I have to agree on that being a problem. I played mono U Elixir a bunch of times now, and I never came close to being in danger once I survived past turn 5-6. The only time someone beat me was indeed with an early Gnawing Zombie, sneaking through Corpse Hauler to recurr a previously countered Tenacious D. Apart from that, Millstone could be an Idea, or just some sort of engine. I feel that apart from sticking and defending a midgame thread (like a Trollhided guy or a Serra or something rather), engines are really what this format is all about. Basically there is not much out there, except another engine, that can win against Tenacious D + Sac outlet, Elixir in Mono Blue or an active Angelic Accord in the mid to lategame.
Btw: You could always try to Naturalize or Smelt the Elixir, since the Mono U player will likely want to burn all his counters, to get max. value, before activating Elixir.
I have decided to partake in a 64 players Draft tournament. The way these work is that there are eight different eight man pods in which players draft their deck, which then get mixed and matched. After that, there are three rounds of single elimination, which will leave eight of the players at 3-0. Those players will then draft again and play another three rounds to declare the actual winner of the tournament. The reason why I decided to play this tournament is that the price payouts are fairly high (24 packs for 1st / 18 for 2nd / 12 for 3rd and 4th etc.) and that there is the prospect of drafting twice, which is always nice.
Draft #1
Pack One:
Pack one started out with a Garruk, which I gladly picked over other strong green cards, fully aware that the signal I was sending to my left was not the best. However, I do not value signalling, especially to the left, that highly in most formats. You will be taking cards from the player on your left for two out of the three packs anyways, so it is really him that has to adapt, not you. Reading signals I think is far more important. Anyway, I picked Garruk, because I think its a very powerful card that delivers a steady stream of card advantage. Plus, it is 9 tickets, so hey!
Pick: Garruk, Caller of Beasts
Pack two had several good options in most colours, namely Phantom Warrior, Charging Griffin, Giant Growth and Corpse Hauler. I decided on the Phantom Warrior, which was partly due to me sending so many green signals to my left (again, I don't value it that highly, but it is at least a consideration) but mostly due to me wanting to be blue in every M14 Draft. I am firmly convinced that blue is the best colour in this format, with green as a close second. I prefer blue, because it can be very strong as an aggro colour and a more controlish one. Plus, the quality of commons is very deep (Trained Condor, Messenger Drake, Nephalia Seakite, Essence Scatter, Time Ebb, Claustrophobia and Scroll Thief are all pretty strong cards).
Pick: Phantom Warrior
Pack three, the pickable cards were Corrupt, Scroll Thief, Trollhide, Marauding Maulhorn and Sentinel Sliver (which I like more than Steelform Sliver due to the shortage of two drops). Corrupt would have been interesting, as I have yet to draft the mono-ish black deck in M14. I am not the biggest fan of white in this format, just because it is kind of a hybrid colour in terms of wether it wants to be aggro or control (and fails to impress in both roles). Scroll Thief would have been a decent pick, but I think Marauding Maulhorn is a fantastic limited card. It is similar to Juggernaut, which was always very strong, and this even has the upside of preventing you from playing badly and not attack. Furthermore, it works in both Blue / Red and Green / Red aggro / tempo decks, making it a sweet follow up to what we had so far.
Pick: Marauding Maulhorn
Pack four was lacking in terms of power level, Wring Flesh being the strongest card in the pack. I picked up a Frost Breath, which is a decent role player in blue tempo decks.
Pick: Frost Breath
Pack five had Pitchburn Devils, Hunt the Weak and Nephalia Seakite as pickable options. I went for the Seakite, because I generally like it more than the other two options. Hunt the weak is servicable, but a little bit expensive and has blowout potential (them killing your creature in response). Pitchburn Devils is a strong card and I do like it in aggressive decks, but the nature of it being a 3/3 for five mana makes it sort of awkward for a deck that tries to mitigate blocking with cards like Frost Breath. Seakite is also not the best in aggro, but it is just generally a solid limited card.
Pick: Nephalia Seakite
Pack six had a Reggaeton Firecat and another Frost Breath. Green seemed to be drying up from our right, so we decided to go for Blue / Red aggro, in which both the Breath and the Cat are strong cards. Having a Frost Breath already, I decided to go for the creature, which I like a lot, again in tandem with cards that try to mitigate blocking (Frost Breath, Trained Condor, Seismic Stomp etc.). Also, Sentinel Sliver still being in the pack was definitley an indicator of white being open, so this would have been a possible route as well, but I prefer Blue / Red to Blue / White or Red / White as an aggro strategy, because I think the synergies are stronger.
Pick: Regathan Firecat
Pack seven had Lightning Talons as the only option, which I came to like a fair ammount. It works nicely with cards like the Cat and Scroll Thief and generally just has to be answered pretty quickly, which for me is a must for an Aura card.
Pick: Lightning Talons
Pack eight showed us that white and black were probably underdrafted, with Child of Night and Siege Mastodon still being in the pack, as well as the sub-par but playable Capashen Knight. For us there was only a Negate, which is playable but not exciting. I mentioned that I do not like switching in this format all that much, just because I often end up scrambling for playables when doing so.
Pick: Negate
Pack nine cemented our prediction of white being wide open with Master of Diversion going around the table. The card is the backbone of the White/X aggressive strategies and seing it going around that late was definitley painful. We got a Seismic Stomp at least, which I always like to play one copy of in my red aggressive decks. It is similar to Frost Breath and Lava Axe in how it allows you to close out games once your opponent has stabilised.
Pick: Seismic Stomp
From this point, the packs dried up as it had to be expected. I am still not sure if Cyclops Tyrant is unplayable, but six mana just seems way overcosted for that kind of card. I also picked up a Sliver Construct, wich is a fine Sideboard card against Accursed Spirit.
Conclusion: Pack one was decent for us. We didn't pick up any of the power commons in our colours (Claustrophobia, Trained Condor, Shock, Chandra's Outrage) but we at least had a plan in Blue / Red tempo. I like the deck a lot actually, because the synergies are very strong and it can often keep the opponent on its toes for a very long time, allowing for cards like Frost Breath and Seismic Stomp to just flat out kill them.
Pack Two:
The second pack started out with a real bomb. The choice between Young Pyromancer and Flames of the Firebrand was not really a choice at all as Flames is just premium removal, two for one or even three for one potential and even goes to the face for three. The card is by far the best red uncommon and might even be the best red card period.
Pick: Flames of the Firebrand
Pack two was as bad as pick one was awesome. Wall of Frost is unplayable in the kind of deck that we were drafting at this point and Archaeomancer asks for a lot to be decent. There might have been an argument for Vastwood Hydra, but because green was heavily denied from our right, I do not think that this would have ended all that well.
Pick: Archaeomancer
Pack three gave us the option between Clone an Blur Sliver. This was again not much of a choice, because cloning, even in the face of a very emotional public debate, never fails to impress in the game of Magic. Getting the best card on either side of the board for four mana is something I cannot deny.
Pick: Clone
Pack four had a couple of options as well in Scroll Thief, Academy Raider, Divination and another Seismic Stomp. Having a stopm and a Frost Breath as well and Divination not being the ideal card for a deck like ours which really wants to keep the pressure going, I decided on Scroll Thief over Academy Raider. I think the pick is actually much closer than I gave it credit in the draft, but having a Lightning Talons already, I had to trust LSV's archetype breakdown and go for the Talons / Thief combo.
Pick: Scroll Thief
Pack five was like christmas for me. Trained Condor I think is the best common in the format, just because it does crazy amounts of damage and works so well in any kind of not super controlish blue decks. Seeing Banisher Priest that late again cemented the role of white as the colour to be in in this particular draft, but I could not care less.
Pick: Concord, the Friendly Condor
Pack six offered another Regathan Firecat, which works nicely in our kind of deck. We really had a lot of three drops at this point and not a single two drop, so my desire to get some Coral Merfolks or Goblin Shortcutters started to grow bigger and bigger.
Pick: Regathan Firecat
Pick seven had Thunder Strike, Canyon Minotaur and a Swords to Plowshares. I don't think that Swords works that well in our deck, because we want to beat down on the ground and leaving behind a blocker can sometimes be very awkward. I decided on the Minotaur, because it is the more safe pick and we were not planning on letting our creatures be blocked anyways.
Pick: Canyon Minotaur
Pack eight offered another Scroll Thief over nothing else really.
Pick: Scroll Thief
The pack dried up after that. The only cards worth mentioning were the Master of Diversion, which again came around (at this point, this didn't suprise me anymore), a Cancel for our Sideboard and an Accorder's Shield (which we even boarded in once against the all-Capashen Knight deck). There was also a very late pack with Seismic Stomp and Divination still in it, which were both not the cards we really needed at this point but at least showed us that our colours were somewhat open.
Conclusion: I still didn't love our spot. We didn't have a single two drop (at this point, I would have picked Coral Merfolk over most other cards) and while we got Concord and Flames in this pack, our card quality was not crazy good either. The good news were that we were solid in terms of overall deck plan, which is generally more important than just raw card power.
Pack Three:
The pack started out with a very tough decision right away. Chandra's Outrage is premium removal and I would not fault anyone on the planet for picking it here. However, Shiv's Embrace can just end games the turn after it was played, which is something that has to be respected. Auras are naturally fragile, but in the case of Shiv's Embrace, they have to have the answer the next turn, otherwise the risk of them losing the game immediatley is very high. I also belive that Shiv's Embrace works just a tiny notch better in our deck type, becaue our whole deck is based on punching through high-power guys and Scroll Thiefs. Again, this pick is very very close and I would never pretend to have the answer here.
Pick: Shiv's Embrace
Pack two was again a pretty tough call, Shock and Water Servant both being excellent cards. The first one is one of the most efficient removal spells in the format while the other is super strong in our deck plan, because it can deal huge chunks of damage. The pick was probably influenced by us passing the Outrage the pack before, meaning that we wanted to compensate for passing the removal. Also, we had a fair amount of four drops already and were on the lookout for cheaper cards. It is possible that Water Servant was the pick after all, but it is again super close.
Pick: Shock
Pack three had my favourite flavour card in the format in Colossal Whale (Lorthos EDH deck allstar!). The whale is also fairly strong in limited, tough not a super bomb. In our deck, getting to seven mana was somewhat ambitious as we really wanted the game to be over at this point, so I went for the other, cheaper option.
Pick: Warden of Evos Isle (Bird EDH allstar!)
Pack four ... Boom goes the dynamite!!!
Pick: Coral Merfolk
Pack five was rub-in city life, as there was another Banisher Priest accusingly starring at us. For us, there was just more of the same with yet another push-through card.
Pick: Frost Breath
Pack six ... rub-in city life all over again with yet another Master of Diverson (we could have had three or four copies). For us the choice was between yet another Frost Breath, Molten Birth and a Lava Axe (which in my oppinion is far inferior to the Cinder Hatchet). We went for Molten Birth, which I don't really know what to think of yet, but we had a lot of finishers already.
Pick: Molten Birth
Pack seven had the running joke of pack seven Planar Cleansing in it. For us, there was again the pick between Molten Birth and Frost Breath, which went the same way for the reasons mentioned above.
Pick: Molten Birth
Pack eight was very pleasant, because there were still a Scroll Thief and a Water Servant in it, both of which work fantastically in our build. I went for the Water Servant, which is not something that you should get eight pick at all.
Pick: Water Servant
The rest of the pack was uneventful. We managed to wheel a Seacoast Drake, which is at least a two drop, although not the best by far.
Conclusion: I like how this deck turned out. It was a little bit on the weaker side in terms of raw power, but the fact that we had a solid plan made up for that. We had some tough picks throughout the draft, but I think we had our reasons, which we explained in detail above.
1 Shock
1 Seismic Stomp
1 Flames of the Firebrand
1 Lightning Talons
2 Frost Breath
1 Shiv's Embrace
Apart from the auto-inclusions, there were the following cards to compete for the remaining two slots:
2 Molten Birth
1 Cyclops Tyrant
1 Seismic Stomp
1 Divination
1 Negate
1 Cancel
1 Archaeomancer
I decided to go for the Negate and one of the Molten Births. I am not in love with Molten Birth, just because it does not provide an extraordinary ammount of power for three mana and is somewhat erratic in nature. However, I wanted another ''creature'', because our deck was dependent on having a lot of creatures to make all those Frost Breaths and Seismic Stomps really count. I went for Negate over Cancel, just because it thought it was more on theme. If you can apply early pressure and follow it up with a turn five three drop, keeping Negate up as protection from their removal, this is a very safe route for victory. Cancel however does not allow for that all that reliably and is also double blue, which is harder to cast in our deck. I prefer Cancel in a vacuum and Negate as a role-player in our deck. As for the other cards, Archaeomancer and Divination just seemed too durdly for our deck that wants to win quickly. We already had two Frost Breaths and a Seismic Stomp, so the second Stomp was not really a consideration. As I have mentioned in the video, I have not played with or against Cyclops Tyrant as of yet, but it fails to impress me on paper.
Final Cards: 1 Negate, 1 Molten Birth
Gameplay:
Match #1:
We played against a Blue / Black control-ish deck. Game one, he binned our turn three Warden of Evos Isle and Sensory Deprived our turn four Scroll Thief. He then attacked in our open mana with his own Warden of Evos Isle, which was promptly assasinated by a Seakite of the Nephalia variety. He followed his plays up with the always very respectable Sengir Vampire. Seakite then got some Lightning Talons attached to it, which allowed us to put our opponent on a four turn clock. He failed to come up with a solution and Frost Breath prevented his Sengir to block after he had played a Tutor (probably for something to deal with Seakite).
1-0
We sideboarded out the Seismic Stomp for a Divination, because I was expecting him to have a fair ammount of removal and Divination could help to recover from being stopped in the early game.
Game two started out with us playing Reggaeton Firecat and him playing the Warden of Evos Isle again. Water Servant then attacked for five points of damage and was followed up by another Firecat, which he Corrupted on his turn. We then were able to play two three drops with Warden of Evos Isle and Scroll Thief, further advancing our board. He again passed, only to Negate our Divination next turn. We drew Scroll Thief, which was added to the board. He made an attempt to take the game by first Doom Blading our Water Servant and playing a Colossal Whale a few turns later. Meanwhile, we had drawn a Shiv's Embrace, which I was hesitant to play into a handful of cards. Shock then took care of his Warden and we drew another Frost Breath. The two cards we drew with our Scroll Thiefs were Island and Clone!!! which came into play as a Colossal Whale of our own. Tharr she blew and the game was over.
2-0
Match #2:
Food and Coffee helped to refuel our mental energy and take on our opponent rocking a deck that never was for us to find out. The reason for that was that our opponent failed to show up in time and we got a freebie this round. Not the most exciting, but I definitley take it.
2-0 (Bye)
Match #3:
After a more than uneventful round two, our round three opponent had an interesting deck, featuring several copies of Capashen Knight, supported by the rare enchantment Path of Bravery. The path made it awkwar for us to race him, while his knights mesured up nicely with our draw of Firecats and Marauding Maulhorns (we also mulliganed to five this game). However, due to a combination of Frost Breath and Seismic Stomp, drawing Shock for the last few points, we were able to just barely mise a win before he was able to take over the game.
1-0
We sideboarded in Accorders Shield, in order to enable our Firecats to still do something with Capashen Knight on the Board. We cut the Molten Birth for it, which seemed pretty weak against him.
Game two we could keep our starting seven. Seacoast Drake and Scroll Thief were our early drops, while he played out a couple of fliers in Griffin Sentinel and Charging Griffin. Nephalia Seakite and Seacoast Drake took care of his Charging Griffin, after which our opponent seemingly did not have much more gas in his tank. Lightning Talons on our Thief was trumped by his Pacifism, but we again had Seismic Stomp and Frost Breath in our hand, threatening to again take the game from him. He drew a Bonescythe Sliver, which together with the Steelform Sliver he played before threatened a lot of damage. We drew Water Servant and decided to play around Fortify the following turn (we were at 16 life and Fortify plus the two 2 power double strike Slivers would have meant lethal damage). He did not have the Fortify, but instead had an Act of Treason for our freshly played Maulhorn. We then misplayed by leaving back our Seacoast Drake to block the Maulhorn he took for a turn, where we really should have kept playing around Fortify and blocked one of the Slivers. Fortunaltey, that was all he could do and we were able to attack for the win next turn with Concord lifting up Water Servant to the skies for his remaining points of life.
2-0
That means we successfully made it to the top 8, which was our goal entering the tournament. I was very happy how everything turned out and excited to draft again.
Draft #2
Pack One:
Our fist pack had several options in Rootwalla, Chandra's Outrage, Corrupt, Enlarge and the rare Ogre Battledriver. I have not played with the Ogre as of yet, however I have lost to it several times before (one even on video) and decided to not let that happen this time. As for Enlarge vs. Rootwalla, I am really not that sure. I probably like Enlarge less than most players, just because they think of it as sort of an Overrun type of card, which it definitley is not. In fact, most of the times where my opponents played Enlarge, it basically traded for a guy of my choice, dealing me between three and five damage in the process. Not bad of course, but not first pick good. I think I prefer Rootwalla over Enlarge, but I could be wrong. Corrupt was again tempting, but I do not like going that deep with my first pick.
Pick: Ogre Battledriver
Pack two had another Corrupt as the most powerful card, but after passing the first one, I was hesitant to pick that one here. The only other cards I considered were Master of Diversion and a Time Ebb, which again pointed us towards a similar direction to our previous draft, so I happily picked the ebb, being convinced by the archetype.
Pick: Time Ebb
Pack three had a couple of interesting opions in Rumbling Baloth (best green common, although close), Charging Griffin and a Warden of Evos Isle. After passing Enlarge and Rootwalla, I did not nessecarily want to switch into green, especially not with a perfectly fine Warden of Evos Isle in the pack.
Pick: Warden of Evos Isle
Pack four had something we dearly missed in our previous draft, a two drop in Goblin Shortcutter. There was not much else to consider, so the Goblin took the Shortcut into our deck.
Pick: Goblin Shortcutter
Pack five had the interesting option between Young Pyromancer an Marauding Maulhorn. I love both of the cards in this archetype, but there were several arguments towards Pyromancer. It is a two drop, which are at a premium in this format, and it works fantastically with Ogre Battledriver. Therefore, I sadly passed Juggernaut.
Pick: Young Pyromancer
Pack six had Illusiory Armor as the only real card for our deck. I haven't played it before, but it seemed pretty strong in a deck like ours.
Pick: Illusiory Armor
Pack seven was between Shortcutter and Pitchburn Devils, which I think is not close whatsoever. Two drops are just that important and I don't even really like Devils that much outside of Red / Black sacrifice or just Blue / Red control.
Pick: Goblin Shortcutter
Pack eight had Wild Guess, Cancel and Lava Axe as possible options. I decided on Lava Axe, because it fits our deck plan the best and can wrap up games that have come to a halt.
Pick: Lava Axe
The packs dried up after that, the only cards to mention being a Seismic Stomp and a Wild Guess.
Conclusion: I like where this was going. We had several good two drops and a very strong rare in the Ogre. Plus, we were on the same plan as before, which did work out, so this was a good omen if nothing else.
Pack Two:
The pack started out with another very strong high rarity card, a true bomb even in Scourge of Valkas. Nothing came even close to it and I was happy to just slam the mythic dragon.
Pick: Scourge of Valkas
Pack two made us choose between Claustrophobia, Shock and Volcanig Geysir. I like my removal to do double duty in these kind of decks, also functioning as direct damage cards, therefore Claustrophobia, albeit a very strong card, was out of the question. I decided to go for Volcanic Geysir, even though the card is not all that great after all. It lacks mana efficiency, which can be demonstrated by analysing how it measures up against cards that cost the same. If we expect a 3cc creature to be a 2/2, a 4cc to be a 3/3 and so on, you can see that Geysir will always trade down in terms of mana efficiency. Still, the possibility to just reach out and kill your opponent with a card that is also a removal spell is never to be underestimated, so I went for the Geysir instead of the more efficient Shock.
Pick: Volcanic Geysir
Pack three had the choice between a Marauding Maulhorn and a Shiv's Embrace. I think Shiv's Embrace is the better card, demonstrated by me picking it over Chandra's Outrage in the draft before. However, we only had six creatures at that point and some creature dependent cards in Battledriver and the Armor. Therefore, I went for the Maulhorn, because I think it is very important to pick what your deck needs and not just the strongest card period.
Pick: Marauding Maulhorn
Pack four was interesting, offering a Scroll Thief, a Phantom Warrior and the rare Awaken the Ancient. I was hesitant to pick Phantom Warrior (the strongest of the three I think), because of the double blue mana cost. At this point, we had the Dragon and many other heavy red cards, so I picked the Awaken the Ancient. I am not really convinced by the card if you are not able to run a 11/6 or at least a 10/7 split (where it starts to get awkward) on Mountain / Land X, because it just seems very hard to cast. Still, a 7/7 is very big and I wanted to give the card some more playtesting, so I opted to Awaken some Ancients.
Pick: Awaken the Ancient
Pack five had Frost Breath and Lightning Talons, two cards I successfully drafted before. I went with Frost Breath, because it overperformed in the draft before. Plus, we did not have a Scroll Thief as of yet, which is by far my favourite target for the Talons.
Pick: Frost Breath
Pack six had a plethora of cards to choose from. They included Lava Axe, Lightning Talons, Nephalia Seakite, Blur Sliver and Coral Merfolk. As much as I wanted the Merfolk in the previous Draft, we already had double Shortcutter and Pyromancer as early drops. It is still possible that I might have wanted the Merfolk, just because you can never really have too man two drops in this kind of deck. When in doubt, I prefer to pick the creature, especially because we only had eight so far. I picked the flyer, because I like myself some evasion creatures. The pick could go either way between Seakite and Coral Merfolk and came down to a judgement call.
Pick: Nephalia Seakite
Pack seven had nothing for us, so we de-drafted a Windstrom, just to not get blown out should we pick up a Condor or some other fliers.
Pick: Windstorm
The rest was uneventful, with us wheeling a couple of Dragon Hatchlings, which I don't love, but don't hate either. I think the card is much more lategame-ish than it looks, most of the time serving as sort of a Lava Axe... ah, and we wheeled a Shock too... wait, SHOCK! That's right, we got back the Shock that we passed for the Geysir before. That was just crazy and showed me that there were no other red drafters in the pod, which made me very happy.
Conclusion: This was an awesome pack. Scourge of Valkas, Volcanic Geysir and the wheeled Shock made me very happy. The deck looked super strong at this point and I was excited to go into the last pack.
Pack #3:
The pack started off kind of weird, with Water Servant as the only pickable card apart from another Frost Breath. Normally I would be pumped about the Servant, but in a deck with Awaken the Ancients, Scourge of Valkas and some other double red cards, Servant looked like a little bit of a stretch. I still picked it over the Frost Breath, because we still were kind of light on creatures.
Pick: Water Servant
Pack two offered us Negate, Act of Treason and Sensory Deprivation as possible picks, not what we were hoping for. We picked the Act, because Negate is not the best and Deprivation is actively bad in our kind of deck where we want to attack on the ground. There was also a Ratchet Bomb, but I don't think that this card is playable.
Pick: Act of Treason
Pack three had Shock and Goblin Shortcutter. Even tough I like two drops and we were still kind of light on creatures (11, 12 with Awaken the Ancient). I picked the Shock, because I was expecting the Goblin to maybe wheel and Shock is just too efficient to pass up.
Pick: Shock
Pack four had Regathan Firecat, which is a card I adore in Blue / Red tempo. It has such high power to casting cost ratio and you can often push it through with cards like Frost Breath and Condor to kill your opponent very quickly. There was Thunder Strike also in the pack, but I think that the deck wants many other noncreature cards more, such as Frost Breath, Seismic Stomp, Removal Spells and others.
Pick: Regathan Firecat
Pack five ... Boom goes the dynamite again!!!
Pick: Trained Condor (there were some other cards, but Concorde is just the nutter butters).
Pack six again had the choice between an awkward double blue card and a Frost Breath, which we had in the beginning of the thrid pack. I again went for the double blue card, Phantom Warrior this time, because we were still a little bit short on creatures and we already had a Seismic Stomp and a Frost Breath.
Pick: Phantom Warrior
Pick seven is where the wheels came off. We picked up another Dragon Hatchling and subequently a Blur Sliver, but nothing really of note. We also got a Molten Birth back, which looked sweet together with Young Pyromancer, but still is just a little bit too low impact most of the time.
Conclusion: The last pack was not as insane-o-crazy good as the second one, but still had some strong additions to the deck in Trained Condor and Shock. The problem was that our mana base turned out somewhat problematic, with double blue and double red (even two tripple red) cards. Overall though, I think we came out with a super strong deck, much much better than the one we had before.
Deckbuilding:
Auto Inclusions (22):
2 Goblin Shortcutter
1 Young Pyromancer
1 Blur Sliver
1 Phantom Warrior
1 Regathan Firecat
1 Trained Condor
1 Warden of Evos Isle
1 Marauding Maulhorn
1 Ogre Battledriver
1 Nephalia Seakite
1 Water Servant
1 Scourge of Valkas
2 Shock
1 Seismic Stomp
1 Time Ebb
1 Molten Birth
1 Frost Breath
1 Awaken the Ancient
1 Illusiory Armor
1 Volcanic Geysir
The maybe pile had the following cards in it, one of which we had to choose for our mainboard:
1 Seismic Stomp
3 Dragon Hatchling
1 Lava Axe
1 Act of Treason
1 Wild Guess
I did not want two copies of Seismic Stomp, because it does nothing if you are behind on the board. Lava Axe I think is even worse than Stomp, at least Stomp does a ton of damage if you can afford to play it. Wild Guess seemed too durdly, so the choice came down to Act of Treason and Dragon Hatchling. I still don't really know about this, but I eventuall decided on Act, just to audible into Dragon Hatchling the last second. I think it's very close and could go either way.
Final Card: Dragon Hatchling
Gameplay:
Quarterfinals:
We kept a hand with Young Pyromancer, Ogre Battledriver, Time Ebb and lands, which promised a lot of damage throughout the game. Our opponent was rocking a Green / White Sliver-ish deck. Sentinel Sliver came down turn two for him, forcing our Pyromancer to stay back for the time being. Rootwalla was added with us slamming Battledriver turn four. He had another Rootwalla, but we drew Frost Breath, which allowed us to smash his face for a pounding eight damage. Giant Spider came down, but a timely drawn Shock, together with the Time Ebb we already had allowed us to smash him for twelve, which was conveniently his life total.
1 – 0
We sideboarded in another copy of Seismic Stomp for the Hatchling, trying to steal some wins.
Game two we had a pretty land heavy hand, with only Maulhorn and a Shock as spells. A timely drawn Phantom Warrior allowed us to add some pressure to the board, shocking his Master of Diversion in the Process. Pacifism and Deadly Recluse put an end to our beatdown plan and all we could come up with was a Molten Birth and a Seismic Stomp. We drew a Water Servant, which was traded for the Recluse eventually. A critical play here was playing the third Island instead of the third Mountain, which, together with Mountain number four, would have allowed us to play double Molten Birth on turn six. I did play the Island, because I wanted Water Servant to be able to trade for Recluse even if he had Show of Valor, so I think the play is defensible. Verdant Haven was what he came up with, which I cannot approve of at all (you want to be two colours in this format almost all the time in non-blue / non-control decks). Another Rootwalla threatened to trade for our Maulhorn, which we prevented from happening by playing Seismic Stomp. I wanted to put him in range of a few flyer attacks or Volcanic Geysir, which is why I elected to falter him. From here on, we drew lands while he drew Seraph of the Sword, which works pretty nicely against our Maulhorn. Double Lava Axe from his part shortened his clock severly, while we couldn't draw anything but lands and died.
1 – 1
We boarded in the Act of Treason for the second Seismic Stomp, just because so that we have anything against his Seraph.
Game three started off suboptimally, with us missing our thrid land drop. We drew a third Mountian, which meant that we could still not play blue spells, but at least were able to measure up some board presence with Molten Birth and the previously played Goblin Shortcutter. We drew the Battledriver, which we couldn't cast just yet, but promised something for the future. Meanwhile, he went turn two Sentinel Sliver, turn three Master of Diversion and turn four Giant Spider, so things were looking grim for us. We drew an Island just in time and slammed the Ogre. He emptied his hand by casting Deadly Recluse, Rootwalla and Voracious Wurm while we drew a Young Pyromancer for our turn, which was eventually a way out of the hole with us still having Seismic Stomp and Frost Breath in hand. We stomped and attacked for a whopping twelve damage. Suddenly, the board was getting even, but we were still at fourteen life with him at six after our alpha strike. An end of turn Frost Breath on his two reach guys together with a freshly drawn Scourge of Valkas was eventually enough to take the game form him, so we were able to win a real nailbiter of a quarterfinal and advanced to the semis.
2 – 1
Semifinals:
We won the die roll and went first, unfortunately drawing an unkeepable hand with only Islands and red creatures. Shortcutter was our first play, while he played Manaweft Sliver, mirroring the Green / White Sliver strategy of our previous opponent. Blur Sliver and Concord were what we could measure up, with Ogre Battledriver and Awaken the Ancient sitting in our hand, punishing us for our suboptimal mana base. Fireshrieker was equiped to his previously played advocate of the beast, returning the beatdown favour. We managed to put him to eight life, before he played the rare Bonescythe Sliver, which together with his previously played Predatory Sliver meant that we had to block his whole team and lost all of our creatures. At this point we were out of the game which at the start looked like we were well in it.
0 – 1
We ran back the original 40 and tried to overcome the Sliver menace.
We had to mulligan down to five this game, keepin a very mediocre hand of only lands and Volcanic Geysir. We managed to draw a Young Pyromancer and he had not the fastest of starts as well, also some mana problems from his part involved. We drew the Ogre, but because we had traded off the Pyromancer for one of his Slivers previously, the combo way to victory was unavaliable to us. In the end, we had drawn a grand total of eleven lands, which together with our mulligan to five unfortunatley meant that we had to concede the game and wish our opponent good luck for the finals.
0 – 2
Final Words:
The ending was definitley anticlimactic, but I was very satisfied with our overall performance. Our goal was top 8, which we trumped by reaching the semifinals. There was nothing we could do in the semis, but that happens in the high variance game of Magic. Throughout the tournament, we had some pretty cheeky wins as well, so that had to come back to us eventually. I liked both of our draft decks very much, the second one obviously being much better. I firmly belive that Blue / Red tempo is one of the best, if not the best archetype in M14 draft, with Concord the friendly Condor being the flagship card of the deck. I am looking forward to drafting it again.
So, with that said, I am going to continue my adventures in M14 limited, preparing for GP Prague at the end of the month. I will definitley do some more videos for MTGOstrat, even if such a detailed walkthrough as this one will probably not happen again, as it takes a lot of time to write. Still, it was a fun exercise, being my first ever legitimate written MTG content. Please comment here or on Youtube if you like.
Thank you very much for reading and go play some M14 limited.
Every single one of the cute 'vanilla' creatures in my lorthos ocean themed flavour deck (ie Giant Shark, Spiny Starfish, Walking Sponge etc.). Seriously, if someone dares touching my precious crustations, he'll most definetly get a bunch of gigantic tentacles in his face at some point.
I don't know whether you played against an animar deck yet, but that creep is actually just insane. seriously. I have experienced all of the other boogeymen (boogywomen) allready, and animar is just as sick. You only need palinchron to generate infinite mana, and curio isnt exactley fair either. Not to mention that animar fuels your deck exponentially to allow you turn 5/6 wins pretty consistently. And good luck pathing/swording/bant charming/ vindicating / oblationing etc. this sicko!
Teeg (as a general) is actually banned in my group. just not funny at all. Other ones i dislike: Animar (too abusive) Arcuum (the *****) and any momir (takes for friggin ages to play against him).
Cool! I built a vish kal deck myself. my suggestions are:
Blade of the bloodchief (kill all x/2's)
Necromancers covenant (a whole lotta fodder, plus i allways wanted to play it)
Slaughter (criminally underplaid in EDH / insane with LG generals)
Hoarders Greed/Necropotence/Skeletal Scrying/Neceoligia (obv)
Wall of Blood / Chronosavant (All in!)
Adarkar Valkyrie.(cheaper + faster than reya)
CRADLE OF VITALITY - Oh yeah boy!
(i wish someone would alter sephiroth on my vish kal, that be nuts)
Faces of the Past and Conspiracy don't do anything on their own, so i wouldn't.
The Ertai Deck i currently play features things like Triskelavus, Pentavus etc. and things to take them back (academy ruins, skeletal shard, crystal shard), but its more of an artifact deck.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAEn32A9E2A&feature=c4-overview&list=UUnPrdoVR4NENbiIzJOkiI1w
Btw: You could always try to Naturalize or Smelt the Elixir, since the Mono U player will likely want to burn all his counters, to get max. value, before activating Elixir.
Drafting together with GP Madrid Champion Ivo Grossholz.
This is where I will post the links to the m14 drafts that I'll do for mtgostrat. Here is the latest one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D04V5J3ByN4&feature=c4-overview&list=UUnPrdoVR4NENbiIzJOkiI1w
Feel free to comment on youtube or right here.
Cheers
-Dom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D04V5J3ByN4&feature=c4-overview&list=UUnPrdoVR4NENbiIzJOkiI1w
The video can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i76AuvOk5GE&feature=c4-overview&list=UUnPrdoVR4NENbiIzJOkiI1w
Draft Report – 64 Players (Top 8) Draft – 05.08.13
I have decided to partake in a 64 players Draft tournament. The way these work is that there are eight different eight man pods in which players draft their deck, which then get mixed and matched. After that, there are three rounds of single elimination, which will leave eight of the players at 3-0. Those players will then draft again and play another three rounds to declare the actual winner of the tournament. The reason why I decided to play this tournament is that the price payouts are fairly high (24 packs for 1st / 18 for 2nd / 12 for 3rd and 4th etc.) and that there is the prospect of drafting twice, which is always nice.
Draft #1
Pack One:
Pack one started out with a Garruk, which I gladly picked over other strong green cards, fully aware that the signal I was sending to my left was not the best. However, I do not value signalling, especially to the left, that highly in most formats. You will be taking cards from the player on your left for two out of the three packs anyways, so it is really him that has to adapt, not you. Reading signals I think is far more important. Anyway, I picked Garruk, because I think its a very powerful card that delivers a steady stream of card advantage. Plus, it is 9 tickets, so hey!
Pick: Garruk, Caller of Beasts
Pack two had several good options in most colours, namely Phantom Warrior, Charging Griffin, Giant Growth and Corpse Hauler. I decided on the Phantom Warrior, which was partly due to me sending so many green signals to my left (again, I don't value it that highly, but it is at least a consideration) but mostly due to me wanting to be blue in every M14 Draft. I am firmly convinced that blue is the best colour in this format, with green as a close second. I prefer blue, because it can be very strong as an aggro colour and a more controlish one. Plus, the quality of commons is very deep (Trained Condor, Messenger Drake, Nephalia Seakite, Essence Scatter, Time Ebb, Claustrophobia and Scroll Thief are all pretty strong cards).
Pick: Phantom Warrior
Pack three, the pickable cards were Corrupt, Scroll Thief, Trollhide, Marauding Maulhorn and Sentinel Sliver (which I like more than Steelform Sliver due to the shortage of two drops). Corrupt would have been interesting, as I have yet to draft the mono-ish black deck in M14. I am not the biggest fan of white in this format, just because it is kind of a hybrid colour in terms of wether it wants to be aggro or control (and fails to impress in both roles). Scroll Thief would have been a decent pick, but I think Marauding Maulhorn is a fantastic limited card. It is similar to Juggernaut, which was always very strong, and this even has the upside of preventing you from playing badly and not attack. Furthermore, it works in both Blue / Red and Green / Red aggro / tempo decks, making it a sweet follow up to what we had so far.
Pick: Marauding Maulhorn
Pack four was lacking in terms of power level, Wring Flesh being the strongest card in the pack. I picked up a Frost Breath, which is a decent role player in blue tempo decks.
Pick: Frost Breath
Pack five had Pitchburn Devils, Hunt the Weak and Nephalia Seakite as pickable options. I went for the Seakite, because I generally like it more than the other two options. Hunt the weak is servicable, but a little bit expensive and has blowout potential (them killing your creature in response). Pitchburn Devils is a strong card and I do like it in aggressive decks, but the nature of it being a 3/3 for five mana makes it sort of awkward for a deck that tries to mitigate blocking with cards like Frost Breath. Seakite is also not the best in aggro, but it is just generally a solid limited card.
Pick: Nephalia Seakite
Pack six had a Reggaeton Firecat and another Frost Breath. Green seemed to be drying up from our right, so we decided to go for Blue / Red aggro, in which both the Breath and the Cat are strong cards. Having a Frost Breath already, I decided to go for the creature, which I like a lot, again in tandem with cards that try to mitigate blocking (Frost Breath, Trained Condor, Seismic Stomp etc.). Also, Sentinel Sliver still being in the pack was definitley an indicator of white being open, so this would have been a possible route as well, but I prefer Blue / Red to Blue / White or Red / White as an aggro strategy, because I think the synergies are stronger.
Pick: Regathan Firecat
Pack seven had Lightning Talons as the only option, which I came to like a fair ammount. It works nicely with cards like the Cat and Scroll Thief and generally just has to be answered pretty quickly, which for me is a must for an Aura card.
Pick: Lightning Talons
Pack eight showed us that white and black were probably underdrafted, with Child of Night and Siege Mastodon still being in the pack, as well as the sub-par but playable Capashen Knight. For us there was only a Negate, which is playable but not exciting. I mentioned that I do not like switching in this format all that much, just because I often end up scrambling for playables when doing so.
Pick: Negate
Pack nine cemented our prediction of white being wide open with Master of Diversion going around the table. The card is the backbone of the White/X aggressive strategies and seing it going around that late was definitley painful. We got a Seismic Stomp at least, which I always like to play one copy of in my red aggressive decks. It is similar to Frost Breath and Lava Axe in how it allows you to close out games once your opponent has stabilised.
Pick: Seismic Stomp
From this point, the packs dried up as it had to be expected. I am still not sure if Cyclops Tyrant is unplayable, but six mana just seems way overcosted for that kind of card. I also picked up a Sliver Construct, wich is a fine Sideboard card against Accursed Spirit.
Conclusion: Pack one was decent for us. We didn't pick up any of the power commons in our colours (Claustrophobia, Trained Condor, Shock, Chandra's Outrage) but we at least had a plan in Blue / Red tempo. I like the deck a lot actually, because the synergies are very strong and it can often keep the opponent on its toes for a very long time, allowing for cards like Frost Breath and Seismic Stomp to just flat out kill them.
Pack Two:
The second pack started out with a real bomb. The choice between Young Pyromancer and Flames of the Firebrand was not really a choice at all as Flames is just premium removal, two for one or even three for one potential and even goes to the face for three. The card is by far the best red uncommon and might even be the best red card period.
Pick: Flames of the Firebrand
Pack two was as bad as pick one was awesome. Wall of Frost is unplayable in the kind of deck that we were drafting at this point and Archaeomancer asks for a lot to be decent. There might have been an argument for Vastwood Hydra, but because green was heavily denied from our right, I do not think that this would have ended all that well.
Pick: Archaeomancer
Pack three gave us the option between Clone an Blur Sliver. This was again not much of a choice, because cloning, even in the face of a very emotional public debate, never fails to impress in the game of Magic. Getting the best card on either side of the board for four mana is something I cannot deny.
Pick: Clone
Pack four had a couple of options as well in Scroll Thief, Academy Raider, Divination and another Seismic Stomp. Having a stopm and a Frost Breath as well and Divination not being the ideal card for a deck like ours which really wants to keep the pressure going, I decided on Scroll Thief over Academy Raider. I think the pick is actually much closer than I gave it credit in the draft, but having a Lightning Talons already, I had to trust LSV's archetype breakdown and go for the Talons / Thief combo.
Pick: Scroll Thief
Pack five was like christmas for me. Trained Condor I think is the best common in the format, just because it does crazy amounts of damage and works so well in any kind of not super controlish blue decks. Seeing Banisher Priest that late again cemented the role of white as the colour to be in in this particular draft, but I could not care less.
Pick: Concord, the Friendly Condor
Pack six offered another Regathan Firecat, which works nicely in our kind of deck. We really had a lot of three drops at this point and not a single two drop, so my desire to get some Coral Merfolks or Goblin Shortcutters started to grow bigger and bigger.
Pick: Regathan Firecat
Pick seven had Thunder Strike, Canyon Minotaur and a Swords to Plowshares. I don't think that Swords works that well in our deck, because we want to beat down on the ground and leaving behind a blocker can sometimes be very awkward. I decided on the Minotaur, because it is the more safe pick and we were not planning on letting our creatures be blocked anyways.
Pick: Canyon Minotaur
Pack eight offered another Scroll Thief over nothing else really.
Pick: Scroll Thief
The pack dried up after that. The only cards worth mentioning were the Master of Diversion, which again came around (at this point, this didn't suprise me anymore), a Cancel for our Sideboard and an Accorder's Shield (which we even boarded in once against the all-Capashen Knight deck). There was also a very late pack with Seismic Stomp and Divination still in it, which were both not the cards we really needed at this point but at least showed us that our colours were somewhat open.
Conclusion: I still didn't love our spot. We didn't have a single two drop (at this point, I would have picked Coral Merfolk over most other cards) and while we got Concord and Flames in this pack, our card quality was not crazy good either. The good news were that we were solid in terms of overall deck plan, which is generally more important than just raw card power.
Pack Three:
The pack started out with a very tough decision right away. Chandra's Outrage is premium removal and I would not fault anyone on the planet for picking it here. However, Shiv's Embrace can just end games the turn after it was played, which is something that has to be respected. Auras are naturally fragile, but in the case of Shiv's Embrace, they have to have the answer the next turn, otherwise the risk of them losing the game immediatley is very high. I also belive that Shiv's Embrace works just a tiny notch better in our deck type, becaue our whole deck is based on punching through high-power guys and Scroll Thiefs. Again, this pick is very very close and I would never pretend to have the answer here.
Pick: Shiv's Embrace
Pack two was again a pretty tough call, Shock and Water Servant both being excellent cards. The first one is one of the most efficient removal spells in the format while the other is super strong in our deck plan, because it can deal huge chunks of damage. The pick was probably influenced by us passing the Outrage the pack before, meaning that we wanted to compensate for passing the removal. Also, we had a fair amount of four drops already and were on the lookout for cheaper cards. It is possible that Water Servant was the pick after all, but it is again super close.
Pick: Shock
Pack three had my favourite flavour card in the format in Colossal Whale (Lorthos EDH deck allstar!). The whale is also fairly strong in limited, tough not a super bomb. In our deck, getting to seven mana was somewhat ambitious as we really wanted the game to be over at this point, so I went for the other, cheaper option.
Pick: Warden of Evos Isle (Bird EDH allstar!)
Pack four ... Boom goes the dynamite!!!
Pick: Coral Merfolk
Pack five was rub-in city life, as there was another Banisher Priest accusingly starring at us. For us, there was just more of the same with yet another push-through card.
Pick: Frost Breath
Pack six ... rub-in city life all over again with yet another Master of Diverson (we could have had three or four copies). For us the choice was between yet another Frost Breath, Molten Birth and a Lava Axe (which in my oppinion is far inferior to the Cinder Hatchet). We went for Molten Birth, which I don't really know what to think of yet, but we had a lot of finishers already.
Pick: Molten Birth
Pack seven had the running joke of pack seven Planar Cleansing in it. For us, there was again the pick between Molten Birth and Frost Breath, which went the same way for the reasons mentioned above.
Pick: Molten Birth
Pack eight was very pleasant, because there were still a Scroll Thief and a Water Servant in it, both of which work fantastically in our build. I went for the Water Servant, which is not something that you should get eight pick at all.
Pick: Water Servant
The rest of the pack was uneventful. We managed to wheel a Seacoast Drake, which is at least a two drop, although not the best by far.
Conclusion: I like how this deck turned out. It was a little bit on the weaker side in terms of raw power, but the fact that we had a solid plan made up for that. We had some tough picks throughout the draft, but I think we had our reasons, which we explained in detail above.
Deckbuilding:
Auto Inclusions: (21)
1 Coral Merfolk
1 Seacoast Drake
1 Phantom Warrior
2 Regathan Firecat
2 Scroll Thief
1 Trained Condor
1 Warden of Evos Isle
1 Canyon Minotaur
1 Marauding Maulhorn
1 Nephalia Seakite
1 Clone
1 Water Servant
1 Shock
1 Seismic Stomp
1 Flames of the Firebrand
1 Lightning Talons
2 Frost Breath
1 Shiv's Embrace
Apart from the auto-inclusions, there were the following cards to compete for the remaining two slots:
2 Molten Birth
1 Cyclops Tyrant
1 Seismic Stomp
1 Divination
1 Negate
1 Cancel
1 Archaeomancer
I decided to go for the Negate and one of the Molten Births. I am not in love with Molten Birth, just because it does not provide an extraordinary ammount of power for three mana and is somewhat erratic in nature. However, I wanted another ''creature'', because our deck was dependent on having a lot of creatures to make all those Frost Breaths and Seismic Stomps really count. I went for Negate over Cancel, just because it thought it was more on theme. If you can apply early pressure and follow it up with a turn five three drop, keeping Negate up as protection from their removal, this is a very safe route for victory. Cancel however does not allow for that all that reliably and is also double blue, which is harder to cast in our deck. I prefer Cancel in a vacuum and Negate as a role-player in our deck. As for the other cards, Archaeomancer and Divination just seemed too durdly for our deck that wants to win quickly. We already had two Frost Breaths and a Seismic Stomp, so the second Stomp was not really a consideration. As I have mentioned in the video, I have not played with or against Cyclops Tyrant as of yet, but it fails to impress me on paper.
Final Cards: 1 Negate, 1 Molten Birth
Gameplay:
Match #1:
We played against a Blue / Black control-ish deck. Game one, he binned our turn three Warden of Evos Isle and Sensory Deprived our turn four Scroll Thief. He then attacked in our open mana with his own Warden of Evos Isle, which was promptly assasinated by a Seakite of the Nephalia variety. He followed his plays up with the always very respectable Sengir Vampire. Seakite then got some Lightning Talons attached to it, which allowed us to put our opponent on a four turn clock. He failed to come up with a solution and Frost Breath prevented his Sengir to block after he had played a Tutor (probably for something to deal with Seakite).
1-0
We sideboarded out the Seismic Stomp for a Divination, because I was expecting him to have a fair ammount of removal and Divination could help to recover from being stopped in the early game.
Game two started out with us playing Reggaeton Firecat and him playing the Warden of Evos Isle again. Water Servant then attacked for five points of damage and was followed up by another Firecat, which he Corrupted on his turn. We then were able to play two three drops with Warden of Evos Isle and Scroll Thief, further advancing our board. He again passed, only to Negate our Divination next turn. We drew Scroll Thief, which was added to the board. He made an attempt to take the game by first Doom Blading our Water Servant and playing a Colossal Whale a few turns later. Meanwhile, we had drawn a Shiv's Embrace, which I was hesitant to play into a handful of cards. Shock then took care of his Warden and we drew another Frost Breath. The two cards we drew with our Scroll Thiefs were Island and Clone!!! which came into play as a Colossal Whale of our own. Tharr she blew and the game was over.
2-0
Match #2:
Food and Coffee helped to refuel our mental energy and take on our opponent rocking a deck that never was for us to find out. The reason for that was that our opponent failed to show up in time and we got a freebie this round. Not the most exciting, but I definitley take it.
2-0 (Bye)
Match #3:
After a more than uneventful round two, our round three opponent had an interesting deck, featuring several copies of Capashen Knight, supported by the rare enchantment Path of Bravery. The path made it awkwar for us to race him, while his knights mesured up nicely with our draw of Firecats and Marauding Maulhorns (we also mulliganed to five this game). However, due to a combination of Frost Breath and Seismic Stomp, drawing Shock for the last few points, we were able to just barely mise a win before he was able to take over the game.
1-0
We sideboarded in Accorders Shield, in order to enable our Firecats to still do something with Capashen Knight on the Board. We cut the Molten Birth for it, which seemed pretty weak against him.
Game two we could keep our starting seven. Seacoast Drake and Scroll Thief were our early drops, while he played out a couple of fliers in Griffin Sentinel and Charging Griffin. Nephalia Seakite and Seacoast Drake took care of his Charging Griffin, after which our opponent seemingly did not have much more gas in his tank. Lightning Talons on our Thief was trumped by his Pacifism, but we again had Seismic Stomp and Frost Breath in our hand, threatening to again take the game from him. He drew a Bonescythe Sliver, which together with the Steelform Sliver he played before threatened a lot of damage. We drew Water Servant and decided to play around Fortify the following turn (we were at 16 life and Fortify plus the two 2 power double strike Slivers would have meant lethal damage). He did not have the Fortify, but instead had an Act of Treason for our freshly played Maulhorn. We then misplayed by leaving back our Seacoast Drake to block the Maulhorn he took for a turn, where we really should have kept playing around Fortify and blocked one of the Slivers. Fortunaltey, that was all he could do and we were able to attack for the win next turn with Concord lifting up Water Servant to the skies for his remaining points of life.
2-0
That means we successfully made it to the top 8, which was our goal entering the tournament. I was very happy how everything turned out and excited to draft again.
Draft #2
Pack One:
Our fist pack had several options in Rootwalla, Chandra's Outrage, Corrupt, Enlarge and the rare Ogre Battledriver. I have not played with the Ogre as of yet, however I have lost to it several times before (one even on video) and decided to not let that happen this time. As for Enlarge vs. Rootwalla, I am really not that sure. I probably like Enlarge less than most players, just because they think of it as sort of an Overrun type of card, which it definitley is not. In fact, most of the times where my opponents played Enlarge, it basically traded for a guy of my choice, dealing me between three and five damage in the process. Not bad of course, but not first pick good. I think I prefer Rootwalla over Enlarge, but I could be wrong. Corrupt was again tempting, but I do not like going that deep with my first pick.
Pick: Ogre Battledriver
Pack two had another Corrupt as the most powerful card, but after passing the first one, I was hesitant to pick that one here. The only other cards I considered were Master of Diversion and a Time Ebb, which again pointed us towards a similar direction to our previous draft, so I happily picked the ebb, being convinced by the archetype.
Pick: Time Ebb
Pack three had a couple of interesting opions in Rumbling Baloth (best green common, although close), Charging Griffin and a Warden of Evos Isle. After passing Enlarge and Rootwalla, I did not nessecarily want to switch into green, especially not with a perfectly fine Warden of Evos Isle in the pack.
Pick: Warden of Evos Isle
Pack four had something we dearly missed in our previous draft, a two drop in Goblin Shortcutter. There was not much else to consider, so the Goblin took the Shortcut into our deck.
Pick: Goblin Shortcutter
Pack five had the interesting option between Young Pyromancer an Marauding Maulhorn. I love both of the cards in this archetype, but there were several arguments towards Pyromancer. It is a two drop, which are at a premium in this format, and it works fantastically with Ogre Battledriver. Therefore, I sadly passed Juggernaut.
Pick: Young Pyromancer
Pack six had Illusiory Armor as the only real card for our deck. I haven't played it before, but it seemed pretty strong in a deck like ours.
Pick: Illusiory Armor
Pack seven was between Shortcutter and Pitchburn Devils, which I think is not close whatsoever. Two drops are just that important and I don't even really like Devils that much outside of Red / Black sacrifice or just Blue / Red control.
Pick: Goblin Shortcutter
Pack eight had Wild Guess, Cancel and Lava Axe as possible options. I decided on Lava Axe, because it fits our deck plan the best and can wrap up games that have come to a halt.
Pick: Lava Axe
The packs dried up after that, the only cards to mention being a Seismic Stomp and a Wild Guess.
Conclusion: I like where this was going. We had several good two drops and a very strong rare in the Ogre. Plus, we were on the same plan as before, which did work out, so this was a good omen if nothing else.
Pack Two:
The pack started out with another very strong high rarity card, a true bomb even in Scourge of Valkas. Nothing came even close to it and I was happy to just slam the mythic dragon.
Pick: Scourge of Valkas
Pack two made us choose between Claustrophobia, Shock and Volcanig Geysir. I like my removal to do double duty in these kind of decks, also functioning as direct damage cards, therefore Claustrophobia, albeit a very strong card, was out of the question. I decided to go for Volcanic Geysir, even though the card is not all that great after all. It lacks mana efficiency, which can be demonstrated by analysing how it measures up against cards that cost the same. If we expect a 3cc creature to be a 2/2, a 4cc to be a 3/3 and so on, you can see that Geysir will always trade down in terms of mana efficiency. Still, the possibility to just reach out and kill your opponent with a card that is also a removal spell is never to be underestimated, so I went for the Geysir instead of the more efficient Shock.
Pick: Volcanic Geysir
Pack three had the choice between a Marauding Maulhorn and a Shiv's Embrace. I think Shiv's Embrace is the better card, demonstrated by me picking it over Chandra's Outrage in the draft before. However, we only had six creatures at that point and some creature dependent cards in Battledriver and the Armor. Therefore, I went for the Maulhorn, because I think it is very important to pick what your deck needs and not just the strongest card period.
Pick: Marauding Maulhorn
Pack four was interesting, offering a Scroll Thief, a Phantom Warrior and the rare Awaken the Ancient. I was hesitant to pick Phantom Warrior (the strongest of the three I think), because of the double blue mana cost. At this point, we had the Dragon and many other heavy red cards, so I picked the Awaken the Ancient. I am not really convinced by the card if you are not able to run a 11/6 or at least a 10/7 split (where it starts to get awkward) on Mountain / Land X, because it just seems very hard to cast. Still, a 7/7 is very big and I wanted to give the card some more playtesting, so I opted to Awaken some Ancients.
Pick: Awaken the Ancient
Pack five had Frost Breath and Lightning Talons, two cards I successfully drafted before. I went with Frost Breath, because it overperformed in the draft before. Plus, we did not have a Scroll Thief as of yet, which is by far my favourite target for the Talons.
Pick: Frost Breath
Pack six had a plethora of cards to choose from. They included Lava Axe, Lightning Talons, Nephalia Seakite, Blur Sliver and Coral Merfolk. As much as I wanted the Merfolk in the previous Draft, we already had double Shortcutter and Pyromancer as early drops. It is still possible that I might have wanted the Merfolk, just because you can never really have too man two drops in this kind of deck. When in doubt, I prefer to pick the creature, especially because we only had eight so far. I picked the flyer, because I like myself some evasion creatures. The pick could go either way between Seakite and Coral Merfolk and came down to a judgement call.
Pick: Nephalia Seakite
Pack seven had nothing for us, so we de-drafted a Windstrom, just to not get blown out should we pick up a Condor or some other fliers.
Pick: Windstorm
The rest was uneventful, with us wheeling a couple of Dragon Hatchlings, which I don't love, but don't hate either. I think the card is much more lategame-ish than it looks, most of the time serving as sort of a Lava Axe... ah, and we wheeled a Shock too... wait, SHOCK! That's right, we got back the Shock that we passed for the Geysir before. That was just crazy and showed me that there were no other red drafters in the pod, which made me very happy.
Conclusion: This was an awesome pack. Scourge of Valkas, Volcanic Geysir and the wheeled Shock made me very happy. The deck looked super strong at this point and I was excited to go into the last pack.
Pack #3:
The pack started off kind of weird, with Water Servant as the only pickable card apart from another Frost Breath. Normally I would be pumped about the Servant, but in a deck with Awaken the Ancients, Scourge of Valkas and some other double red cards, Servant looked like a little bit of a stretch. I still picked it over the Frost Breath, because we still were kind of light on creatures.
Pick: Water Servant
Pack two offered us Negate, Act of Treason and Sensory Deprivation as possible picks, not what we were hoping for. We picked the Act, because Negate is not the best and Deprivation is actively bad in our kind of deck where we want to attack on the ground. There was also a Ratchet Bomb, but I don't think that this card is playable.
Pick: Act of Treason
Pack three had Shock and Goblin Shortcutter. Even tough I like two drops and we were still kind of light on creatures (11, 12 with Awaken the Ancient). I picked the Shock, because I was expecting the Goblin to maybe wheel and Shock is just too efficient to pass up.
Pick: Shock
Pack four had Regathan Firecat, which is a card I adore in Blue / Red tempo. It has such high power to casting cost ratio and you can often push it through with cards like Frost Breath and Condor to kill your opponent very quickly. There was Thunder Strike also in the pack, but I think that the deck wants many other noncreature cards more, such as Frost Breath, Seismic Stomp, Removal Spells and others.
Pick: Regathan Firecat
Pack five ... Boom goes the dynamite again!!!
Pick: Trained Condor (there were some other cards, but Concorde is just the nutter butters).
Pack six again had the choice between an awkward double blue card and a Frost Breath, which we had in the beginning of the thrid pack. I again went for the double blue card, Phantom Warrior this time, because we were still a little bit short on creatures and we already had a Seismic Stomp and a Frost Breath.
Pick: Phantom Warrior
Pick seven is where the wheels came off. We picked up another Dragon Hatchling and subequently a Blur Sliver, but nothing really of note. We also got a Molten Birth back, which looked sweet together with Young Pyromancer, but still is just a little bit too low impact most of the time.
Conclusion: The last pack was not as insane-o-crazy good as the second one, but still had some strong additions to the deck in Trained Condor and Shock. The problem was that our mana base turned out somewhat problematic, with double blue and double red (even two tripple red) cards. Overall though, I think we came out with a super strong deck, much much better than the one we had before.
Deckbuilding:
Auto Inclusions (22):
2 Goblin Shortcutter
1 Young Pyromancer
1 Blur Sliver
1 Phantom Warrior
1 Regathan Firecat
1 Trained Condor
1 Warden of Evos Isle
1 Marauding Maulhorn
1 Ogre Battledriver
1 Nephalia Seakite
1 Water Servant
1 Scourge of Valkas
2 Shock
1 Seismic Stomp
1 Time Ebb
1 Molten Birth
1 Frost Breath
1 Awaken the Ancient
1 Illusiory Armor
1 Volcanic Geysir
The maybe pile had the following cards in it, one of which we had to choose for our mainboard:
1 Seismic Stomp
3 Dragon Hatchling
1 Lava Axe
1 Act of Treason
1 Wild Guess
I did not want two copies of Seismic Stomp, because it does nothing if you are behind on the board. Lava Axe I think is even worse than Stomp, at least Stomp does a ton of damage if you can afford to play it. Wild Guess seemed too durdly, so the choice came down to Act of Treason and Dragon Hatchling. I still don't really know about this, but I eventuall decided on Act, just to audible into Dragon Hatchling the last second. I think it's very close and could go either way.
Final Card: Dragon Hatchling
Gameplay:
Quarterfinals:
We kept a hand with Young Pyromancer, Ogre Battledriver, Time Ebb and lands, which promised a lot of damage throughout the game. Our opponent was rocking a Green / White Sliver-ish deck. Sentinel Sliver came down turn two for him, forcing our Pyromancer to stay back for the time being. Rootwalla was added with us slamming Battledriver turn four. He had another Rootwalla, but we drew Frost Breath, which allowed us to smash his face for a pounding eight damage. Giant Spider came down, but a timely drawn Shock, together with the Time Ebb we already had allowed us to smash him for twelve, which was conveniently his life total.
1 – 0
We sideboarded in another copy of Seismic Stomp for the Hatchling, trying to steal some wins.
Game two we had a pretty land heavy hand, with only Maulhorn and a Shock as spells. A timely drawn Phantom Warrior allowed us to add some pressure to the board, shocking his Master of Diversion in the Process. Pacifism and Deadly Recluse put an end to our beatdown plan and all we could come up with was a Molten Birth and a Seismic Stomp. We drew a Water Servant, which was traded for the Recluse eventually. A critical play here was playing the third Island instead of the third Mountain, which, together with Mountain number four, would have allowed us to play double Molten Birth on turn six. I did play the Island, because I wanted Water Servant to be able to trade for Recluse even if he had Show of Valor, so I think the play is defensible. Verdant Haven was what he came up with, which I cannot approve of at all (you want to be two colours in this format almost all the time in non-blue / non-control decks). Another Rootwalla threatened to trade for our Maulhorn, which we prevented from happening by playing Seismic Stomp. I wanted to put him in range of a few flyer attacks or Volcanic Geysir, which is why I elected to falter him. From here on, we drew lands while he drew Seraph of the Sword, which works pretty nicely against our Maulhorn. Double Lava Axe from his part shortened his clock severly, while we couldn't draw anything but lands and died.
1 – 1
We boarded in the Act of Treason for the second Seismic Stomp, just because so that we have anything against his Seraph.
Game three started off suboptimally, with us missing our thrid land drop. We drew a third Mountian, which meant that we could still not play blue spells, but at least were able to measure up some board presence with Molten Birth and the previously played Goblin Shortcutter. We drew the Battledriver, which we couldn't cast just yet, but promised something for the future. Meanwhile, he went turn two Sentinel Sliver, turn three Master of Diversion and turn four Giant Spider, so things were looking grim for us. We drew an Island just in time and slammed the Ogre. He emptied his hand by casting Deadly Recluse, Rootwalla and Voracious Wurm while we drew a Young Pyromancer for our turn, which was eventually a way out of the hole with us still having Seismic Stomp and Frost Breath in hand. We stomped and attacked for a whopping twelve damage. Suddenly, the board was getting even, but we were still at fourteen life with him at six after our alpha strike. An end of turn Frost Breath on his two reach guys together with a freshly drawn Scourge of Valkas was eventually enough to take the game form him, so we were able to win a real nailbiter of a quarterfinal and advanced to the semis.
2 – 1
Semifinals:
We won the die roll and went first, unfortunately drawing an unkeepable hand with only Islands and red creatures. Shortcutter was our first play, while he played Manaweft Sliver, mirroring the Green / White Sliver strategy of our previous opponent. Blur Sliver and Concord were what we could measure up, with Ogre Battledriver and Awaken the Ancient sitting in our hand, punishing us for our suboptimal mana base. Fireshrieker was equiped to his previously played advocate of the beast, returning the beatdown favour. We managed to put him to eight life, before he played the rare Bonescythe Sliver, which together with his previously played Predatory Sliver meant that we had to block his whole team and lost all of our creatures. At this point we were out of the game which at the start looked like we were well in it.
0 – 1
We ran back the original 40 and tried to overcome the Sliver menace.
We had to mulligan down to five this game, keepin a very mediocre hand of only lands and Volcanic Geysir. We managed to draw a Young Pyromancer and he had not the fastest of starts as well, also some mana problems from his part involved. We drew the Ogre, but because we had traded off the Pyromancer for one of his Slivers previously, the combo way to victory was unavaliable to us. In the end, we had drawn a grand total of eleven lands, which together with our mulligan to five unfortunatley meant that we had to concede the game and wish our opponent good luck for the finals.
0 – 2
Final Words:
The ending was definitley anticlimactic, but I was very satisfied with our overall performance. Our goal was top 8, which we trumped by reaching the semifinals. There was nothing we could do in the semis, but that happens in the high variance game of Magic. Throughout the tournament, we had some pretty cheeky wins as well, so that had to come back to us eventually. I liked both of our draft decks very much, the second one obviously being much better. I firmly belive that Blue / Red tempo is one of the best, if not the best archetype in M14 draft, with Concord the friendly Condor being the flagship card of the deck. I am looking forward to drafting it again.
So, with that said, I am going to continue my adventures in M14 limited, preparing for GP Prague at the end of the month. I will definitley do some more videos for MTGOstrat, even if such a detailed walkthrough as this one will probably not happen again, as it takes a lot of time to write. Still, it was a fun exercise, being my first ever legitimate written MTG content. Please comment here or on Youtube if you like.
Thank you very much for reading and go play some M14 limited.
-Dom (and Concord)
Midnight covenant is worse than skeletal scrying, necrologia and NECROPOTENCE by far.
No love for the wall of blood / chronosavant all in plan?
Blade of the bloodchief (kill all x/2's)
Necromancers covenant (a whole lotta fodder, plus i allways wanted to play it)
Slaughter (criminally underplaid in EDH / insane with LG generals)
Hoarders Greed/Necropotence/Skeletal Scrying/Neceoligia (obv)
Wall of Blood / Chronosavant (All in!)
Adarkar Valkyrie.(cheaper + faster than reya)
CRADLE OF VITALITY - Oh yeah boy!
(i wish someone would alter sephiroth on my vish kal, that be nuts)
cradle of vitality
reya dawnbringer
deathrender (maybe)
well of lost dreams
reborn hero
cheers
The Ertai Deck i currently play features things like Triskelavus, Pentavus etc. and things to take them back (academy ruins, skeletal shard, crystal shard), but its more of an artifact deck.