Saturday, November 19, 2011

Random Card of the Day #8

Random Card of the Day #8:

Mindlash Sliver - B
Creature - Sliver
All Slivers have "{1}, Sacrifice this creature: Each player discards a card."
1/1

Initial thoughts:

I always imagined Slivers as the WUBRG elf. They have a ton of synergy with each other and are relatively low cost. That said, this Sliver just doesn't live up to that "synergy" between Slivers I was looking for.

Me and Slivers have a little bit of a history. I never owned a Sliver deck, it was always my friend's deck of choice. Several times after splitting rares by choice, we had argued over who gets what rare and what use it will have to each of us. To simplify things, we dueled and whoever won got first pick, and then we alternated in choosing. His deck of choice was always his WUBRG Sliver deck, and mine was always my Extended Burn deck. My deck had a lot of hate towards creatures, specifically cards that split damage such as Forked Bolt, Searing Blaze, Arc Trail, etc. As well as many pingers such as Cunning Sparkmage or Vithian Stinger*.

That being said, this Sliver doesn't live up to any of the other Slivers that have given me problems. Sure it's a 1/1 for 1 mana, but it's stopped by an opponents turn two-drop, and if you use it's ability, it cost you two cards and your opponent one card. I suppose if it's going to be removed you change it from a 1-for-1 trade, to a 2-for-2 trade, and if you don't have a hand then you 2-for-1'd your opponent, but only if it's being removed and you sacrifice it on the stack. Otherwise, it's a weak 1-for-1 trade. I would use something like Inquisition of Kozilek or Thoughtseize if I wanted targeted discard.

Then again if you don't have a hand in a Sliver deck, it probably means: your aggro deck is burning out, or you are losing. In both of these cases you don't want to lose a creature just to have an opponent discard a card. If you're burning out, you should be ready for that final swing against your opponent, not sacrificing a creature because you want an instant-speed discard.

This card could be amazing if you resolve a Splinter Twin on this, thereby locking your opponent out of any sorcery-speed cards if you got them down to a hand size of zero, but once you get those two cards out, it's going to become a huge target (then again any Splinter Twin'd creature is) and fairly easily removed. Good news, it's immune to Doom Blade.

A decent card, but it just doesn't live up to the Sliver synergy I was hoping for. Maybe I'm holding to too high of a standard, but it's just no Crystalline Sliver or Sedge Sliver. 2/5
Maybe 3/5 if you can make a deck around creating copies of this, or creating copies of other Slivers. A little more control-like than I think should exist in a Sliver deck, but it could work.





* I have a problem of skimming over cards for the first time and calling it something that looks like its name, but isn't. Several cards I have mispronounced and have forever changed the name of the card between friends.
Vithian Stinger :: Vitharian Stinger
Kazandu Blademaster :: Kazmandu Blademaster
are a couple of examples.

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