Limited: M14 common synergy and strategies

UPDATE: Instead of this post, please try reading pick orders by Frank Karsten and Owen Turtenwald. Karsten and Turtenwald are top pros who wrote based on a lot of experience; the post below is just my guesswork from reading the spoiler before the set was released.

GW Slivers: Probably the best three common slivers are Predatory Sliver, Sentinel Sliver, and Hive Stirrings.  There are common Slivers in red, but they are not as good.

RB Aggro: There aren't many "bears" in M14, but the best ones are probably Child of Night, Corpse Hauler, and Goblin Shortcutter. Those plus Festering Newt should go well with Lightning Talons and the red finisher commons (Lava Axe, Act of Treason, Seismic Stomp).

Auramancer and Quag Sickness.

Trained Condor and Scroll Thief: Drafting Condor is probably harder than drafting Tricks of the Trade was, but this is still cool.

UR Archaeomancer: Stuff like Essence Drain and Murder made Archaeomancer best in UB for M13, but M14 doesn't have as many common black targets for Archaeomancer. It can still recur stuff like Chandra's Outrage and Lava Axe.

Pick this early.

Blue Control: The general weakness of the creatures in M14 means "durdle cards" like counterspells and Divination are good, and it makes Disperse good by forcing people into auras like Mark of the Vampire and Trollhide.

Big Green: There isn't anything like Timberpack Wolf or Centaur Courser at common in M14; the best green cards are the Llanowar Elf, Hunt the Weak, and Sporemound. Rootwalla instead of Yeva's Forcemage also makes green a mana-hungry colour. Verdant Haven should be very playable now.

Things I don't recommend:

- 5-colour green. The fixing is there (Verdant Haven and Shimmering Grotto), but there are no gold cards, so all the bombs in this set cost heavy coloured mana and aren't really splashable.
- UW flyers. This strategy works better when there are exalted creatures in the set. In M14, UW flyers will just mean attacking for 1 with Seacoast Drake and Griffin Sentinel. The best blue common (Trained Condor) encourages you to play a bunch of non-flyers.
- GR Advocate of the Beast. There are only two common beasts in the set.
- White weenie. Master of Diversion will make people try this deck, but the common white attackers are pretty bad in this set.