Magic 2014 is a very bad Limited format. I wouldn’t say that it’s as infuriatingly broken as Avacyn Restored, but it’s not good. The key problems are color imbalance and lack of complexity. Now, the latter I can understand; this is a core set, and accordingly, it is not designed to have the complex interactions of a set like Innistrad. What a lack of complexity does is push gameplay toward a pure numbers game: Who draws the most stuff? In a simple set, there are fewer opportunities to gain advantages through play—there are fewer two-for-one removal effects, the combat tricks are simple one-for-ones (either for the opponent’s dude or for his or her removal spell), and the game tends to degenerate into a series of creature-for-creature trades until whoever has the last man wins.

If you’ve been playing or reading about this format at all, you are probably familiar with the dominance of blue. Blue has the deepest suite of removal (Disperse, Sensory Deprivation, Time Ebb, Essence Scatter, and Claustrophobia) as well as a very deep selection of powerful creatures. It doesn’t hurt that, unlike the other colors, none of its uncommon slots are wasted on unplayables; in fact, it has what are two of the best uncommon creatures in the set in Air Servant and Water Servant. Frankly, I don’t know what R&D was thinking when they made blue this deep. Maybe they were busy with Theros.

The two leading synergies that have been able to battle all this blue good-stuff are in B/R (sacrifice outlets, ideally Blood Bairn, with Act of Treason) and R/G (Advocate of the Beast with Marauding Maulhorn and Kalonian Tusker). If you want to claw your way out from under Jace’s oppressive boot, you’ll need to be tricksy, say these synergy decks. Which brings us to my original thrust: opportunities for the extemporaneous brewer.

Angelic Accord

When to move in: Early—but this isn’t a good first-pick.

Power level: Very high

Odds of failure: Also very high!

An effective way to beat blue’s torrential card-draw is with an engine that generates its own cards. In this case, the “cards” are 4/4 flying tokens, which, in this format, are worth more than one card each, really; the only nonrare creatures that brick them on offense are Deadly Recluse, Serra Angel, and Sengir Vampire, and on defense, they beat all the flyers you’re likely to see. Unfortunately, you can’t just proc Accord with any life-gain—it needs to be at least 4. I’ve seen players try to synergize with Accord by filling their decks with Child of Night and Dawnstrike Paladin, and I strongly advise against this—Child of Night and Dawnstrike Paladin are both abysmal creatures in this format. What you need to make Accord work are effects that give you big bites of life at once. There are four I’d would consider: Trading Post, Bubbling Cauldron, Mark of the Vampire, and Congregate. The Post and the Cauldron are ideal, and if you pick up Post or Cauldron plus Accord, go on and jam it into any deck. If you draw them both, you are favored to win, and if you draw the Post or the Cauldron solo, it’s not dead. Congregate is a one-shot effect and not the ideal way to be triggering your Accord, but it can gain you 12 to 16 life fairly easily in this cluttered-up format, which might be enough to allow you to start aggressively racing. Mark of the Vampire opens you up to be two-for-one’d by removal, but since half of the removal in this set is main-phase only, it’s likely you’ll get a hit in and proc the Accord at least once. This grows somewhat busted in multiples. Consider this: You have a flyer of some sort and Accord on the table. You Mark up and swing in, proccing a token. The enemy untaps and kills your vampiric flyer. You untap, Mark up the Angel token, bash for and gain 6, and generate another token. Even if the opponent has another removal spell for the second Marked creature, you’re now leagues ahead. Please win gracefully.

The problem with Accord is that it is an absolute do-nothing if you don’t have an appropriate life-gain effect. Do not go to deep. Again, it is possible to suit up Childs and Paladins with Divine Favor or Dark Favor to gain 4, but then, your deck is full of bad cards. Don’t be afraid to switch gears.

Blightcaster

When to move in: Immediately—it’s first-pickable.

Power level: High

Odds of failure: Very low

A less ambitious, but much more reliable, build-around-me is Blightcaster. Consider this: Almost all of the top-tier removal spells in M14 are actually Auras; Claustrophobia, Quag Sickness, Sensory Deprivation, and Pacifism are all premium removal effects in this format. Accordingly, you don’t actually have to go far off the beaten path to draft a Blightcaster deck. Blightcaster fits very well in the dominant blue good-stuff decks, especially if you pick up one or more copies of Opportunity and load up on Sensory Deprivations—since you can then dump a whole hand of the little Auras and wipe out a number of guys. Once you have two or more Quag Sicknesses, don’t be afraid to start picking Auramancers even though white is generally the weakest color in the format; Regrowthing your Quag Sicknesses is powerful enough to keep pace with Divinations and Opportunities.

I do occasionally see players go too deep on enchantments here. Let me be clear: Blightcaster doesn’t make bad enchantments playable. Don’t main-deck something terrible such as Into the Wilds or Oath of the Ancient Wood just to have another Blightcaster trigger. Verdant Haven is acceptable if you have a reason to want the ramp and fixing (perhaps you’re fixing into white for Auramancer and Pacifism.) With so many of M14’s removal effects already being enchantments—especially in blue—I am comfortable first-picking Blightcaster over any nonrare other than Air Servant and Opportunity.

Young Pyromancer

When to move in: Early—you can always back out into U/R or a B/R Act deck.

Power level: Moderate

Odds of failure: Low (with Blood Bairn), moderate (with Fortify)

Like Angelic Accord, Young Pyromancer presents an opportunity to generate cards out of thin air. Unlike Angelic Accord, the cards are mostly useless. If 2/1s aren’t generally useful in this format, you can imagine what the utility of 1/1s might be. The two key interactions to keep in mind with Pyromancer are those with Blood Bairn and those with Fortify. If you’re playing Blood Bairn, you should be on Act of Treason, so you will have at least one effect to proc Pyromancer; having a Pyromancer onboard gives you another 2 damage out of your Blood Bairn swing on the Act turn. This is not inconsequential. B/R Act decks tend to need to win very soon after they start Act of Treasoning—once you’ve used your Threaten effects, your sacrifice outlets become much less useful. Pyromancer adds a little fuel to your Vampire’s fire and can make the B/R Act strategy more efficient.

A more interesting application, I think, is to play a R/W aggressive strategy with Fortify. 1/1s are not helpful in this format, but 3/1s can get some work done. If you are able to pick up enough Shocks, Chandra's Outrages, and Celestial Flares to justify leaning on the Pyromancer triggers, you can end up with a board of six or more tokens, a state where swinging and casting Fortify can end games out of nowhere. In both cases—whether you’re on B/R or R/W—playing Pyromancer means you should consider taking a card I’m usually not a fan of: Molten Birth. This card is not by any means the next coming of Lingering Souls; the 1/1 Elementals it produces do not have evasion, and many times, you’ll only make two of them. If you’re already set up to make aggressive use of tokens, however, Pyromancer plus Molten Birth can equal an awful lot of them. Fortify tends to go pretty late, so you can move in on the R/W version of this strategy cautiously. If you do, another team I recommend adding to your squad is Master of Diversion alongside Regathan Firecat for some sneaky 4/1 Cat beats.

Voracious Wurm

When to move in: Once you’re already in green.

Power level: Moderate.

Odds of failure: Essentially nil

Ah, Life-o-goyf. Voracious Wurm is usually not a high priority for most green decks because without life-gain effects, he is essentially just a bear. He’s doubly hampered by the low-cost life-gain effects in this format (Soulmender and Child of Night) being nigh-unplayable. If you pick one up in pack one, however, it’s not unlikely that you’ll see a second one in the following packs, especially since, to most decks, he will be just a bear. The key cards you’re looking to pair your Wurm up with are the same enablers you’d want for Angelic Accord (Trading Post, Bubbling Cauldron, Mark of the Vampire, or Congregate) in addition to Verdant Haven, and Verdant Haven may in fact be the best one. On the fourth turn (or thereafter), you have the line of Haven on a land, tap the land, play a Voracious Wurm as a 4/4. It’s less impressive than a 6/6 off a Cauldron, sure, but the tempo hit when it invariably is nullified is much less. The following turn, you’ll have at least 5 mana to work with. If you can pick up multiple Wurms, you can really bring home the bacon with a Brindle Boar or two—and it’s not unreasonable to have a Boar in the ’board even if you only have one Wurm—for matchups against removal-light opponents. If the opponent can’t punish you, go ahead and Pork Ritual into a 6/6. In this format, that’s a pretty meaty guy.

What interesting card synergies have you come across while playing M14 Limited? Do you have another sweet combo to fight the blue menace? Deploy it in the comments!