Magic: The Gathering has no shortage of iconic creature types. Since the days of Alpha, the likes of Goblins, Elves, and Merfolk have been a big part of the game. When it comes to raw synergy, however, there’s no type better than the mighty Sliver. We haven’t seen these curious creatures since 2013, but that could change very soon. According to MTG Head Designer Mark Rosewater, a trip to the Sliver homeworld may be on the cards!
This is exciting news for a number of reasons. For the Vorthos out there, it means we may finally get some more concrete information on the origins of these iconic creatures. For those who care more about gameplay, it means spicy new Sliver designs could be on the horizon. Nothing is confirmed as of yet, of course, but the fact that Slivers are back in the discourse at all is exciting nonetheless.
A Trip To The MTG Sliver Homeworld?!
This revelation came via a post on Rosewater’s Blogatog yesterday. When asked about the Sliver homeworld, the MTG Head Designer all but confirmed that we’d be going there at some point.
“trogon872x10: If/when visit sliver homeworld in a set?
Mark Rosewater: I think the Sliver Homeworld is more when than if.”
Via Blogatog
For those new to Blogatog, Rosewater tends to answer questions like this with either ‘when’ or ‘if.’ When means the thing in question will be happening at some point, while if means it may or may not. These answers aren’t 100% official, of course, but they typically correlate to product output to some extent.
That a trip to the Sliver homeworld is a ‘when,’ then, is pretty exciting. This means it’s almost certainly something Wizards has been considering for a while. The Sliver homeworld has been a bit of a long-running mystery, with few details being revealed to players since the type debuted in 1997’s Tempest. The possibility of finally getting answers is tantalizing. As shnipshnap put it in the comments: “For real? Fuck yeah.”
Rosewater hasn’t revealed any further details on the subject so far, outside of refusing to name the Sliver homeworld in another Blogatog post. This means we have very little to go on about exactly when we’ll be seeing it. One interesting possibility is that it might be one of the worlds that appears in Edge of Eternities.
As a space exploration set, it would make sense for Edge to visit different worlds, the Sliver homeworld perhaps included. Classic Slivers also heavily resembled the Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise, so they’d be a flavor fit for sure. That’s just one possibility, mind you: we could be a while off of seeing it yet.
Lore To Explore
Whenever the Sliver homeworld shows up, it’ll fill in some big holes in the MTG lore. Slivers have shown up multiple times across the game’s story, but the crucial details of their origins have always gone unexplained.
Originally, Slivers were a slave race on an unknown plane. The Sliver Queen, working secretly underground, engineered gradual evolution of Slivers into a more powerful state. As reflected in their “all Slivers get” abilities, these creatures share a hive mind. When close to other Slivers, they can tap into their abilities and fight as one.
Eventually the Slivers overthrew their oppressors on their home plane, seizing control for themselves. They would later become involved in the main Magic story when Volrath traveled to this plane during the events of the Rath cycle. Fascinated by the Slivers, he brought some over to Rath, which would eventually merge with Dominaria during the first Phyrexian Invasion. Slivers would play a key role in this part of the story, but they would all be wiped out during the invasion.
After this, things slow down a lot for Slivers. They were resurrected on Domnaria by the Riptide Project during the events of Legion, then mostly destroyed again as Karona arrived in Apocalypse. Some Slivers persisted into the new Dominaria, evolving into the unusual forms we saw during Magic 2014.
As of right now, that’s where the story ends. Introducing the Sliver homeworld would open up some very interesting narrative possibilities around these events. For example, a new set could show us how much the plane has changed since the Slivers took it over originally. It could also take us back in time, giving us more detail on the original revolution itself.
New Design Horizons
As exciting as these story implications are, the gameplay implications of having Slivers back in the game are even more so. Slivers have always been one of the simplest creature types in Magic. Every Sliver in play shares its abilities with all the others, making it very easy to assemble an unstoppable board once you got a few of them out. These shared abilities range from simple stat boosts and keywords, to more complex fare. Harmonic Sliver, for instance, is essentially a Sliver take on Aura Shards.
Seeing how Wizards would approach designing a new batch of Slivers in 2025 would be very interesting indeed. Depending on where we finally see the MTG Sliver homeworld represented, it could go several different ways.
If the homeworld appeared as part of the next Modern Horizons set, for instance, we’d likely get a bunch of pushed Slivers with advanced effects. If it showed up in Standard, in Edge of Eternities, for example, we’d likely see a range of simpler, rebooted Slivers. Magic 2014 took this approach, and it would make sense to repeat it given how long it’s been. Newer players would probably appreciate a simpler introduction to the creature type, after all.
However it turns out, more Slivers would be great news for a big chunk of the Magic community. While they’re not as popular as they once were, Sliver decks still see a ton of use in Commander. The First Sliver, in particular, is a big hitter, leading 12,660 decks at time of writing according to EDHRec. They may be one of Magic’s simplest, “builds-itself” creature types, but it’s hard to deny the strange appeal of the Sliver. Hopefully Rosewater’s statement here bears fruit sooner rather than later.