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by Matthew Brown
The Slivers Okay, I keep waiting for someone to say it, but I'm sick of waiting so here is my attempt to vent on the glory of the Sliver. First a little bit about myself. I am in my latter teens and have been playing magic for 3 plus years; I started in the heyday of revised (just after The Dark stopped printing). I live in a good size town in the middle of nowhere (upstate new York, that is about 3 hours north of Albany, this isn’t the Bronx). I, as I assume many others, am a person who has taken some significant breaks from Magic, for financial and social reasons. I popped back onto the scene around February. The first thing I did when i started playing again (after i dug up my card box) was look at some spoiler lists. Well, first off, I didn’t know half the sets existed, fourth addition was still new to me, (I had cut out shortly after buying a box of Ice Age). As I read through these spoilers saw some really cool cards, and I wrote a short list of those that i thought really kicked A**. Slivers were not on that list, I had long ago stopped trying to build decks out of creature types; I tried the goblin thing; I tried the merfolk thing (I have owned 5 Lords of Atlantis at one time, don’t ask); but all in all I always lost, and it wasn’t fun. So after having played for about a month I was looking for something new, something to REALLY energize my interest. Well, I made this practically unstoppable 4th turn kill deck, but that’s another story. Anyway, I finally got to poking around Wizard’s homepage, and I saw something called the Sliver Queen, it didn’t say what it did, but something in me snapped, I had to own that card. That night I went through all my spoilers (downloaded of course) and looked up all the Slivers, i found 16 or so in all their glory. THEN after I saw what they did, I looked at their commonality: ALL common and uncommon? How absurd!! Why is it that this two casting-cost common thing does what my precious Lords of Atlantises do? Well, to make a long story short, me and some friends bought a box of strongholds when it came out and my heart nearly stopped beating when a friend declared “I got the Queen!!” Well, that was nothing compared to the reaction I got five minutes later when another declared “NO! I got the Queen.” Yup, two queens, and neither was mine. One of these immediately asked me what I'd give him for it, the other declared he would out-Sliver me and use it for himself. Well, I got one, and set to building a deck based around her, what fun! Mana is the problem of course, so I did what I could to assemble some good rainbow mana givers. Three cards immediately stuck out in this field: Birds of Paradise (obviously), and two other, seemingly unmentioned, cards School of the unseen (Land, T: 1 colorless; 2T: one mana of any color), and the other Mana Prism (3 artifact, T: 1 colorless, 1T: 1 mana of any color). Unfortunately my group is small, and there were a grand total of one of each of these in it. Other handy cards are City of Brass, Lotus Petal, and Celestial Prism. These three obviously have downsides over the previously mentioned. Beyond that, I did what I could to get some multi-color lands, mostly Ping-lands and (what i call) sleeper lands (add mana of x color, this land does not untap next turn). I still have mana basic lands just in case someone pulls that damned Ruination on me. Back to the Queen. Okay lets look at her as a standalone. 5 casting cost 7/7 legend that can pump out (without tapping) 1/1 colorless creatures. I would be all over this even if she weren’t a Sliver. Now, she needs some children, obvious answers to that are 4 Muscle Slivers. So there is a fairly good chance you’ll get at least 1 of these 2/2 buggers that bump up their kin by +1/+1 in a standard 10-20 turn game. Now, how about regeneration? Clot Sliver; flying? Winged Sliver; hell, how about some bonuses when we’re attacking? Spined Sliver (+1/+1 for every creature blocking). And we can add more stuff like trample, first strike, you name it we got it. So great, we MAY get some cool creatures in play, so what? What about some of those other important aspects of game play, card drawing, life, what if they just pyroclasm or something? Well, we could regenerate, but at 2 mana a pop that could be a problem. AHHH HARK, the ever sacred Heartstone, one of the most dangerous cards in the whole set, and here is how. First of all, with this bugger we transform the Queen into a lean mean wieny producing machine. Got a few spare mana? Just let the queen throuw out a few new Slivers. AHH another thing, can’t we think of some thing more inventive to do with wienies then just attack with them? HELL YEAH. Let’s examine some of the other Slivers. Acidic Sliver (Every Sliver gains: “2 colorless: sacrifice this creature to do 2 damage to target creature or player) what this equates to is that with just these 3 cards alone (heartstone, acidic Sliver, Sliver queen) we can pay two colorless mana, ANY TIME to do two damage to ANYTHING! Isn’t it grand? Here’s a few more keeno cards, hopefully you can see their relative uses as well. Mnemonic Sliver, each Sliver gains “2 colorless, Sacrifice this creature: draw a card) two mana, draw a card. Victual Sliver, Each Sliver gains “2 colorless, Sacrifice this creature: Gain 4 life” Two mana for four life, I challenge YOU to find a cheaper method of using a sol ring to gain life. There are others but I'll leave that to you to find out. Oh, and the icing on the cake, the ever glorious, Crystalline Sliver, yes this IS the one, the one you hoped didn’t exist, All Slivers Gain (no really, get this) “this creature cannot be the target of spells or affects” That’s right, no terror, no disintegrate, no desert twister, no Tim, no Seasinger, no Helm of Posession, no Icy. And just in case they somehow manage to risk it all and throuw out that nasty nasty 13 point pestilence, never fear, for your VERY important Slivers we have the hibernation Sliver, each Sliver gains “pay 2 life: return this creature to owners hand.” SO what gives, there has to be a way to stop this nasty NASTY deck, well, there is, its called extinction, but GUESS WHAT!! WHO CARES, you wipe out every single last freakin Sliver in play? Well, again with the Hibernation Sliver, just return those puppies to your hand, and those you don’t wish to save, blow your opponent away with a few Slivers loaded with battery acid (acidic Sliver). Now, is it all to hokey? don’t like using all these Slivers, don’t wanna base a deck around them, my friend we DO have a solution. How bout this, if you play black or white, you probably know all about throwing huge creatures into play by resurrecting them from the graveyard. Well, we do that, we take our heartstone, and my very favorite wieny deck compliment, Ashnod’s Altar. UH OH, WotC better get out that banned cards list, here comes one of my infinite combos. YES let’s play a game i call real life scenario.
Well, the chances of getting that EXACT draw are pretty slim, but since it’s only three cards, it can’t really hurt as far as rounding out your deck. And think of it, what IS the ultimate defense against a Sliver deck? your own Queen Sliver!! Of course I have not included an actual deck in this article because its somewhat of a nobrainer. I'm not claiming that I've actually assembled a perfect sliver deck (although I hope to), I'll leave that to you. NOW, I realize this may screw with other peoples ideas of Slivers, and i hope it will drive the price up enough so that i can sell mine and retire to some tropical island somewhere. Thank you for you time.
Matthew Brown
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