Manor to No Man's Land
Many times Twilight had read the word ‘cacophony’ in books, yet she had never managed to securely grasp the idea. She had heard chaos, and she had heard Pinkie Pie wake up, but never had she come across something that she would describe as a cacophony. Until the morning that was, the sheer volume of noise echoing up through the house was painful to her ear and it took her many moments before she could manage to operate properly with it shooting through her skull.
Twilight looked around, her friends were all begrudgingly awake as well. She was about to shout over the noise when the door burst open. One of Sorin’s vampires servants spilled into the room, blood, sweat, and grime smeared across his face while he clutched an open wound at his side. Fluttershy gasped at the severeness of the wound but her worry went ignored, without wasting time he approached Twilight and, when he was sure that she would hear him, he shouted an important message that Sorin had given him to deliver.
“We’re under attack!” He called, loud enough that the other ponies managed to hear it over the din. “Master Markov and Master Jace want you downstairs now! They can barely defend, let alone start a counter attack!” Knowing the strength of both planeswalkers, Twilight couldn’t help but feel a sudden chill. As if she had been dragged under the ice water by an impossibly heavy weight. Twilight glanced to her friends, all of them shared a glance for a minute before nodding. Nodding a few seconds after they had Twilight ran past the vampire, her friends close behind.
They ran down the stairs as fast as they dared, making their way closer and closer to the voice of Markov that even now they could hear shouting below them. “Aim for the Muscles and Sinews, we’ll need them weaker if we want them down!” Upon reaching the base floor the ponies were all put into shock, odd insect-like creatures lay bleeding around the proud and tall form of the vampire planeswalker.
He didn’t notice them immediately, keeping his eye on the battlefield, in the distance he saw something that angered him, slicing a wide wound in another of the creature’s chests he turned to something that none of the present ponies could see, then he shouted again. “It’s a Shifting Sliver Jace, take it out before it becomes a problem! I do not want to use my magic if I don’t need to.” There was no response, but the vampire looked toward the fight expectantly. When a blue whirlwind whipped up around the sliver he had seen earlier he smiled.
Turning to his side he noticed the ponies had arrived and were looking at him like he was insane. Still smiling, Markov wiped the blood from his blade and bowed to them before jabbing it up through the throat of the next sliver that entered. “I’d love to treat you to a morning breakfast, but we’re under attack right now, so if you’ll excuse my manners at this time, that would be wonderful.”
“What’s happening?” Twilight quickly asked, looking past the opening and out onto the battle that raged between vampires and insects. She hadn’t seen anything like this before, she assumed this must be what the books meant when they told of wars. The topic however was something that Twilight had been proud to be ignorant of. Up until now anyway.
“Slivers, No idea how they managed to come back this time but I can’t say I’m surprised. If they were good at any one thing it was being extremely annoying.” Markov said, looking towards the battle as well where corpses of both sides piled on top of one another. Twilight briefly wondered how the vampires were surviving in the day and cast an exploratory spell to see if she could come up with an answer. Almost immediately she became aware of large waves of energy that were wafting off of Sorin.
“What are Slivers?” She eventually managed, her other friends still struck silent by the blood spilling that was happening in front of their eyes. Sorin noticed as well and paused for a moment to wonder why Twilight seemed unaffected while the rest of her friends were traumatized.
“Think of a hive mind taken to the next stage. Not only do they share ‘thoughts’ but they also share ‘abilites’.” Twilight looked confused, so he continued. “If, for instance, a sliver that can fly comes into the fray,” He pointed out a flying sliver, with the tip of his sword, that was approaching from a distance. As it flew next to other Slivers they grew wings as well and took to the air.
“That’s... amazing.” Twilight said, in awe at the evolutionary concept.
“Yes, it’s rather intruiging isn’t it? However, they are currently trying to kill us. So, if you would be so kind as to not be awestruck by them that would be very nice.” Sorin said with a smile. Spinning blindly he decapitated another Sliver and sighed. “Unfortunately, me and Jace can barely hold this position, so we can’t stop whatever is bringing them here.”
“And that’s where we come in.” Twilight said, the rest of her friends managing to drag themselves away from looking at the battle, though Fluttershy was now cowering behind everyone with her eyes closed. Applejack and Rainbow Dash seemed one hundred percent ready for whatever they would need to do to save everyone, meanwhile Pinkie and Rarity both shared looks of indecisiveness.
“No, that’s where you come in, Twilight.” Sorin said, eyeing her. “Your friends would only slow you down. I believe I did only ask for you to come down, why you brought your friends I have no idea.” Three slivers managed to get through the opening and were quickly dispatched by Sorin, but it was clear it was beginning to wear him out. In the distance a rain of ice collapsed around a group of slivers and froze them over permanently, removing them from the battle. Sorin smiled wryly at the sight.
“What?” Twilight looked behind her, all her friends looked uneasy now. “But their my friends, I can’t do it without them!” She turned around to face Sorin, who remained impassive.
“Then by all means, take them. If it ends with their deaths then that will be your problem won’t it?” The next sliver that entered was faster than the rest, and it got off an attack before Sorin could properly react. Angry splashed across the vampires face, then he placed his hand on the creature’s ‘face’. It froze in response. Twilight and the others watched in horror as the sliver began to twitch and writhe underneath of Sorin’s grasp, but it never broke free. At last the thing dropped to the ground, dead, and Sorin’s wound was healed.
“Well then? What’s stopping you? Jace will help clear the way, but you’re the ones who will need to destroy whatever is out there.” Sorin swiped his hand to his side as if to remove a liquid from it. A sliver jumped in from the side, aiming to attack Twilight. Before she could react a vampire jumped in from the opposite side of the hall and tackled it back out the way it had come with a sword through it’s midsection. Sorin didn’t seem to notice.
Twilight looked to her friends, and she was happily surprised to see them all nod to her almost immediately. She smiled and made her way to the exit proper of the building. “Good to hear it.” Came Sorin’s voice from behind, interrupted suddenly as he no doubt disposed of another enemy. “Jace will show you the way when you’ve left the building proper.”
As they were about to go through the door they were stopped by two vampires, each one with three sheathed swords. “With Master Sorin’s regards.” Gratefully Applejack and Rainbow took the weapons, eventually managing to coerce the rest into getting one for self protection. “If your friends die he would like them back, if you find the time.”
“They won’t die.” Twilight said through gritted teeth. “We’ve been through worse.”
The lie was obvious on her tongue, but the vampire didn’t seem to recognize it. “Merely relaying Master Sorin’s words.”
Somewhat ashamed Twilight nodded to the vampire and turned back to the door. “Are we ready girls?”
“Ready.” Came the conjoined reply of the elements. And then they were out of the manor and onto the battlefield.
*****
"It's actually quite simple, but since you've only recently begun to walk upright, it may take some time to explain."
—Jace Beleren
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Fukken slivers man.
Old worm like slivers or the new humanoid slivers?
4347425 Old worm like.
4349553 Cool I like both of them personally, but something about the humanoid ones just seems more threatening. I guess it like they say "More disturbing than the unknown is a distortion of the familiar."
4349553
I prefer the old slivers, for one, they had the disadvantage of pumping other people's slivers at the same time, unlike these pansy, selfish new ones. They also appeared more graceful, at least in my opinion.
4349774
Fleshmad Steed's quote, huh? Nice.
4392470 If your oppenent doesn't use slivers in your match, then the slivers that pumps all slivers on the battlefield wouldn't a disadvantage anymore. Then your local game store has a player dominate FNM with their sliver deck. Especially when they pull the "Virulent Sliver" and trample on all slivers combo
...
6538774
Or, y'know, use anything with Changeling.
6538827 Bad memories
... such dark times...
6538874
And yet the Tides of Morning returned.
Wither is still a (balance-wise) superior ability to Infect. I'm sorry, as powerful as the Phyrexians were supposed to be, I don't like the idea of breaking the game to make a point. If they wanted to have Infect be so prolific, they should've had more abilities that remove counters from players, too.
6538940 I honestly love the Phyrexia. That's actually the block that I got into Magic. But to be fair, I only play it within my group of friends that want to fuck around playing casually to this day.
On the subject about slivers, I honestly don't like to play them. Yes it has so much synergy among each other, but it basically plays itself which my friends and I find boring. Unless we have a one-on-one sliver battle, now that is always interesting.
6538990
Can't argue with that argument. Infect is, in my mind, left too cheap on too many cards, with little to no in-bloc counters.
As for Slivers... well, I can get that they do tend to play themselves after a point, but early setup can make or break a game. I can understand not liking playing them, but I have a special fondness for them, as my first deck I made myself was a Sliver deck, and it eventually grew large/powerful enough I split it into a pair of three-color decks, built for being played together, though they played just fine apart.
6539171 Same with my infect, can easily kill someone on quick succession and my friend countered my infect with his infect deck that had major removal. Although a new rule came out in Magic stating -1/-1 and +1/+1 counters will cancel each other out if on a creature. So my friends and I had a blast adding and negating counters on our creatures.
Then, Battle for Zendikar came out...
6539171 Also, I don't mind slivers, I'm a huge sucker for cards that synergies well. Just after a while, it's the same combo, overwhelm them with creatures that can't be blocked, or trample over their defenses.
Same with the minotaurs, Deathbellow Raider and Minotaur Skullcleaver as the main force, and Rageblood Shaman, Ragemonger, and Kragma Warcaller as beast support. Same combo, same stragegy. If I were to choose, Slivers would be interesting, especially with cards like Constricting Sliver to play around with your opponents in a "casual" game.
6539516
Yeah me and my friends have always played with the antimatter rule for those counters, but I was meaning the Poison counters on players. There's exactly one method to remove them, and that's with a legend that screws infect decks.
6539561
On, I came up with incentive wins, like milling to death, card recycle to out last opponents, and nuking every non-slivers and letting my foe quit out.
6539620 You mean Melira, Sylvok Outcast? Yeah, that's a big F you to infect decks XD. Although, I somehow beat the guy that played it against me by killing him the old fashion way: damage
.
The poison counters on opponents is still on interesting way to win a game. It's basically a big F you to life gaining decks, but I see your point.
6539687
I wouldn't have a problem if there was more ways to remove those Poison Counters. But there isn't, and as such I don't like it. That said, I've made a bunch of cards with the MSE that deal with Infect and removing the resulting counters; I made a sci-fi medics deck in black-white-green. It was glorious.
6539967 I bet it is.