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Battle Royale 13 – Snow Slivers!

StarCityGames.com - Battle Royale!I would imagine it would be hard being a Sliver. I mean, you meet a new friend one day and up sprouts an extra head out of nowhere. Then another friend joins the group and your arms turn into some kind of weapon. Then one of them goes away and your extra head disappears. Another one comes down and you start shooting webs out of your butt or you grow spines on your back. Seems like it would be frustrating, to say the least.

The mood was set at a little Italian restaurant on the edge of town. With candles producing a wonderful pomegranate epiphany, and a maestro playing some of Beethoven’s finest in the background, everything was on track and ready to roll. All I needed was her…

Five minutes went by. No big deal; she’s probably just stuck in traffic.

Seven minutes. I pulled the cell phone out to play my bowling game. My high score is 132. Jealous?

Ten minutes? I started to brainstorm possible deck ideas for Battle Royale. I felt cold inside; twenty-three Snow-covered lands and four Skreds was the only thing that popped in my head.

Fifteen minutes. The waiter asked me if I’d like to order, and gave me a look of disgust.

After twenty-five minutes, I left $5 on the table. I left alone, feeling crumbled.

Damn this cold feeling.

Damn that stupid waiter and his cross-eyed glares.

Damn Brittany for leaving her cell phone at home.

And damn her brother falling out of the second-floor balcony…


Card Quantity Amount Total Cost (Tickets)
Sedge Sliver 4 1 4
Hit//Run 4 .50 2
Cryoclasm 4 .50 2
Snowlands 18 ? 6
Firewake Sliver 3 .20 .60
Fortune Thief 3 1 3
Spined Sliver 4 .40 1.60
Putrefy 4 .25 1
Stormbind 2 1 2


The cost? Twenty-three tickets total.

I would imagine it would be hard being a Sliver. I mean, you meet a new friend one day and up sprouts an extra head out of nowhere. Then another friend joins the group and your arms turn into some kind of weapon. Then one of them goes away and your extra head disappears. Another one comes down and you start shooting webs out of your butt or you grow spines on your back. Seems like it would be frustrating, to say the least.

Truth be told, I made a basic Sliver deck in the beginning with the whole package, with full complements of Might Sliver, Coat of Arms, and even one of those Saphardian Empires Volume XXX, or whatever the heck it’s called. I played one game and didn’t like it. It was too clunky, like a Stuffy Doll in an Affinity deck. I also began to notice how aggressive all the Red/Green slivers are, so I went with it.

When the mold for the R/G aggro sliver deck was made, it cost about ten tickets. So I searched for other red and green cards via the deck builder on MODO until I stumbled upon Sedge Sliver; he stuck out like a Stuffy Doll at Sunday brunch and quickly became the driving force behind the deck. Best of all was that with the addition of Sedge Sliver, the deck could now afford to cut the expensive (and very clunky) Might Sliver.

After fondling with the mana for awhile, I added the low-price Terramorphic Expanse to ease the mana needs. It sucks drawing it late game when you need a land to cast a spell, but there really isn’t anything that can be done about it. Hit / Run is another card I’ve had nerd wood for, so it jumped in the deck and I ended up with this masterpiece.

Fortune Thief seemed like a pretty good idea for the sideboard, since a lot of the Battle Royale decks I’ve seen have little or no removal in them. I’ve also been playing U/R Snow for the past couple of weeks, and he’s one of my favorite sideboard cards.

After goldfishing the deck a few times on MODO, I’m about as happy as I’m going to get with it. I don’t like Terramorphic Expanse very much, but there really is no other alternative unless you just drop Sedge Sliver and Hit – my two favorite cards in the deck. When I found out I had a large budget to work with after the core of the deck was down, I wanted to add Demonfires to the deck, expecting them to be at two or three tickets. The lowest price I could find was two for seventeen tickets, which is completely insane. So I went for the cheap version with Disintegrate, which then got replaced by the superior Stormbind.

I’m a big fan of TV shows. Whether it be Desperate Housewives, Lost, Family Guy, or Sopranos, I always like to watch the "new show" to make sure I’m not missing anything big. They usually flop, but the good ones stand out like a Stuffy Doll in a wet T-Shirt contest. Heroes is that kind of show (if you haven’t seen/heard/watched it go download the first X episodes). It’s soooooo good. From the very beginning I was drawn and can’t stop watching. I guess the only reason I’m talking about it is because its only one hour until it starts and I’m getting anxious like a Stuffy Doll with a Night of Souls’ Betrayal in play.

Peter kicked Sylar’s butt in the last episode, but he got arrested! And Sylar was abducted by the cheerleader’s father! There are so many plot twists, it’s crazy. In the beginning I really liked Ali Larter’s character, probably because she is super duper hot, but with each episode she gets more and more boring. My favorite "hero" so far is definitely Hiro, though, and when you look at it he is really the driving point behind the whole show.

Just got back from watching another amazing episode with Heroes. Every show has a re-cap episode each season that tells what happened before you started watching, and this was that kind of episode. It revealed Sylar’s rise to power as well as some more background info on all the other heroes. It reminds me of Lost, Season One. Everything is a mystery, I just hope they don’t drag it out like they have in Lost.

Ali Larter’s husband is another one of my favorite characters. He has the ability to pass through different things, like Kitty from X-Men. He also played the role of the retarded son who killed a girl on Desperate Housewives. When this last episode ended it looked like he was about to take a bullet to the head from Ali, and on the previews for the next episode it says a hero dies! Man I hope it’s not him. I hope its somebody stupid, like the police officer who can hear people’s thoughts. I mean hes a good guy and all, but his character is definitely the lamest of all the heroes.

I also want to see more from the radiation guy. My whole theory so far is that Sylar steals the radiation guy’s power, then steals the cheerleader’s regeneration power so he can blow up New York and live. It seems a bit too obvious, though – it’s probably something weird that is totally unpredictable…

I had another Stuffy Doll simile lined up, but I’ll spare you.

See you at the battle!

Thanks for reading,
Kyle

Top 5 Picks
1) "Slowly" by Amon Tobin
2) "Manitoba" by Tapes n’ Tapes
3) "Brandy Alexander" by The Walkmen
4) "Dear Mr.Supercomputer" by Sufjan Stevens
5) "Me & You & Him" by Palaxy Tracks

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The Battle takes place on Friday, December 1st at 9 p.m. EST, in the Anything Goes Casual Room on Magic Online. Be there!]