As it turns out, tapping for 7 colorless mana on turn 3 is pretty good. This mana is typically used to cast Karn (either with or without pants), Ugin, the Bane of Creature Decks, and a spaghetti monster that exiles your permanants and library. These colorless bombs cast way ahead of schedule can easily take over the game. But, thanks to Modern Horizons, we now get to use our 7 colorless mana to cast WUBRG spells.
Just like my burn opponent, who questioned the Sliver Hivelord on top of my library with his Goblin Guide trigger, you too must be wondering how this deck works. It’s a simple four card combo to enable 0 mana Slivers. Power Plant, Mine, Tower, and Morophon, the Boundless. There are 13 creatures in Modern that cost WUBRG and Slivers make up 3 of them. Instead of casting Chad Liberated, this more refined deck opens up a brand new archetype in ramp tribal combo.
Slivers are a deck that require a critical mass of cards to be successful. Traditionally, this is achieved by curving one, two, three, Collected Company. But when 1+1+1=7 this deck gets to do a lot more exciting things than dying to a Damnation.
Step 1: 7 mana. Thanks to the thousands of people playing this deck, they have figured out that Expedition Map, Sylvan Scrying, Ancient Stirrings, and Once Upon a Time do a good job at finding Tron. Those last two cards are especially relevant for finding our payoff Morophon, which leads us to…
Step 2: Cast Morophon. Typically, having a single playset of a card makes it really hard to build a gameplan around, but with how many cantrips are in this deck it’s not as hard as one would think. Unlike with typical Tron, however, we aren’t done casting spells yet. A 6/6 by itself won’t win the game (unless it has deathtouch and lifelink), so it’s time we start slamming with Slivers.
Step 3: OTK. Modern Horizons gave us more than just Morophon, it also gave us the slivers that would let us just kill the opponent on the spot. The most important card to follow up Morophon is The First Sliver and can enable the kill when 7 mana is obtained. Cascade into Homing Sliver, and then Cloudshredder Sliver and you will have 19 flying hasty damage on turn 3. This is what differentiates Sliver Tron from a normal list and turns it more into a combo deck. And if you don’t have what you need, cycling your Homing Sliver can find the missing link.
Edit: This is not actually true. I thought cascade worked this way, but since The First Sliver is still on the stack Homing Sliver does not cascade into anything else. If you have Cloudshredder Sliver in hand when you cast The First Sliver you can still do 19 damage.
However, since Tron is such a popular deck, many people have evolved different ways to hate on it. This makes it important to have a gameplan for when we can’t get easy access to 7. Vivien’s Arkbow is a great way to turn dead cards into gas, and Cascading Cataracts can help when you have Tron but no Morophon. You could also try cracking 2 Terrarions and tapping a forest to cast a Sliver, but in my experience that rarely comes up.
This deck is a lot of fun, but can also be very awkward. Sometimes you’ll have Tron for days but your hand will be 3 different WUBRG Slivers and you’ll question the choices that led you to this point. Other times, your opponent will be beating down with a Snapcaster Mage for lethal on turn 7 while you still haven’t assembled Tron. But when it works, your opponent will think they are up against boring old Tron again until you slam a Sliver Legion and show them whats up.
Disclaimer: This is a deck that I initially came up with when Modern Horizons first came out, but due to a certain Hogaak I put it on the backburner and forgot about it. However, thanks to the podcast Faithless Brewing and their patreon Unpronounceable, I was reminded that this deck exists, and it’s just as fun as I imagined. The list I used for this article was the same one found in the shownotes of Theros Previews & Brew Review #1, and if you aren’t listening to these guys yet I would highly recommend them.
