Slivers and Poisons Oh My!

Poison has come of age!!!!


Well not really.


But at least now it has a 2HG limited format win under its belt.


The driver for this is the combination of both slivers and poison. Virulent sliver being the perpetrator here.


Slivers has always been a tough nut to crack in 2HG, due to the fact that people usually don't draft it (or draft thingies over it). With poison, slivers now have a sucker punch for its opponent and thats usually after having to deal with the numbers or size of the slivers already in play.

Now the reason I am excited enough to blog is that it just hit me (things always hit me, I am getting a headache already..) that poison and to a lesser extend slivers need more resources(or time, depending on which is available). In a 2 headed giant format, you do not get more time (or put another way the games is not slowed down, think Mercadian Masques), but you do get more resources, since now each "side" is playing using 2 hands 2 land drops, draws etc.

Which struck me as interesting, because I think this is a facet of design. Poison and LD (Land destruction) have always suffered from a "all or nothing" syndrome. Imagine 1/1 + evasion + poison 1 + non targetable. This means poison, will kill 2 times as fast as regular damage. Broken, given the right spells and creatures (which is why a poison critter's stats are always nerfed, wotc wants to err on the right side, which is also the reason for poison's poor rep as crappy strategy). LD has a more concrete example. Think the difference between Sinkhole and Stone rain. Big difference right. All just due to a 1cc increment.


Which means any given strategy can be thought of as having a time facet and a resource facet. How much time does it take the strategy to set up? How much resources? Note that though clearly tied, resource and time are quite different animals. Slivers and poisoners require critical mass or evasive capability. Time is not really an issue, in fact slivers and Poison usually kill double time ;)

There's probably more to be said, but thats all I have right now.