The First Sliver's cascade ability, eventually ending with a massive, hasty, flying board of Slivers, potentially as early as Turn 3! Now, thanks to Modern Horizons 2 and other recent sets, the deck has some sweet upgrades to help increase its consistency, like Profane Tutor. So, today, we're going to give the new and improved Morophon Sliver Combo a try in Modern! What crazy things can the deck do? Is Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord really worth it in a Sliver deck? Let's find out on this week's Much Abrew About Nothing!
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Much Abrew: Morophon Sliver Combo
Discussion
- Record-wise, we finished 3-2 with the deck, although one of our losses came to Izzet Phoenix, where, after winning game one easily, we had the combo set up in both games two and three but failed to draw our third land for Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord a bunch of turns in a row. The only match that really felt bad was against UW Control, where our opponent's endless counters and free interaction, like Solitude, made it incredibly hard to combo off. While the deck looks weird and three-piece combos traditionally aren't super competitive, Morophon Sliver Combo actually felt surprisingly strong!
- So, here's the plan of the deck: get Morophon, the Boundless on the battlefield as quickly as possible, naming Sliver. Normally, we do this by playing Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord and using its –3 ability to put Morophon (which, as a Changeling, is technically a Vampire) into play, hopefully on Turn 3. Once we get Morophon, the Boundless on the battlefield, all we need to do to win the game is cast The First Sliver. Since the rest of our deck is all tutors that can find more Slivers as well as Slivers (which will trigger The First Sliver to cascade again and find a tutor), the end result typically is that we cascade a bunch of times and eventually end up with a Morophon, the Boundless, The First Sliver, Sliver Hivelord, Sliver Legion, and Cloudshredder Sliver on the battlefield, which gives us a massive board of 10-ish-power flying, haste, indestructible Slivers, which allows us to attack and hit our opponent for 40 or 50 damage and win the game on the spot!
- As I mentioned a moment ago, outside of Sorin and Slivers, our deck is 100% tutors, including Profane Tutor, Summoner's Pact, Eladamri's Call, Grim Tutor, Search for Glory, and Wishclaw Talisman. These cards do two things for our deck. First, they help us find our combo pieces. Even though we do technically need three pieces (Sorin, The First Sliver, and Morophon, the Boundless) to win the game, with 18 tutors, the deck is surprisingly consistent at executing its game plan if the opponent doesn't have disruption. Second, the tutors make sure that we're unlikely to fizzle once we start the cascade combo with The First Sliver since, outside of Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord, everything we can possible cascade into is another Sliver or a tutor for a Sliver, either of which allows us to cascade again until we eventually build up a board big enough for lethal.
- If you decide to give the deck a try, keep in mind that once we start comboing off, it's often best to tutor up additional copies of The First Sliver with our first tutors, even though the new copy will legend rule with the one on the battlefield. The reason is that if we cast a The First Sliver with another one on the battlefield, we'll get to cascade twice. Remember, the one way the combo can fizzle is if we cascade into multiple Sorins in a row and don't have another Sliver in hand to cast and cascade again. Chaining together The First Sliver to start the combo allows us to build up a handful of Slivers so that we're much less likely to get unlucky by hitting a couple of Sorins in a row and seeing the combo fizzle.
- It's also worth keeping in mind that if we cast a Cloudshredder Sliver with The First Sliver on the battlefield, we are 100% to hit either Profane Tutor or Summoner's Pact, either of which can snag any other creature in our deck.
- Perhaps the biggest change I made to the deck was the mana. The original build wasn't really set up to be able to hard-cast our five-color Slivers. Adding more five-color lands and a couple of off-color shocks gives us a backup plan of trying to win fairly by casting things like The First Sliver. While it doesn't come up very often, we did win a match this way. The cost is pretty low (a slightly more painful mana base), which makes it more than worthwhile.
- Oh yeah, one last thing: the sideboard. There are only four different cards in our sideboard, each with a different purpose: Leyline of Sanctity helps us beat discard decks, Defense Grid is for counterspell decks, and Assassin's Trophy and Engineered Explosives are primarily to deal with cascade hate like Teferi, Time Raveler, Chalice of the Void, and Void Mirror, which is fairly popular at the moment thanks to decks like Temur Rhinos and Living End being popular. The most important thing is to not bring in too many sideboard cards at once. Usually, we want to bring in no more than a playset of one card. This is because the more sideboard cards we bring in, the more likely we are to cascade into them during our combo, and as we discussed in regard to Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord, the one way our combo fizzles once it gets going is by cascading into too many non-Sliver / non-tutor cards. While bringing in answers to hate is essential, it's generally best to use a light touch.
- So, should you play Morophon Sliver Combo in Modern? I think the answer is yes. While I don't think the deck is top tier, it did feel oddly competitive. Plus, it's hilarious and explosive! If you're a fan of Slivers or weird combo decks, give it a shot!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
