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Slivers of Fifth Dawn (5.31.2004)

As you may have heard Slivers were going to be in Fifth Dawn featuring the new mechanics and abilities. This was unfortunately abandoned due to the lack of Sliver veriety and the nature of the cards. Fifth Dawn was made to encourage multi-colored decks, just like Slivers, but the development team decided that to make room for equipment cards that is more efficient when colored mana is used instead. Fifth Dawn was going to feature one Sliver of each color and four colorless Slivers. The colorless Slivers were each going to have one of the new Fifth Dawn mechanics or abilities. In an interview before Fifth Dawn was released the team boasted that the new colorless Slivers would be the most powerful cards in the set.

Suntouched Sliver — This creature would have had the Sunburst ability. Although most creatures that have this ability get +1/+1 counters, the team decided to give it charge counters instead. The team was originally going to make Suntouched Sliver a 5 mana cost -2/-2 creature that would get +1/+1 counters, but playtesting revealed this to be too powerful. This card was probably believed to make Power Conduit perfect for the future Sliver decks.

Yes, Sunburst is the most ambiguous ability ever made. The ability in itself doesn't tell you what kind of counters it gets. Luckily there's always reminder text, which is so essential that there was actually no point in giving it a mechanic name.

Dawn Sliver — This would give all Slivers the ability of Bringer of the n Dawn (where n is a color). The development team thought about making this sliver a 5/5 for 9 mana, like the Bringers, but they decided to make it like this instead. I suspect that one of the colored Slivers was going to have an incredibly high casting cost, so you could cast it faster with this... perhaps the combination of a high casting cost Sliver and Dawn Sliver was inteded to be used with Rush of Knowledge, to draw extra cards. Then again, it's already a super combo with Suntouched Sliver.

I think this card would go great in a deck full of Sliver Queens and Sliver Overlords.

If Wizards keeps helping the mana problems of multi-colored decks in ways like this I think we will finally see the days without the possibility of being mana screwed.

Relentless Sliver — This creature gives all Slivers the ability of Relentless Rats. Yes, that means you can have 30 Muscle Slivers in any deck with Relentless Sliver in it. But the card's second ability makes it so good with itself that someone might want to make a deck of all Relentless Slivers. Since it is a Sliver, it is much more cumulative than Relentless Rats. Sure, if you have 4 Relentless Rats in play, they each get +3/+3... but if you get 4 Relentless Slivers into play, they each get +8/+8. Wait a minute (does some calculating)... they actually get +12/+12 each... I think.

If you don't believe me, just read the card closely. It's like a Coat of Arms, except it is rediculous.

Transparent Sliver — Why doesn't it say Artifact Creature? Oh. It isn't one. Why not? Because of the new token creatures in Fifth Dawn. There are now colorless token creatures that aren't artifacts. (I'm not sure what the new promo colorless token creatures will look like, but the background will probably be of Jupiter, like this one.)

To make the colorless token creatures more at home, Wizards was going to make colorless non-artifact creature cards, starting with this one.

The Transparent Sliver's ability may sound horribly written and redundant, but it is actually due to a vital rules clarification. Sliver cards implies all Slivers not in play, and Slivers implies all Slivers in play. Some people have suggested that Wizards actually refused to release the Fifth Dawn Slivers because this card would make this dark secret well-known.

Unfortunately Transparent Sliver's ability isn't a combo with Dawn Sliver's ability, but it is clearly very powerful in any five color Sliver deck.

The most famous Magic Deck store, The Magic Deck, will be giving out representations of the Transparent Sliver card starting June 1st. The cards will have the fine print This is for entertainment purposes only. This is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Wizards of the Coast or Hasbro, and will be given out to the 9 first people to use buy it now.

Note: This article is a parody and should not be taken too seriously. I like Fifth Dawn. These cards are in no way real. I know Sunburst Sliver isn't really a combo with Sliver Queen.