LoadingReadyRun Draft #37: The Many Rares of M14




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  1. R1G2: I think you should have played your indestructibility on your sliver and forced him to attack into your 5 power indestructible dude every turn with diplomats!

  2. Holy cow, match 1 was frustrating! At least you caught the Flare thing yourself though.
    But something you didn’t catch is that Indestructibility interacts very favourably (for you) with first strike. Because, as your creature is indestructible, it doesn’t die to any first strike shenanigans. And then it still deals it’s damage, too.
    Which could have won you the game!
    Had you played indestructibility on your Battle Sliver, for instance, it would just have eaten anything of his that’d dare enter the red zone.
    But even on the 2/1 Goblin (Piker) Diplomats, it wasn’t horrible. As that would conveniently eat his 7/2, first striking, Predatory Sliver.

    As always though, at least it was entertaining! M14 seems like a terrible format to do a raredraft in XD

  3. Round One, Game 2: you could have blocked the 7/2 Predatory Sliver with your 2/1 -Indestructible- Goblins to kill the Sliver, no?

    Although it wouldn’t have bought you much more time with the Sovreign and drawing into Dismiss a few turns later, so…

  4. christ you’re bad at magic. i love the wacky drafts, and clawing at victory with a deck full of strange cards is awesome, but the loose play ruins it.

  5. the indestructibility “combo” with diplomats was already pointed out so no need for me to comment further there but i will say that w/ these types of decks, u should focus more on the late game. you know your mana is going to be rough but u do have powerful spells that will win u the game as long as theyre resolved so your entire game plan early should be to play defensive and prevent as much damage as possible. for example, in round 3 game 1, preventing the additional 2 dmg from ur opponent’s sovereign should have been a much higher priority than getting in 2 dmg with your diplomats. in the end, it didn’t really matter that game but knowing whether or not you are the aggressor can increase ur chances of winning and more importantly, buy you time to resolve more rares :) i think in most cases, these wacky decks have slower win conditions so having a defensive mindset should help you. keep up the great work!

  6. And why not MILL for a winning strategy. Once your were “forced” to take the Traumatize you should have prioritized Tome Scours (I saw at least one go by, maybe more) and then Millstone was sent your way in Pack 3. Those two go a long way to shortening up the long M14 games!

    Whenever I see Traumatize, I am tempted to take it, but if you don’t get the Millstones and the Tome Scours it’s not worth it. Once you get those, though, it is pure gold!

  7. So people are talking about the actual magic games or whatever, but I think far more importantly… When you counted the rares after building the deck, the intonation on the “eleven”… I was sure you were about to follow it up with a good old “that’s ridiculous” or “it’s not even funny”…

  8. Here’s a better combo that works well in modern: Dismiss into dream and Chandra’s fury = entire board wipe. I’ve used the combo before but it’s never been that successful. The Zephyr charge still works just fine, but if you want to go big, play modern with the Chandra’s fury.

    Also I have a new draft challenge for you guys. Draft only one color per pack, the color being determined by the first rare you open, and maybe come out with an ok deck. If there aren’t any of the color you’re drafting just sideboard some cards from each color in case one of them shows up in the next pack. In the end you’ll either end up with a cool shard deck or a piece of crap that is just decent enough to play and funny to watch.

  9. Loved the videos, as usual. I was thoroughly entertained, which is the entire point of these wacky drafts. People take magic WAY too seriously down in these here comments sections…

    Keep up the good work!

  10. You made up for Match 1 with Match 3, that was hilarious. I was surprised that you never even saw your Planar Cleansing, but that’s how it goes. That is the most rares I think I’ve ever seen you get in a rare draft and I don’t even really think of M14 as having particularly bad rares.

  11. “Well, at least we’ve been really good about going first . . . ”

    Lol, haven’t you heard? M14 is draw first

  12. Entertaining as always. Good collection of bulk rares, and 2 packs from a Swiss thanks to a ‘bye’ in round 2. That victim must have just saw that his deck had no rares at all and therefore, no chance at winning.

  13. When you are looking to hit combos just to get anything on the board at all I think draw first is pretty much mandatory.

  14. Related to Dismiss Into Dream discussion: it could be fun to pick up the card when already U/R with at least one Flames of the Firebrand and/or Frost Breath; even cards like Goblin Shortcutter, Shock, Thorncaster Sliver (if you have multiple red slivers), Time Ebb – really anything that targets creatures but doesn’t necessarily kill them – get far better with that card. You really don’t even need a bad card like Zephyr Charge to make it work for you.

  15. Great fun as always, Graham, though you sounded crushed about the Celestial Flare. Such is life. *shrug*

    Still want to see you do an Ironroot Chef with a random common chosen at the beginning of the draft, though. :) Can’t wait to see you guys with Theros!

  16. “I wonder what uncommon they took over this?”
    Opportunity. The answer to that question in M14 is ALWAYS Opportunity.

  17. were you just joking or were you serious when you said “our opponent curved out beautifully for a mull to 4″
    he literally went t4 striking sliver (with giant growth backup), t5 battle sliver, t6 pred sliver. that’s the saddest sliver curve in the world.

  18. Duuude, Sensory Deprivation is the champion of bad durdling decks everywhere. There’s a reason LSV has half-jokingly referred to it as the “Blue Swords to Plowshares.” It lets you survive long enough to play your rares n stuff.

    Also, part of the problem with this draft is that you didn’t realize until deckbuilding that you weren’t actually committed to black at all, because you only had one black rare.

    Still, good times.

  19. I’m only upset that you repeatedly did not block the predatory sliver when you could have eaten it the first time, and then had 2 blockers left and him with 1 big guy again, you would have shut down his aggression after ONE swing.

  20. “christ you’re bad at magic. i love the wacky drafts, and clawing at victory with a deck full of strange cards is awesome, but the loose play ruins it.”

    QFT

    So disappointing to see thoughtless, frivolous play. Stopped watching immediately after you fucked Celestial Flare up.

  21. I think people watching this are really REALLY missing the point. The loose play is bad, but that’s NOT THE FREAKING POINT! He already said he’s just trying to resolve rares. Comments of like “you should have committed to mill” and “loose play ruined it for me” means you aren’t watching this for the point: trying to dumb things you would never do at an actual FNM and see if they work out (somehow).

  22. Utterly hilarious! One of my favourite LRR MTG videos. I look forward to seeing more such drafts in future. Was rooting through the whole draft for you to pull off the Dismiss / ZC combo. Great stuff!