Slivers, Allies, Lord-Lords & The Core Set

Wizards revealed Monday night that Slivers are returning to Magic in this Summer's core set and that they're getting a face-lift, both visually and mechanically. Some players are unhappy with this news, while a lot are ecstatic, but pretty much everyone is surprised.

While I support them getting some new visual concepts, I do fall on the side that full-on humanoid was a bit too far, but I'm not here to talk about that. Doug Beyer talks about that here if you want to learn more.

I'm more interested in analyzing the logic R&D used to bring us Slivers in the core set. I imagine it starts out pretty simple. The core set wants to reward established players with some nostalgia, while remaining accessible to new players. New players love linear mechanics and tribal themes and (many) old players love Slivers.

From there, you know there was a debate whether to update Slivers or not and whether to use Allies instead. The best argument against updating Slivers is consistency: Old players are going to add the new Slivers to their old Sliver decks and new players are going to seek out old Slivers to add to their new decks; Some work one way and others work another and it won't be trivial keeping track which is which, particularly since old-style Slivers were printed in the Modern card frame in Time Spiral.

But, as Mark Rosewater explains here, they needed to be updated for the same reason Lord of Atlantis is now Master of the Pearl Trident. It's less confusing when your bonuses only affect your creatures and it also makes playing such cards much more straight-forward when you don't have to wonder if they help your opponent more than you. Except for the hive-mind flavor, that reason goes double for Slivers since it's an entire tribe of lords. You can even justify the flavor change the same way you do for the Merfolk… Not all Merfolk are friends and there's no reason my Merfolk leader would lead your Merfolk. Clearly, when the Slivers evolved humanoid forms, they also evolved enough society to form cliques and tribes that aren't always on the same wavelength. Literally. (They're telepathic.)

The next question is, if we're using half of the new lord template for our race of lord-lords, why not the full template? Modern lords grant their bonuses to other creatures of their tribe and any abilities they would have granted themselves are printed directly on the card. It's simpler and clearer this way. So why don't the new Slivers do that? The reason I find this template lacking is the same reason Goblin Chieftan has haste while granting haste to other goblins and Veteran Armorsmith is a 2/3 instead of a 2/2 that grants +0/+1 to himself. It's never ideal to print a card that isn't what it says it is at first glance, but it's particularly bad in a core set where we want to pull as few gotchas on new players as possible.

Many surmised (including our own HavelockV) and MaRo confirmed that the reason is that it's easier to add up all the bonuses from all your Slivers once and then apply them globally. That definitely explains why the new Slivers are templated the way they are, and I wouldn't make new Slivers any other way. But it makes me wonder why they accepted that solution when there were other options.

What other options? They created Allies in Zendikar as a direct analog to Slivers. Really. If we can't update Slivers to be appropriate for the core set, why not use Allies in their stead? I guarantee R&D discussed the option and settled on Slivers, so it's not a matter of proving them wrong (only a fool would try to correct an expert) but exploring the reasons they must have had so that we can learn from their wisdom.

If you compare Slivers and Allies critically, you'll find that both eat up mind-space at a non-linear rate as you add more to the board. For Slivers, you're basically tracking the global Sliver bonus which is simply the sum of all bonuses from all the Slivers on the table (or on your side of the board, for the new ones) and then applying that single, compound bonus to each of your Slivers. You can do this whenever you gain or lose a Sliver, but will mostly end up doing it when attacking, blocking, or planning combat. For Allies, there are no ongoing effects, so most of the time the cards are just what they say they are (plus some number of counters), but whenever you cast a new Ally you have to handle an entire batch of triggers.

In both cases, you want to play as many as you can in order to maximize their effect and there's no reason you'd put more of one in your deck than the other, except that Slivers currently outnumber Allies 5:2. The danger is bogging the game down with repeated calculations and in forgetting something important. Slivers are going to be re-calculated potentially every combat step (unless you haven't gained or lost any since the last combat, and you can remember the global bonus or the final size of each of your slivers) while Ally triggers are going to be stacked and resolved whenever you cast a new one. If you forget one of your Allies' triggers, it's simply lost according to the current tournament rules. That can cost you a close game. If you forget one of your Sliver's bonuses, it may never be noticed and could cost you a close game. Or perhaps it gets noticed a turn too late and then you have to call a judge over, potentially earning you and/or your opponent a warning or even game loss.

It's absolutely debatable, but to my mind, Allies are safer and cleaner mechanically. I would suggest that their inclusion in Zendikar shows that at least part of R&D agrees. So why did new Slivers get the nod in M14 over Allies? I'm guessing their long history, stronger nostalgia, and the fact that they are iconically Magic while Allies were effectively borrowed from D&D is what trumped the mechanical upside. But I'd love to hear your opinion. Why do you think Slivers won out? Do you agree?

As a small teaser, tomorrow's CCDD will be another potential solution R&D might have considered.