After listening to the podcast today on Dominaria lore and creative direction, I stumbled over their statement that there was no room for slivers in Dominaria. The thing is, I do agree that slivers shouldn't have been a major element of Dominaria (and this comes from an avid sliver fan!) but I think leaving them out completely was unnecessary. Immediately I thought of ways to include "low-maintenance" slivers, so slivers that work fine by themselves. The most obvious path is letting the slivers create more tokens themselves, so they can also work in a non-sliver deck. As I thought, I came across the following designs, which I think not only work well as stand-alones, but also perfectly exemplify the sliver's flavour of "overrunning everything if left alone".
Icatia-Hive Sliver 2W
Creature - Sliver (R)
Each sliver you control has first strike and "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, create a colorless 1/1 sliver creature token." With the thallids and thrulls ruling the abandoned continent of Sarpadia, it was here where slivers first learned humility.
1/1
Tolaria-Hive Sliver 2U
Creature - Sliver (R)
Each sliver you control has flying and "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, create a colorless 1/1 sliver creature token." Slivers quickly learned to utilize the time bubbles of Tolaria for rapid breeding experiments, accelerating their evolution.
1/1
Stronghold-Hive Sliver 1B
Creature - Sliver (R)
Each sliver you control has "Sacrifice this creature: Add B." and "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, create a colorless 1/1 sliver creature token." "If the cabal actually knew their history, they'd appreciate the irony of the slivers infesting the lower sections of the Stronghold." -Aruk, pathfinder en-kor
1/1
Keld-Hive Sliver 1R
Creature - Sliver (R)
Each sliver you control has "Sacrifice this creature: It deals 1 damage to target creature." and "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, create a colorless 1/1 sliver creature token." When the remnants of the Skyshroud withered away, the slivers found warmth in the flame of Keld - and the keldons found a constant source of meat and battle practise.
1/1
Krosa-Hive Sliver 3G
Creature - Sliver (R)
Each sliver you control gets +2/+2 and "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, create a colorless 1/1 sliver creature token." Although the slivers of Krosa are among the strongest and wildest, they are also the least volatile thanks to the guiding hands of the druids tending to the forest.
1/1
Thoughts?
Also sorry about the flavour texts, I couldn't help myself.
Slivers in dominaria are a catch-22. Either they don't include them and their fans complain about that, or they get included in small numbers and their fans complain because there isn't enough. Your choice to tack token generation onto all of them proves this point, and even that copy-paste attempt at a solution wouldn't make everybody happy. Not including them would be the easier of the two choices because slivers have pretty limited design space as-is, since every sliver that isn't 5-colored or colorless has to be some sort of lord. The necessarily creature-heavy nature of sliver decks constricts even the design space for sliver-based noncreatures. The only alternative would be another thing that many slivers fans hate, which is slivers that break the mold. Even updating slivers from their antiquated symmetrical lord abilities to more modern asymmetrical styles created a backlash even though it made the slivers better for it.
After listening to the podcast today on Dominaria lore and creative direction, I stumbled over their statement that there was no room for slivers in Dominaria. The thing is, I do agree that slivers shouldn't have been a major element of Dominaria (and this comes from an avid sliver fan!) but I think leaving them out completely was unnecessary. Immediately I thought of ways to include "low-maintenance" slivers, so slivers that work fine by themselves. The most obvious path is letting the slivers create more tokens themselves, so they can also work in a non-sliver deck. As I thought, I came across the following designs, which I think not only work well as stand-alones, but also perfectly exemplify the sliver's flavour of "overrunning everything if left alone".
As a solution to Slivers these seem fairly problematic since they are all rare. Also a whole cycle of a single creature type is a lot of room if you don't even get a small draft theme out of it (since once again: these are all rare).
On the other hand any other rarity doesn't work with this mechanic since multiples are so strong, so you write yourself into a corner.
Alternatively they could have gone the Thrull/Kavu way and just included a single Sliver e. g. replacing Pardic Wanderer with another vanilla artifact Sliver (the Troll answer, but if they planned on including Slivers in the next set certainly a way to get people talking) or a nonvanilla artifact Sliver with an ability for a change similar in ability to e. g. Sparring Construct.
There are plenty of Sliver designs that are straight-forward enough to "work" in small numbers expanding on Predatory Sliver as a self-contained card.
Not that I think any of those solutions are necessary. A set without Slivers is okay. Put Slivers in a set that benefits from it. I don't need a set that has historic really wants them. Slivers are not Sagas. You usually get only one artifact Sliver and one legendary Sliver per block/arc - maybe an additional artifact. Otherwise Slivers are almost orthogonal to the historic theme, even a bit antithetical with the real desire to avoid being legendary. (Another point against putting a rare cycle into Dominaria since that's space also occupied by legendaries - and reserving a whole cycle of nonlegendary creatures might make things tight.)
And Slivers would take up the space of a lot of references. What point is there to including Slivers if that means you take out e. g. the Thrull, the Kavu and the Homarid? When does the satisfaction of Sliver fans get overruled by the satisfaction of the fans of other aspects of the game?
Last but not least: Making all the Slivers in the set so similar to each other may actually be disappointing in its own way. Slivers are about building your own creature army. If all the cards already share one ability, it feels less special. Suddenly all Slivers in all colors are all about that very ability.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
Creature - Sliver (R)
Each sliver you control has first strike and "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, create a colorless 1/1 sliver creature token."
With the thallids and thrulls ruling the abandoned continent of Sarpadia, it was here where slivers first learned humility.
1/1
Creature - Sliver (R)
Each sliver you control has flying and "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, create a colorless 1/1 sliver creature token."
Slivers quickly learned to utilize the time bubbles of Tolaria for rapid breeding experiments, accelerating their evolution.
1/1
Creature - Sliver (R)
Each sliver you control has "Sacrifice this creature: Add B." and "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, create a colorless 1/1 sliver creature token."
"If the cabal actually knew their history, they'd appreciate the irony of the slivers infesting the lower sections of the Stronghold." -Aruk, pathfinder en-kor
1/1
Creature - Sliver (R)
Each sliver you control has "Sacrifice this creature: It deals 1 damage to target creature." and "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, create a colorless 1/1 sliver creature token."
When the remnants of the Skyshroud withered away, the slivers found warmth in the flame of Keld - and the keldons found a constant source of meat and battle practise.
1/1
Creature - Sliver (R)
Each sliver you control gets +2/+2 and "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, create a colorless 1/1 sliver creature token."
Although the slivers of Krosa are among the strongest and wildest, they are also the least volatile thanks to the guiding hands of the druids tending to the forest.
1/1
Thoughts?
Also sorry about the flavour texts, I couldn't help myself.
As a solution to Slivers these seem fairly problematic since they are all rare. Also a whole cycle of a single creature type is a lot of room if you don't even get a small draft theme out of it (since once again: these are all rare).
On the other hand any other rarity doesn't work with this mechanic since multiples are so strong, so you write yourself into a corner.
Alternatively they could have gone the Thrull/Kavu way and just included a single Sliver e. g. replacing Pardic Wanderer with another vanilla artifact Sliver (the Troll answer, but if they planned on including Slivers in the next set certainly a way to get people talking) or a nonvanilla artifact Sliver with an ability for a change similar in ability to e. g. Sparring Construct.
There are plenty of Sliver designs that are straight-forward enough to "work" in small numbers expanding on Predatory Sliver as a self-contained card.
Not that I think any of those solutions are necessary. A set without Slivers is okay. Put Slivers in a set that benefits from it. I don't need a set that has historic really wants them. Slivers are not Sagas. You usually get only one artifact Sliver and one legendary Sliver per block/arc - maybe an additional artifact. Otherwise Slivers are almost orthogonal to the historic theme, even a bit antithetical with the real desire to avoid being legendary. (Another point against putting a rare cycle into Dominaria since that's space also occupied by legendaries - and reserving a whole cycle of nonlegendary creatures might make things tight.)
And Slivers would take up the space of a lot of references. What point is there to including Slivers if that means you take out e. g. the Thrull, the Kavu and the Homarid? When does the satisfaction of Sliver fans get overruled by the satisfaction of the fans of other aspects of the game?
Last but not least: Making all the Slivers in the set so similar to each other may actually be disappointing in its own way. Slivers are about building your own creature army. If all the cards already share one ability, it feels less special. Suddenly all Slivers in all colors are all about that very ability.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
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