Commander Spotlight: Necrotic Sliver

Welcome back to what has been a carnival-like atmosphere that is our Guild-Themed Commander picks. Apparently things have gotten a little too out of hand, and it’s time for some penance. So, we’re being sent to church. Unfortunately, it appears that the only folks willing to provide us services are the Orzhov. So come on in, grab a pew, and prepare to get your atonement on. The first thing you want to do is put the pitchfork down. Go head. That corner there. Onto that pile of all the other pitchforks, yeah. It’s alright.

There is a decent amount of Black / White cards out there to go through, but I didn’t choose Debtors’ Knell, or Unmake, or Merciless Eviction for a reason. I know it’s a little unorthodox to think that my pick for this is a Sliver of all things, but here’s the short sermon as to why:

Multicolor cards, by their nature, personify the blending of their color’s philosophies. They tend to either use abilities of those colors stapled together to allow something neither color can do alone, such as Quicksilver Dagger, or their combination allows for more potent effects of abilities those colors may share, such as Fracturing Gust. Either satisfies the multicolor checkbox. The catch is not to get drawn into thinking that just because a card has more than one color that it will inherently be more powerful than a mono-colored cards in one of their color’s cost. Merciless Eviction is one such example. Yes, you get to choose which permanent type you wish to remove, but is it vastly better than Austere Command, exile vs destroy aside? You don’t want to get drawn in to the temptation of the multicolor strictly because you can slot it. I know, as I too tend to fall into this trap myself. In Commander, this is especially so, as deck building must carefully craft around a card’s color identity – and yes, much to some of the community’s detriment, hybrid cards count as both.

Now, add in the fact that Black and White both have a lot of mechanical overlap. As examples, both can reanimate creatures, both are big on lifelink (or just manipulating life totals in general), and they are the top two colors for board wipes. What was needed for a proper Orzhov representative, dear parishioners, was something that fulfills one of the two multicolor check boxes.

Today we have: Necrotic Sliver

Name: Necrotic Sliver

Edition: Planar Chaos / Premium Deck Series: Slivers

Rarity: Uncommon

Focus: Permanent Destruction

Highlights: Necrotic Sliver is a great example of multicolor blending. Both Black and White have the ability to exile or destroy things permanently. Sure, White does have Oblivion Ring-like effects that can remove most things temporarily, but if whatever “prison” effect goes away, then that permanent gets to come back. White does have the ability to out right destroy creatures, artifacts, and enchantments though. (White used to  destroy land too, but those days are long gone.) In the other corner, Black destruction is pretty much limited to

 creatures, lands, or planeswalkers via player damage effects. When you combine those together, you get Necrotic Sliver.  Necrotic Sliver is essentially a self-sacrificing Vindicate in creature form. It just happens to be a Sliver creature at 1/30th the financial cost to attain compared with Vindicate. He can also be used for those brave folks wishing to do a Sliver Commander deck as well.

Otherwise, the Sliver part was actually a bit of a red herring. However, the Orzhov are not against leading you down a road of false assumptions. They aren’t above that honestly. They do expect you to make a donation on your way out though, so make sure you’re generous.

Stay tuned for the next guild-based Commander card. In the meantime, we’ll keep the light on for you.

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Do you have a particular Commander card to suggest for us to shine a future Spotlight on? You can send suggestions to ryan@cardboardrepublic.com