So, after only a couple drafts and some discussion, it's looking like UW skies is even more powerful than usual... A lot of efficient fliers, coupled with standard UW removal + walls, minus enough removal in other colors. Nephalia Seaskite is nasty in any deck with counters.
Any draft observations so far?
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I observed myself going Serra into Serra into Clone:Serra.
Underpowered.
Seriously though, only observation I'm certain of thus far is Green looked unstoppable on paper but it's lacking something and gets shut down by numerous other strats.
Seriously though, only observation I'm certain of thus far is Green looked unstoppable on paper but it's lacking something and gets shut down by numerous other strats.
So basically it's like every core set ever.
In core sets, green always looks so deep and strong, but it suffers when up against decks that can punish its tempo and use tricks to create an interactive game, which green basically doesn't do. Green wants to be the blunt object, and there are far too many options in basically every other color that allow you to interact with it profitably.
That's not to say green is bad, but you need to prioritize cards like Deadly Recluse, Hunt the Weak, Giant Growth, and especially Briarpack Alpha, as they force your opponent into more cautious play and force them to be thoughtful with their removal.
I'm impressed so far with this core set, to be honest. It's pretty enjoyable, even if it's just as a break from the hyper-strategic stuff from blocks past.
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Signalling is like farting: it's a natural thing that helps people avoid being where you are, and if you try to do it deliberately, things turn to crap fast.
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It still feels like a core set, but I like that they've included more combos. Some more obvious than others, which is always good. There seem to be a lot of opportunities for small synergies -- not sweeping linear mechanics, just little interesting boosts here and there.
I love cards like Young Pyromancer. It's fine on its own (2 power for 2 mana, good in all but the most control based formats) so you're happy to run it regardless of your instant/sorcery count. But it plays a completely different role if you do draft a heavy spell deck. It goes from an expendable early drop with upside to a mass token producer. It's hard to design simple cards that play well but completely differently depending on your deck.
Frankly, the Izzet Guild needed more cards like Young Pyromancer...
Its a slow format. Nothing really is over powered to the point it is unanswerable. All the colors compliment each other well, which is nice. Like many have said already, its a core set. After the last few sets and draft environments we have had, this core set seems very boring and vanilla to me, so much I am shying away from drafting it after a little over a dozen drafts. Usually it takes many more drafts then that to push me off a draft format.
I observed myself going Serra into Serra into Clone:Serra.
Underpowered.
I got to Clone Seraph of the Sword and follow it with Serra... perhaps my small sample size was too bomb-heavy to allow for much consideration.
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Like most core sets, the ground tends to stall and you need a way to break through whether that's evasion, removal, combat tricks, whatever. UW Skies is always a valid core set deck because it has evasion in the same sense that you can always build a RB Lots of Removal deck if it's open to you and it will usually be solid.
What you need to avoid in core set is the pile of 16-17 average sized creatures and nothing really going on with your support spells. Those decks will always stagnate even if your individual creatures are all "fine." You need some big punches to throw eventually.
I've drafted this twice so far to get a taste of it (Drafting more once the regular queues open on Modo) and I felt it was better in actual play than I thought it would be on paper. So my excitement for this set's Limited play was pretty high very early on ('Claustrophobia and Sensory Deprivation are in this? COUNT ME IN!'), then dipped a bit after seeing the whole thing more carefully ('Ugh, the creatures in this... are so bad') but now that I've actually played with it, I think it's actually a pretty sweet core set.
Mostly it feels vanilla because the returning mechanic, slivers, doesn't have nearly as much of an impact as Exalted in M13 - If you have one Aven Squire in your deck, the Exalted will matter; if you have one Predatory Sliver in your deck, it's just a bear. But at the same time there is so much stuff going on - the lifegain deck, the enchantments deck, the young pyromancer deck - that it feels fresh enough. After all the complexity of DGR - with 10 mechanics floating around and a really intricate drafting dynamic - it's nice to go back to basics for a while, I think.
I think Deadly Recluse is still wildly undervalued. That thing is probably the best green common outright and between that and Kalonian Tusker is pretty close (And I probably take it over the first Predatory Sliver at least for now).
Oh, and I've been much more impressed with Soulmender than I have any right to be. There are enough 2/1 guys floating in this format to make it reasonably likely to trade with something, and if not, it nets you quite a lot of live over the course of the game. Since this is a slow format, it can actually swing races for the UW deck that is hoping to get there with 3/3 fliers or the WB deck that wants to abuse lifelink. Still not a high pick, obviously, but it's far from knee-jerk unplayable.
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Did two 10-man drafts yesterday. Took first place with a monoblack deck full of synergy but no bomb rares (4x tenacious d + sac outlets; 3x corrupt; 3x quag sickness; 2x sengir vamp). Then I came in 7th with a UGb deck the second draft.
This format is awful. Games routinely had players with 30+ life, or coming back from 2 life to 20 life. There were routinely giant lines of creatures looking at each other with no way to break through.
Basically this:
What you need to avoid in core set is the pile of 16-17 average sized creatures and nothing really going on with your support spells. Those decks will always stagnate even if your individual creatures are all "fine." You need some big punches to throw eventually.
How many times did I see trollhide create a massive stall...
One match I had the 1/3 drake out vs the 1/3 griffin and the 2/3 seakite... bunch of big-butt flyers pecking me for 1 damage a turn. Race! That game ended once my opponent had lined up 3 more small flyers. I had a mark of the vampire on an accursed spirit with enlarge, illusionary armor, opportunity, and archaeomancer in hand. Looked like I was turning the corner for an easy win - opponent plays pay no heed on my first swing, drops me to within lethal, then archaeomancer's back her pay no heed making me unable to enlarge and swing for 13 unblockable lifelink...
What's sadder - that I was able to make 13 lifelink unblockable? That I needed that to stay in the game? Or that my opponent was able to run pay no heed as a trump card?
In core sets, green always looks so deep and strong, but it suffers when up against decks that can punish its tempo and use tricks to create an interactive game, which green basically doesn't do. Green wants to be the blunt object, and there are far too many options in basically every other color that allow you to interact with it profitably.
That's not to say green is bad, but you need to prioritize cards like Deadly Recluse, Hunt the Weak, Giant Growth, and especially Briarpack Alpha, as they force your opponent into more cautious play and force them to be thoughtful with their removal.
I'm impressed so far with this core set, to be honest. It's pretty enjoyable, even if it's just as a break from the hyper-strategic stuff from blocks past.
I entirely agree. For this reason, I like pairing green with either blue or black as opposed to red if possible. Blue/Green has historically not been great because it lacked removal, but in this set both blue and green have removal spells that really complement each other well. Also, black of course just has really efficient removal spells which is good if you're beating down. R/G I find less good, just because red and green do very similar things. Shock and giant growth are pretty similar cards, as are hunt the weak and chandra's outrage. Unless you have a strong sliver theme, I would avoid RG, just because I think it compounds green's problems to some degree.
I entirely agree. For this reason, I like pairing green with either blue or black as opposed to red if possible. Blue/Green has historically not been great because it lacked removal, but in this set both blue and green have removal spells that really complement each other well. Also, black of course just has really efficient removal spells which is good if you're beating down. R/G I find less good, just because red and green do very similar things. Shock and giant growth are pretty similar cards, as are hunt the weak and chandra's outrage. Unless you have a strong sliver theme, I would avoid RG, just because I think it compounds green's problems to some degree.
R/G can also be good if you have beast tribal action going on. Advocate of the Beast can be really hard for some decks to beat.
My big complaint with the format right now is how bomby it is - it feels like if you don't get one of the bomb uncommons (Serra Angel, Air Servant, Sengir Vampire, Shiv's Embrace and Briarpack Alpha) your deck just isn't as good as a deck in that colour should be. Red's bomb uncommon being decidedly the worst of the lot is also kind of sad.
My big complaint with the format right now is how bomby it is - it feels like if you don't get one of the bomb uncommons (Serra Angel, Air Servant, Sengir Vampire, Shiv's Embrace and Briarpack Alpha) your deck just isn't as good as a deck in that colour should be. Red's bomb uncommon being decidedly the worst of the lot is also kind of sad.
I think you need to recheck the set list. Not only is red's best uncommon insane, but it's likely better than all of the cards you listed.
Signalling is like farting: it's a natural thing that helps people avoid being where you are, and if you try to do it deliberately, things turn to crap fast.
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What's sadder - that I was able to make 13 lifelink unblockable? That I needed that to stay in the game? Or that my opponent was able to run pay no heed as a trump card?
First of all, you could have made a 13/13 Lifelink Unblockable creature that would have been completely blown out by a number of spells including something as simple as Disperse. You can make huge Frankenstein creatures in this format...that doesn't make it a good strategy. That's why disruption spells, especially Instants, are so important.
Pay No Heed is marginal but not a bad card. It usually winds up being Negate because you counter a combat trick or something, and Negate has been core set maindeck material for a while now.
First of all, you could have made a 13/13 Lifelink Unblockable creature that would have been completely blown out by a number of spells including something as simple as Disperse. You can make huge Frankenstein creatures in this format...that doesn't make it a good strategy. That's why disruption spells, especially Instants, are so important.
Pay No Heed is marginal but not a bad card. It usually winds up being Negate because you counter a combat trick or something, and Negate has been core set maindeck material for a while now.
Yeah, I didn't have any illusions about Pay No Heed being the second coming of Stave Off or anything, but it seems to be more playable than your typical Healing Salve variant. The fact that it nerfs some pretty hefty spells in this format (Enlarge, Flames of the Firebrand, Corrupt, and Volcanic Geyser come to mind) is at worst relevant, and I've found myself either sideboarding it in often or wishing it were in my starting 40.
Oh, and the fact that it doesn't target sometimes becomes important too, even if it's an outlier case.
Signalling is like farting: it's a natural thing that helps people avoid being where you are, and if you try to do it deliberately, things turn to crap fast.
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I hereby found the American Chapter of the Zealots of Semantics. All glory to The Curmudgeon.
Flames is the best red uncommon by a far margin. I only meant that, out of those five cards I listed (The pseudo-cycle of uncommon bombs), the red one was by far the worse. I think Red is relatively weak in this set (But the differences are really tiny - there is no colour to avoid really) but I don't think Red's uncommons in general are underwhelming, though... man, Fleshpulper Giant. At least they didn't get the stinker that is Spell Blast.
Or in other words: Flames is very good, and an easy first pick, but it's not a bomb per se.
Pay No Heed strikes me as the sort of marginal trick that needs to exist because decks just need tricks and good drafters will take them to ensure they can interact even if they haven't seen a good amount of removal/premium combat tricks.
Flames is the best red uncommon by a far margin. I only meant that, out of those five cards I listed (The pseudo-cycle of uncommon bombs), the red one was by far the worse.
This is untrue. Flames is roughly as powerful as Serra Angel (which is the best of the five).
This is untrue. Flames is roughly as powerful as Serra Angel (which is the best of the five).
I think Flames is significantly weaker than it was in M13. There are fewer X/1s, partially due to Exalted not being in the set. So it's harder to get a 241 or 341 out of the card.
You think? Seems all I see these days are 2/1s... they play some major roles in a lot of decks (Trained Condor, Young Pyromancer, Child of Night, Corpse Hauler, baby Slivers etc.) There's also a near-cycle of sweet 1-toughness rares (green has no 1-toughness rare, thank jeebus.)
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This is untrue. Flames is roughly as powerful as Serra Angel (which is the best of the five).
Yes, but it's not a bomb. It's premium removal and you take it over almost everything but it's still not a bomb no matter how powerful it is. Red's uncommon bomb is weaker than the similar cards in other colours, but Flames of the Firebrand is close to the best uncommon in the set (Alongside Serra Angel, Doom Blade and possibly something else I'm forgetting).
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I have been very happy with Concordia PegasusSeacoast Drake so far. Simply blocks like a champ in this set whether he's blocking land or air. With all of the aforementioned 2/1s running around, he is a nice drop to get in there on turn two. Then, he can block Warden of Evos Isle and Nephalia Seakite while shutting down Trained Condor.
Yes, but it's not a bomb. It's premium removal and you take it over almost everything but it's still not a bomb no matter how powerful it is. Red's uncommon bomb is weaker than the similar cards in other colours, but Flames of the Firebrand is close to the best uncommon in the set (Alongside Serra Angel, Doom Blade and possibly something else I'm forgetting).
Oh for the love of Pete, let's not have the "Such-and-such card is or is not a bomb in italics for emphasis!" argument again...
Bomb is a meaningless term. When you peel back the layers, everyone has a different definition (and some people choose to have no definition because they realize how pointless it is).
Everyone is free to have their own opinions about the set. "Bomb" is not an objective measure, nor do we have to come to agreement about each and every card. If you don't think Flames is that great, pick something else. Sporks can pick it higher.
If you don't think Flames is that great, pick something else. Sporks can pick it higher.
Haaang on a minute. Whilst you may have a point that discussing exactly what counts as a bomb isn't particularly interesting, the same cannot be said for actual opinions on card power. If two players disagree on how good a card is, let them discuss it! You aren't forced to read it.
Flames of the Firebrand has been very powerful in some past formats, but the early discussion of M14 suggests it's a bit slower, so possibly killing X/1s isn't important enough to make the card great?
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bateleur: I don't know how much my opinion counts, but I think that the fact that Flames exists makes Steelform Sliver the second-most important sliver to have.
There's also a lot of bit butts in the format, and so it can almost act as a semi-Wrath if you're on the wrong foot and you attack with your 2-power dudes into their 3-toughness dudes.
OK fine. We can debate the card. I was more reacting to the "is/isn't bomb" debate which is like two people arguing over whether a particular painting is interesting or not -- there's no right answer.
In my brief experience with M14 so far, tempo seems relevant. 2/1s are still reasonable cards. There are plenty of important X/2s that are hard to kill in combat such as Phantom Warrior or Accursed Spirit.
There is no reasonable argument that Flames is bad. For 3 mana, as long as it kills something, it's perfectly good. The fact that is occasionally goes 2-for-1 or better makes up for the fact that it can't kill a Serra Angel. That's a standard restriction on Red removal -- you can very efficiently kill most things, but often not the most important thing. If you want to guarantee you can kill the most important thing, draft Black instead.
I think the reports that M14 is "slow" are premature. Every format starts slow and gets faster, so I imagine Flames can only improve as time goes by. It might be slower than M13 but only by a small margin.
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Any draft observations so far?
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Underpowered.
Seriously though, only observation I'm certain of thus far is Green looked unstoppable on paper but it's lacking something and gets shut down by numerous other strats.
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So basically it's like every core set ever.
In core sets, green always looks so deep and strong, but it suffers when up against decks that can punish its tempo and use tricks to create an interactive game, which green basically doesn't do. Green wants to be the blunt object, and there are far too many options in basically every other color that allow you to interact with it profitably.
That's not to say green is bad, but you need to prioritize cards like Deadly Recluse, Hunt the Weak, Giant Growth, and especially Briarpack Alpha, as they force your opponent into more cautious play and force them to be thoughtful with their removal.
I'm impressed so far with this core set, to be honest. It's pretty enjoyable, even if it's just as a break from the hyper-strategic stuff from blocks past.
:dance:Fact or Fiction of the [Limited] Clan:dance:
I love cards like Young Pyromancer. It's fine on its own (2 power for 2 mana, good in all but the most control based formats) so you're happy to run it regardless of your instant/sorcery count. But it plays a completely different role if you do draft a heavy spell deck. It goes from an expendable early drop with upside to a mass token producer. It's hard to design simple cards that play well but completely differently depending on your deck.
Frankly, the Izzet Guild needed more cards like Young Pyromancer...
I got to Clone Seraph of the Sword and follow it with Serra... perhaps my small sample size was too bomb-heavy to allow for much consideration.
My Decks:
EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn
Modern: Polytokes
IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
Just a friendly reminder that I will drive this car off a bridge
What you need to avoid in core set is the pile of 16-17 average sized creatures and nothing really going on with your support spells. Those decks will always stagnate even if your individual creatures are all "fine." You need some big punches to throw eventually.
Mostly it feels vanilla because the returning mechanic, slivers, doesn't have nearly as much of an impact as Exalted in M13 - If you have one Aven Squire in your deck, the Exalted will matter; if you have one Predatory Sliver in your deck, it's just a bear. But at the same time there is so much stuff going on - the lifegain deck, the enchantments deck, the young pyromancer deck - that it feels fresh enough. After all the complexity of DGR - with 10 mechanics floating around and a really intricate drafting dynamic - it's nice to go back to basics for a while, I think.
I think Deadly Recluse is still wildly undervalued. That thing is probably the best green common outright and between that and Kalonian Tusker is pretty close (And I probably take it over the first Predatory Sliver at least for now).
Oh, and I've been much more impressed with Soulmender than I have any right to be. There are enough 2/1 guys floating in this format to make it reasonably likely to trade with something, and if not, it nets you quite a lot of live over the course of the game. Since this is a slow format, it can actually swing races for the UW deck that is hoping to get there with 3/3 fliers or the WB deck that wants to abuse lifelink. Still not a high pick, obviously, but it's far from knee-jerk unplayable.
This format is awful. Games routinely had players with 30+ life, or coming back from 2 life to 20 life. There were routinely giant lines of creatures looking at each other with no way to break through.
Basically this:
How many times did I see trollhide create a massive stall...
One match I had the 1/3 drake out vs the 1/3 griffin and the 2/3 seakite... bunch of big-butt flyers pecking me for 1 damage a turn. Race! That game ended once my opponent had lined up 3 more small flyers. I had a mark of the vampire on an accursed spirit with enlarge, illusionary armor, opportunity, and archaeomancer in hand. Looked like I was turning the corner for an easy win - opponent plays pay no heed on my first swing, drops me to within lethal, then archaeomancer's back her pay no heed making me unable to enlarge and swing for 13 unblockable lifelink...
What's sadder - that I was able to make 13 lifelink unblockable? That I needed that to stay in the game? Or that my opponent was able to run pay no heed as a trump card?
**** format.
I entirely agree. For this reason, I like pairing green with either blue or black as opposed to red if possible. Blue/Green has historically not been great because it lacked removal, but in this set both blue and green have removal spells that really complement each other well. Also, black of course just has really efficient removal spells which is good if you're beating down. R/G I find less good, just because red and green do very similar things. Shock and giant growth are pretty similar cards, as are hunt the weak and chandra's outrage. Unless you have a strong sliver theme, I would avoid RG, just because I think it compounds green's problems to some degree.
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R/G can also be good if you have beast tribal action going on. Advocate of the Beast can be really hard for some decks to beat.
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
My big complaint with the format right now is how bomby it is - it feels like if you don't get one of the bomb uncommons (Serra Angel, Air Servant, Sengir Vampire, Shiv's Embrace and Briarpack Alpha) your deck just isn't as good as a deck in that colour should be. Red's bomb uncommon being decidedly the worst of the lot is also kind of sad.
I think you need to recheck the set list. Not only is red's best uncommon insane, but it's likely better than all of the cards you listed.
I'm hoping you simply forgot that Flames of the Firebrand existed.
:dance:Fact or Fiction of the [Limited] Clan:dance:
First of all, you could have made a 13/13 Lifelink Unblockable creature that would have been completely blown out by a number of spells including something as simple as Disperse. You can make huge Frankenstein creatures in this format...that doesn't make it a good strategy. That's why disruption spells, especially Instants, are so important.
Pay No Heed is marginal but not a bad card. It usually winds up being Negate because you counter a combat trick or something, and Negate has been core set maindeck material for a while now.
Yeah, I didn't have any illusions about Pay No Heed being the second coming of Stave Off or anything, but it seems to be more playable than your typical Healing Salve variant. The fact that it nerfs some pretty hefty spells in this format (Enlarge, Flames of the Firebrand, Corrupt, and Volcanic Geyser come to mind) is at worst relevant, and I've found myself either sideboarding it in often or wishing it were in my starting 40.
Oh, and the fact that it doesn't target sometimes becomes important too, even if it's an outlier case.
:dance:Fact or Fiction of the [Limited] Clan:dance:
Flames is the best red uncommon by a far margin. I only meant that, out of those five cards I listed (The pseudo-cycle of uncommon bombs), the red one was by far the worse. I think Red is relatively weak in this set (But the differences are really tiny - there is no colour to avoid really) but I don't think Red's uncommons in general are underwhelming, though... man, Fleshpulper Giant. At least they didn't get the stinker that is Spell Blast.
Or in other words: Flames is very good, and an easy first pick, but it's not a bomb per se.
Pay No Heed strikes me as the sort of marginal trick that needs to exist because decks just need tricks and good drafters will take them to ensure they can interact even if they haven't seen a good amount of removal/premium combat tricks.
This is untrue. Flames is roughly as powerful as Serra Angel (which is the best of the five).
I think Flames is significantly weaker than it was in M13. There are fewer X/1s, partially due to Exalted not being in the set. So it's harder to get a 241 or 341 out of the card.
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
You think? Seems all I see these days are 2/1s... they play some major roles in a lot of decks (Trained Condor, Young Pyromancer, Child of Night, Corpse Hauler, baby Slivers etc.) There's also a near-cycle of sweet 1-toughness rares (green has no 1-toughness rare, thank jeebus.)
My Decks:
EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn
Modern: Polytokes
IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
Just a friendly reminder that I will drive this car off a bridge
Yes, but it's not a bomb. It's premium removal and you take it over almost everything but it's still not a bomb no matter how powerful it is. Red's uncommon bomb is weaker than the similar cards in other colours, but Flames of the Firebrand is close to the best uncommon in the set (Alongside Serra Angel, Doom Blade and possibly something else I'm forgetting).
Concordia PegasusSeacoast Drake so far. Simply blocks like a champ in this set whether he's blocking land or air. With all of the aforementioned 2/1s running around, he is a nice drop to get in there on turn two. Then, he can block Warden of Evos Isle and Nephalia Seakite while shutting down Trained Condor.Oh for the love of Pete, let's not have the "Such-and-such card is or is not a bomb in italics for emphasis!" argument again...
Bomb is a meaningless term. When you peel back the layers, everyone has a different definition (and some people choose to have no definition because they realize how pointless it is).
Everyone is free to have their own opinions about the set. "Bomb" is not an objective measure, nor do we have to come to agreement about each and every card. If you don't think Flames is that great, pick something else. Sporks can pick it higher.
Haaang on a minute. Whilst you may have a point that discussing exactly what counts as a bomb isn't particularly interesting, the same cannot be said for actual opinions on card power. If two players disagree on how good a card is, let them discuss it! You aren't forced to read it.
Flames of the Firebrand has been very powerful in some past formats, but the early discussion of M14 suggests it's a bit slower, so possibly killing X/1s isn't important enough to make the card great?
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There's also a lot of bit butts in the format, and so it can almost act as a semi-Wrath if you're on the wrong foot and you attack with your 2-power dudes into their 3-toughness dudes.
OK fine. We can debate the card. I was more reacting to the "is/isn't bomb" debate which is like two people arguing over whether a particular painting is interesting or not -- there's no right answer.
In my brief experience with M14 so far, tempo seems relevant. 2/1s are still reasonable cards. There are plenty of important X/2s that are hard to kill in combat such as Phantom Warrior or Accursed Spirit.
There is no reasonable argument that Flames is bad. For 3 mana, as long as it kills something, it's perfectly good. The fact that is occasionally goes 2-for-1 or better makes up for the fact that it can't kill a Serra Angel. That's a standard restriction on Red removal -- you can very efficiently kill most things, but often not the most important thing. If you want to guarantee you can kill the most important thing, draft Black instead.
I think the reports that M14 is "slow" are premature. Every format starts slow and gets faster, so I imagine Flames can only improve as time goes by. It might be slower than M13 but only by a small margin.