How Magic's Strangest Creatures Help New Players Learn The Game
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- čas přidán 29. 05. 2024
- An Indie Dev and a AAA Dev discuss Slivers and how they help new players learn how to build decks.
Hosts:
Forrest Imel forrestimel.com/
Gavin Valentine www.gavinvalentinedesign.com/
Join the Distraction Makers Discord: / discord
Thumbnail Artwork: The First Sliver by Svetlin Velinov - Hry
Fun fact about the art for Slivers from Core Set 2014 that looked like dudes: During the development of Core Set 2014, they wanted to make a new creature type that all buffed other creatures you controlled of that type. They were humanoid in the lore and I think the creature type was called "Skep." But some time during the design of M14, they were like, "hey, aren't these just Slivers but they only buff your creatures and not all creatures? Let's just make them into Slivers!" But by then it was too late to change the art, so that's why the Slivers in M14 have that weird humanoid design and that's also why the new design of Slivers is for your creatures only rather than all creatures even though they're back to looking like Slivers again.
I think you're spot on for the most part. The big thing about Slivers you missed is the "All" vs "you control" aspect of the creature type. Back when I was learning the game, Slivers were the cards that taught me to watch out for cards that share effects with opponents. Definitely would have been worth mentioning. Cheers!
Good point!
Sliver mirror matches used to be zany. Now my sliver deck is called "unevolved"
In my earliest kitchen table games I was able to beat my friend's sliver decks using the Lorwyn changelings
I miss symmetrical Slivers. It was cool to have this one weird creature type that was still symmetrical when every other type wasn't any more, but I can't really blame WoTC for ditching them from a design perspective. I enjoyed finding ways to prepare a sliver deck for a mirror match without sacrificing its ability to handle other strategies, but I imagine those matches must have been an absolute nightmare in draft.
😂 I definitely blame them. Keeping them symmetrical was what made them unique and interesting. Now they're just another (possibly the most) milquetoast creature type.
Your section about Slivers not helping new players break through the tribal deck building mindset is spot on. Other tribes you’ll see “oh this card does X thing better than any merfolk/vampire/zombie and makes the deck better” so you expand your horizons
but no card does that for Slivers so you get stuck in that deck building space.
I gotta say, with slivers, the individual design of each sliver really matters, and affects the feel of the deck it is in. Like, any sliver that just gives your other slivers evasion is just really boring. They need to print slivers with really niche interactions. Ones that give your slivers madness, ones that make food tokens, ones that get bigger when your opponents creatures dies. Slivers don’t have to be boring. Individual card design matters.
There are some really interesting slivers, but they rarely get used. I try to rotate slivers in and out of my deck to keep it a little spicy.
Totally agree. I feel like this is what they missed out on in the last Commander Masters. They did do some Slivers with an interesting design/mechanic (Hatchery, Regal, etc.), but definitely could have done more than just 6 new Slivers.
Hell, there's only been 19 new Slivers in the last 5 years. Other tribes have had way more support over that time, with Eldrazi at 51 new creatures (thanks to MH3) and even Snakes (!?) at 38.
The problem is simply that they "can't" (more accurately "won't") make too many more Slivers, even niche ones, because Slivers are so exponentially synergistic with all other Slivers, that every time they print a new Sliver card, that increases the potential power of all Sliver decks by some amount, even if it is only slightly.
Even if the new Slivers don't increase the power of specific Sliver decks, they still increase the overall power of Sliver decks as whole by giving them more potential options. Also, they can increase the power of specific Sliver decks by allowing for better synergies & better decks.
It's kinda like the power difference between Legacy and Modern, where simply having more cards available makes each deck more powerful, except that Slivers kinda get stronger exponentially, where other decks get stronger multiplicatively.
In fact, the biggest problem with Slivers is that they already have too many cards. If they had less cards (especially removing the 5-color commanders), it would be a way more interesting and fun deck to play, especially for commander.
It'd be cool to see them bring some specific select Sliver cards (or an equivalent creature type that is separate but works the same) back to a rotating standard format again, because I feel like you could come up with some super interesting & fun cards & decks in that kind of environment. They'd be much more interesting than the very samey-feeling commander decks that start off unique, but then evolve, over the course of the game, into the same generic amorphous Sliver blob you always see.
@@altrivotzck6565 That's what I thought when they brought a bunch out in 2014 and 2015 and then again in one of the Modern Horizons set and a new deck with a few extra cards in commander Masters. The more they do it, the more variability to these. Sure, they become a keyword soup perfect hybrid, but there's some unique abilities and synergies that I like to rotate in and out. I do think having legendary options that are 2, 3 or 4 colors would also help make even more unique sliver decks. Give the two color ones eminence abilities just to encourage actually building them...
"I think that's when i started drinking" that's me the moment I'm made to start a game of commander
The first Tribe I ever played was Rats! Crypt Rats just being my favorite card ever.
Then, with my naive understanding of Magic OR the consequences of the thought, I decided to play Slivers with my friends next ('Sedge Sliver' from Time Spiral was love at first sight). And as I shared this tidbit of information with Gavin about 'Plague Rats', I felt vindicated.. it seems I just came back to where it all started for me.
EDIT: As a negative about Slivers, is the overhead and bookkeeping. It's just too much.
I just got my 13 yr old son into MTG and he loves slivers. Turns out you can make some pretty simple but powerful decks with these guys! Bit of a challenge to make a competitive budget sliver deck though. The 5 color mana base is pricey even without the original dual lands. I'd personally love to see some 3 color sliver commanders come out like you guys talked about. I think it would be really cool and would also help teach newer players.
I really like the green white pauper sliver deck.
I use Jetmir as the commander
Maybe an idea to expand slivers and let sliver players branch out: slivers that link the tribes, effects like "all slivers are also elves and all elves are also slivers"
Slivers are SUCH a fun deck to play; a couple times.
Probably the most sacrilegious thing I've ever heard 😂slivers are the kickers of tribal
There are slivers that do this. Slivers actually lend themselbes to a creature storm deck a layer deeper with dormant sliver, heart sliver, and gemhide sliver.
Slivers have been one of my favorite creature type since I was introduced to them in MH1. I have a commander deck where I randomly choose one of the six legendary slivers to pull out of the 99 to be the commander.
Somebody went 5-0 in a legacy league playing Vial Slivers. It's not a good deck, but i think everyone is happy to see weird lists doing well.
Haha what a legend
Back when cold snap was brand new and I was brand new to magic, the first friend that I would play 60 card with in high school had a slivers deck that would always beat my ass. No matter what kind of deck I threw against it it was always stronger. There is some aspect of that that made magic really special to me. It's one of those tribal decks that just works.
I really enjoy your thought process and back and forth discussion around the game I love so much. I hope your channel grows.
As for Slivers… the issue I have is that my brother loves them and I’ve been stomped before resulting in PtSD.
I've been out of Magic since the Walking Dead stuff but I am loving this design focused content!!!
Did it drive you out or was it more of a coincidence?
@@connorclarke1708 Both. Seeing it hit right after Godzilla and not understanding the Universes Beyond distinction made me feel like Wizards was willing to shred the IP. The game is still great, but the lore trappings of a game matter a lot in keeping my interest.
It turned off my playgroup generally and so it wasn't fully a me choice but when the rest of my friends started selling their cards at that time also prompted me to exit.
7:35 - MOAR CATS
oh cool I can translate to english
oh no
I can't believe what has happened to the cats..
There are some strategies that feel sliver like, for example Merefolks or the lesser known 3/3 golems(precursor golem) that are even more similar to slivers. I like those strategies, because force people to understand which pieces are to attack and which pieces should be protected on your board.
As you said Slivers are hard to transition out of them because they are a tribal strategy pushed to its maximum expression so they do not feel as baseline and feel more like a specialized branch on tribal in which you are going "all in" on it.
Golem tribal is something I wanna build, I have the cards I'm pretty sure..
Slivers are small, Splinters are the big ones that can impale you to death, Shards are usually even bigger parts that can almost be put back together.
Chunks have high blood pressure and need to consider lowering their daily saturated fat intake.
Mark rosewater has often talked about power creep and compared it to an MCEscher painting. where they are trying to put power in a different place in each and every set. I would love to hear how you guys think magic has done over the last few years. and from your perspective where has power been in each set.
Lantern control mentioned
I think some of the best second stage type decks would be like voltron, burn/aggro or mill. they have simple enough win cons but will teach players about different aspects and interactions of the game that don't get to complicated
Slivers are the thing that really drew me into the game. I played with some friends kitchen table stuff and it was okay, but this was well before commander really took off. Then I got to play with another friend's decks and his Slivers deck had a clear vision with powerful synergies and it could do whatever you needed. Plus, they were this really cool hive mind threat that could swarm the opponents. This got me into collecting for a bit and playing casual 60 card decks, but I fell out. As some friends started to get into commander and convinced me to really build my a Commander deck I would love, I went all in on Slivers and never looked back . Sure I'm up to about 30 different decks, but Slivers is still my favorite deck and one of my most powerful decks. It's hard to stop it once I get going. I can interact to any situation. It ends up being a One v 3 archenemy game, to which I find the way to win and dodge their attempts at removal. I had a game where I was down to one life and hanging on by a pinky with a life loss effect on the stack where I then was able to stay alive by a slim margin and go on to win. I had a game where an attempted cyclonic rift only reset everybody else's board and I was able to float a bunch of mana out of nowhere and rebuild at instant speed. You are correct about a lot of their drawbacks, but in commander (not cEDH) they are always worthy of fear and can be very fun to play
I have a friend who attempted a lantern control deck, using Circu, Dimir Lobotomist as the commander. It was really interesting to play against. It did have a single proxy in it, Field of Dreams… and when it had either the lantern or the field out, it did do lantern things… and of course the deck had lots of ways of tutoring for those. It was also just a really solid blue black control deck… lots of stax pieces to deny card advantage… and it would usually win with painter’s servant and some kind of infinite loop to mill everyone’s deck out
With each of these episodes I can feel my brain growing ever so slightly
I hate to beat this point home but I do think it's worth getting it out there, they aren't called kindred strategies. Kindred is a card type that replaced tribal. Saying your deck is a kindred deck implies that it's centered around cards that actually have the kindred type. Typal is the term for when something refers to it's type. Not just in magic, that's just a word. That fits really well when we're talking about creature types. Cause it's types!
really love your content. I learn something every video.
As a Yugioh player, ive always thought Tribal decks like slivers are wicked cool. In Magic, I feel like there should be more decks like them.
Consider playing Rukarumel, Biologist as the commander. Gives some “newness” to a sliver deck
I don't really care for the Sliver-style tribal decks where every card just reads 'play this with X' and non-X cards (ie. all interaction) are a grudging inclusion. I guess they're nice easy decks to build, so they have some spot, but I don't feel you need a lot of tribal effects. If you have a few Elf lords, you already want your creatures to be Elves. Maybe the deck could have Elves that do something other than buff Elves?
Dominaria had a really neat Wizard/spell tribal theme in Red/Blue. Those decks were interesting to build because there was a tension between how many Wizards to include versus how many spells. Spell subtypes would do a lot to make this work, but the boat sailed on that a long time ago I think. They could still bring Arcane back and them it as 'primordial magic used by ancient weirdos'. Kamigawa's spirits, Elder dragons, Eldrazi, Ravnica's Old Gods, Oona, there are plenty of opportunities to bring it back.
I think Slivers can both be the "here's how to build around a creature type" for new players, but also the endgame of "build around a creature type"
I may be biased because I made my first commander deck around the aTime Spiral Remastered slivers where I got one of each and that deck has been my main one to get upgrades, and it taught me so much about deckbuilding and is still one of my favorite decks
At least for me I don't usually transition smoothly from one archetype to another with my decks, l but jump from one to another because I either saw someone play it and it looked fun or because I had a dumb thought
Something I dont hear talked about a lot is the power of 5 color commanders in regards to expensive mana bases. People say "oh expensive manabases dont give you that much more power". That can be true for decks that run fewer colors. With a 5 color commander, the commander itself is CMC-wise very undercosted as a 5 drop because its supposed to be difficult to guarantee WUBRG by turn 5. But with commander's card pool allowing very strong manabases, its often not as difficult to cast this undercosted commander. So naturally your deck starts with an extremely undercosted, powerful card in your hand every game that can be cast over and over.
The worst thing about slivers, is they made the buff player specific =( .. still have my 4of Plague Sliver somewhere ^^
Good point! Should have mentioned that change in the video.
First sliver food chain combo?
In Yu-Gi-Oh every deck is a Slivers deck.. that plays their end board on turn 1..
I had a sliver commander deck back in 2010 that I would give to nee players to use to learn all the mechanics at once
I ran 4 Plague Slivers in a deck without other Slivers. This was around 2007 or so. You really don't want to run it in an actual Sliver deck.
The only reason that I ran it at all is because, at the time, it was as close to a Juzam Djinn as I would ever get. And a 5/5 body that cost 4 was still a good rate at the time. It's trash now lol. 😂
Have 1 commander deck. Sliver queen. The most efficient non cEDH build I could ever put together.
Perfect mana. No rocks apart from mox diamond. And fast combo. Best deck ever. Null rod and collector ouphe mainboard. 😂
Oi the only good looking Sliver that came out of the M15 core set was the Thicc Sliv-er i mean Diffusion Sliver as look at those thighs, and of curse it would be the Sliver that gives all the Slivers you control Ward 2 pretty much as long as it remains on the field. Note Diffusion Sliver is the source of the triggered ability so say her and The First Sliver are in play and Kasmina's Transmutation is slapped onto it which reads "Enchanted creature loses all abilities and has base power and toughness 1/1." The First Sliver would still have Thicc Sliver's ability since it was not the source of it in the first place. This is also more fun when you can clone it and stack the ability of Diffusion Sliver pretty much as each one has a trigger, even more fun when you have a few of them out then the rest are Virulent Sliver's for a army of Poisonous 100. But shenanigans aside this is like Ward but not at the same time since it does not make the creatures the source of it making it better
To be honest even though i am not a fan of the Humanoid designs as the normal ones reminds me of Snakes with sharp limbs Diffusion Sliver is the only one i like Design wise from M15 as it does make sense to have one that resembles a Human Woman inside the skep to fool invaders or trespassers or since they would be dealing with Humans a lot so mess with their hormones as those thighs
If the Hive is waring with Humans on Shandalar then the Sliver Primes that are Humanoid really makes sense as it throws Humans off. Especially if you think about it as they are mimicking their prey to trick them so they can eat
I learned to play against the premium all foil deck. I learned to play quick lol
Fun useless fact: in Brazil, slivers are called fractius
I think a big part of my problem with slivers is that there's no such thing as a vanilla or even French vanilla sliver. They aren't all equally powerful, but all of them do something the turn you play them as long as you have other slivers already. They also are inherently difficult to balance, because how do decide on a mana cost for a creature you know will always have more abilities, power, and toughness than what you print it with? And, as you guys pointed out, their design is very paint-by-the-numbers, which is very repetitive and boring to play against. Those are my two cents, at least.
Would it be possible to start uploading on spotify again? i enjoy your content while i am walking and youtube isnt the most friendly for that
Almost like the distillation of tribal
I'm in the middle when it comes to Slivers. Dont really mind them.
Sliver gravemother does sliver aristocrats
Something very interesting about slivers is that the mirror game is terrible. Since they buff all slivers, you buff your opponents too. So if you have fly, theirs have it too; if theirs have +1/+1 theirs too and so on. Essentially neither of the slivers do anything and they just become sitting ducks
It usually just boils down to "who has more slivers." Which is why, as much as I love my sliver decks I don't play them if someone else already playing slivers
@@Executioner9000 Sliver v Sliver can honestly be fun at times but usually ends when someone summon something like a Queen or Overlord to just end the game
Bring back symmetrical Slivers you cowards!
Agreed! Haha
A friend of mine plays Slivers and we Rule 0 that all Slivers are symmetrical because they were enraged when the new Slivers came out.
Are you sure the heart palpitations weren’t just because you were playing commander?
Common side effect, honestly.
Some creature types aren't as good at providing a gateway experience to the other parts of the game. Think about how good of job Goblins does at teaching aggressive strategies, but compare how Zombies can do the same while being so much better at being a gateway to midrange. To me, that is an acceptable fact.
No no, Forrest has the right of it (and Gavin for that matter), you either hate slivers, or you like playing against them, there is no inbetween.
P.S. Yes, there actually IS a lantern control deck in commander, check out Xanathar or Sen Triplets, say hi to the playgroup when they try to assassinate you.
Tribal -> Kindred is the MTG version of Twitter -> X
I don’t get why people try abiding by these naming changes. Even if they’re official, they’re just so needless and poorly thought out.
Something interesting I found was that slivers was the first deck in commander that my competitive Yu-Gi-Oh friend finally clicked with.
Even though it's tough to deal with regularly, glad to see he's enjoying game nights more.
1:12 I'll be honest, I think I'm one if those people who is kinda 'eh' on Slivers. They don't really inspire much emotion in me, unlike Angels or Demons or Vampires or even Clerics.
I love slivers, but if you're running them in commander you die first
Slivers are ok. I don’t love but I don’t hate them.
4:52 Typal. Kindred is the card type, typal is the category of strategy. The WHOLE POINT of the vocabulary change is that the two concepts should be called different things
The whole point of the vocabulary change was because they didn't like the word tribal
I think you mean tribal
@@ABWABWABWABWABWABWABWABWABWA no, you don't. You think going against change makes you cool and edgy. it makes you annoying
Paint by numbers? So like modern commander?
Slivers CAN be an onboard mechanic but don't have to be. They're the Relentless swarm of Ants, or Tyranids, or Zurg, it's a meta flavor.
Keeping the design space limited and consistent is key. I.e. maybe keep with only 5 come Sliver legendaries. It shows that other decks synergy is better than Slivers just jamming out creatures fast. Slivers are weak to removal and that's a HUGE lesson for new players.
Plus they're freaking cool looking and silly. It's a good way for experienced players with every reserved list Legend and Land to power themselves down at a casual table.
I like the video but stop trying to force Kindred
I don't think slivers were intended for new players at all
Slivers are dogshit design.They are literally just all lords. Its tribal made easier and tribal is already so completely basic and a gimme with lords. Tribal as a whole is just basic design that takes very little thought. At least other tribes have some bad cards.
Someone get owned by slivers over and over