Magic: The Gathering players have a refined concept of “cute”—which includes parasitic, shapeshifting creatures that can devastate entire ecosystems. Fans old and new to the popular trading card game know I’m talking about slivers, the creature type introduced in the 1997 MTG Storm expansion set. Slivers have always been a popular creature type and a staple of tribal decks, thanks to the trademark mechanic that allows each sliver to share its abilities with the rest of the brood. Now, after a long absence, slivers are back in MTG’s newest set, Edge of Eternities . Sort of.
Players hoping to spice up their sliver commander or tribal decks will be disappointed to learn that there’s only one Sliver card in the set, and it’s not a creature. Thrumming Hivepool is a rare artifact card that looks truly powerful for any sliver deck, but it’s technically not a real sliver. More importantly, creatures don’t appear in Wizards’ incredible story arc, Edge of Eternity . Not officially, at least. There are still plenty of hints that Slivers are present in this intriguing new setting, and they’ll likely make an explosive (and slippery) return to the scene in an upcoming set.
Image: Rob Rey/Wizards of the Coast
Slivers draws inspiration from the science fiction trope of a swarm of alien creatures linked by a hive mind, similar to the Tyranids in the Warhammer 40k universe. In Magic: The Gathering Lore, the origins of this species remain shrouded in mystery. They appeared on an unnamed plane, where they were used as beasts of burden due to their ability to adapt and evolve for specific functions. However, evolution cannot be stopped or tamed, so the hidden queen of the slivers, the Putrem, orchestrated the rise of her species and its takeover of the world. Some time later, the Evidence of Rath, Volrath, visited another plane invaded by Slivers and took some specimens, along with a sliver queen, to serve him and his Fyrexian masters’ plans to invade Dominaria.
When the Fyrexian invasion failed, most of the shards, along with the queen, perished. The few that survived and remained dormant were found 100 years later by the Wizards of the Riptide. In another take on a classic sci-fi twist, the Wizards lost control of the shards, which still lurk in the world of Dominaria, waiting to be used by another villain, or perhaps biding their time until a new shard queen rises (but don’t expect to actually see this card, as it’s on the “fenced list” of MTG tokens —cards that will never be reprinted again to preserve their market value).
Excluding Commander Masters and Time Spiral Remastered, the last appearance of Slivers in an MTG Backdated 2019 Modern Horizons . With Edge of Forever being presented as a space opera set in a remote expanse of space, players correctly guessed that Xenomorph-style Slivers might appear. The Edge of Forever story . A nice reference to a classic MTG Creature and a callback to the Alien franchise, but with no real presence in the set. Or at least, that’s how it seemed.
The art for the Wurmwall Sweeper card from Edge of Eternities, with a chip visible in the corner.
Image: Wizards of the Coast/Hardy Fowler
As shown on the Hivepool Thrumming card, shards exist outside of fiction in the Sothera system. According to the lore text at the bottom of the card, the creatures are trapped in a “rock” (possibly an asteroid). Someone left behind an encrypted log recording the shards’ existence—an unlucky explorer or perhaps a scientist involved in experimenting with the creatures—which would be a nice callback to Project Riptide. Something that could be a shard also appears in the side story “Holding in the Dark” by RJ Taylor, but this is speculation at best, as the creature’s description is very vague.
So, shards exist in the Sothera system, but where exactly are they? The biggest clue may have been dropped in the art for the Wurmwall Sweeper card. In the lower left corner of the illustration, a familiar shape lurks in the darkness of a barren landscape, waiting for a spaceship to land. The Wurmwall is a dangerous and remote expanse of space, where the next chapter of Sotherra’s story will likely take place, teasing the whole shard appearance in an upcoming set. Colossal space wurms and a new batch of shards? Sign me up.
