Back when it was still a thing (2010, 2011 or so), I played natural order bant. Goblins and Merfolk were still decks you often ran into, I sided in Novablast Wurm against them. Pretty hilarious when they pick up that card to read it, then they sigh.Originally Posted by monovfox
If you want a bug list let me know. I have a GSZ/Daze version and a shardless version that I have been playing for a while. I think it is more powerful than the rug version (my opinion only obviously). Much better in the current meta.
As far as beating miracles with a NO target, Rurtic Thar is where you want to be. If you can up the creature count like my bug list, Hoof is the next best option. Being able to kill immediately is quite good. In reality, you should probably just side out the Order package and beat them with goyfs and zeniths. That game plan seems very strong.
I've been having success with a singleton nimble mongoose as a green sun's target maindeck.
I have also identified if we are the control deck or the beatdown in certain matchups. I have marked that matchups that I think favor us heavily with ++ and slightly favor us with +
Grixis and Shardless might benefit from putting in a mainboard scavenging ooze
(=)Miracles: Beatdown with less emphasis on prog combo (side out one natural order). Emphasis on Jace against mentor, and no Jace against Legends (IF you see cavern in game 1 or two)
(Legends Miracles is pretty unfavorable, but I expected that due to their better combo MU). The singleton nimble mongoose has been pretty good for me in this MU and I recommend one for everyone who likes making miracles players cry themselves to sleep and regret their life decisions.
(slightly unfavorable)Shardless: Beatdown with less emphasis on early prog combo postboard. Decent amount of emphasis on Jace postboard. Be wary of creeping tarpit
++DnT: Control with heavy emphasis on the combo plan. They don't have many tools against you besides mother of runes and stoneforge mystic. Their mana denial is pretty mediocre when you're running 3-4 GSZ (if there is a lot of this deck in your area I recommend a 3 to 1 split of hierarch to birds/deathrite shaman). You'll want to board out a goyf and a scavenging ooze postboard. Pretty god-awful cards against them.
+Eldrazi: Strictly Combo (Elderscale Wurm if you're too far behind, Prog if even or ahead), turn 1 chalice is dumb, and sometimes they have the nut so you'll just have to live with that. If you really want to find your combo postboard I recommend impulse, peer through depths, or intuition. Very strong cards that do what you need them to.
+Grixis: Control (more of a midrange plan. Removal is favored here over jace. They go far too wide to protect him). It's okay if deathrite shaman sticks around here, the major problem creatures are young pyromancer and gurmag. Kill both on site or you're in for a bad ride.
(=)Rug Delver:You are control. you have more tarmogoyfs, but they can sometime get the nut of stifles and wastelands. You're very much control here. If you can get a clique and goyf to resolve you are in a good spot. I actually don't side out any NO's in this matchup because they are forced to counter it. If they don't counter Prog and instead try to counter your removal you're in a good spot.
(in their favor)Bug Delver: Take the annoying parts of both delver decks. Hymn is a beating, and force of will after hymn is back-breaking. They have submerges and decays with a mana denial plan. Pretty disgusting, especially when you consider golgari charm is common plan post-board.
(slightly unfavorable)Burn: You have tarmogoyf but they are a lot faster. Definitely control. Postboard elderscale wurm is king (read: moat)
Storm (about even): Because my version lacks a mana denial plan and many of the creatures require a decent amount of mana to actually cast you'll often times find yourself without significant pressure early. However, a lot of your draws are live versus storm. Post-board I'd recommend siding out goyfs and playing to the "fuck you i have ruric thar and vendillion clique" plan. I don't have all that much testing in the matchup, but there's a certain amount of time you have before they can for sure kill you. If you have lots of storm in your area I recommend a healthy mix of permanent and stack-based hate for the matchhup.
Sneak and Show(slightly favorable): Beatdown. Sometimes you get there, sometimes you don't. I recommend siding in your big dudes post-board, it makes show and tell much less punishing even if resolved. If you have lots of this in your area and really like smoked gouda you could always just throw 3 more progs and some big-nasties in your sideboard to drop off of show and tell if the fight on the stack doesn't pan out. If you get prog out they pretty much can't win through it without sneak attack. HYDRA > DEMON !!!!!
Omni-Show (favors them). Beatdown. It's difficult. They're better on the stack, and what they drop wins them the game. If you have krosan grip you might be able to steal some victories. But I suppose we knew how problematic this deck was from the Dig-Winter.
UR Delver (favors us): You are control. They don't commit hard enough to either plan for us to care. Their stuff is boltable, blockable, and goyfable.
Emptying the Warrens: So YOU don't have to!
Got to finally unleash the sideboard Elderscale Wurm against elves and eldrazi
This card is insane. Literally won me a match against elves by itself. Turns out removal + elderscale wurm means that elves needs deathrite shaman burn to swing in for lethal. :D
Also kicks eldrazi's butt.
I also got to green sun's for 6 in the miracles matchup to grab ruric thar. I won that game.
This has got to be my new favorite deck.
Running a 62 card decklist tomorrow featuring maindeck goose and maindeck reclamation sage. WISH ME LUCK!
CHANNEL 3K HO!
Emptying the Warrens: So YOU don't have to!
Ended up 3-3. my breakers were actually good enough to top 16 if I decided to play the last round, but I was not feeling well and decided against it. In spite of my record I actually really liked the deck and felt in control in most of my matchups (I can name a few misplays that straight up lost me some matches), regardless of the outcome.
2-1 vs UWR Delver
2-1 vs Elves (I ended up getting 6 mana on turn 3 and hardcasting bonefire of the damned for two to whipe his board of 5 creatures)
1-2 Against Death and Taxes (he kept his 7 with turn 1 vial in all three games usually with multiple stps and thalia. It was brutal, and I may actually start running a sulfur elemental because of this)
2-0 Against Deathblade
1-2 Against Miracles (he cast Elspeth, Sun's Champion. WHAT. Wat.)
1-2 Against Shardless (a friend who I have jammed 4+ hours of this matchup against. Had I had the rogue factor I would have taken this pretty easy IMO).
The deck was powerful, fun, and well positioned. There wasn't a moment during the day I wish I was playing a different deck (well, okay, at one point I wished I was playing lands because I hate miracles so much >.> Terminus is like the epitome of anti-fun)
changes to my list would probably be something like
+2 Deathrite
+1 Bayou
-1 Hierarch
-1 Nimble Mongoose
-1 Tropical Island
In the sideboard I might look for more hard counter-magic. With running maindeck reclamation sage there's a chance I might drop my krosan grip and go to 1 pithing needle or 1 relic and end up playing another flusterstorm.
Sideboard vs Shardless me and my friend determined the best route was actually to keep force of will in and go for a tempo plan. This seems like it might be a plan for the miracles matchup. Natural order is just too risky (or against shardless too vulnerable once they bring in all of their removal from board) for it to be worth it.
No regrets. Deck was fun. I had a blast, even though I was not feeling well, and I think with more experience you'll see me in top 8 next time.
Emptying the Warrens: So YOU don't have to!
I've been running the following list on online testing to some pretty good and encouraging results:
18 Lands:
3 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island
1 Taiga
1 Forest
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Wasteland
7 Tutor/Combo:
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Natural Order
15 Threats:
3 Noble Hierarch
3 Tarmogoyf
3 Vendilion Clique
2 Dryad Arbor
1 Progenitus
1 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
20 Counter, Filter, Removal:
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Fire // Ice
Sideboard:
2 Pyroblast
2 Flusterstorm
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Krosan Grip
1 Elderscale Wurm
1 Granger Guildmage
1 Bonfire of the Damned
1 Pithing Needle
1 Blood Moon
1 Izzet Staticaster
Running 2 Natural Order targets in the maindeck has been great, especially since the two are fairly different Silver Bullet "I win" creatures against a variety of decks, additionally sometimes one is better than the other depending on the current game-state. With all of the acceleration available I've found it completely feasible to cast Ruric for his actual cmc of 6 (4GR) in a longer game. Situationally, Order'ing for Ruric is actually better than Progenitus, especially if you've already attacked your opponent a few times with Goyf/Clique/Bolts and now the text on the card essentially reads "Your opponent can not cast spells."
I took the suggestion of another poster on this thread and adding a Reclamation Sage to the main deck, which has proved very useful by providing a main deck answer to resolved problematic Artifact/Enchantments. Cutting a Goyf for it has been worthwhile.
Regarding running only 18 lands: again, with all of the acceleration, this deck typically does just fine getting the mana needed. I dropped Wasteland further down to 2 slots, but I suppose you could cut a Ponder and/or something else for another land or two.
The sideboard has been working out okay to address a lot of the popular decks. It's in flux and by no means definitive.
So as I said before, I will give this deck a spin at the next local Legacy event, instead of playing ol' reliable (RUG or BUG Delver variants, etc.) I'll keep ya'lls posted if I make any discoveries or noteworthy plays.
Last edited by wcm8; 06-20-2016 at 07:11 AM.
I'm going to try the 3 NO-2 target plan this tuesday if I don't end up playing another brew. Prog really doesn't get there against certain decks, and against others he is amazing. Because I'm in 4 colors I don't think 2 dryad arbor is going to cut it for me right now. How is two arbor in the context of the 3 color manabase? Is it really all that good for the risk that comes with a more fragile manabase?
Also have you considered running the 4th NO sideboard? It's really good against Elves, Eldrazi, and DnT.
Also Scavenging ooze put in some serious work for me today. I'm a huge fan of it now, as did reclamation sage. Having both cards in the main is HUGE.
Emptying the Warrens: So YOU don't have to!
Second Dryad Arbor is good against decks with lots of removal. You can fetch for it, so you can easily get a sac outlet for Natural Order anytime you need one. Big bonus: fetch Arbor when the opponent uses Liliana's sac ability to get rid of your Proggie.
Disadvantage: high chance to draw Arbor naturally, which is of course rather awkward.
I never ran the second Arbor in my three colour lists.
Side note: If you go for multiple Natural Order targets, you need to play four Orders.
If I understand your post correctly, you are going down one Order. I don't think that makes sense.
What I always do when Proggie is bad, is simply board out the combo. Plan B is often good enough.
4 copies of Natural Order is justifiable I suppose, but honestly I've found that running only 3 (with the help of 3 Ponder, 4 Brainstorm, and 1 Jace... and sometimes a Clique trigger gets targeted at myself) seems to be enough to generally find the card in a reasonable time-frame, yet reduce the instances of drawing it in your opening hand (or simply too early, in any case). You also generally only want to draw 1 copy per game.
I have heard it said that in Legacy, you run 4 copies of a card if you don't mind seeing multiples early, 3 copies if you want to see just 1 copy at least once in most typical games, and then 2 or 1 copies if the card is either not essential to your strategy, is functioning as redundancy of existing cards, or is being tutored for.
The way that a lot games tend to play out seem to emphasize the 'Plan B' beat-down and board interaction plan for the first several turns. While the opponent is busy dealing with my threats and ramp, I'm attacking their life total and exhausting their resources. So then by the time I actually cast Natural Order, it's more of an assurance that I've won the game definitively, rather than an incidental 'oops, I win' button or even essential requirement to doing so.
Yes, sometimes I get to cast Natural Order on turn 3 or 4, but generally I tend to err on the side of caution and would rather play a Vendilion Clique, play around Daze and/or Spell Pierce, or bait their counterspells with something else before going all-in on casting Order; the card does have a steep cost to casting it, after all. I find that 3 copies facilitates this approach well enough, whereas playing 4 might make one more likely to just throw it into the opponent's face and see if it sticks. I mean sure, sometimes you just *have* to go for it, but particularly against Blue decks I like to do what I can to ensure that the spell makes it through.
I also think that the 'Plan A' of this deck has actually gradually taken the back-seat to the 'Plan B' beatdown w/counter-burn mode. This is largely because Modern Legacy decks are far better equipped to deal with Natural Order in general these days, and I believe that this is a factor as to why Natural Order RUG became less popular and more infrequently played over time following the banning of Mental Misstep -- it wasn't *just* the loss of that card, it was also the introduction of newer strategies and cards that altered the metagame's landscape and made this archetype less powerful, comparatively speaking. It used to be that Progenitus was practically impossible to answer outside of certain sideboard cards; nowadays we have to contend with Terminus, Liliana of the Veil, Toxic Deluge, and other such cards. Flusterstorm loves targeting N.O., especially considering the additional sacrifice tacked onto the 2GG mana cost. Other combo decks can enact their game plan faster than us. Non-blue decks often have ways of disrupting our ability to even cast Natural Order. Tapping out against a deck like Elves and not having a Force of Will potentially opens us up to dying to a Craterhoof'd army. Progenitus himself isn't even the King of Fatties he once was; that mantle now rests on Emrakul's tentacled shoulders. Griselbrand can be difficult to race even with an Exalted Proggie, as not only is he gaining 7 life per swing, but the opponent also has the opportunity of drawing a brand new hand (or two) with each combat step. There's a myriad of other examples I'm sure you could consider; the main point being that Natural Ordering for Progenitus is simply not the most powerful thing you can do in Legacy anymore.
But we have *also* gotten some new toys. Ruric Thar, the Unbowed is a Pyrostatic Pillar on steroids; Elderscale Wurm is a situationally better version of Platinum Angel; if we just want some fatties with ETB/death triggers, there's also Worldspine Wurm or Primeval Titan. The other thing is that the Temur shard itself is still an amazing color-combination that has access to many powerful tools that deal with the current meta-scape in savagely efficient fashion. Pyroblast alone is practically reason enough to be playing Red in Legacy.
I think if we get just 1 more Green Fatty as a powerful Order target, this deck can really justify itself as a legitimate Tier 1 contender. Until then, it remains a powerful deck that can steal a tournament that's unprepared for it.
In Legacy, decks do not really die*. They sleep. And like a grizzly roused from hibernation, they can be very, very angry.
(well, bannings aside)
Speaking primeval titan: It would be super hilarious to run a single kessig wolf run and a primetime as a no target.
Emptying the Warrens: So YOU don't have to!
KWR has been played to good effect in the Bant Knightfall decks (Knight of the Reliquary + Retreat to Coralhelm). Especially with the amount of ramp available (in addition to that granted by Prime Time), this could be a completely reasonable approach.
I would be wary though of playing too many Silver Bullet land targets. It works fine if you're playing KotR, but relying purely on a singleton PTitan doesn't seem to be a reliable method of getting these cards out on the table. But a single Kessig Wolf Run fits just fine into a RUG deck as a utility card that you wouldn't be completely dismayed to draw naturally.
Well, I was responding to Monovfox, who suggested going 3x Order, 2x Order target main deck. That seems off, because we'd have almost as big a chance to draw a target as we'd have to draw Order. Besides, if we invest so many slots to 'plan A', it seems to me we should make sure we maximize our chance to execute it.
In regard to your 'how many copies do I play of card x' argument: yes, generally that's correct. There's also the idea that you generally play the full set of a card that will usually win you the game and that you've essentially built your deck around. Cantrips can only dig so deep, and there are several matchups that are only favourable because we have Natural Order. These two points would suggest we should run the full set, and board one out against decks where Order is more of a backup plan, but against which we don't want to side out the entire combo. I'm not sure which decks that would be though.
I want the full set against:
- D&T (I'll have quite a low chance to win without it)
- Miracles (make them have the Terminus!)
- Shardless (make them have Lily/Deluge!)
- Eldrazi Stompy (my dude is bigger than yours)
- Elves (I'll have quite a low chance to win without it)
- Blade Control (they have very little answers to Prog, plan B isn't the best against them)
- Jund (make them have Lily!)
- Dredge (excellent finisher because of optimal invasion)
I want to board out the entire combo against:
- BUG Delver (they can hose it well, making it card disadvantage + they have mana denial)
- RUG Delver (they have mana denial, good removal for mana dudes, good stack interaction - plan B becomes plan A)
- Show and Tell (combo is too slow, plan B plus sideboard cards should be enough)
- Storm (unless we have Ruric Thar, otherwise the combo is WAY too slow)
- Infect (slow, don't want to tap out, need more removal here)
- Burn (combo is too slow, I want counters to slow them down and win with Goyfs)
- Reanimator (slow, don't want to tap out, plan B plus sideboard cards should do it)
I'm not sure/have never tested:
- Grixis Tempo
- Combo Lands
Looking at the above, I don't see a single common matchup where I want to go to 3x Order.
Another thing: I see only a few matchups where I want a different Order target than Prog.
What would be your analysis?
Well, my analysis is pretty much there in the post you were quoting. Essentially, I was saying that Natural Order is not quite the same card that it was back in its halcyon glory days of Misstep-era Legacy, circa Summer 2011.
But I will try to be more specific here:
Today, RUG Order is contending with a more savage and hostile Legacy metagame, better equipped with maindeck answers to Progenitus and our X/1 creature army. The aggro decks are faster, the tempo decks are more efficient, the control decks are more controlling, and the combo decks are better capable of consistently winning on the spot before turn 3. So in order to really justify running RUG Order as a truly competitive, tier-tearing deck (and not just as an outdated, semi-competitive curiosity that can maybe spike a local event thanks to unfamiliarity), it needs to be updated to better fight in the current metagame's proverbial landscape -- or 'metascape' for brevity's sake .
To me, that means emphasizing the archetype's traditional 'Plan B' (cheap, consistent, reliable) over its 'Plan A' (costly, more random, not always guaranteed victory). I feel that the aggro plan is better able to attack the current Legacy metagame, whereas the Order plan is more frequently sided out than not. UWr Miracles is the Deck To Beat right now, and that means tapping out for a 4-mana Sorcery (that also happens to cost you a creature) only to have your opponent either 1) counter it, or even worse, 2) Terminus away your hard work is not where you typically want to be. The same is true against the variety of Delver decks, which I feel are the next most important DTBs to consider when building a list for tournament play: Tarmogoyf + Bolts are going to do much better than trying to resolve Order in the face of Stifle, Daze, Spell Pierce, Wasteland, etc. And then even if you were to get Progenitus on board, swinging twice might take too long against an opponent who's already wittled down your life total and has a flipped Delver (or two) + DRS activations + Bolts of his own -- you might be dead before Progenitus even gets to turn sideways once.
There are a bunch of other Tier decks where I similarly believe that Natural Order isn't necessarily better than exalted Goyf/Clique beats + Bolts + Counterspells: UGx Infect (you'd best be dealing with their creatures instead of tapping out for Progenitus, else you'll die to a Berserk'd infection), GBx Elves (they can combo out and easily race a resolved Progenitus), Storm.dec and other varieties of combo (Progenitus doesn't really matter if they still get another turn or 2 to sculpt their hands), even BUG Cascade (you often have to resolve Natural Order earlier unless you want it to get discarded, and then if you do it's entirely possible that they have a Liliana or Toxic Deluge to deal with Proggie).
So against all of these decks which comprise a large portion of the current metascape, Progenitus isn't really the ideal target or plan of attack. Hence the justification for 4 Green Sun's Zenith + 3 Natural Order instead of vice versa.
**BUT**, against some of these decks, Ruric Thar, the Unbowed is an *amazing* alternative, especially game 1. Against a deck like Storm (and most combo decks in general), he basically just wins the game. Against a lot of the other decks I mentioned, he similarly stops the opponent from casting any more spells (or at the minimum, gets their life total to within a single attack and/or Bolt-range). He also blocks flipped Delvers all day long and outsizes Tempo decks' ground threats, making it harder for them to race. While it's true that I wouldn't want to open a hand with him in it, 4RG is actually completely doable in a long-enough game with all of the ramp available. Hence, the justification for him as a secondary Natural Order target in the maindeck.
If you had a local metagame that consisted more primarily of aggro decks (or decks just susceptible to Natural Order in general), then sure, go ahead and run 4 Natural Order and/or drop the second maindeck target or make adjustments to what the target actually is. But based on my own experience and local metascape, this seems to be the correct direction to be heading in with landing on an optimized RUG Order list.
I am going back through the thread and reading up on some of the published material that was written about the deck back when it was the main DTB (and probably BEST deck in the format overall) from around 2011. Specifically I found this article to be helpful:
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...Order_RUG.html
Streamlining Natural Order RUG, by Reid Duke, published August 26, 2011
Anyone remember back when the SCG Open circuit gave byes to the traveling troupe of "pro players" (which I guess was done to incentivize traveling to events and also to help establish a brand identity of known faces), and we would consistently see the same group of people Top 8'ing Legacy events week after week? Well, Reid Duke was (and maybe still is?) among that crew and he had quite a bit of success with NO RUG back in the day -- though I'm sure starting the tournament with 2 or 3 byes certainly helped too! Regardless, this article has some useful information in it that is still applicable, even though the glory days of Goblins, Maverick and Merfolk are since passed.
"What I look for in a deck is consistency and efficiency. Toolbox packages and silver bullets are anathema to me because I only want to put cards in my deck if I'm actually happy to draw them. This is strange thing for me to say as Green Sun's Zenith is one of my absolute favorite magic cards. I treat the card more like a Preordain than like a Demonic Tutor; it finds mana when you need mana and a threat when you need a threat. It provides extra ways to hit three mana on turn 2 in Legacy... without overloading on low-impact mana creatures and therefore increases the consistency of the deck rather than the other way around.
Personally consistency and efficiency are my primary concerns whenever I build a deck in any format. There's a reason though that I insist on waving this preference of mine in front of your face right now: It's the only way to survive in Legacy.
...Game-winning threats come as cheap as two mana... and good answers cost one or are free. Anything that requires more setup than that causes you to fall behind and falling behind means losing in Legacy more so than in any other format. Legacy is too fast and brutal to play utility cards. What's more the abundance of permission in Legacy provides even more incentive for redundancy... It's a mistake to play cards that are second-best most of the time because in those cases where they are best you may not find them they may get answered or what's most likely you could win anyway with the more streamlined card choice."
It was true then, and it is true now. We don't want to be stuffing the deck with a bunch of narrow random 1-ofs in the hopes of having them for that one particular instance where they will shine. At the time he wrote the article, Reid was specifically talking about Terravore and/or Eternal Witness taking the space of some number of the Tarmogoyf slots, which today seems somewhat silly but at the time was more arguable.
That all said, I think that there *is* justification given the current metascape in finding room in the main deck for a Reclamation Sage, and maybe also a Scavenging Ooze. Plenty of decks today have a target for Reclamation Sage, and given the prevalence of UWr Miracles, Reclamation Sage is a somewhat necessary component for coming back and winning game 1 in the face of a resolved Counterbalance. However, more narrow cards such as Granger Guildmage are decidedly better fit in the sideboard, at least until the format at large (or your local metascape) is overwhelmed with X/1 creature decks.
"After all my preaching I do have to admit that Eternal Witness is one of the best suggestions I've heard for a one-of Zenith target. It's slow and can't be maindecked for the reasons above but the ability to single-handedly rebuy the whole Natural Order combo is intriguing (green creature+return Natural Order+Progenitus gets shuffled in when he dies)."
Eternal Witness is still a pretty cool sideboard suggestion for attrition matches, unfortunately the near-ubiquity of Deathrite Shaman and Rest in Peace (that could be brought in to fight your Tarmogoyfs) makes it worse. However, this was also under consideration specifically for the mirror match, which was further complicated in those days due to the Legend Rule of the time (for people who don't recall, essentially Legendary permanents would 'cancel each other out' and Vindicate each other from the opposing side; nowadays the Legend Rule essentially only applies to a single player's board).
"The same argument goes for alternative Natural Order targets: you need a specific excellent reason to devote another slot."
I think Ruric Thar, the Unbowed justifies itself by being so good against the types of decks where Progenitus isn't, as well as being feasible to hard-cast. Progenitus just isn't quite the monstrosity he used to be: consider how Elves (the other Natural Order/Green Sun's Zenith deck) has pretty much dropped him entirely for alternative targets. For the sideboard, Empyrial Archangel has been replaced by Elderscale Wurm for the most part. Though to be fair, there are some instances where the Archangel might be better.
A relevant take-away from the article is his suggested mana base, which I think is still quite good:
1 Forest
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Scalding Tarn
3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
1 Taiga
(his suggested list only had 1 Dryad Arbor, but I actually think the 2nd copy is worth running)
He drops Wasteland entirely, which does leave you a bit susceptible to problematic lands, e.g. Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale; Maze of Ith (if you're on the beatdown plan); Dark Depths/Thespian's Stage; etc. You also lose access to the general usefulness of Wasteland, which can sometimes just win you the game against a mana-screwed opponent or at least slow them down significantly, and also keep Daze live for longer.
Luckily though, the RG combo Lands matchup is one where an early Progenitus is likely to win the game and faces little opposition, Wasteland/Rishadan Port aside. You can further address this matchup with the addition of SB Blood Moon and/or Winter Orb and/or Price of Progress. I also think that you'd rather have access to more colored mana sources to have less chance of mulligans.
Tempo decks are not more efficient. They lost Misstep and gained Delver. Canadian Thresh isn't even deck to beat right now. BUG Delver has a 25/75 matchup against Shardless. Grixis performs moderately well right now, but that's it. Besides, tempo has serious issues with this deck when we board out the combo. We have enough mana to be able to function okay despite their mana denial, and we have more Goyfs. Just side out the combo and side in threats and removal. You should be fine.
Against Miracles, you never have to go all in. Cast two threats, beat him until he dies or clears the board. If he clears, you drop two more threats. Natural Order into Proggie counts for a double threat. Protect Natural Order well with your counters and Clique. Make him have the Terminus. If you can, keep mana open to counter Terminus with Ivasive Surgery or Envelop or whatever you have in the board. If all else fails, Jace could still win the day. Miracles is tough, but the matchup should not be worse than 45/55. You get time to set up, and your threats are very good against them.
I stated the matchups where I want the full set of Natural Order. That was over 60% of the meta, and that's counting without Ruric Thar in the 75. I counted with Progenitus as only target in mind. I see no reason to waste slots to play Natural Order, but not really commit. Plan B doesn't get much worse when you drop one of its cards for the fourth Natural Order, but the odds for finding Natural Order when you need it do improve significantly when you go from three to four copies. I'm all for questioning the relevance of Natural Order, but your arguments are actually arguments in favour of dropping Natural Order alltogether. In my opinion, going down to three is bad against the majority of the meta.
But all 3 or 4 NO aside, Monovfox suggested going 3x order 2x target, rather than 4x order 1x target. That's a threat less, and it's double the chance to draw a target (which sucks, of course). Besides, there are so little matchups where you really need a different target than Prog, that you could just as well put one in the sideboard. I prefer to just board out the combo when Prog isn't good, but loving Natural Order so much you want to main deck an additional target, but then proceeding to drop an Order, that just seems wrong to me.
This deck requires basics, because it has a steap curve and we don't want to lose to Wastelands. This means it's really tough to run our own utility lands that don't help us fetch our coloured mana. I completely agree with not running Wasteland. I never have run Wasteland in this deck and I probably never will.
Tabernacle isn't a big problem, because it's a fringe card in a not that popular deck. Besides we can pay one mana a turn for Prog if we have to. The other lands we can all stop with Pithing Needle if we really have to. Needle is also very good against Miracles (most dangerous deck right now) and it has applications elsewhere too (Liliana?). I would advise against running dedicated hate for Lands, but if you face it a lot, I'd just add Needles to the board. They can hose Stage, Wasteland, Port and if needed even Maze of Ith.
Staying at four is definitely better, which I can say now that I decided to test the DnT matchup without natural order. Natural Order hoses Eldrazi and Death and taxes, decks which are traditionally strong against aggro-control/brainstorm decks. It makes for a great finisher, even if you want to stay on the tempo plan in game one, because if it resolves most decks are still dead to it. You want to draw it game 1 because there is nothing more powerful to drop game 1 rather han jace
Emptying the Warrens: So YOU don't have to!
I'll grant that Mental Misstep was the perfect Tempo card, but I disagree that Delver decks aren't more efficient today. For one, as you said they now have Delver of f***ing Secrets, which itself is now the name of the archetype instead of Tempo/Thresh. A 3/2 flyer for one Blue mana, backed up by counterspells, mana denial (and sometimes Discard) is as efficient as it gets and has altered the format significantly -- it's even a legitimate archetype in Vintage ferchrissakes. Delver is the reason why decks like Naya Zoo aren't even really run anymore; you can achieve practically the same degree of aggressiveness except backed up with the consistency and permission that Blue grants, and now have a positive matchup against Combo.
RUG Delver isn't considered a DTB *by the numbers*, but it continues to get played and continues to put up results and is probably the perfect example of a Tier 1.5 strategy. It had several pilots in the Top 32 of the two most recent Grand Prixs (including one in the Top 8, and many more if you count the X-4 bracket in its entirety, which would include my own results at Columbus with the deck), which proves it to be a legitimately successful and competitive deck. BUG Delver rotates back and forth between being a DTB or not, depending on how frequently it gets played on any given month and also whether the people at TCDecks and other deck-list aggregators are properly defining the lists as BUG Delver, 4-C Thresh or some other name.
But regardless, you can't deny that Grixis Delver is a DTB and needs to be considered when optimizing a list. In addition to the aforementioned Delver of Secrets, the deck also gained efficient threats in Young Pyromancer and Gurmag Angler, which both benefit from the efficiency of Gitaxian Probe + Cabal Therapy.
I don't know what your local metascape looks like, but at mine I can pretty much bet on there being at least 25% of the field playing some flavor of Delver, whether that be BUG, RUG, Grixis, UR or some other variation (the occasional UWR still pops up). This factors into my suggestion for running only 3 copies of Natural Order, because the card is fairly terrible against these type of decks.
In the last few sentences of the quoted paragraph, you are conceding that siding out the combo is the right call in these matchups, and yet you are arguing for 4 Natural Orders instead of 3?
You're preaching to the choir. We all know that you don't want to over-commit to the board against Miracles, as doing so leaves you vulnerable to a Terminus blow-out. But the problem is that they run 4-Terminus and plenty of filter to find it, so playing Natural Order even *once* is a guaranteed blow-out 2-for-1, since you've already lost a threat as part of the spell's cost.
UWr Miracles makes up a significant portion of the Tier 1 DTB metagame, and locally gets played in high numbers -- again, I'd roughly estimate that close to 25% or more of the field is piloting the deck at my local shop. So again, cutting down to 3 copies of Natural Order against a deck that makes the card miserable seems justifiable. Furthermore, the secondary target (Ruric) is actually quite fantastic against Miracles in some (granted, not all) scenarios where Progenitus isn't: at the minimum, he's pretty much a guaranteed 6 damage even in the face of a Terminus (often enough damage to help close out the game) unless of course they happen to already have an on-board Jace or Karakas, and in certain other scenarios his text reads: you can't play non-creature spells. Games against Miracles tend to go quite long, so having a threat that is essentially immune to Counterbalance and punishes them for playing non-creature spells is quite good.
But really, Ruric isn't there for Miracles, he's there as a Natural Order target that wins on-the-spot against most forms of Combo. I like the potential of having an early Natural Order that wins the game against Combo.dec, which also tends to take up a significant percentage of the metagame. If you don't run into enough Combo decks to justify the slot, then by all means, move him to the sideboard.
I am not sure your estimate of 60% of the meta is accurate for the Grand Prix or even SCG Open circuit, and it certainly isn't true of my local metagame, which btw I have always stated was what I had in mind for gearing my list towards. But perhaps this estimate is true for your locality, in which case I encourage you to adjust your list towards beating.
If I were going to drop Natural Order altogether, I'd just be playing RUG Delver if I wanted to stick with Temur. I do think that Natural Order is a decent card that can help win against certain aggro and midrange strategies, which RUG traditionally has some trouble with. I also think that this deck's configuration takes advantage of Green Sun's Zenith quite well, which is a card I feel is underplayed in general and has the advantage of allowing for a tool-box sideboard plan. The combination of 1) mana ramp to play around Daze/Spell Pierce/Wasteland etc., 2) exalted triggers on Clique/Goyf to attack the opponent's life total, and 3) Burn to both kill smaller threats and close out the game is an effective strategy in tandem and works well against the current format.
If my arguments seemed to imply that I was suggesting dropping Natural Order altogether or moving it to the sideboard, then either there's been a miscommunication or (more likely) a misunderstanding of the content I've presented. My arguments are really just for flipping the emphasis on which Plan is actually considered Plan A versus Plan B due to the sweeping changes in the format since the deck's Zenith (no pun intended) in Legacy circa 2011, and adjusting the list accordingly for the modern Legacy format of 2016.
Ruric is there for Combo game 1, and is also a nice surprise win in certain other scenarios where Progenitus simply wouldn't (e.g. against flipped Delvers when you're at single-digit life). As stated, if combo is not a big enough percentage of your locality's metagame to justify running him maindeck, move him to the sideboard instead. I simply like having the added utility as I think the benefit in increasing the deck's Win% for Game 1 outweighs the problem of occasional awkwardness brought on by drawing him naturally (and that's why I'm running 4 Brainstorm, 1 Jace and 3 Vendilion Clique to help mitigate that scenario).
We are in agreement here. I started with 4 Wasteland, then cut to 3, then to 2, and now have just dropped it entirely in favor of colored sources and 2 basics. Testing has shown to me that this deck much prefers them.
I don't disagree entirely, but RG Lands (with Tabernacle) is an actual presence in my local metagame and having some plan of beating it is kind of a necessity for winning the tournament -- sure, you can make Top 8, but if one of the two local RG Lands players have made the cut as well, you're almost guaranteed to face it. So that is why I even brought the discussion up. I do think that Winter Orb is a useful card, in that it's essentially one-sided (thanks to our Hierachs, Daze and lower curve) and can be brought in against a variety of decks beyond just RG Lands, but especially Miracles as it punishes them for utilizing SDT and ignores the fact that they use Basic Lands to side-step Wasteland and whatnot.
And yes, I agree entirely that Pithing Needle deserves at least 1 slot. The card has so many applicable targets and does it at such an efficient cost.
Damn this is the most heated debate about a 4 mana sorcery.
By my understanding aren't you guys just disagreeing about the role natural order plays in the context of questioning where this deck's identity lies?
We're either an aggro control deck with a strictly natural order backup plan or we are a control deck with creatures with natural order as a 4 mana finisher. These ideas of the deck will lead to players taking different lines and playing differently. This means that . Both of you agree that natural order should be cast (it's why you''re both in the thread), the role of natural order is in question, and thus the deck's identity is in question in your debate.
If you're often times the control deck in your style of play four natural order is where you want to be at. If you are often times the beatdown I can see why you might want to play 3, but you should still play 4 because the card is powerful enough that it wins games out of nowhere in the format in game 1 (especially against Dnt and Eldrazi, which are traditionally bad matchups for RUG). Back when NO-RUG was popular (particularly the Reid Duke version, which was apparently different than the non-Reid Duke Version) Finn (the guy who created Death and Taxes and heavily tested the deck before it was popular) found that No RUG had a 60+% winrate against Death and Taxes. This is entirely off the back of natural order, cheap removal, cheap mana, cheap ways to find the combo, and vendilion clique. Cheap ramp + natural order is also really really good against Eldrazi, a deck I expect to never fall off for as long as miracles exist.
With DnT and Eldrazi so popular right now, I see no reason to go below 4, as these are both matchups where our combo wins us the game and we cannot race them with our normal suite of tempo creatures due to their creatures being too large, or the presence of equipment (which we know is problematic from the days in which UWR stoneblade was popular, according to earlier tournament reports from our NO-RUG ancestors)
I think you both have some really good points. I personally never thought about siding out natural order post-board against delver (I cut one against Grixis because it's clunky in that MU with all of their cheap removal), and I think it might be bad to as Prog is often times going to win the game by himself against Delver, especially because a lot of our beatdown plan is entirely consistent of cards that make natural order better against blue, and our burn is often times enough to deal with any creature an opponent can cast fairly, especially postboard with grim lavamancer.
Also, if you are going to insist on playing 3 natural orders wouldn't you atleast want 2 Jace for miracles and for shardless?
Also for the record I was not the one to originally say "I am going to go for 3 NO's and 2 targets", that was from wcm8's list, and I thought I might try it to see how it goes because we only have three people playing the deck right now, and any testing we can do on the maindeck is testing that's worth doing because NO(RUG) one has touched the deck in years until a couple of weeks ago.
Also I suggest we change the deck name to "Hardwood Floors", because No Rug, and because there are not enough fun deck names
Emptying the Warrens: So YOU don't have to!
Played tonight and hit enchantress twice and burn once. Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh kill me, so boring
My sideboard is a mess and I need help.
Here is my current 75
3 Tarmogoyf
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Daze
4 Vendilion Clique
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Force of Will
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Sylvan Library
4 Brainstorm
4 Natural Order
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
1 Taiga
1 Island
1 Forest
1 Progenitus
2 Ponder
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Fire // Ice
SB: 1 Ancient Grudge
SB: 1 Pyroblast
SB: 1 Relic of Progenitus
SB: 1 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 1 Grim Lavamancer
SB: 2 Pithing Needle
SB: 1 Flusterstorm
SB: 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
SB: 1 Elderscale Wurm
SB: 1 Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 1 Bonfire of the Damned
SB: 1 Krosan Grip
SB: 1 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
Last edited by monovfox; 06-22-2016 at 04:03 AM.
Emptying the Warrens: So YOU don't have to!
This deck looks super sweet and Natural Oder is my favorite cube card, so i'm jumping aboard, for fun. Like wcm8, i play a lot of RUG Delver, so getting this deck list together isnt much of a stretch.
Why Jace at all? Plan C, after Prog (plan A) and Tarmo/Clique beats (plan B)? Back in the day when this deck was doing really well, it looks like Jace was a sideboard card, probably for the Reanimator deck that isnt very popular right now. I suppose he is still OK versus Sneak, but having a full set of NO and Jace is a pretty high curve. I def dont want my opening hand gummed up with too many 4 drops.
How do you feel NO RUG (i love Hardwood Floors as a name, BTW) stakc sup against the top 5 decks? Here is what i would think off the top of my head, but i have no idea...
- Even vs. Miracles
- Favored vs. Eldrazi
- Not Favored vs. Shardless
- Favored vs. Delver
- Even vs. Sneak & Show
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