There are few things I dislike more than a Sliver Kindred deck. There are a few reasons why, and the first is the sheer power of it all. They are nuts when you put them all together in one deck. The ease with which that deck is broken is too much - I don't mind throwing some power around, but when practically any pile of Slivers will wipe a table, that's annoying. Second, I think it is, frankly, uninspired. There's no creativity to it at all. I mean, sure, you can run your pet Sliver, but still - it's a pile of cards that all help each other and make each other absurdly powerful. I want at least a little personality and effort in my decks, both the ones I build and the ones I play against.

So, it may come as a surprise when we look at today's Commander.

I will say, as Sliver Commanders go, this is probably the best one. You can actually play another Kindred type, so rather than just all-Slivers-all-the-time at least you can do something creative with Minotaurs or Unicorns or whatever. And because the Slivers she makes take on whatever type you choose on casting, you could just pick a pet type and go with it. I like that. But still, if you've been reading my last few articles, you'll know we're not going to do Kindred at all. Nope! Let's do something else entirely.

Rukarumel, Biologist | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Rukarumel, Biologist

• Creatures (10)
• 1 Archaeomancer
• 1 Bloom Tender
• 1 Deadeye Navigator
• 1 Emiel the Blessed
• 1 Faeburrow Elder
• 1 Great Whale
• 1 Peregrine Drake
• 1 Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
• 1 Shipwreck Dowser
• 1 Tidewater Minion

• Instants (33)
• 1 Anguished Unmaking
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Bant Charm
• 1 Behold the Multiverse
• 1 Brainstorm
• 1 Brokers Charm
• 1 Chemister's Insight
• 1 Contact Other Plane
• 1 Delay
• 1 Despark
• 1 Esper Charm
• 1 Eureka Moment
• 1 Evacuation
• 1 Fated Retribution
• 1 Flame of Anor
• 1 Hieroglyphic Illumination
• 1 Lightning Bolt
• 1 Magma Opus
• 1 Meeting of Minds
• 1 Memory Lapse
• 1 Obscura Charm
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Prismari Command
• 1 Quick Study
• 1 Reality Shift
• 1 Rowdy Research
• 1 Soul Read
• 1 Spoils of Adventure
• 1 Stinging Study
• 1 Sultai Charm
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Vampiric Tutor
• 1 Visions of Beyond

• Sorceries (3)
• 1 Cruel Ultimatum
• 1 Rout
• 1 Ruinous Ultimatum

• Enchantments (1)
• 1 Freed from the Real

• Artifacts (2)
• 1 Ashnod's Altar
• 1 Illusionist's Bracers

• Lands (50)
• 2 Island
• 1 Plains
• 1 Arcane Sanctum
• 1 Archway Commons
• 1 City of Brass
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Crumbling Necropolis
• 1 Deserted Beach
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Frontier Bivouac
• 1 Gateway Plaza
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Grand Coliseum
• 1 Indatha Triome
• 1 Jetmir's Garden
• 1 Jungle Shrine
• 1 Ketria Triome
• 1 Mana Confluence
• 1 Mystic Monastery
• 1 Nomad Outpost
• 1 Opulent Palace
• 1 Path of Ancestry
• 1 Prairie Stream
• 1 Raffine's Tower
• 1 Raugrin Triome
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Rupture Spire
• 1 Sandsteppe Citadel
• 1 Savage Lands
• 1 Savai Triome
• 1 Sea of Clouds
• 1 Seaside Citadel
• 1 Spara's Headquarters
• 1 Temple of Abandon
• 1 Temple of Deceit
• 1 Temple of Enlightenment
• 1 Temple of Epiphany
• 1 Temple of Malady
• 1 Temple of Malice
• 1 Temple of Mystery
• 1 Temple of Plenty
• 1 Temple of Silence
• 1 Temple of Triumph
• 1 Transguild Promenade
• 1 Xander's Lounge
• 1 Zagoth Triome
• 1 Ziatora's Proving Ground

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This, my friends, is a five-color Draw-Go deck.

Quick primer (skip this paragraph if you know what Draw-Go is): Draw-Go is a deck style that plays almost entirely on the end step of your opponent's turn. It comes from back in the early days of competitive Magic, and it gets its name because all you do is draw a card, play a Land, and pass the turn. It's a play style I'm rather enamored with, and I have tried in the past to make it work in Commander, which is much harder because you have multiple opponents all trying to kill you. But we've got all five colors to work with, which means we can use all the best spells, and everyone will be waiting to see what Kindred type you're playing as you play your Lands and pass the turn.

Because the spirit of Draw-Go is to not play on our own turn, we're running a solid 50 Lands here for our mana, rather than rocks we'd have to cast in a main phase. We really can't have enough; the more we draw, the better. We'll play them out in due time. No ramp, but we'll be fine; we'll draw Lands plenty and just keep playing them long after everyone else has stopped. We could run the few Instant-speed Green ramp spells if we wanted to, but those tend to require Basic Lands and we don't have many of those; we really need Lands which tap for multiple colors to pull this off.

We've also got a number of answers. One of the nice things about a Rainbow (all five colors) deck is we can play a whole bunch of Charms - and the Charms are awesome. They're normally overpriced (just slightly) for each individual effect, but they're 100% worth the price of admission because of all the utility. One of my favorites is Bant Charm - for three mana, we can destroy a key combo piece like Ashnod's Altar, blunt an attack, or counter a key spell. That's amazing. The Charms provide us with a variety of great answers for any number of problems, but we also have a number of Exile Creature spot-removal spells, and even a couple in the Anguished Unmaking arena of "Exile target nonland permanent" fame. We want to reliably wait till the last minute to cast any of these - don't use them just because something is scary. Use them because you must, because the thing is about to gain Hexproof or is actually attacking you right now. We also have a couple of blow-up-the-board spells, including a couple which can be cast at Instant speed (Rout and Fated Retribution) and one which can't but is both too awesome and too on-theme to not play: Ruinous Ultimatum.

We have a few counters, but I opted against the Counterspell type which cost . Instead, we're running Arcane Denials, which are easier to cast but less final. That's fine, because we're probably not going to counter anything unless we're about to win - we have them to stop people from stopping us! That said, a number of the Charms have a counter-something mode, and don't be afraid to use it if it helps keep you alive.

The classic Draw-Go deck wins by running your opponent out of resources and either casting some big spell which kills them in one go or playing a big flying Creature and beating them up with it. The Creature route would be way too hard in Commander - no way to make sure your three opponents can't kill it - and while we could certainly do something like Exsanguinate, I thought it'd be fun to do something with a bit more style. So, we're going to make infinite mana and cast a ton of copies of Cruel Ultimatum. Hard to beat that!

To do this, we need to do two things: create infinite mana (of any color) and cast Cruel Ultimatum a whole bunch of times. Here's what I settled on.

Infinite mana combos:

• Emiel the Blessed or Deadeye Navigator + Peregrine Drake or Great Whale. You flicker the Drake or Whale with Emiel or the Navigator, and each time you untap more Lands than you need to flicker the Drake or Whale again. That means you can keep adding mana to your mana pool until you've added a million of each color or whatever.
• Tidewater Minion + Illusionist's Bracers. Stick the Bracers on the Minion and tap it to untap two things. Have it untap itself and a Land of your choice. Repeat until you have whatever you need. (This is the only combo where you need exactly these two cards, but both of them seemed decent on their own; we have other activated abilities which wouldn't hurt to be doubled and the Minion is a decent blocker.)
• Bloom Tender, Faeburrow Elder, or Selvala, Heart of the Wilds + Freed from the Real (plus Rukarumel or another Creature with 3 or more power, if we're working with Selvala, or possibly Rukarumel just for the colors). The idea here is these three Creatures are each capable of tapping for more than one mana, so we make more than one and use the we make to untap the Creature. Bloom Tender and Faeburrow Elder both require we have at least a couple extra Blue sources kicking around, because we'll use the Blue we make every tap to untap it, but I suspect we can make it work.

Then we have to win. We do that with a specific combination of cards. We need Cruel Ultimatum, Archaeomancer or Shipwreck Dowser, and Ashnod's Altar to do all this, and here's how it works. We make infinite mana using our option of choice, then we play Archaeomancer to return Cruel Ultimatum to our hand. We then sacrifice it to Ashnod's Altar and play Cruel Ultimatum again, returning Archaeomancer to our hand and playing it out again. We do that until all our opponents are dead. (For what it's worth, Emiel or Deadeye will both work just as well as Ashnod's Altar; we just flicker the 'mancer instead of casting and returning it each time.)

And that's the problem, isn't it? It's quite likely we won't be able to kill all three of our opponents before we mill ourselves out and lose to decking ourselves. This is where Magma Opus comes in. Because once we're flickering Archaeomancer rather than recasting her from the Graveyard each turn, we can just cast Magma Opus over and over and do the rest of the damage. Of course, Magma Opus also draws us cards, so we still could deck ourselves. This leads us to our final way of killing people: Lightning Bolt.

Do not cast Lightning Bolt for any other reason than to win the game. In the end, we're going to Bolt our opponents to death - cast Bolt, flicker Archaeomancer with our unlimited mana, and cast Bolt again. And again. And again. Until everyone is dead. You may have started with Cruel Ultimatum. You may have started or wound up with Magma Opus. Or you may have started with Lightning Bolt (because you can actually do that - if you have Archaeomancer and Deadeye plus infinite mana, you can just go for it). But no matter what, everyone is ultimately going to lose a game of Commander to Lightning Bolt, and that's awesome, especially when they assumed they were playing against Slivers.

How do you feel about Slivers? Have you ever tried Draw-Go in Commander? Let us know on socials!

Thanks for reading.