Today's card of the day is Virulent Sliver which is a one mana Green 1/1 that gives all sliver creatures Poisonous 1. For the cost this is an effective starting point for a sliver deck, though it has heavy competition from Galerider, Metallic, Plated, Sidwinder, and Striking.

Maintaining the curve and different mana bases to the deck might leave Virulent in the cold and a purely poison theme is better served with Infect. As a sidedeck option it is very effective against lifegain and in a Green based deck it is an obvious choice.

For Limited formats where this is available the poison is not easily supported, though a 1/1 sliver for one is useful and other slivers are available. For that alone it belongs in any Sealed deck with Green mana, purely sliver builds, and in particular when other slivers are in your pool. In Booster the draft priority is moderate as a 1/1 it is very useful early and when combined with other slivers is not likely to be a bad topdeck.

Constructed: 3.0
Casual: 3.0
Limited: 3.5
Multiplayer: 3.0

David Fanany

Player since 1995

Virulent Sliver

Very few tribal decks can play like combo decks, but Slivers is one of them, thanks almost solely to this card. The Time Spiral block contains just the right combination of Slivers to set up a scenario where you get four Virulent Slivers in play and hit the opponent for between sixteen and 40 poison counters in one attack step. Even if you only play singleton formats like I do, you can appreciate any card that adds another dimension to your game plan and a different angle to a seemingly linear strategy. Especially in casual settings, it's quite easy to add some cards with the proliferate keyword that are otherwise useful as a backup "oops, I win" combo with this card.

Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 4/5
Multiplayer: 3/5