Throughout Magic: The Gathering's history, slugs have been an underrepresented tribe. In this article, I hope to teach you more about them.
I was recently inspired by my friend* to begin a blog, and here it is:
For those of you who don't know, my favorite animal is a slug, so I decided to begin with an article on the lore of slugs. This will be the first article discussing this esoteric topic, so I hope to cover as much information as possible. To begin with, there are only eight slugs**! Eight! You might think that eight is actually quite a decent-sized number, but compared to some other creature types, eight seems miniscule. For example, let's look at some other tribes, more specifically, the tribes of cats, fish, spiders, and birds. Though one might think that at least one out of these four creature types mentioned would have less cards than slugs, none of them do. It turns out that cats have 180 cards representing them, fish have 48, spiders have 53, and birds have 252. All of these numbers are greater than the number of cards that slugs have, which is a pathetic 8 cards. With this in mind, let's look at the history.
The History of Slugs***
Firstly, for all the viewers that have noticed that Molder Slug does not have the Creature Type, Slug, on it, Wizards later deemed it a Beast Slug. Anyhow, the first slug ever printed was Giant Slug. This card was mostly ignored by Magic players, which made sense, as it was a horrible card. After that, in The Dark, and later reprinted in Time Spiral, came Spitting Slug, a card that was also equally disappointing. Later on in Mirrodin, came Molder Slug. This card was much better than both the slugs that came before it, though still not quite that good. The reason that it was not a horrible card nor a good one was that it actually had a decent power and toughness and also had a weak artifact hate ability. Then in Coldsnap came Thermopod. Thermopod was actually quite underestimated and it currently sees a lot less EDH play than it should, as it's basically a Phyrexian Altar that produces only red mana. Later, when Return to Ravnica came around, Catacomb Slug was released. There's not much to say about it except that it was just another mediocre slug. It was later reprinted in Magic Origins. Then, the slugs began to improve. In Shadows Over Innistrad, Morkrut Necropod was released. This card was a pretty big creature with menace, one of the key reasons why it was good, but, sadly, it made you sacrifice lands or other creatures when it attacked. The most recent slug though, printed in Modern Horizons, is Gluttonous Slug. At first glance, it seems mediocre, but it grows quite quickly with its evolve ability and also has menace. Next up, Mechanics!
What Defines a Slug -- Mechanics
Let's take a look at the various mechanics of these slugs and try to identify some themes within these slugs. Let's start with the oldest slug in MTG history, Giant Slug. Giant Slug, ironically, is not very giant and also has a bad, expensive landwalk ability. Next off is Spitting Slug. Spitting Slug gives other creatures first strike unless you pay two mana. This is also quite a horrible ability. After that is Molder Slug. Its ability is similar to Braid, Cabal Minion's except for it only gets rid of artifacts. However, there is definitely better artifact hate like Stony Silence, Kataki, War's Wage, and Collector Ouphe.
Then, comes Thermopod. As discussed before, Thermopod is an amazing card with a Phyrexian Altar effect, but only for red mana. It's other ability of giving itself haste is usually irrelevant. I will not discuss Catacomb Slug (except for right now), as it has no abilities. Next is Morkurt Necropod. It has menace and makes you sacrifice creatures or lands when it attacks or blocks. And finally, Gluttonous Slug. Gluttonous Slug has menace and evolve to make itself bigger and hard to block. What we can learn from all the mechanics of these slugs is that slugs in Magic are not very cohesive in terms of their mechanics except for two slugs, Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug and Thermopod, which both have some form of haste. Ironically though, slugs are extremely slow creatures. Next up, flavor!
What Defines a Slug -- Flavor
What ties all these slugs together though is their flavor. The most obvious flavor that can be found on slugs is in their flavor text. If we look at Gluttonous Slug, Molder Slug, and Morkrut Necropod's flavor texts, we can see a clear theme of slugs fearing**** salt. This makes quite a lot of sense, as slugs die to salt, even outside the realm of Magic. However, Catacomb Slug's flavor text gives quite a different sense about these slugs, as it portrays that these slugs murder people. Here it is: "The entire murder scene was covered in dripping, oozing slime. No need for a soothsayer to solve that one." —Pel Javya, Wojek investigator
If you didn't find the flavor text of Catacomb Slug strange, read it again. It's implying that slugs MURDER people. And lastly, Thermopod's flavor text references that it heats itself up to slide along the ice at great speeds. The next most identifiable flavor on a card is its art. If we look at the arts of these cards, we can see that Morkrut Necropod does not resemble a slug much, but more a strange monstrosity, which makes sense as it is a slug horror. Speaking of slug horrors, we can see in Gluttonous Slug's art that it looks slightly shriveled, which means that it probably got salt poured on it, relating back to its flavor text about salt. Molder Slug's art is not as interesting, it just depicts a giant, slimy dragon. Spitting Slug's art though is strange on many levels. When did slugs start spitting green substances, why is it lying in a pool of blood, and why does it look a misshapen organ? Sadly, Spitting Slug has no flavor text, meaning we aren't going to get any answers to these questions. Giant Slug looks especially weird, with its strange long, tentacle-like eyes. It also looks like it's going to eat the person that is depicted in its art. Thermopod's art shows it emerging out of the ice and probably, soon eating the people on the ice. Finally, Catacomb Slug's art actually resembles a slug, and looks the most realistic out of all of them. What we can learn from these slugs is that there are two clear and identifiable themes within the flavor of slugs, one of which is a primary theme, hating salt, and one which is a secondary theme, murdering people.
Slug Tribal
To finish off this article, I decided to build a Slug Tribal deck. Will Slug Tribal actually work in Modern? Probably not, but we're going to try it anyways. This is what I came up with:
Creatures(18) Artifacts(11)
4x Metallic Mimic 3x Coat of Arms
4x Thermopod 3x Vanquisher's Banner
Enchantments(4)
Sorceries(3) 2x Shared Animosity
3x Roar of the Crowd 2x Mana Echoes
Lands(24)
4x Blood Crypt
The goal for this deck is to play some slugs and then make them bigger with the help of cards like Metallic Mimic, Adapative Automaton, and Door of Destinies. The main finishers are Roar of the Crowd, which can deal 8+ damage, if enough slugs are out and Morkrut Necropod, which becomes even bigger with the cards mentioned previously. I had pretty low expectations for this deck, but it surprisingly managed to pull out a few wins. This deck doesn't have a consistent win rate, but I would definitely recommend this to anyone who has some spare cards lying around, as it is quite a fun deck.
Thanks for reading.
*You can check out his blog here at https://beautifulthorns.wixsite.com/home
**Seven, if you're not counting un-sets.
***Sadly, I currently do not know how to implement the HTML for the hover-over mtg card (I'm still trying to find a decent tutorial on it), so I had to make it so that the cards take you to the link on Gatherer. I apologize for any inconveniences.
***Or just shriveling and dying to it.
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