What are your thoughts on the return of Slivers in M14? Do you like or dislike that they now apply their abilities only to your slivers? What do you think of the visual redesign?

I'm excited to play with Slivers. I wasn't around for their original reign, but I expect it to be fun. The "you control" clause will probably make them play better, but it seems wrong somehow. The new art style is very weird. It's interesting, but Slivers already had a defined look: the sickle arm, the chitinous faceplate, the sinuous body tentacle. These new Slivers are more like biomech warriors or Phyrexians. Some still have the sickle or faceplate, but they no longer form a unified whole.

slivers are by definitions part of a whole. these slivers are already complete, and human?. i swear wotc is making dumber decisions by the set.

What do you mean, they "are already complete?" I do find it bizarre that they are humanoid, but I suppose that must be he difference between Slivers from Rath and Slivers from Thune.
I can't say I like that they "dumbed down" Slivers by making them only affect your Slivers, but I do appreciate how much better it will feel to play them this way.

its like giving snakes mammaries and legs. aka cop out to cater to the newbes.

Doug Beyer has explained the rationale on his blog: Slivers Evolved. I understand the reason for the changes; doesn't mean I fully agree. The mechanical change makes sense. A visual extension is also legitimate, but Magic doesn't need another humanoid race, especially not at the cost of a classic nonhumanoid.

I doubt that making slivers only affect your stuff is catering to newbies. New players either wouldn't notice the difference, or prefer the game to get as explosive as possible. Really, that's a move courting experienced players... especially the Spikes (not tourney Spike... just regular old Spike) who hates to get blown out because of choices he has no control over (i.e. playing slivers, but my opponent happens to have a few slivers and he's feeding off of my abilities in a way that I had no control over when I built my deck.)

Is that a good idea? Maybe? I don't know. I assume Wizards sees that Slivers will probably still be a thing 20 years in the future. If that's the case, they should fix them now. I don't really feel they need fixing. Why not just make a different creature type? Let the players decide which they like better? Ah well. ­

I've never played in a sliver mirror match. My instinct is that it doesn't give a lot of benefit over the slivers playing the same way as they do against most other decks, but is harder to remember, so wizards' change seems reasonable. But if that's actually important to the play of slivers, then it might be wrong.

I'm rather surprised by the humanoid art too, but it looks good, so I don't have a strong preference either way.

ETA: I forgot to say, I'm excited to see them. I played intermittently during time spiral, but entirely casually, and I never really played a sliver deck. I'm excited to see what they look like when they're in standard.

ETA2: Wow, I've always found it really hard not to say "silver creatures".

More slivers? Thumbs up. Art style shift? Broadly okay with it; as Doug points out, they are meant to be able to evolve.

Only affecting your own Slivers? Thumbs down. It was perhaps somewhat inevitable given Master of the Pearl Trident vs Lord of Atlantis, but I still really dislike it.

It's a direct attack on the metagame (as in, "Stop having one! BLAM!"); I feel like I should celebrate.

Well, no, it's mainly to avoid what Wizards call "feel-bad moments" where your cards help your opponent; also lining up with the modern design trend of vastly reduced amount of drawback mechanics.

Which is subtly different from catering to new players: the idea is that fun is something that affects all players, but grumbly old players tend to dislike changes Wizards make in the name of fun. In this case I find myself on the side of the grumblies. I like Slivers being the nostalgic old kind of uncontrolled tribal.

I'm looking at it from the point-of-fun of the non-sliver player. Old style; I could throw in a sliver and maybe sometimes get to giggle a lot. New style, I can't. But that's playing the metagame; not the game.

Heh. Okay, I see.

For those who care, this is Mark Rosewater's take on it:

> For the same reason that all our lords now only affect creatures you control. It has less downside, creates less board confusion, and, in general, makes the cards more enjoyable for a larger portion of the audience.

For yet one more take on it: Slivers effecting all creatures really puts a monkey-wrench in limited. I assume Jack didn't draft during Time Spiral, otherwise he would have seen this interaction come up all the time. A player with a really cool defensive sliver deck can be shut down by a bad player with a 14th pick Shadow Sliver.

I'm a bit of a grumbler, too. Sure, that's annoying, but that's what slivers do. Players like slivers because they're annoying. Changing slivers to just your creatures gets rid of half the reason that many players adore the card in the first place.

But, whatever. This is an experiment. They can always go back to the old way if public perception is negative... and I get the impression that Wizards will be tracking this point very carefully.

"They can always go back to the old way if public perception is negative... and I get the impression that Wizards will be tracking this point very carefully."

I strongly suspect that if the change doesn't work out (and the issue of having both types of slivers in Modern and Legacy should totally be considered IMO), there simply won't be any slivers of either type anymore owing to the "things should work the way people expect them" argument prevent the mixing of two types of lords.

My feeling is that if they return old-style slivers, that means no other lords at all in standard during that time, and that is unlikely.

I have been against the way Wizard have been designing their core sets since M11.

M11 was the perfect coreset they ever made in my opinion, simple yet elegant. Trying to fit in Bloodlust, Exalted and now Slivers is ruining the Limited enviroment for new players. And a simple enviroment where archetypes where scaled down to the core foundations of each color.

How did bloodthirst or exalted ruin Limited? Your last sentence isn't a complete thought, but if you're saying that's a bad thing, you're missing the point of a core set.

The Art: It's good art but I don't care for them being humanoid. Search 'human' in the Gatherer. More humans that anything else in the game, and eventually, I think, if Wizard's doesn't add more non-humanoid races the preponderance of humans will become much more noticeable. I'm still waiting for someone in Modern to put together a Human Zoo deck. (Noble Hierarchs, Champion of the Parish, Knight of the Reliquary, splash some red for Bolts and Helix.)

The Wording: Didn't even notice that it said "you control" but I'm not super excited about that. All the arguments already made are sufficient expression about my feelings.

Rant: Talking about stuff Wizard's does that is annoying, I can't stand when they just make a card to 'fill a slot'. If a slot has to be filled, that's fine, but don't just throw some text on it and print it. :/

Addition/Prediction: A sliver 'lord' (maybe artifact/enchantment) that changes 'slivers you control' to just 'slivers'.