Like most of you, I was horrified when I saw the art for the new slivers. The originals felt so deliciously alien and menacing; how could they replace them with these goofy dreadlocked humanoids? But when I sat down and actually compared the art straight across, I realized that the new style made the creatures' abilities clearer. Much clearer.
Let me ask you a question: which of the following two creatures looks more like it has trample?
And which of these two looks like it has +2/+0?
And which of these has haste?
Quadruped slivers have massive advantages over the one-clawed classic variety when it comes to portraying movement and action. It is easy for our brains to observe a mammal-shaped creature and draw inferences about its abilities or behavior. The same cannot be said for old slivers.
The most important function of Magic art is to evoke the flavor of the card's rules text. The new slivers make that task much easier. I still don't like how they look, but it is clear that they serve the game better, and that's what Creative should care about most.
This is actually an argument I can buy. Thanks for pointing it out!
ReplyDeleteIt's funny that you should say the new art makes these Sliver's abilities clearer. A guest writer on Ted Knutson's blog brought up the point that the new look detracts from the idea that these creatures are all a common species, let a lone a part of the same hive. There most basic mechanic is that they share abilities, but they don't look connected to each other at all.
ReplyDeleteHere's a link to the blogpost. The author makes a lot of good points, under all that snark.
http://mixedknuts.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/729/
As far as the original form being ill-suited to displaying each creature's bonus, that largely depends on the art assignment. I I have no doubt artists could show a massive Sliver slithering through the forest, cracking trunks left and right as it goes. But Horned Sliver was drawn when they were still enamored of showing how the various parts of the hive all looked different. None of those early Slivers were doing much but posing for a picture. Even Bonesplitter is a bad example, because it had the added burden of being a Time Spiral mash-up and its art was meant to suggest the Bonesplitter equipment as much as a sliver. A better example would be look at Blade Sliver. It showcases it's bonus as well as Battle Sliver while retaining the form.
I read that post, but I didn't like it. Yes, there are a few good points, but the fact that he assumed Creative was being lazy was downright offensive. Being an artist is hard work, and when some random clown says, "You could have done it this way if you'd just tried harder," it's hard not to get frustrated.
DeleteI used Time Spiral Block slivers for comparison since they were the most recent. Neither Battering Sliver nor Horned Sliver portrays trample effectively, in my opinion. Blade Sliver is marginally better than Bonesplitter Sliver, but to my eye, the claws not as prominent or noticeable as Battle Sliver's extra arms.
I agree that they look much less connected than the old slivers. In a vacuum, that's a big loss; if this were for a Sliver graphic novel, I would be smacking my head. But I think it's the right decision for a CCG. The important thing for the art to communicate is not, "Is this a sliver or not?" since you're not likely to forget that in the middle of the game. It's, "Is that the trample guy or the first strike guy?"
Not only has I assumed you read it, I assumed this update was a response to it. But I know not everyone has seen it. It was only posted yesterday.
DeleteAnyway, being offended by it on behalf of artists, misses the point that the author is trying to be offensive. You got a little trolled. The larger point is true though, that it is more work to retain the original design and iterate on it each time than to create each creature individually. As for the old art being hard to differentiate, the same could be said for birds and soldiers and goblins and zombies, who all share basic traits.
The best point he or she makes, is that ultimately none of it matters. However they look, we will still play Slivers. And in a year no one will care.
This wasn't meant to be a direct response to that post. I generally don't rebut trolls; they're not interested in actual discussion.
DeleteAt any rate, I don't see why it's relevant which way takes more work. (Unless one actually believes that Creative is lazy.) The question I'm asking is, which way yields better results?
I never cared for the original slivers. I liked their uniqueness in regards to other creatures, but I hated that you couldn't tell any of them apart.
ReplyDeleteIt was a lot like the Borg in the STAR TREK ccg. If you were a Borg player, well, the fact that this Borg has a diamond-shaped red LED-eye and that this Borg had a pentagon-shaped red LED-eye were huge, glaring differences obvious at even a cursory glance. But to your opponent, who loved Jem'hadar, he couldn't tell them apart. (But boy, could he tell apart his Jem'hadar.)
What was worse was if you were both playing slivers, the amount of re-checking and remembering... ugh.
I am happy that the slivers actually look different from each other and are recognisable, as you say, as entities. The one thing I wish they had done, is given the "sliver silhouette" as it were, to all of them. The shape is iconic, and it just needed to be a part of the design.
Or at least, watermark the tribe. That would've been cool.
But I think it's better than it was, for certain.
This reminds me of the time Kai Budde accidentally played Whipgrass Entangler face down, thinking it was a Daru Sanctifier. Magic art has come a long way since then.
DeleteMaybe the new Slivers still look like the old Slivers right after they are born.
ReplyDeleteThe new art is better both in the abstract, and for keeping the slivers distinguishable from each other. It's also preferably to the original Slivers in that you can actually imagine these creatures as a threat, as opposed to being like really angry slugs. I do very much wish that they had avoided making any of them humanoid (the +2/+0 could be four-legged with two extra arms/pincers) and that they had common elements that made them clearly part of the same race, something every other race has, but suddenly the Slivers don't.
ReplyDeleteI'm really kind of sick of "everything must be a humanoid" (merfolk with legs? BLASPHEMY). By all means, give them faces, maybe even arms, but at least keep some part of the old sliver morphology like their claws or tails. The issue now is that not only can't I tell they're supposed to be part of the same tribe, I can't tell them apart from any other garden-variety semi-metallic humanoid. Sentinel Sliver looks like an Eldrazi, Steelform Sliver could be a cousin of Suture Priest, and Megantic Sliver's head is strongly reminiscent of Vorinclex.
DeleteI, for one, welcome our new Sliver overlords.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually quite happy with the new art. It maintains the Magic-IP-only look which is probably the most important thing. But more than that, these Slivers feel really dangerous. I'm right with Jay on this. The old Slivers were scary because the hive mind aspect made them swarm you like rabid bees (a frightening prospect in itself). But these Slivers, being humanoid, hit the Uncanny Valley style of threat: they're almost human. They're just similar enough that we're reminded of ourselves, but different enough that we see what horrors can become of us (the same reasons Zombies make great "villains"). And that's terrifying.
Also keep in mind, for any players who began playing after Time Spiral - that is anyone who joined Magic from 2008 onward (5 or 6 years) - these are exactly what Slivers look like. It's the enfranchised players like us that are upset, but I'm pretty sure newer players would be super excited to get these guys, regardless of art style.
Yes, exactly. Given how massive Magic's growth has been in the last five years, catering to the ancients shouldn't be a high priority.
DeleteA blog post by Doug Beyer on the subject of new Sliver art direction: http://dougbeyermtg.tumblr.com/post/49835902311/slivers-evolved
ReplyDeleteIndeed, one of the reasons for changing the Slivers was to make them more expressive. You got it on the nose.
Honestly I didn't know much of slivers story, except that they are hive mind and they evolve to suite the collective. To me this new look is just an evolution of them to better the hive.
ReplyDeleteGood argument, indeed, but still I don't like them :)
ReplyDeleteThe "look-like" questions are just plain stupid. First one of the new Slivers resembles a beast, the second a human with extra arms, and third a hound. Sure, they seem more likely to grant those abilities given the art, but just because they were made from those creatures, by blatantly violating the classic Sliver anatomy. Now I ask, Which of those seem more likely to be Slivers? Pretty sure the "tentacles with claws" ones. Others could just be, i.e., beasts, shapeshifters, constructs, or any kind of phyrexian. If we attend just to what Slivers used to be, classical Slivers are fair enough. They could have applied all those artwork enhances to their tentacle form and we would have fantastic new Slivers of the likes of all.
ReplyDelete