We’ve been getting a lot of massive spoiler dumps lately. Just when we thought the Avatar: The Last Airbender First Look spoilers came and went, 100 more spoilers appeared out of thin air. Now, the same thing is happening for Edge of Eternities Alchemy, where the entire set seemed to hit the internet at the same time.
There’s some exciting cards to look at, but it’s all headlined by a new five-colored Sliver Legend that’s exclusive to MTG Arena. Get ready Brawl players, Slivers are coming your way with perhaps the best Commander for the archetype, on MTG Arena, at least.
Sliver Weftwinder
For WUBRG, Sliver Weftwinder announces the start of a massive parade of Slivers that will come into play. Warp 3 is mildly useful, allowing you to cheat The First Sliver into play. You can also use it to double up on Cascade triggers from The First Sliver, which will basically function as a second Commander for this Brawl strategy. Sliver Weftwinder, however, does a lot to make up for the lack of Slivers on MTG Arena thanks to its Spellbook.
In addition to drawing a card, whenever a Sliver enters, you’ll get to Conjure a Sliver from the Slivers Spellbook, a collection of Slivers that will randomly appear as choices, to the top 10 cards of your library. Here are the list of Slivers that you can find:
- The First Sliver
- Bonescythe Sliver
- Enduring Sliver
- Diffusion Sliver
- Sentinel Sliver
- First Sliver’s Chosen
- Lancer’s Sliver
- Steelform Sliver
- Scuttling Sliver
- Dregscape Sliver
- Leeching Sliver
- Belligerent Sliver
- Bladeback Sliver
- Blur Sliver
- Cleaving Sliver
- Hollowhead Sliver
- Lavabelly Sliver
- Sliver Hivelord
This also happens to be almost all of the Slivers currently legal for Brawl on MTG Arena, which isn’t really enough for a proper Sliver deck. Sliver Weftwinder helps to fill out the missing pieces by creating a ton of extra creatures, and might therefore outperform The First Sliver as a Brawl Commander on MTG Arena. You’re also able to Conjure multiple The First Slivers using Sliver Weftwinder’s ability, which can get seriously out of hand. This card is certainly worse than The First Sliver overall, but Weftwinder does solve a unique problem for the Sliver archetype on Arena.
This is likely the only place that Sliver Weftwinder will see play. Slivers aren’t a viable archetype competitively, though some may experiment with the archetype in Historic. Most Slivers on the client aren’t legal in Alchemy, but Sliver Weftwinder and Thrumming Hivepool could make for a cool combo to try and pull off if there’s an Alchemy Edge of Eternities Draft.
Prototype X-8
As cool as Sliver Weftwinder is, Prototype X-8 is a far more powerful MTG card. In a dedicated shell, this is basically a 8/8 for two mana that copies all of your creature’s enters and dies triggers. There are competitive decks that already see play that could be interested in Prototype X-8, as well.
This card could become an absolute monster in Historic. It synergizes with Dimir Affinity strategies, but it also works extremely well with Overlord of the Balemurk, which is absolutely everywhere. A majority of the everpopular Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord decks run a reanimation package that the Overlord helps fuel. That card also fuels Prototype X-8 since it dumps cards into the graveyard. Combine that with Emperor of Bones for reanimation shenanigans, and you have yet another payoff for an incredibly scary archetype.
All of that said, many of these decks also run a Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd and Dedicated Dollmaker package to take advantage of all the powerful entry triggers. Sadly, these cards don’t work too well with Prototype X-8 since it turns all of your creatures into tokens, but if you’ve successfully resolve Prototype X-8, you don’t really need to be flickering your creatures anyway. Prototype 8 also only replaces casted creatures with tokens, meaning that there should still be plenty cards for Phelia and Dollmaker to flicker, including payoffs cheated in with Sorin.
This might just end up meaning that Prototype X-8 is not needed in the archetype, but the card is powerful enough to entice players to try it. It could also end up seeing play in Insidious Roots decks in Alchemy since it will naturally become incredibly cheap.
Cosmic Sovereign
For five mana, Cosmic Sovereign is incredibly powerful. If Alchemy red decks can consistently get to five mana, this card will almost guaranteed be seeing play. A 3/4 Flying Haste for 5 with Firebreathing is not that impressive, but Cosmic Sovereign also spawns another temporary body with Haste at the beginning of each combat. That means this creature is basically swinging for 6 with Haste at minimum, and could also generate other random benefits depending on the creature that gets Conjured. That’s an absurd amount of value for five mana.
There’s a good chance that a card like this will also end up in Arena Cubes. The value it creates is rather generic, meaning it can see play in a ton of different strategies. The only thing holding this card back is its mana value. Our bet is that, as long as Alchemy isn’t so fast that five mana is unreasonable, this card will see play.