How Magic's Strangest Creatures Help New Players Learn The Game 

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!

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.

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.

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 think that's when i started drinking" that's me the moment I'm made to start a game of 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.

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.

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.

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've been out of Magic since the Walking Dead stuff but I am loving this design focused content!!!

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.

7:35 - MOAR 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.

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.

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.

With each of these episodes I can feel my brain growing ever so slightly

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

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

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

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.

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.

Consider playing Rukarumel, Biologist as the commander. Gives some “newness” to a sliver deck

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.

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

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.

The worst thing about slivers, is they made the buff player specific =( .. still have my 4of Plague Sliver somewhere ^^

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

First sliver food chain combo?

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. 😂

I learned to play against the premium all foil deck. I learned to play quick 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

Fun useless fact: in Brazil, slivers are called fractius

Almost like the distillation of tribal

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

Sliver gravemother does sliver aristocrats

I'm in the middle when it comes to Slivers. Dont really mind them.

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

Bring back symmetrical Slivers you cowards!

Are you sure the heart palpitations weren’t just because you were playing commander?

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.

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.

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.

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.

I love slivers, but if you're running them in commander you die first

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.

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

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.