[Deck] Natural Order RUG

[keys]

Terravore IS a clock, because opponent can't just chumpblock it, and it eats kotrs.

The only problem is that Maze of Ith handles Terravore pretty well. I'm not saying Terravore isn't awesome, but it doesn't singlehandedly solve KOTR. The best way to beat KOTR is still with Submerge.

This is currently the best sideboard IMO:

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Submerge
3-4 Red Elemental Blast
2 Grim Lavamancer
2 Surgical Extraction
1-2 Ancient Grudge
1 Scavenging Ooze (I can still see a metagame argument for playing this guy maindeck, but most of the time he should be SB)

[Jonathan Alexander]

If you're worried about Maze Of Ith, Fire // Ice is pretty awesome here, and with Terravore you can easily stall Knight Of The Reliquary until you either only need one or two swings to win the game or can cast Natural Order and then swing with Progenitus while stalling with Terravore.

What I don't get is that we're actually discussing what creature is better against Affinity. Is it that much of a presence in your metagames? I didn't play against that deck in more than half a year. Sure, Terravore is bad against them, but I'm not tuning my maindeck against Affinity. If I'm worried about Affinity, I start playing Energy Flux again. The same is true for burn. What do I care about my burn matchup? I mean Merfolk and Goblins are at least somewhat reasonable decks, but our Goblins matchup is super good with all the burn spells and big green dudes we have (Terravore included). And as long as I'm running NO RUG, I will pretty much never be afraid of Merfolk.

What I also don't quite get is why the early game is more important than the late game. We already have the strongest early game in the format, aside from combo decks. When you're playing against stuff like Daze and Wasteland, you obviously become a bit slower. Without Natural Order, you're pretty bad in the lategame. The addition of another lategame-card is totally worth it in my opinion, considering a lot of decks are trying slow you down until their engines get online.

Also, I agree on keys' sideboard (obviously). That board has been really good for me in testing. The only other thing you might consider is Krosan Grip, but that doesn't seem too important right now.

As for my boarding plan against Bant Aggro and Maverick, you're right, CaBaaL. I already stated in the article that most of my plans vary a lot and Bant Aggro is one of the most versatile decks right now. There are lots of routes you can take. But like I stated in the article, I'm usually expecting Daze and Stoneforge Mystic, not Force Of Will and Natural Order. If they're playing Natural Order, it's more like the mirror. If they don't have Stoneforge Mystic or Umezawa's Jitte, you obviously don't bring in Ancient Grudge. This is also true when you expect them to board out Stoneforge Mystic. I would never board out Terravore against them though, Vendilion Clique is too fragile to rely on in this matchup and relying solely on Natural Order is never where you want to be.

[reev_]

i have played this deck for few days. This IS strong, but i was raped every time im played against a minimal land control deck. i.e. 4 wastelands and did.
when you play against 4 waste + 4 stifle, you will win when your opp make some mistake and u comes just wonderful.

like 35-65 against blade control
25~30 - 70~75 against merfolk
40~60 against green sun's rock.
:frown:

was a terrible test imo. i'll training for a bit more.
anyone could say a word about this? some help is welcome here.
ty.

Proper capitalization is required on these boards. Please use it. Thanks. -zilla

[Haakon]

For both is very important a stable acces to red sources...if you have it there is no hope for them. Specially, merfolks post-side (side out orders for lavamancers and rebs) is very favorable.

So try to substitute a volcanic island with a basic mountain. I've done it and it's another music for those 2 matchups.

Maverick is another match-up for which the basic mountain is good, in fact keeping a lavamancer constantly activable is great.

[Krondo9]

when do you guys usually use submerge? I tend to use it on the noble hiearch or first creature to slow them down, but im not sure if i should do that or just patiently wait for a fetchland to react. any suggestions? im currently having them out in favor of alex bertoncini's style SB, with 2 lavamancers and 2 spell pierce instead. junk has pretty much fallen out of favor, and bant aggro isnt that popular where i play, so the only matchup where i would need it is zoo, and id rather just have kitchen finks + lavamancer usually

Capitalization and punctuation are required on these boards. Please use them. Thanks. -zilla

[TraxDaMax]

I'm usually happy tarmogoyf only costs two to cast while I setup Progenitus.
He's just an awesome wall. With 18-19 lands it's not sure you'll be able to get up to three mana. A bolt on hierarch and a wasteland on your dual can ruin your day, and at that point lower cc is just key.
Thats why tarmogoyf is better in my opinion, then terravore in this deck.
But, thats my opinion :)

[Krondo9]

yeah i agree. i often get mana screwed with NO RUG. i guess thats the drawback of only running 19 lands. mana dorks get owned by perish/swords/most of your lands will get wasted unless u fetch for basics. so yeah, tarmogoyf is a lot safer while u build up mana. i would think that u would need to run slightly more lands if u plan on playing 2 vores. the mana base is incredibly tight.

Proper capitalization is required on these boards. Please use it. Thanks. -zilla

[Krondo9]

Has anyone been having trouble with the manabase? I feel like 19 lands is incredibly tight, and I often have to mulligan due to bad land hands. I decided to take out a Force from the main (cutting to 3) to add another land, and move the Force to the board, while cutting a jace (not 100% sure if I cut jace though). What do you guys think? My list is basically the same as Alex Bertoncini's with some minor differences. If I cut the jace, I would be down to 1 on the board, because I run a Ooze on board.

[catmint]

For me it is also the manabase I think about most.
I tested a lot with 19 lands (2 dryads and 3 basics main) and it worked reasonable well so far.
Of course the best way to beat us is to manascrew and I experienced it some times. Not sure if more than with other 3 color aggro-control decks... probably less.

[CaBaaL]

I tried (2) spell pierce on the last trials and jace MD. jace is ripping people apart none expected him MD and resolving one on the 3rd turn was epic.
On the other hand spell pierce sucked all day long only usefull vs combo (didn't paired with any) so do not have it MD unless it is meta depented. I will add either dazes or goyf + terravore so I will have a full agro package of : 4 goyfs 1 terravore 1 ooze.
Fire//ice was the best card in mirror and vs U/w/x decks hitting 2 sprites when he was trying to counter something was priceless.
One last thing I had 3 missteps and I never wanted more how many do you use? I see that a lot of lists now are using 3

[Muradin]

For me 19 lands do absolutely not work. I even got screwed too often with 20 lands including 3 basics and 2 Dryad Arbor.

Current mana base that is the best one I had so far:

4 Wooded Foothills
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Scalding Tarn
4 Tropical Island
2 Taiga
2 Volcanic Island
2 Dryad Arbor

This is giving me very reasonable openers and has 16 blue initial sources, 16 green and 14 red ones, which is a lot compared to other NO RUG decklists.

Even though I'd like to have the basics a lot they actually sucked for me. I tested every single combination of basic lands for quite some time. The problem is, that even with Mountain, Island and Forest in play you still can't cast all of your deck (like compared to Zoo or Bant for example).

You managed to fetch out your 3 basics and still Natural Order and Cliques are stuck in your hand. Island is the worst basic land in the deck, forest the best one and the mountain depends on your list.

My advice for you: Don't run any at all. Doesn't look as cool as fetching out those 3 Guru/Unhinged whatever basic lands you got, but simply works better in roughly 95% of all tournament games.

It makes the deck stronger against Wasteland without recursion, not weaker. The only issue you get from doing so is that your Dragon Stompy and Aggro Loam matchup will become a little less positive and you should be fine with that in order to improve your decks consistency in general.

[esqulax]

Probably not a giant issue, but Price of Progress is scary as hell when you run 0 basics.

[BKclassic]

One last thing I had 3 missteps and I never wanted more how many do you use? I see that a lot of lists now are using 3

I have been playing RUG Order on MTGO and am running 4 Mental Missteps. Casting it for free is huge tempo and helps Natural Order resolve by protecting Noble Hierarch, Dryad Arbor and countering Brainstorm. I always laugh when I realize I am playing against an opponent running only 3 Missteps, having the Misstep advantage is huge.

I don't think the mana base would be a problem if I just had a good answer to Knight of the Reliquary and Submerge isn't available online. Maindeck Jace seems like a good idea to me and may help to alleviate the problem. I'll try it out.

[Haakon]

I think the same, 4 missteps are wonderful against opponents that try to kill every our creature, and in mirror match is decisive.

Against knight it's better you resolve a fast order...in fact 4 misstep against maverick or bant countering sword to ploshares and acceleration.

[Muradin]

Actually, I think that Misstep is absolutely superior to Daze. Its stronger in the early game and still a hard counter later on. Especially in this deck setting yourself back on land drops sucks as unlike Canadian Threshold we want to play 4 mana spells and don't run Wasteland and Stifle to complement Daze.

Yep, PoP absolutely kills me most of the time. My version of the deck has a horrible burn matchup. Still, 1 Basic land wouldn't make PoP much less devastating and even the standard version with Daze, Misstep and 2 basic lands wouldn't do a lot against burn.

[catmint]

Since there are many burn matchups in my local Meta I run Empyrial Archangel with very good sucess!

[Krondo9]

What would you cut for the 4th misstep? I also run 20 lands so im only running 3 FoW Main. 2 Daze seems bad, since the chances of you drawing it for the early game would be very slim, making it useless.

[BKclassic]

What would you cut for the 4th misstep? I also run 20 lands so im only running 3 FoW Main. 2 Daze seems bad, since the chances of you drawing it for the early game would be very slim, making it useless.

Unless people are walking into Daze a lot in your meta, I think the 4th FoW and the 4th Misstep are both significantly better.

[BantFTW]

I think 4x fow, 3x misstep and 2 daze s good, otherwise 4 mm (it's really good).
Also I do'nt get why you don't play spell snares, those are so good against many decks...

[KobeBryan]

Does anyone have any strategies to fighting The Gate. That deck is brutal. After boarding, they bring in dystopia and perish.

[BlackStarDeceiver]

Play 2 Spell Pierce and maybe 2 Misdirection in the board, just counter key spells and try to get down a fat goof or a fast Progen, otherwise it's rough, like Deadguy Ale.

[catmint]

Does anyone have any strategies to fighting The Gate. That deck is brutal. After boarding, they bring in dystopia and perish.

3 Grim Lavamancer, 2-3 Jace, scavenging ooze to remova cabal therapy and countermagic!

[TraxDaMax]

I haven't been able to test it much, but how is the Zoo match up?
Or atleast, how is it supposed to be :)

[useL]

I am going to play NO RUG next Tuesday in an important tournament with this list:

Creatures:

3 Vendilion Clique
4 Noble Hieararch
2 Dryad Arbor
1 Progenitus
1 Grim Lavamancer
4 Tarmogoyf

2 Sylvan Library
2 Lightning Bolt
4 Brainstorm
3 Mental Misstep
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Fire // Ice
4 Natural Order
3 Green Sun's Zenith

Sideboard:

1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Grim Lavamancer
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
2 Spell Pierce
4 Red Elemental Blast
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Ancient Grudge

Can I please have some sideboard tips? What to take out and bring in for some of the matchups I list here:

U/W Stoneblade
BW Aggro (stoneforge/batterskull/hymn/gatekeepers)
Merfolk
Sligh/weenie/burn-decks
Dredge
Bant (both with FoW and without it)
BigZoo
NO-decks (RUG and Bant)

Is my sideboard poorly constructed for any of these matchups? I welcome suggestions as to what to take out and replace. How do I play against a Junk-deck that runs misstep/removal/creatures with sacrifice/stoneforge-equipments that kills my dudes?

Thank you in advance from a newbie RUG-player.

[Krondo9]

Hey guys, how do you beat merfolk with NO RUG? I board in blasts and lavamancers and take out the combo. Yet I still seem to have a terrible time against merfolk. One game I kept a lavamancer, misstep, and 5 land hand, just to see how it would go, and he just happened to have the dismember for the lavamancer.

Pre-board is very tough too because I don't have the redblasts, and island-walk just wrecks me. What do you guys suggest?

[catmint]

preboard is very tough, but winable if they don't have the nut draw. Suggestions are pretty obvoius: I would not try to go for the combo primarily, try to get defensive Goyfs out early and save removal for the important lords.

Postboard is pretty favourable I think. The basic mountain in the maindeck helps a lot!
I board out 4 FoW, 3 Daze & the combo and board in 3 grim, 4 blast, 2 Jace, 2 ancient grudge (vial/jitte), 1 Scavenging Ooze.

[JimmyC27]

I board out 4 FoW, 3 Daze & the combo and board in 3 grim, 4 blast, 2 Jace, 2 ancient grudge (vial/jitte), 1 Scavenging Ooze.

What do you use the Ooze for? An extra body?

[Krondo9]

Ooze is great against aggro because not only is it another body, but it slows them down by gaining you life, while pumping him up. Merfolk has enough dudes that will die, making him pretty solid. At worst, he trades w/ a 2/2.

[Julian23]

Secured 3 Byes at the Munich GP Trial yesterday (34 people), playing Muradin's goyfless list (-1 Jace TMS -1 Relic of Progenitus in the sb, +2 Submerge)

My matchups:

1st round: GW Maverick 2-1
2nd round: NO Rug (73 card mirror) 2-0
3rd round: Elves 1-2
4th round: BW with Bob,Blossom,SFM,Hymn: 1-2 [mull to 5 on the play in game3..]
5th round: The Gate 2-0
6th round: Canadian Threshold 2-0

At 4-2 I sneak into the top8 in 7th place.

1/4 Final: GBW Ramp with Veteran Explorer, Recurring Nightmare, Deed etc. 2-0
1/2 Final: NO Rug (same as in swiss) 1-2 but he scoops because he's not sure about going to Amsterdam.

Top8 consisted of: 2x NO Rug, GBW Ramp, 2x Maverick, Elves, Muradin playing High Tide and something I don't recall.


The deck seems awesomely strong if you don't fail to evaluate your role in a given matchup (aggro/control, control or mainly rely on the combo). Never really missed those Goyfs at all. One could argue for 1x Goyf as a potential GSZ "beef" target but Scavenging Ooze seems like the better pick here, outclassing other goyfs and being way more versatile in general. Also, Submerge really shone as a sb card and I'm considering going up to 3 here.

[catmint]

Where can I find this goyfless list?

Thanks!

[jeanbathez]

Secured 3 Byes at the Munich GP Trial yesterday (34 people), playing Muradin's goyfless list (-1 Jace TMS -1 Relic of Progenitus in the sb, +2 Submerge)


Gratz for the byes !!!
I must admit i'am also interested in that list, still tuning mine, so if you don't mind....?
The last time i played against GBW Ramp i had some problems, in 1 game he deeded away my progenitus....but at this/until that point i don't know what the to hell was playing...

[PhanTom_lt]

I won a local GPT using a minor MD modification of Jona's list, not cutting down on goyfs, but squeezing in a Terravore anyway. Terravore was really good in the Maverick matchup, but the postboard game was very well handled by Jace.

[Krondo9]

When do you guys choose to bring in jace? And do you run 2 or 3? I generally bring in Jace in the matchups where combo gets wrecked. i.e., Junk/Deadguy, Team America, Merfolk. Are there other matchups where you guys think it is good to bring in Jace? I usually dont keep both of them in at the same time because it gives us way too many 4-drops.

[Asthereal]

I personally think this deck will get a serious hit from the banning of Misstep.
What should one do about this?
4 Daze and 3 Spell Snare?
Different deck?

[Muradin]

While I personally think that both, printing and banning Mental Misstep was a mistake by WotC, this is my goyfless list.

4 Wooded Foothills
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Scalding Tarn
4 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island
2 Taiga
2 Dryad Arbor

4 Noble Hierarch
1 Scavenging Ooze
4 Vendilion Clique
3 Grim Lavamancer
1 Progenitus

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep
1 Ponder
2 Sylvan Library
4 Natural Order
3 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Lightning Bolt
3 Fire/ice

Sideboard:
4 Blasts
2 Spell Pierce
2 Jace, TMS
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Kitchen Finks
3 Submerge

Julian 23 is probably right about Submerge, probably belongs in the board even though I don't like it.

As of replacing MM... we will need Spell snare to fight against Goyf + Counterbalance + Stoneforge Mystic again for sure. We can't run the deck and just replace MM with SS, but for me thats the card that has to take its place in a similar shell. SS is much stronger now again with CB back and MM out of the format.

@Julian: Congratz on winning the byes, you're a nice guy and we came to the conclusion that conceeding to you was the right decission.

[Final Fortune]

I don't think we can keep the mana open for Spell Snare given our curve, Daze is probably the lesser of all evils altho' Misdirection might be worth a slot or two as well.

[keys]

I'm just going to replace MM with 2 Spell Pierces and an extra Daze/Ponder. Works for me.

[TraxDaMax]

Are we able to play CB ourselves?

[esqulax]

I'm just going to replace MM with 2 Spell Pierces and an extra Daze/Ponder. Works for me.

Seems like the best option in theory.

I was just wondering if the mainboard Jaces are still worth it now that the format will be faster? Same with Sylvan Library actually.

Edit:

Also since I am expecting a rise in the number of tribal and dredge decks I am definitely upping my MB number of lavamancers.

[JJ_JKidd]

Seems like the best option in theory.

I was just wondering if the mainboard Jaces are still worth it now that the format will be faster? Same with Sylvan Library actually.

Edit:

Also since I am expecting a rise in the number of tribal and dredge decks I am definitely upping my MB number of lavamancers.

If the format becomes faster, why not bring back those Chain Lightnings instead? But that would depend if the local meta is infested with Zoo.....

[Haakon]

I don't think spell pierce is a good counter for the deck. Other than combo MU, it's useless to protect pur strategy.

Mental misstep has never been vital for NO RUG: mainly, it was a contrast against other missteps and a little help against combo and fast starts of zoo. So substitute it with something else makes no sense, IMHO.

If you remember this deck was seen the first time at SCG Open @ Charlotte 2011/05/01, piloted by David Nolan (4th/211) and Reid Duke (6th/211). Those two decklist were identical (sideboard too) except for 2 cards: fire/ice instead of chain lighting:

(13 creatures other than dryads)
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Vendilion Clique
1 Progenitus

(7 draw)
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder

(7 counters)
3 Daze
4 Force of Will

(6 removals)
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Fire/Ice (or 2 Chain lightning)

(8 win conditions)
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order

(19 lands)
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Scalding Tarn
3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
1 Taiga
1 Forest
1 Island

SB: 1 Kitchen Finks
SB: 1 Terastodon
SB: 1 Pyroblast
SB: 2 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 2 Spell Pierce
SB: 1 Blue Elemental Blast
SB: 1 Flame Slash
SB: 1 Ancient Grudge
SB: 2 Krosan Grip
SB: 2 Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 1 Tormod's Crypt

So if the new metagame will not meet too much combo and eventually we'll reconsider chain lighting, I think that a good list could be still this.

[esqulax]

Just a thought, but could Snapcaster Mage have a slot in this deck? Might be too expensive, but an extra brainstorm to shuffle prog back in the deck, an extra removal spell or an extra Natural Order if the game drags on seems decent at least.

[Razorwynd]

I am pretty sure grim Lavamancer is gonna have to stay in the deck to combat the anticipated rise in goblins and merfolk.

[Zunam]

I don't like the idea of having Snapcaster Mage in this deck.

There is no single slot in the list that I feel would be better occupied with the Mage.
What would you could to not weaken relevant matchups plus he is not not fetchable with Zenith.

Yes I know that Clique is also not fetchable with Zenith but it does at least protect the combo and is actively disrupting the opponent.

I still thinkt that Snapcaster Mage is a good card an will see play but I cannot imagine seeing it a lot in this kind of deck.

[Krondo9]

Im running a list very similar to David Nolans. I am running lavamancer on the board, and I think Ponder replaces Sylvan Library very nicely, as well as fixes our land drops too. Lightning Bolt is signficantly better than Fire/ice now with misstep gone. I dont really see why he runs krosan grips on the board, as I am only running 2 ancient grudges. I will try out the jittes as well, not sure if they are better than submerges.

[Krondo9]

After testing, I feel like Jitte may be too slow. I think I might just go with 2 submerge instead, since those are free spells and instant speed. When we take out the Combo, we are a tempo deck, and Submerge does that job well.

[jeppeapan]

Alright, so how do you guys believe the new changes are gonna affect norug? How bad/good is the misstep ban? Will snapcaster mage change the metagame making norug worse?

[luckme10]

Alright, so how do you guys believe the new changes are gonna affect norug?
Consensus believes that the more agro based power level of NO Bant will take no rug's place.


How bad/good is the misstep ban?
pretty bad. no misstep =less blue and no rug preys on a predominantly blue metagame.


Will snapcaster mage change the metagame making norug worse?
No rug will probably be worse, but I wouldn't blame snapcaster mage. Stay tuned for the next episode of Nightline.

[Theonlyone]

How's the Match-up against storm combo without mental misstep? Is it terrible?

[catmint]

The matchup is worse, but not terrible. Depending on which storm deck it is and the SKILL of the player, I think the matchup is even to slightly unfavourable.

I would run 4 v-clique to play them consistently on turn 2 for a clock and disruption. Side out NO and use spell pierce/counterspell/red-blast/Daze to trade some cards with them. That has to buy enough time for the aggro win. Scavenging ooze can come in to clear out the GY for cabal ritual or past in flames (if you have nothing better to do with your mana).

[catmint]

The matchup is worse, but not terrible. Depending on which storm deck it is and the SKILL of the player, I think the matchup is even to slightly unfavourable.

I would run 4 v-clique to play them consistently on turn 2 for a clock and disruption. Side out NO and use spell pierce/counterspell/red-blast/Daze to trade some cards with them. That has to buy enough time for the aggro win. Scavenging ooze can come in to clear out the GY for cabal ritual or past in flames (if you have nothing better to do with your mana).

[Krondo9]

I would never side out the combo vs. Storm. There are much useless cards to side out, such as lightning bolt. If you NO for terastodon, storm basically loses. Hitting their 3 lands is so powerful. If its ANT, their only out is chain of vapor for the elephant. Likewise, Tide needs snap. Generally, these decks most likely think that you're just getting prog, but when you get terastodon it is game over for them.

I strongly recommend the guy, although I'm also curious as to how this deck will do overall in the new faster meta.

[Julian23]

I recommend siding out NO+Progenitus vs. Storm. It's just too slow and requires tapping out. Especially the fact about tapping out is something that's really bad while you're trying to represent Clique, Blasts and Spell Pierces.

I'd much rather have Lightning Bolt+Fire/Ice (especially Ice) against Storm, althought I'm going to side out Lavamancers here. Still, turn2 Vendilion Clique is your gameplan here and your best bet of beating storm + Burning them out for the last points of damage. Also, having Bolt in your decks makes it much harder for them to determine whether they can wait for one more turn or should be going for a risky move.

Also, and this is big: Keeping Bolt+Fire/Ice also gives you a lot more EV against decks that are likely to be boarding Xantid Swarm or Dark Confidant. In fact, I wouldnt side those cards against NO Rug but will if I see they didn't side out NO.

[Final Fortune]

How's the Match-up against storm combo without mental misstep? Is it terrible?

It's even to slightly unfavorable MD, but I think you'll be slightly favorable after SBing if you SB out Natural Order/Progenitus for Red Elemental Blasts and target their cantrips or Diminishing Returns (in the case of TES). A full set of Daze and Vendilion Clique will make all the difference, be certain to Daze any Duress or cantrip they "hang" and bring a weighted coin ;)

Don't SB out Lightning Bolt, that's completely stupid for obvious reasons i.e. Ad Nauseam math and SB Xantid Swarms.

[beebles]

Sooo post rotation I am thinking something like:

4 Noble Hiearch
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Scavenging Ooze
3 Snapcaster
3 Vendillion Clique
1 Progenitus

4 Lightning Bolt
1 Chain Lightning
4 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Daze
1 Spell Snare
1 Spell Pierce
3 Force of Will
4 Natural Order

4 Rainforest
4 Foothills
4 Trop
3 Volcanic
1 Taiga
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Arbor

I could almost see going like 3 Goy 2 ooze or even 2 Goyf 3 Ooze if snapcaster is going to dominate the metagame. Got to zap those swords to plowshares and brainstorms before they get flashed back. I have rarely been mana screwed with 19 lands, and things will get much easier now that you do not have to sweat when you draw a 1 land, 1 hiearch hand or a 1 land 1 GSZ hand, praying you don't get missteped.

[metamet]

Mark Hinsz wrote an article on GSZ targets. As NO RUG ought to be running GSZ, I figure there may be some value in the potential targets he points out.

Exploring Green Sun’s Zenith in Legacy (http://www.quietspeculation.com/2011/10/exploring-green-sun%e2%80%99s-zenith-in-legacy/)

Thoughts?

I ran Scavenging Ooze this past weekend. I love that card.

[Adan]

NO RUG Top8'ed Ovino6 Milano last weekend and finished 8 out of ~400 ppl:

1 Progenitus

4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
2 Spell Pierce
4 Force of Will
3 Vendilion Clique
2 Fire//Ice

3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Sylvan Library
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Scavenging Ooze

1 Dryad Arbor
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Mountain
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Taiga
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island
3 Wooded Foothills

2 Grim Lavamancer
4 Lightning Bolt

#########
Sideboard
#########

2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Submerge
2 Magus Of the Moon
2 Jace, the mind Sculptor
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Jitte
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Krosan Grip
1 Surgical Extraction

While I still can't imagine how he made it through all the Springtides without the full set of REBs, I still seems to be absolutely viable in the new metagame. Although this list lacks 3 Ponder for my taste.

[Roel]

Hey Guys,

I also tried NO R/U/G in preparation for the GP Amsterdam. I took this to the GPT (65 ppl):

4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
2 Spell Pierce

3 lightning bolt
2 Fire//Ice

4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Vendilion Clique
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Progenitus

3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order

2 Dryad Arbor
1 Forest
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island
1 Taiga


Sideboard

4 Pyroblast
2 Grim Lavamancer
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Spell Pierce
1 Trygon Predator
1 Gaddock Teeg

Games:
2-1 vs Affinity
2-1 vs Dark Horizons (B/W/G Rock)
0-2 vs AnT
2-1 vs MUD
2-0 vs AnT
2-1 vs Affinity
ID

So, i got in the top8 we're i lost from a teammate. The list was very solid with the exception of spell pierce. I didn't cast it once the entire day. I think i will take them to the side completly and add 1 lightning bolt and 1 grim in the main.

Grim lavamancer was a powerhouse all day, burning everything in his way. He is also very good against all the Tempo ***** list around here (Holland).

Also people seem not prepared for the big green monster anymore, when i got him out almost all of my games were instant good game.

All in all it seems that NO RUG is still very viable even after the MM banning. I hope people will keep playing and improving the deck.

[Roel]

.

[esqulax]

What I really want to do with the free slots I get from cutting Jace and Misstep is go up to a full set of Bolts and goyfs and add some Grim Lavamancers main, but the problem just is that this gets me to a dangerously low count on my blue spells for FoW.

I am not sure if I should just add some fire and ice instead of the bolts to try and have some more blue cards.


Edit:
Also, I am expecting Goblins to be popular in my meta, but I am really not sure what to sideboard against them.

[Deon de Molay]

I wonder, what do people think of Snapcasters in the deck?
I've seen the list a couple of post above, but still more elaborated thoughts would be welcome.

On the one hand, the Mage provides us with virtually more countermagic/burn/zeniths (by the way, should we play 2 Arbors? I guess so). On the other hand, the deck being (correct me if I'm wrong) more or less combo oriented, maybe Snapcaster doesn't really contribute to our strategy.
Could someone share his thoughts?

Another question is need for Lavamancers. Are they really so powerful in the deck? I was thinking about replacing them with Snapcasters (allowing to use burn spells twice, therefore working in some sense as Lavamancer, but with more flexibility), but I'm pretty unexperienced with this particular deck, so I'm very interested in your opinions.

[Adan]

I don't think Snapcaster Mage belongs to this deck. He's quite underwhelming. You can flashback Lightning Bolt, Brainstorm or a countered Zenith on Dryad Arbor/Noble Hierarch.

This all costs 3-4 Mana. But for 4 Mana, you win the game. AND it does not contribute anything the the gameplan.
Grim Lavamancer is pretty okay, but for one, he's a rather underwhelming creature. He's good against Gayfolk and Maverick, but that's basically it. He's not a clock and he does not contribute to the gameplan. NO RUG also doesn't tend to have a full graveyard all the time and therefore it's hard to have guns blazing all the time. And since I love Ponder I see an ugly anti-synergy with Tarmogoyf: Sorceries are rare nowadays and you want to have a big Goyf as early as possible.
No need to mention that Ponder is great at digging for stuff and the problem of Bomb-Blank-Blank piles is very solved brilliantly by fetches and Zeniths.

This is my list that I 6-0'd out monthly Hassloch tournament with today:

4 Force of Will
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Progenitus
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Dryad Arbor
3 Ponder
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Brainstorm
4 Vendilion Clique
4 Daze
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Volcanic Island
4 Tropical Island
4 Natural Order
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Taiga
1 Island
1 Forest
1 Scavenging Ooze

SB: 1 Ancient Grudge
SB: 3 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 2 Spell Pierce
SB: 1 Krosan Grip
SB: 1 Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 1 Trygon Predator
SB: 1 Loaming Shaman
SB: 2 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1 Scavenging Ooze
SB: 2 Submerge

It's a close derivative of the Reid Duke/David Nolan-style-build. Very sterile, but it plays out very very smoothly.

I can't say a lot about the maindeck Ooze as I never had him active (well, I had. While I was facing a Sphinx of the Steel Wind. Fail.), but I think he's good as he's a kind of proxy-Goyf which you can fetch in certain occasions:

- causes random splash damage against Reanimator
- picks Bridges and DR against Dredge
- picks random spells when facing decks sporting Snapcaster
- can shrink KotR. Slowly.
- removes relevant spells to protect you from random Past in Flames-jerkoffs into your face.

This is a list where Scavenging Ooze can - in theory - be good. If you agree with me, play him. If you don't it's also fine. I simply tried him over a 4th Zenith, but after I experienced how this deck can ramp I'D say that a 4th Zenith instead of the Ooze is also a very good option since I actually want the 1st Turn accel, especially because it allows me to play Daze without an significant loss of speed.

The sideboard was good, but Spell Pierce sucks ass. I'd cut them. I'd fill the slots with a 4th REB and a 2nd Jitte/3rd Submerge ooor 2 Surgical Extractions (versatile against Dredge, Animator, Combo).
But 4 REBs are crucial. Otherwise I'd not feel safe against Spiral.
And I have no idea how you could improve the Reanimator MU. It's a tough one. And I see Reanimator being the next big thing.

[Cotes16]

hey guys,
i have been playing this deck for some months and i see a lot of people in this forum that do not consider very much one of my favourite cards : Fire//Ice!
very often i feel that this card is "very better" than lightning bolt because more or less all the creature you can kill with 3 damages can also be killed with just 2 damages...
FIRE can do the 2x1 with nice creature such as Bob, mother of runes, Tiago, Bop, Noble hierarc, vendillion, lackey and can also kill every conventional merfolk...
ICE instead can sometimes turn the race in your favor especially if you have a progenitus but you are low on life, draw you a card and it is also blue so.....
what do you think? currently my list involves a split 3/3 between fire/ice and bolts but i am planning to go 4/2...

[Adan]

hey guys,
i have been playing this deck for some months and i see a lot of people in this forum that do not consider very much one of my favourite cards : Fire//Ice!
very often i feel that this card is "very better" than lightning bolt because more or less all the creature you can kill with 3 damages can also be killed with just 2 damages...
FIRE can do the 2x1 with nice creature such as Bob, mother of runes, Tiago, Bop, Noble hierarc, vendillion, lackey and can also kill every conventional merfolk...
ICE instead can sometimes turn the race in your favor especially if you have a progenitus but you are low on life, draw you a card and it is also blue so.....
what do you think? currently my list involves a split 3/3 between fire/ice and bolts but i am planning to go 4/2...

Fire//Ice is indeed a good card, but your initial 4 Burnspells should always be 4 Bolt mainly because Lightning Bolt is easier to cast and does 3 Damage. This is crucial in matchups where removal spells are dead (i.e. combo) where you have to build up a fast clock (Goyf-/Clique Beatz with Hierarch support) and give him the coup de grace with Bolts to the dome. You get 6 Damage for 2 Mana when you have double Bolt whereas double Fire//Ice gives you 4 damage for 4 mana. Since we play Natural Order, we are used to simply win when we invest 4 Mana into something, right? ;)

I absolutely agree with you that Fire//Ice is an excellent card, but 2 Mana is clunky in the early game where you have to gun down *any creature you mentioned* as soon as possible AND drop a threat during the same turn.
I had enough situations against GW where the 2 Mana requirement would have cost me the game.

My opening hand was Fetch, Dryad Arbor, 2 Hierarch, Bolt, 1 blank (don't remember, but it wasn't Daze).

So I played 1st Turn Fetch -> Taiga, Hierarch with the intention to burn his 1st Turn drop on Turn 2 AND drop my 2nd Hierarch together with Dryad Arbor.
It happened exactly that way and I ripped Natural Order for the win afterwards. I'd have been 2 turns slower if my burnspell would have been Fire//Ice.
Openers like this one happen quite often actually, so you should stick to 4 Bolts just to maintain the streamline of the deck. Although there is absolutely nothing wrong with your hype about Fire//Ice, I just can't see this going on efficiently during the earlygame if you really want to curve into Natural Order because then you might as well just ignore the creatures since Progenitus has protection from ALL OF THEM!!! (You know, right?)

The maindeck has 1 or 2 flex-slots, I played a 20th Land and the Ooze. But I do think all the other cards are mandatory. Play Fire//Ice in these flexslots, it's really good.

By the way, some people will always bring Zoo. Wild Nacatl is also a reason why you want Lightning Bolt. I'm serious, don't underestimate that kitty, it's size is big enough to cause a lot of trouble when it comes in 1st Turn.

[Vandalize]

I've been having trouble against CounterTop Thopter, because of crappy stuff like Moat (I know Vedilion Clique can fly over, but he can eat a Swords as well) and Ensnaring Bridge. Perhaps, more artifact hate in sideboard should be good.

Something like this:
Sideboard [15]
3 Ancient Grudge
2 Krosan Grip
2 Spell Pierce
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Submerge
3 Pyroblast

Has anyone had the same problem?

[Final Fortune]

I haven't noticed a significant difference between Lightning Bolt and Fire/Ice except in the Zoo and Goblin match up respectively, altho' Fire/Ice is clearly the more skill intensive card. I think the main selling point of Fire/Ice tho' is that it helps keep the blue count post board, which is pretty relevant when you're SBing out Daze

[Adan]

I've been having trouble against CounterTop Thopter, because of crappy stuff like Moat (I know Vedilion Clique can fly over, but he can eat a Swords as well) and Ensnaring Bridge. Perhaps, more artifact hate in sideboard should be good.

Something like this:
Sideboard [15]
3 Ancient Grudge
2 Krosan Grip
2 Spell Pierce
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Submerge
3 Pyroblast

Has anyone had the same problem?

I guess I'd not spend more slots for Thopters than I did. you bring in Grip, Trygon, Grudge and 3 REBs and for that you board out Ooze, 4 Bolts and a Land. At least that's what I'd do.
I don't think Thopters are a big issue. As you said, Moat can be circumvented with Clique/Trygon. And these two buddies can build a fast clock in combination with Hierarchs. So the most dangerous card (or actually the most annoying card) is Ensnaring Bridge.

But to be honest, I don't really think Thopters is a solid choice. You have to have balls and skill for it (and you/your friends/someone you know have to own a Moat which can be difficult sometimes :D ).
At least NO RUG can circumvent Counterbalance due to Zenith and Natural Order.

And I guess it's common sense that the Countertop-Engine is only active from Turn 3 on. The only spells you can lock out on your 2nd Turn are CC1. NO RUG on the other side can perform one of the most badass creatures on Turn 3. Sometimes even with multiple protection via 2nd Turn Clique, Force-Daze.

I think it's a fair matchup. I'm more concerned about Reanimator. If SPhinx of the Steel Wind can hit you once and you don't have Progenitus, you scoop. And keeping in NO and Progenitus is actually a bad idea since they have Daze and postboard Spell Pierces. AND they can still go for Blazing Archon in that case which I also won't be able to handle since I board out Lightning Bolts. I might be wrong, but REBs are more important. Countering the blue outlets/winning counterwars is important. And randomly gunning down Jin-Gitaxias' at the end of the mainphase is awesome as well.

My plan was:

- 5 Order-Prog
- 4 Bolts

+ 3 REB
+ 2 Pierce
+ 2 Crypt
+ 1 Loaming Shaman
+ 1 Ooze

Thoughts and further ideas are welcome!


I haven't noticed a significant difference between Lightning Bolt and Fire/Ice except in the Zoo and Goblin match up respectively, altho' Fire/Ice is clearly the more skill intensive card. I think the main selling point of Fire/Ice tho' is that it helps keep the blue count post board, which is pretty relevant when you're SBing out Daze

Some people will always be playing that crap, especially on a big tournament like Amsterdam. Statistically you will face situations where Fire//Ice's CC2 will cause you a lot more trouble because it feels clunky in compairison with Lightning Bolt. And you will have a few more difficulties to race some decks with Fire//Ice because it's more expansive and just deals 2 Damage, especially when you are facing any deck playing Spell Snare. I admit that the Spell Snare-argument is rather insignificant, but I have won at least 3 games where Lightning Bolts got me there before 2-3 Knight of the Reliqaries beat my face in after my Clique got killed before it could finish off the last 6 lifepoints of my opponent.

In such situations, having Lightning Bolts in your deck (or better: The possibility to dig for Lightning Bolts) wins you more situations where you would lose otherwise. Additionally, all the decks that care about Fire//Ice tend to trample on your manabase OR it does make a difference here (Gobs & Zoo for example).

I did not find the U-count problematic after I decided to roll with the quite normal NO RUG list, but the other list with 3 maindeck Lavamancers had 17 blue cards total, Progenitus not counted in. But with a list such as mine, you will always have enough Dazes or Clique's to pitch to FoW.

And on a sidenote, you never board out Daze. Maybe 1 when you are on the draw.

[Final Fortune]

Daze has been the worst card in the deck on the draw in every aggro-control match up, I don't know how you're keeping in Daze and SBing in Red Elemental Blast while keeping Force of Will stocked with pitchable cards (and I 4xPonder)

As far as Fire/Ice, I think you'll find just as many fringe arguments for Ice winning games as you will for +1 damage. Whether or not you run Lightning Bolt, Fire/Ice, Magma Jet, Punishing Fires or Dismember is really a matter of preference as they all have their own marginal utility.

[elof]

Hi!

Havn't read your tread but decided (for what it's worth) that I'll show you the list that I finished 42 at GP Amsterdam with:

4 Noble Hierarch
1 Birds of Paradise
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Knight of the Reliquary
2 Dryad Arbor
1 Progenitus
2 Snapcaster Mage
2 Vendilion Clique

3 Spell Pierce
4 Brainstorm
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Force of Will
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Swords to Plowshares

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Savannah
3 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island
1 Taiga
1 Mountain
1 Forest

SB:
1 Snapcaster Mage
2 Flusterstorm
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Terastodon
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast
3 Grim Lavamancer

My opponents: 3 byes, BUG (2-1), BUG (2-1), Hive Mind (0-2), Reanimator (2-0), Reanimator (2-0), Bant (2-1), UBR (1-2), Jund-aggro (2-1), Can thres (1-2), GW (2-0), Aggro Loam with white, no black (1-2), NO Bant (2-1), ANT (2-0), total 12-4.


It's a very greedy list and it might have needed a Tundra in the deck. I really like the 2 Oozes in the maindeck, they where better than Tarmogoyf on an average and every time that you could Sword a Knight and flashback with Snapcaster, it was really awesome. I really wanted to fit in Ponder into the deck but I couldn't find the room.

The Knight worked really well as a large threat when Tarmogoyf wasn't and it also let me use GSZ for 3. It could be replaced with a Eternal Witness.

[Cotes16]

let's reanimate the topic that seems dead!
yesterday i split the final of a small (12 people) tournament in italy...
my list was quite classic with a savannah for more white mana in order to play a quasali pridemage...
the mage can solve us problems pre side ,such as humility/dreadnought/ensnaring bridge/ecc , that make us just lose...
i made 3-1 in the swiss and in top4 i won against the guy that defeated me in the second round...
about the deck i can say that it was a bomb like usual but becuase of the fact that the savannah took the place of a dryad arbor i have to say that it is just incorrect to play with only one of them...PLAY ALWAYS 2 DRYAD ARBOR (and 20 lands...)!!

[Adan]

quasali pridemage...
the mage can solve us problems pre side ,such as humility

No ;)


i made 3-1 in the swiss and in top4 i won against the guy that defeated me in the second round...
about the deck i can say that it was a bomb like usual but becuase of the fact that the savannah took the place of a dryad arbor i have to say that it is just incorrect to play with only one of them...PLAY ALWAYS 2 DRYAD ARBOR (and 20 lands...)!!

I absolutely agree with the 20 lands/2 Arbors. This has been very smooth to me. I think I'd try Muradin's manabase which was:

10 Fetch (4/4/2 Rainforest/Foothills/Tarn)
8 Duals (4/2/2 Tropical/Volcanic/Taiga OR 4/3/1 Trop/Volc/Taiga)
2 D.Arbor

just because basiclands were annoying all day long.

And a 4th Zenith feels correct. This way you will have virtual 8 Manaelves to start on Turn 1. This accel is important to use Daze (which is the reason why I'd try the 2nd config of duals, i.e. just 1 Taiga) without loss of speed and or blow out the 3rd Turn Order quite consequently.

In fact I've been thinking about cutting the Ooze for a 4th Zenith. But that's just me, rolling with 3 Zenith is also good.

[Cotes16]

ehm...when i wrote "humility" i meant moat...:tongue:

[renohawj]

I'm thinking about playing something like this for Worlds. I am not sure how good punishing fire combo would be in NO RUG but I think it will be good due to the fact that the meta has shifted to some type of tempo deck, particulary RUG with snapcaster mage and delver of secrets or U/W blade. I figure, have a repeatible souce of burn on their tempo win condition should do it. The weird fetch land configuration is to avoid surgical extraction. Let me know what you guys think.



4 Noble Hierarch

3 Vendilion Clique

4 Tarmogoyf

1 Progenitus

1 Scavenging Ooze



4 Natural Order

3 Green Sun's Zenith

4 Brainstorm

4 Lightning Bolt

1 Ponder

4 Force of Will

4 Daze

3 punishing fire



2 Misty Rainforest

2 Wooded Foothills

2 Verdant Catacombs

2 scalding tarns

3 Tropical Island

3 Volcanic Island

4 Grove of the burnwillows

2 Dryad Arbor



Sideboard

3 Submerge

2 Red Elemental Blast

2 Pyroblast

3 Surgical Extraction

1 Qasali Pridemage

2 Umezawa's Jitte

1 Trygon Predator

1 Ancient Grudge

[Asthereal]

Last sunday I played NO RUG at the Dutch Nationals of Legacy (145 people).
I went 5-2-1, having played at table 5 or better during all of the last 6 rounds.

What happened:
1. Burn, won 2-1 after my opponent kindly made some small errors.
2. Naya Zoo, won 2-1. Game 1 Pro was too late, games 2 and 3 he was in time.
3. TempoThresh, won 2-1. Boarding out the combo was techy.
4. SemiTempo UGR, won 2-0. Again Goyfs ride to victory.
5. Burn again :-(, lost 0-2. No counterspells for me...
6. CounterThopter, won 2-0. Little luck needed here, Ancient Grudge kills two Shackles!
7. EsperBlade, 1-1-1 draw. Won the first on Pro, lost the second because he got control, last one I couldn't kill him quickly enough and he was too controllishly oriented to kill me quickly.
8. EsperBlade again, 0-2 loss. Too bad, a win would have given me a top-8 spot, but my opponent drew very well and killed me twice, no chance whatsoever. This guy actually won the title, so that gave me some consolation.

The list:
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Vendilion Clique
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Progenitus

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder!!
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Natural Order
3 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Fire // Ice
3 Lightning Bolt

1 Island
1 Forest
3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
1 Taiga
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Scalding Tarn /18

Side:
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Pyroblast
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Trygon Predator
3 Tormod's Crypt
1 Mountain /15

Conclusion:
1. The deck works quite well
2. I loved the Ponders. Drawing what you wnat is rather important in a deck like this.
3. Sideboard Mountain was awkward. Sided it in almost every round, but not sure whether I needed it.
4. Needed more counterspells versus Burn. Also a Scavenging Ooze would have been nice.
5. EsperBlade is a bitch, what does one do against that matchup??

I think if I played it again, I would change only the sideboard, using these:
3 Grim Lavamancer
3 Pyroblast
3 Spell Pierce
1 Vithian Renegades (seems better than the Trygon)
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Scavenging Ooze /15

Who still plays this, and who has advise on improving my list?
Also I have no real clue how to sideboard. :-P

[Asthereal]

No one here interested in discussing this deck anymore? It's still a very strong deck:
A friend of mine went top-8 twice in a row since Misstep was banned, and reached day two at GP Amsterdam. My first attempt almost got me into top-8 as well.

[Einherjer]

Its just normal for the people nowadays to drop a deck thats not up to date anymore. Thats netdecking, if you just play what the "pros" do.

Even though I dont play this deck I think its a good deck, even though it was stronger during the MM-era but its still good.

Greetings

[dsck]

Against uwb blade you need jaces, ancient grudges and rebs/pyros from the sb. Only thing you can lose to is Elspeth.

Kitchen finks and ooze might be doable plan against burn.

[Asthereal]

Thanks. :smile:
Actually I thought netdecking was something people would do in tournaments, not on a forum. Funny thing is: discussions stopped right after Misstep was banned, so aparently no one really tried NO RUG after the banning. Oh well, I shall prove them wrong! :tongue:

So suggestion is to include Jace TMS to my sideboard. I actually added Empyrial Archangel to my side as a NO target against Burn now. List looks as follows now:

Main:
1 Island
1 Forest
3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
1 Taiga
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Wooded Foothills
2 Scalding Tarn /18

4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Vendilion Clique
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Vithian Renegades
1 Progenitus /14

4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Fire // Ice /28

Sideboard:
1 Empyrial Archangel
2 Ancient Grudge
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Spell Pierce
3 Pyroblast
3 Grim Lavamancer /15

What should I cut for two Jace TMS's?

[dsck]

Maybe shave pierces and mancers to 2 each? I'd also try to fit Sylvan Library somewhere in the 75.

I dont know how well this deck does against tempo thresh, that may be why it sees so little play currently.

[Asthereal]

In my last tourney I won both matches against Tempo Threshold. One was a normal list with Delvers, the other was more controllish with Jaces and some Snapcasters.
Taking out the NOPRO plan and just playing with Goyfs and protection worked fine for me.

I think I did -4 Order, -1 Progenitus, -1 Clique, -1 Dryad Arbor, +4 Pyroblast, +3 Lavamancer. In the new list that would be +3 Pyroblast, +2 Lavamancer, +2 Jace, I guess.

I was thinking about cutting a Spell Pierce and a Surgical Extraction, but then I'm pretty sure of losing against Dredge. Don't see too much Tribal anymore these days. Perhaps as you say I'd better cut a Lavaman then. :smile:

[Final Fortune]

I think the Daze/Lightning Bolt version of this deck is still tier 1 regardless, if anything the SFM and RUG Tempo match ups are going to come down to how many REB and Pyro you're SBing considering the utility of those cards have increased relative to the inclusion of Snap Caster and Delver respectively.

The more problems you're having with those match ups, the more REB/Pyro you include.

[Tombstalker]

Why has such a great archetype suddenly fallen off the grid? I am considering building NO RUG but first I'd like to know why this deck suddenly disappeared. Is tempo thresh such a poor match up as previously suggested or is it something else? Anyone with some insight I'd appreciate your input. Thanks.

[Hanni]

It's the not the flavor of the month. It's still a good deck.

[Jonathan Alexander]

Why would you want to play this? I'd imagine it should be good against Nic Fit (but I don't think that's a deck in the US), it's definitely good against Stoneblade, but it's likely really bad against Can Thresh, especially those Snapcaster lists which are played in the SCG Open circuit. It's also decent against Maverick, thanks to Punishing Fire being really slow. Without Mental Misstep, I don't it's too strong against Storm; especially DDFT is an important deck over here in Germany. Dredge is also not too good of a matchup as it seems.

All in all, it's good, yeah, but I don't see a metagame where this is be the best deck. If you're looking for a list, this is what I've been working on recently:

1 Dryad Arbor
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Progenitus
3 Tarmogoyf
2 Terravore
3 Vendilion Clique
1 Sylvan Library
4 Brainstorm
1 Daze
1 Fire // Ice
3 Flusterstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Misdirection
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Taiga
4 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
4 Wooded Foothills

For the sideboard, not sure. I'd definitely want play some Scavenging Oozes and some Submerges. Other than that, Dispel and Red Blasts are options, maybe Magma Spray against Nic Fit, probably some Sudden Shocks to get rid of hatebears out of Maverick and Stoneblade. Not too sure about that.

[catmint]

I was also thinking about it again, because having NO you don't have to worry too much about Maverick, Burn/Zoo/Sligh (Empyrial Archangel)

"Not beeing flavour of the month" aka
- not abusing Delver or Snapcaster which really made an impact on legacy
- naturally weak to Stifle/Daze/Wasteland RUG, which is very popular

[Holden1669]

Reid Duke had a video deck tech with NO RUG here:
http://starcitygames.com/events/coverage/deck_tech_no_rug_with_reid_duk.html

I believe his list is:

1 Forest
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Taiga
4 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
4 Wooded Foothills
19 lands

1 Dryad Arbor
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Tarmogoyf
4 Vendilion Clique
1 Progenitus
13 creatures

4 Brainstorm
1 Forked Bolt
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Ponder
3 Daze
1 Sylvan Library
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Natural Order
4 Force of Will
28 other spells

Sideboard
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Sylvan Library
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
15 sideboard cards

I like this list a lot and am going to try it out. I may put a scavenging ooze in the board in place of one relic as a GSZ target, but other that I like it a lot.

[Borealis]

Yup, I also just got the bug to try this deck out too. I think it's well positioned again, at least based on the inbred meta we've been seeing on SCG's circuit. When everyone is busy fighting each other's small creatures and equipment, Progenitus cleans up pretty quick if you can defend him properly. Just watch out for Innocent Bloods if you're playing against a Spagnolo list, seems like that could be a potentially dismal matchup.

I do agree that a Scavenging Ooze should find it's way into the deck. I'd actually consider cutting a Clique or 2 for them, but I understand why Reid ran the full 4 (Clique into NO is almost always a safe win).

So aside from needing like 4 NO and 3 Jace, I might give this deck a shot. Resolving Progenitus sure seems like a truckload of fun!

[wcm8]

It seems to me like this deck could be an easy solution to Maverick. It seems like it'd be pretty easy to accelerate into a turn 3 Natural Order and race them out of the game, as they don't run any maindeck solutions to Progenitus that I'm aware of (most lists have been dropping Aven Mindcensor, and Grafdigger's cage in the SB isn't extremely popular at the moment). Then against opposing blue decks you just SB out the Natural Order package and play it like a more standard aggro-control deck.

edit: I think Empyrial Archangel could be a decent 1-of in the SB to deal with Burn and some other matchups where racing with Progenitus isn't a sure bet.

[BKclassic]

I've been doing some experimenting with NO RUG on MODO and here are some thoughts I've had:

-Reid Duke's list wrecks Esper control decks and is favorable against almost any deck not running Wasteland.
-The Maverick match up isn't as good one would hope. Good Maverick players are all running 4 Wasteland now and Thalia is a huge beating when backed up by Mother of Runes and Knight of the Reliquary. Aven Mindscensor, Gaddock Teeg and Umezawa's Jitte are also pretty solid against us as well. This is a problem if you consider the Tier 1 decks to be Esper, Maverick and RUG tempo, as we lose to 2/3 of those decks.
-I've been trying to think of a way to improve our matchups against Tier 1 decks. I experimented with a build based on Muradin's Goyfless list, and having 3 maindeck Grim Lavamancer was definitey good, but I missed Tarmogoyf, and there isn't really room for both and enough blue spells to support Force of Will. So one thing I am experimenting with now is a black splash, because Darkblast answers a lot of problems that Grim Lavamancer would, but without summoning sickness. You can also kill Gaddock Teeg by playing Darkblast during your upkeep and playing it again after dredging. An additional Darkblast in the Board and Nihil Spellbombs along with Kitchen Finks and Thrun would theoretically give you a chance against RUG tempo.

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea

3 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
1 Island
1 Forest
2 Dryad Arbor

1 Dryad Arbor
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Tarmogoyf
4 Vendilion Clique
1 Progenitus

3 Ghastly Demise
1 Darkblast
1 Diabolic Edict

4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
3 Daze
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Force of Will

1 Sylvan Library
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order

SB
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Krosan Grip
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Kitchen Finks
1 Darkblast
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Trygon Predator
1 Pithing Needle

I am not saying this version is better than the typical red splash, but the deck is going to need some kind of innovation to have more game against Maverick and RUG Tempo decks.

[Borealis]

Except you essentially just replaced Lightning Bolt with the same exact card, only slightly more conditional. Bolt doesn't kill KOTR, but if they are resolving a KOTR you should be resolving NO. Reid's deck (and NO RUG in general) is streamlined to protect the combo and clear the path of problem creatures. Forked Bolt is similar to Darkblast, and if you really wanted to you could run another 1-2 in the board. Burn also can turn your Progen clock into a 1-turn swing after enough fetches and Exalted beats.

In my experience testing Junk against NO RUG, Wasteland was not enough to stop the combo, even when backed by thoughtseize and Hymn. I think Maverick is a bit more reactive in its answers, but they certainly still have the tools to stop your combo if they play it out right. But if their entire plan A is trying to disrupt your combo, they can't focus on their beatdown plan, which means you can sometimes just get there with Goyfs, Cliques, and Reach.

If you really want to shore up the Maverick matchup you can just run a few Grim Lavamancers in the board rather than splashing black. They can't kill all your 1-drops.

[Jonathan Alexander]

If you really want to shore up the Maverick matchup you can just run a few Grim Lavamancers in the board rather than splashing black. They can't kill all your 1-drops.

Excep they actually can, given they run Punishing Fire or Jitte. Still, in my experience Maverick has always been an easy matchup, you just need to mulligan into turn 3/4 Natural Order - with enough cantrips you rarely need to go below six cards in order to get that. Still, the matchup I worry about is Canadian Threshold, and I'd be grateful for a solution. I'm going to jam a few games with my team tomorrow, and this is one of the decks I'm looking to work on.

[Goddik]

In my experience playing Maverick against NoRUG the matchups seems slightly unfavourable from the RUG side. The problem is that they have quite alot of disruption and can easily race progenitus if he turns up too late to the party. t1 mana accelerant seemed incredibly important on both sides of the table (i.e. if your opponent has it and you dont its uphill)

[Einherjer]

I have a pretty self-built list without force but with Daze,Snare and Pierce and with Punishing Fire and I do not have any problem with Maverick - I can even control them out with Pfire and at the end I play a NO and win...

Still the Canadian-MU isnt good :/

[Raviv]

what about playing delver in this deck?

NO and GSZ are flipping delver and the exalted clique + burn part of the deck also wins you the game so often without ever casting NO. delver should fit in this part perfectly. and its blue and this deck always had problems with the u count. maybe some of the tarmogoyfs should be cut for the delvers. in a world of gigantic knights and batterskulls, tarmogoyf often does not do much anymore.

[Sygg_River_Landlord]

Cutting tarmogoyf for a non-green creature would not be a good plan as it's even more important to have a creature available to sac to natural order, and tarmogofy is the most resilient of these, especially against RUG Tempo, which I've found to be an even more difficult matchup than maverick. In my experience the RUG matchup comes down to protecting our mana, since after the initial few turns we simply go bigger than them and have more goyfs because of GSZ. In an attempt to survive the first few turns with lands in play I've cut a clique for another basic land (I chose mountain to be able to bolt delver more easily but an island or forest would be a valid choice). Also submerge out of the board helps both the RUG and Maverick matchups, but my primary concern is keeping lands in play against these two decks.

[Asthereal]

Right now I am trying two things:
1. Two Intuitions to make sure I find Natural Order in time.
2. Sideboard Gut Shots to kill Thalia's, Mindcensors, Mothers of Runes, Delvers, Cliques, Lavamancers and win Goyf wars.
Both are not bad so far.

My current list is this:

Creatures:
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Vendilion Clique
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Progenitus /13

Spells:
4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
2 Intuition
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Fire // Ice
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order /29

Lands:
3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
1 Taiga
1 Island
1 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Wooded Foothills
2 Scalding Tarn /18

Sideboard:
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Fire // Ice
3 Gut Shot
3 Pyroblast
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Kitchen Finks /15

What do you guys think?

[Sygg_River_Landlord]

I like the Gutshots, I think I'll try them out. I don't like the Inuitions though, I think you're better off with Jace or Sylvan Library. Intuition is a bit clunky in this deck, and if they manage to counter the natural order you're down to one left to draw, and you really want to be casting clique on turn 2/3 anyway. sylvan may take up the same turn that clique might but it can help you find your orders and provide an advantage throughout the entire rest of the game. Jace is Jace, he just wins.

edit: Explanation

[Asthereal]

True, and against decks that counter a lot, Intuition will go out. That's for sure. I am trying it mainly because the Maverick matchup depends greatly on resolving Order, and you have to find and play it before turn 5 to be able to surely win. But so far I have also used Intuition to find a greatly needed Force of Will and have pitched it to Forces already in hand, where Sylvan Library would have been rather greenish. :tongue: Perhaps Intuition is not that brilliant, but it's only a two-of, it's blue and it does help out a lot from time to time. It also enables me to side in only one Ancient Grudge and still find it.

The idea about Intuitions main and Gut Shots side is to improve the Maverick matchup so much that I can hardly lose those games anymore. That deck has become so popular, that I needed to make sure I have a strong game against them.

Against RUG Tempo Gut Shots are also quite okay, killing Delver and winning Goyf battles. Siding the combo out and going for 'who has the most Goyfs' works pretty well, so we need to make sure that strategy is optimally supported. Next to that REB's counter their sideboard cards (Submerge, Mind Harness), so we should look good in that matchup as well.

[Borealis]

I think I would play forked bolt or fire/ice over gut shot. Forked bolt will almost always be a 2 for 1 in the relevant matchups, and is much more useful in the lategame. It also can still take out a flipped delver or new scavenging ooze, and can make goyf wars very favorable with the help of exalted. Worst case its a shock to help close out the game Overall I just think forked bolt is better and protects us more effectively.

[Asthereal]

Yes, Forked Bolt does more than Gut Shot.
But Gut Shot costs zero mana and is instant, so it never ever slows you down. In the matchup where I have it for (Maverick), it is extremely important to resolve Natural Order turn 4 latest. I wouldn't want to wast too much time dealing with their team. But Forked Bolt is also on the list for testing. Fire // Ice required two mana. I would never consider playing that as more than a 3-of. I mainly have it because it is blue and so FoW-pitchable.

[ceustice]

This isn't a constructive post but I'd just like to express how much I miss this deck being a legit threat out in the format.

[catmint]

oh yes me too... find me a good deck playing 7-8 mana accelleration slots and 3-4 vendilion clique and I will play it. :)

[Piceli89]

oh yes me too... find me a good deck playing 7-8 mana accelleration slots and 3-4 vendilion clique and I will play it. :)

If you're good with 4 Noble Hierarchs and 3 Vendilions, Roberto Sartini's "Robin" (UGR Cascade Advantage) may suit you. Very resilient, different CA parallel plans and fun to play, quite fresh.
(Btw how's goin' Fuchs, remember me?)

[catmint]

Thanks - that's why I am posted in this thread. :laugh:http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24739-Waterfalls-(RUG-Cascade!)/page3

phu no idea... Are you maybe the guy you kicked my ass with UBr Past in Tendrils in Milano? :)

[ryscott85]

This isn't a constructive post but I'd just like to express how much I miss this deck being a legit threat out in the format.

This is my favorite deck! I know this forum is pretty dead since missetp's banning. How could we make this deck a legitimate threat again? A third turn 10/10 is still pretty sick... 1oth isn't bad, but it isn't top 8!

[kiblast]

How come no one is playing this deck when NO itself wrecks BGx and UWx Blade (they respectively have 2-3 liliana and 1 Supreme Verdict as their only outs)? Also this deck has the huge possibility of playing a couple of Grim Lavamancer md which are super good right now. You play a lot of counterpells and you can easily fit 3 Jtms backed with 3 Cliques vs. Miracles. Cmon someone pick up this deck!

[The Treefolk Master]

How come no one is playing this deck when NO itself wrecks BGx and UWx Blade (they respectively have 2-3 liliana and 1 Supreme Verdict as their only outs)? Also this deck has the huge possibility of playing a couple of Grim Lavamancer md which are super good right now. You play a lot of counterpells and you can easily fit 3 Jtms backed with 3 Cliques vs. Miracles. Cmon someone pick up this deck!

Do you have any lists to suggest?

[Asthereal]

Before Jund went nuts, but after Maverick had already stopped being so popular, I picked this deck up and decided white was the better splash for the meta. I played a medium sized tourney (100 people or so) and went 4-2-1 with several moments of pretty bad luck.
In the current meta, I think red is the better splash, and NO RUG is just a very dangerous deck, so I think it's definitely a good idea to try it out again.

What list would you suggest?

[Einherjer]

I have been thinking of NO-RUG too, this is what I ended up with:

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
1 Taiga
2 Dryad Arbor
3 Grim Lavamancer
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Scavenging Ooze
3 Vendilion Clique
1 Progenitus
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order
1 Ponder


What are your current lists?

[catmint]

I don't think this deck is a good idea.

Versus Jund there are certainly better combo decks.
It gets raped by RUG tempo whic his still very popular
Terminus is a deck now.
Spell Pierce is very Popular in almost every blue deck.
Supreme verdict is played.

I think for NO to make a comeback there has to be a sick green dude with an "I win" enter the battlefield or leaves the battlefield effect.

[Final Fortune]

Do you have any lists to suggest?

It'd be interesting to try it in black post DRS and A.Decay.

[Arsenal]

The thing I always liked about ProBant and NO RUG was that NOPro decks could basically operate like any UGx aggro-control deck, then all of a sudden go "10/10 Pro Everything, pass". When I played ProBant, there were many, many games where I didn't even cast Natural Order because I was simply going in on the "swing with my Exalted Clique" plan and didn't really see a need for my to pop Natural Order. You don't need to "build" your deck around NOPro, it just takes 4-5 slots that give you a different look.

[thecrav]

It'd be interesting to try it in black post DRS and A.Decay.

So basically Junk with NO-Pro in it?

[Asthereal]

My lists (untuned to current meta, so might need some changes):



NO RUG

1 Dryad Arbor
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Vendilion Clique
1 Progenitus /13

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Fire // Ice /29

3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
1 Taiga
1 Island
1 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Wooded Foothills
2 Scalding Tarn /18

Side:
3 Grim Lavamancer
1 Fire // Ice
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Spell Pierce
2 Ancient Grudge / Krosan Grip
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Surgical Extraction /15
NO BANT

1 Dryad Arbor
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Vendilion Clique
1 Progenitus /13

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
3 Spell Pierce
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order
4 Swords to Plowshares /29

3 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
1 Savannah
1 Island
1 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Windswept Heath
2 Flooded Strand /18

Side:
4 Path to Exile
1 Daze
3 Spell Snare
3 Oblivion Ring
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Surgical Extraction /15
NO BUG

1 Dryad Arbor
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Vendilion Clique
1 Progenitus /13

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
3 Spell Pierce
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order
4 Abrupt Decay /29

3 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Island
1 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Polluted Delta /18

Side:
4 Disfigure
4 Duress
1 Daze
2 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Surgical Extraction /15

[Tombstalker]

*casts reanimate*

So I just came into a set of natural orders and I'm wondering does anyone still play this deck anymore? Id love to hear about your experiences and innovations!
Id also like to try brewing a newer version of NO RUG, maybe even black over red now. Hell we might even be able to mash shardless into it.

Any NO RUG players still out there? Did the newest sweepers and griselbrand and such kill this deck?

[Asthereal]

Nothing really killed this deck. People just stopped playing it after Mental misstep got banned. But it's actually very valid. I played both PRO Bant and NO RUG after the banning of Misstep, and they performed fine. The decisive factor for me not making top-8 was my suboptimal play, and one bad matchup on a wrong moment in the tourney.

My lists haven't changed much since my last post. Only the sideboards are different. But I must say that the last three tourneys I was on Storm Combo, so I haven't touched the lists for a while. I am thinking about running the NO BUG deck in the next one. Still need to tune it a bit though.

[SirTylerGalt]

*casts reanimate*

So I just came into a set of natural orders and I'm wondering does anyone still play this deck anymore? Id love to hear about your experiences and innovations!
Id also like to try brewing a newer version of NO RUG, maybe even black over red now. Hell we might even be able to mash shardless into it.

Any NO RUG players still out there? Did the newest sweepers and griselbrand and such kill this deck?

Reid Duke played NO RUG at the last SCG Invitational. Here is the deck tech:

http://www.starcitygames.com/events/coverage/legacy_deck_tech_no_rug_with_r.html

[Asthereal]

Interesting list, that is. He plays an additional land and a pretty steep curve with seven CMC=4 cards.

He also mentiones that he sides Finks for the Canadian Threshold matchup and keeps his Natural orders, where I have a WAY different approach to that particular matchup. I always side out the combo, and add a few extra creatures and removal. My strategy is basically to just have more Tarmogoyfs than the Thresh player, and win that way. It has been a good strategy for me, but I think I'll try the extra land and keeping the Orders in. I would in that case actually up the Kitchen Finks count to three, since it's just very good against many popular decks right now.

[Tombstalker]

Ya all the high CMC cards looks clunky but then ive never played this deck. Keeping that in mind maybe this is obvious to those of you who have but why not goose over some number of goyfs to protect the combo from removal?

Also If this deck were to shift into BUG thoughtseize seems like a great compliment to clique plus decay and DRS as obvious choices (maybe a mix of hierarch and DRS since GSZ is present).

[Kich867]

Ya all the high CMC cards looks clunky but then ive never played this deck. Keeping that in mind maybe this is obvious to those of you who have but why not goose over some number of goyfs to protect the combo from removal?

Also If this deck were to shift into BUG thoughtseize seems like a great compliment to clique plus decay and DRS as obvious choices (maybe a mix of hierarch and DRS since GSZ is present).

BUG seems like the naturally better choice for the deck, giving you access to Abrupt Decay and Deathrite Shaman, as well as discard to attack combo from a different angle. I built it a bit ago without Jaces (don't own them) and it felt pretty good, would have been far more dominant with Jace however.

And in regardst o Mongoose over Goyf, Goyf is just a bigger beater. Even if he can be removed, he gives you a legitimate option to just kill your opponent without the combo, goose takes awhile to get online and is not good at playing D when you need him to.

[Tombstalker]

Fair enough on gooses defensive abilities although exalted goose sounds great, in theory.

Maybe I should move this into shardless bug but whats the thoughts on shardless agent + natural order? Obviously daze is a nonbo but I think the rest might have some merit. Consider that with 2 dryad arbors cascading into GSZ actually becomes worthwhile due to enabling the combo with protection from liliana.

Basically talking about replacing JTMS and baleful strix with NO package including GSZ, clique in place of hymn and maxing the FoW count. Instead of little cantripping stallers you get the GSZ engine +diverse targets and progenitus + the crazy card advantage inherent to shardless.

Edit- just to get a quick idea of what it would look like, something like this maybe:

4 shardless agent
3 Deathrite Shaman
3 Vendilion Clique
2 Tarmogoyf
1 Progenitus
1 noble hierarch

4 Brainstorm
4 ancestral vision

4 Force of Will
3 thoughtseize

4 Natural Order
3 Green Sun's Zenith

4 Abrupt Decay

Lands 20
9 fetches
3 Trops
3 Sea
2 Dryad Arbor
1 Bayou
1 Island
1 Forest

This deck looks like it can do some seriously broken stuff.

[SirTylerGalt]

I remember testing Goaswerfraiejen's UGB River Rock deck a while ago on Cockatrice. It's a BUG deck with tons of cool interaction as well as the NO kill. You might want to look here if you are interested: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?19683-Deck-UGB-River-Rock-(formerly-Intuition-Thresh)&p=735088&viewfull=1#post735088

I also found a NO-BUG thread while searching for the UGB River Rock thread, might be worth taking a look:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?26052-Deck-NO-BUG

[Tombstalker]

Thanks for the links you my friend rock!

[Asthereal]

The Shardless + Vision thing seems not to fit.
The lowest I got was 64 cards in the main, which is of course unplayable.
So I guess we should drop that idea.
Let me try to sum up the idea of the NO RUG deck and it's splash brothers.


SOME IMPORTANT NOTES ON NOPRO MIDRANGE DECK BUILDING:

1. U-count
In building NOPRO decks, the biggest issue I came around was the blue count for FoW. The deck just wants to play so many cards that aren't blue that FoW gets bad very quickly. But FoW is absolutely necessary to protect Natural Order and save us from opposing combo.
The general rule is we need at least 18 blue cards inclusing FoW, but I prefer 20+ for consistency. We should also keep in mind the u-count after sideboarding. Taking out 4 blue cards and putting in 4 non-blue cards makes FoW much worse, and if your u-count is really low it might even make FoW unuseable.

2. Plan B
Which is actually often plan A. This deck is mostly good because it can also just play Goyf aggro.
Remove or counter the most important opposing threats, and ride the Lhurgoyfs to victory.
Since this is often my main win, I feel it is wrong to go below 4 Goyfs (like Reid Duke did).
Yes, you can Zenith for them, but that opens you up to Submerge, Spell Pierce and costs a mana more.


CARDS WE ABSOLUTELY NEED:

Creatures:

1 Dryad Arbor (We could go up to two, but they pretty much suck in your opening hand.)
4 Noble Hierarch / Deathrite Shaman (Shaman is more versatile, but the main purpose of this slot is 'green mana dude', and Shaman needs lands in the yard to be able to create mana. If we are not playing black -Shaman's best ability- I feel Hierarch is better here.)
4 Tarmogoyf (Our main dude.)
3 Vendilion Clique (Blue, protects NOPRO, gets rid of drawn Proggie, flying+exalted is a nice clock too. Four is definitely an option, but not mandatory.)
1 Progenitus (Obviously.) /13 cards

Spells:

4 Brainstorm (Obviously. Digging for Natural Order is important. Ditching drawn Proggies and Arbors is good too.)
4 Force of Will (Best counterspell out there.)
3 Green Sun's Zenith (Functions as a Llanowar Elf if you fetch Arbor, but also gets Goyf if you need a proper beater. Key card, though three is probably the correct number since it's somewhat slow.)
4 Natural Order (Our 'unfair' way to win. There is debate -also in my head- whether Natural Order is unfair enough to create a deck around, but that's what we are doing right now, so let's just assume it is.) /15 cards

Lands:

3-4 Tropical Island (Depending on whether you want to play 18 or 19 normal lands.)
3 Volcanic / Tundra / Underground Sea
1 Taiga / Savannah / Bayou
1 Island
1 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
3-4 Wooded Foothills / Windswept Heath / Verdant Catacombs
1-2 Scalding Tarn / Flooded Strand / Polluted Delta (Many believe that fetching Dryad Arbor is so important that we should always maximize our green fetch, but I believe that the main purpose of our fetch is to stabilize our mana base, and the ability to fetch the basic Island is a big part of that, so I play the second blue fetch and only three green fetch.) /18-19 cards

These mandatory cards get us up to 13+ 15 + 18 = 46 cards, of which only 11 are blue (not counting Proggie, because who would want to exile that guy?). So we have only 14 cards to fill up the rest of the deck.


WHAT ELSE DO WE WANT?

Removal:

We would like to not die to a flipped Delver of Secrets or Aven Mindcensor or whatever other annoying dudes are out there. So we need some ways to get rid of them. White has the best creature removal there is: Swords to Plowshares. The big problem is that that's basically it. The rest is just strictly worse. Path to Exile is okay as a sideboard card, Oblivion Ring and Detention Sphere are slow as hell, so White would add 4x Swords to Plowshares to the main deck and probably leave it at that.
Red has Lightning Bolt as its best removal. Second best is Chain Lightning, though in some metas (like the current one) Forked Bolt could be as good, if not better. For a mana more we have Fire // Ice and Izzet Charm. Fire is just an expensive Forked Bolt, but it's blue, which is a very big deal in this deck. Izzet Charm has a very challenging mana cost, which scares me away from it, but I should test it some time. A while back people would sometimes also play 1-2 main deck Grim Lavamancer, but I feel that these are more sideboard material since they don't really complement the deck that much (not green for Order, not blue for FoW, doesn't protect Order itself). My choices would be: 4x Lightning Bolt and 2x Fire // Ice.
Black has an enormous range of options. Abrupt Decay seems best since it's uncounterable and removes not only creatures but also Counterbalance, Liliana of the Veil and so on. Other options could be Disfigure, Dismember, Go for the Throat, Smother, Diabolic Edict, Ghastly Demise and Maelstrom Pulse. All of these have distinct disadvantages, so I would only add a selection of these to the sideboard, and just have 4x Decay in the main.

Disruption / protection of Natural Order:

The two options that immidiately spring to mind are Daze and Spell Pierce, the most used couterspells other than Force of Will. Daze has the obvious disadvantage that it's a very soft counter. It's easy to play around. but it's free, and that's a big deal when we are trying to sevolve a CMC=4 card as soon as we can. We won't have much mana to spare. I think Daze is a necessary evil. Good news is: we are finally upping our blue count.
Spell Pierce is a better counterspell, but it has a harder time protecting Natural Order. I like to have a few of these either main deck or on side, especially since Storm Combo is a big thing in the Netherlands. In the US it might be possible to leave these out.
Black has the additional option of targeted discard. Thoughtseize seems best since it can take all dangerous cards. In a meta full of aggro I wouldn't play those, but they are an option as well. Big problem with discard spells is that they aren't blue.
Misdirection is also a fringe card that you could play. In a meta full of Jund and so on I think a few of these could work. I've never tried them in a real tournament though. But it's one to watch, since it works well with the rest of the deck. It's free, it stops counters and it sends back discard and removal spells. Very useful, though rather narrow.

Digging for the goodies:

Brainstorm by itself I feel isn't enough to be able to rely on Natural Order as a winner. The logical options here are Ponder and Sylvan Library. Ponder I feel is very very good in this deck. It helps tremendously in setting up turn three Orders: turn 1 mana dork, turn 2 Brainstorm, then fetch, then Ponder, turn 3 Natural Order with FoW backup is an option. So is turn 1 Ponder, turn 2 Brainstorm, then fetch, then play mana dude, turn 3 Natural Order with FoW backup. Of course any of these sequences can be extended to turn 4 by addingg a turn for EOT/EODraw Step Vendilion Clique.
Sylvan Library is also a good card, thoughj it of course serves a different purpose. It doesn;t really help all that well to dig for a specific card right now. It's more of a long term improvement to the card selection, and gives us card advantage against slower control decks and combo decks that don't care about our life total. I think Sylvan Library is very good, but it's not blue, so I usually don't manage to fit it in.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor is the last card I will discuss. I put it under this category of cards, but kit of course deserves a category of its own. Jace helps us dig for stuff, it's a great wincon on its own and it bounces annoying dudes so we can counter them later on. It's also blue, which is nice since Jace isn't brilliant on turn 1-3, so we can feed him to FoW early on and draw a fresh one later to seal the game for us. Disadvantages: he costs 4 mana, which is the same amount as our unfair wincon, and he doesn't complement the deck that much either, since he doesn't quickly dig, protect Order or remove early threats. But Jace is a force on his own. Jace can draw the counterspell that they needed to stop Order, and he can win the game by himself, leaving us not caring about Order anymore. I am yet to try him in the main deck, but I definitely see a place for him.


THE SIDEBOARD.

The sideboard depends strongly on your meta and how you wish to play against some of the harder matchups. I have been a fan of siding out the combo against Canadian Threshold, for instance. They disrupt my fetches and duals, and they burn my mana dudes. This often keeps me from casting Natural Order. So I take it out and add 1-2 Scavenging Ooze and some additional removal. The game then comes down to who has the most Tarmogoyfs, which is often me. It worked well so far, though there are other options as well.
We need creature removal for Maverick, Jund and heavy creature aggro. Thalia, Aven Mindcensor and their brothers need answers. Especially Mother of Runes should die, since she sort of cancels out our removal. Dark Confidant should also be killed on sight, since he draws Jund into too many discard spells and Lilianas. Remember that Lily can easily kill Progenitus if we have no proper way to stop her. And if we manage to fetch an Arbor in response to her -2 and manage to kill her with an attack, they can just play a new one the turn after.
What we basically need is: more removal, some grave hate, some hate against combo (remember the main deck usually just loses to strong ANT players!) and something against heavy control decks.

Troublesome cards are:
Dudes: Aven Mindcensor; Thalia, Guardian of Thraben; Dark Confidant; Gaddock Teeg (stops Order and Zenith); Mother of Runes; any creature that threatens to kill us. :tongue:
Spells: Liliana of the Veil; counterspells that can counter Natural Order; stuff like Ad Nauseam; Infernal Tutor; Dream Halls; Show and Tell; Enter the Infinite and so on; fringe cards like Humility; Moat; Perish.
I probably forgot quite a few cards here, so don't hesitate to suggest more!

Red:

Red has nice stuff against creatures. I like to add 2-3 Grim Lavamancer plus one or two additional burn spells. This helps a lot against dangerous creatures. Burn can also take out a Liliana if needed.
Red Elemental Blast though is the main reason to play red. Blue is always very popular and REB is just so versatile against them, taking out Delvers and Jaces, and countering FoWs and so on. Merfolk really doesn't like the NO RUG matchup since REB, burn and Lavamancers is just too much for them to handle. So REB comes in against blue midrange and control, and of course against blue combo and Merfolk. Some additional counters help against combo and perhaps control as well. Against heavy control we can take out burn spells, so we have some space to add both REB and counterspells.
Ooze is just a versatile dude that goes in against Canadian Thresh, and the Extractions supplement it against grave based strategies.

White:

For creature removal we have only Path to Exile, Submerge and bounce. Since the latter two work only temporarily if the opponent plays carefully, I highly prefer the Paths. I also like 2-3 Detention Spheres since they help against Show and Tell, next to removing troublesome non-creature permanents. Fringe use: exile a row of Empty the Warrens tokens.
To hose combo decks I like to add a few extra counterspells, usually a 4th Daze and 3rd and 4th Spell Pierce, and often one Gaddock Teeg. Against fast combo, I usually take out the combo, since it's too slow. Since I also have to take out Sowrds to Plowshares I have enough space to also add Detention Sphere and perhaps some number of Surgical Extractions.
Against control I like to add the Spheres as well. They remove troublesome permanents like planeswalkers or so. Furthermore I usually add a few counterspells, taking out the four StP.

Black:

In the black splash we have Decays in the main deck, so we don't have to fear permanents as much. Two extra Maelstrom Pulses can be nice against Jaces, Elspeths, Humilities and Moats, and help against Empty the Warrens. The creature removal package this time consists mainly of Disfigures. Since the creatures we fear are small but fast, we need fast removal that kills */2 creatures. Disfigure does a fine job there. You can also add Dismembers against bigger guys. They can also kill Mother of Runes on turn one, though at a higher cost.
The usual Ooze plus Extractions are there, supplemented by some Thoughtseizes and one or two counterspells. These are there against combo and heavy control, to either stop them from killing us or to clear the way for Natural Order.


SO WHERE DOES THIS GET US?

These are the lists as I would play them, with flex slots that can be adjusted according to your preference and meta.



Red splash: NO RUG

1 Dryad Arbor
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
3-4 Vendilion Clique
1 Progenitus /13-14

4 Brainstorm
2-4 Ponder
0-1 Sylvan Library
4 Force of Will
3-4 Daze
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order
4 Lightning Bolt
1-2 Fire // Ice
0-3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor /27-29

3-4 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
1 Taiga
1 Island
1 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Wooded Foothills
2 Scalding Tarn /18-19

Side:
2-3 Grim Lavamancer
1-2 Fire // Ice / Forked Bolt
3-4 Red Elemental Blast
1-2 Daze
2-3 Spell Pierce
2 Ancient Grudge / Krosan Grip
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Surgical Extraction /15
White splash: NOPRO BANT

1 Dryad Arbor
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
3-4 Vendilion Clique
1 Progenitus /13-14

4 Brainstorm
2-4 Ponder
0-1 Sylvan Library
4 Force of Will
3-4 Daze
0-3 Spell Pierce
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order
4 Swords to Plowshares
0-3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor /27-29

3-4 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
1 Savannah
1 Island
1 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Windswept Heath
2 Flooded Strand /18-19

Side:
3-4 Path to Exile
0-2 Rhox War Monk
0-1 Gaddock Teeg
0-1 Daze
0-2 Spell Pierce
3 Detention Sphere
1-2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Surgical Extraction /15
Black splash: NO BUG

1 Dryad Arbor
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Tarmogoyf
3-4 Vendilion Clique
1 Progenitus /13-14

4 Brainstorm
2-4 Ponder
0-1 Sylvan Library
4 Force of Will
3-4 Daze
0-3 Spell Pierce
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order
4 Abrupt Decay
0-3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor /27-29

3-4 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Island
1 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Polluted Delta /18-19

Side:
0-1 Daze
0-3 Spell Pierce
2-4 Thoughtseize
2-4 Disfigure
0-2 Dismember
2 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Surgical Extraction /15



I like all three lists about equally, and I will consider them all for every tournament I play.
(Not withstanding the fact that I own almost every relevant deck in Legacy... :tongue:)

[Tombstalker]

Holy.. that was a great post Asthereal, damn near a primer!

After further testing I agree the shardless shell isnt where this deck wants to be. Ive been testing RUG and BUG and I am pretty confident that RUG is still the more powerful version.

[Asthereal]

Played a local tourney yesterday with PRO Bant. The list is rather similar to NO RUG, only with white instead of red (see my post above). I wrote a report in the Bant thread, but it deserves a link here, because this is actually where it fits best.
You can find it here: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?16059-Deck-Bant/page61

[ShiftyKapree]

In the current meta does anyone believe NO Rug or NO Bant could make a come back?

[monovfox]

Wouldn't this deck be really strong if it just played 2x REB's in the maindeck? Liliana kinda died out (atleast enough that she isn't a big problem), and this deck can maindeck fire/ice and/or forked bolt.

[Mhenlo]

Wouldn't this deck be really strong if it just played 2x REB's in the maindeck? Liliana kinda died out (atleast enough that she isn't a big problem), and this deck can maindeck fire/ice and/or forked bolt.

problem with this deck now is all the decks this used this shell now are better with Delver of Secrets and that card does not support Natural Order

[monovfox]

problem with this deck now is all the decks this used this shell now are better with Delver of Secrets and that card does not support Natural Order

With everyone and their mother playing 69 removal spells, kind doubt it

[Mhenlo]

With everyone and their mother playing 69 removal spells, kind doubt it

So your mana dorks are much worse which makes Natural Order worse, and in this format UR Delver can still race you even if you get a 10/10 out.

[monovfox]

Hope people still believe in this deck/read this thread.

Went 2-1 at at weekly event with the following list. I beat Death and Taxes and Shardless Bug (turns out they can't deal with a resolved natural order), losing the last round to Loam Pox (yeah, literally unwinnable without a lot of luck)

I theorize Spell pierce to be better than what I could be playing in that slot, but I could be wrong. Daze in this format is decent (not amazing) against delver decks. Deathrite shaman is a major problem card when playing with daze, so bolting it immediately is important.

In retrospect the maindeck either needs a trygon predator or a scavenging ooze (I haven't quite figured out the slot for it, though daze, chain lightning and spell pierce look like prime targets with ponder as a secondary target for getting rid of). If anyone has suggestions for changes to the list I am more than happy to take them.

Out of the board you definitely need 2 ancient grudge, cage craps on you and progenitus is your best out against Shardless. I don't know if surgical extraction is worth playing, as the only thing I would bring it in for is storm and loam (and loam is a pretty shitty matchup, not sure if it's worth salvaging).

I think I want a counterspell as a generic answer in this 75, this format is awfully grindy and taxing permission isn't the greatest most of the times.

Bonfire is hilarious, you guys should play it.

3 Tarmogoyf
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Ponder
3 Daze
3 Vendilion Clique
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Force of Will
2 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 Spell Pierce
1 Chain Lightning
SB: 1 Bonfire of the Damned
SB: 1 Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 1 Ancient Grudge
SB: 2 Pyroblast
SB: 2 Relic of Progenitus
SB: 2 Surgical Extraction
SB: 1 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 1 Sylvan Library
SB: 2 Kitchen Finks
SB: 2 Grim Lavamancer

[Asthereal]

Oh this deck is definitely still playable. Eldrazi, D&T and Shardless have issues beating Progenitus, and plan B (Goyf beatdown) is often just fine. You have an acceptable combo matchup as well. Miracles will probably be a nuisance, but Jace and Sylvan Library will help there. It looks like a fine deck to play at the moment.

There is one question you want to ask yourself: what splash colour is best right now?
Red gives you Blasts, Bolts and other good removal for small guys.
White gives you strong Zenith targets and good removal for bigger guys with StP and Path.
Black gives you Deathrite, Decay and perhaps discard.

Since the basis of the deck is UG with Zenith, Hierarch, Goyf, Natural Order, cantrips and counters, you can use whatever colour you want as splash. I've played this deck with moderate success using red and white splash a few years back. I haven't tried the black splash much yet in competitive play.

Second bit of advice I'd like to give: very often plan B becomes plan A, so I'd definitely recommend you run the full set of Goyfs.

Happy Ordering! :cool:

[monovfox]

Thanks for the advice. Might I ask how you go about sideboarding for miracles and delver? I rarely play blue, so I'm pretty bad at this whole "sideboarding cards that aren't white or artifacts or dismember in and out" thing

[Asthereal]

Thanks for the advice. Might I ask how you go about sideboarding for miracles and delver? I rarely play blue, so I'm pretty bad at this whole "sideboarding cards that aren't white or artifacts or dismember in and out" thing
I'd take out all Bolts and add Blasts, threats.
On the draw I also ditch Dazes in favour of better counters.

Against Miracles you have to time your Natural Order well.
They have Terminus for it, so you don't want to overextend.
One proper threat at the time seems like the way to go.
Play your one threat and defend it. If it dies, play another.

Remember you can fetch Dryad Arbor EOT and Order the turn after. :wink:
For the rest, just play games. You'll get the hang of it.

[square_two]

I'm a bit surprised to see the lonely Progenitus as the main NO target. Back at the start of the year I had a stint of trying out Eureka Order and remember several sad games where even an early Progenitus didn't cut it. Then again, accelerating and landing either a boss Eureka (spilling out Nicol Bolas, Ugin, Terastodon, etc) or NO into Proggy was about that deck's only route to victory.

Still, Elderscale Wurm just is a giant "you can't win" against so many decks - especially a few capable of racing Progenitus such as Burn or Elves.

But then again, like I'm reading from the last couple pages, NO is simply plan B here. And there is plenty of interaction along the plan A route.

[monovfox]

It plays much more like a midrange control deck than a combo deck in some matchups. Though against loam decks you just wanna get progy out on turn 3 and hopefully your sideboard hope//pray worked

[Scott]

Well, the last time it had a lot of success was the last time that 1 CMC spells were being hated on.

[monovfox]

Well, the last time it had a lot of success was the last time that 1 CMC spells were being hated on.

Where are you going with this thought? I don't really understand what this statement by itself means.

[Scott]

Where are you going with this thought? I don't really understand what this statement by itself means.

The deck's viability was brought up. I mused that the last time it thrived was in an environment in which 1 CMC spells were taking some punishment from Mental Misstep, and 1 CMC spells are again being punished to a degree with Eldrazi.

[monovfox]

The deck's viability was brought up. I mused that the last time it thrived was in an environment in which 1 CMC spells were taking some punishment from Mental Misstep, and 1 CMC spells are again being punished to a degree with Eldrazi.

Yeah, that is true. Got some games in against eldrazi and it's favorable (I won about 60% of the games). Turn 3 Prog with blockers is usually too much. Their creatures aren't large enough to get through it, and racing it is questionable for them if w have a noble hierarch or two

[Asthereal]

Well, the last time it had a lot of success was the last time that 1 CMC spells were being hated on.
You ask yourself the wrong question.

The last time this deck was widely played, and therefor able to put up strong results consistently, was before the banning of Mental Misstep. After the ban, people just netdecked other decks. I played this deck only post-ban, and my results were good. No one has tested this deck in the current meta, but it looks good: fine looking matchups against Eldrazi, D&T, Shardless and Combo. Miracles seems tough, but I'd say in capable hands this deck could be a serious contenter.

[monovfox]

I'm wondering if Cryptic Command out of the sideboard against miracles might actually be super strong (also against shardless). Both matchups are super grindy, and I know storm occasionally runs cryptic out of the sideboard to help with miracles.

[Asthereal]

I'm wondering if Cryptic Command out of the sideboard against miracles might actually be super strong (also against shardless). Both matchups are super grindy, and I know storm occasionally runs cryptic out of the sideboard to help with miracles.
I'm not sure whether this is a deck that wants to keep UUU1 open to use in the opposing turn. Against Miracles I'd just bet on Jace, Sylvan Library, REB/Pyroblasts and the fact that we are the aggressor. Against their Jace we have blasts and Clique, and the only way they can beat a resolved Order->Progenitus is a Terminus. They already have a somewhat narrow path to victory against us. Using Jace and Sylvan Library to keep the business coming, and having some additional cards to defend our threats should get the matchup to at least 50/50. At least, in my head it does. This requires testing though.

But I'd strongly advise against using a narrow card that slows us down, doesn't win by itself and has a few perfectly fine alternatives that don't have the same disadvantages (Library is cheap, helps smooth out draws, draws extra cards if needed / Jace can win the game by himself, draw extra cards, and so on).

[monovfox]

Do people ever run 1-2 wasteland to deal with problem lands, or is the mana base too fragile

[Scott]

You ask yourself the wrong question.

The last time this deck was widely played, and therefor able to put up strong results consistently, was before the banning of Mental Misstep. After the ban, people just netdecked other decks. I played this deck only post-ban, and my results were good. No one has tested this deck in the current meta, but it looks good: fine looking matchups against Eldrazi, D&T, Shardless and Combo. Miracles seems tough, but I'd say in capable hands this deck could be a serious contenter.

I don't believe you understood me correctly.

[Asthereal]

I don't believe you understood me correctly.
Maybe not, but the simple fact is: very little people played this deck after the banning of Misstep. If no one plays the deck, it can't put up numbers. If you look at the current meta, the deck should theoretically perform quite nicely. Of course extensive testing will tell us whether it actually will, but so far no one has been willing to invest a lot of time into testing this deck in the current meta.

I personally don't own Natural Orders anymore, so all I can do is think along and explain my findings from back when I did play this deck, which was after the banning of Misstep, but still quite some time ago. I performed nicely with the deck, despite the fact that I was inexperienced with the deck and despite the fact that I am simply not the best MtG player out there. The deck felt very solid and versatile to me. If I were a better player, I'd probably have been able to squeeze a few top-8s out of my efforts.

@monovfox: Indeed the mana base is a challenge sometimes. I'd advise against adding Wastelands. Maybe in a list with Bant colours and 2-3 Knight of the Reliquary it could make sense to add a few to the 75. Karakas would also be a great help against some matchups. But outside of the Bant version, I'm guessing Wasteland would be a bad idea.

[Jonathan Alexander]

I actually really like this deck and I wish it was still good, but many things have changed since 2011.

For starters, Mental Misstep was very good in this deck, protecting your relevant creatures from removal while not being super exciting against it. There's also the fact that NO RUG was never great against combo, but combo wasn't a thing during the Misstep era. The deck was probably still good after the ban, but not after the release of Innistrad. Snapcaster Mage is an issue because control players can no feasibly aim removal at your mana creatures. Delver of Secrets made Submerge way more prevalent (this is the main reason I didn't play NO RUG in Amsterdam). Then there's Liliana of the Veil, which suddenly allows all the Sultai decks to run removal for Progenitus that's actually good. On top of all that, Storm is suddenly a deck because Past in Flames exists.

So with Innistrad alone, UW decks have gotten much better against you, UR decks have become much better, all non-combo black decks have gotten better against you and black combo decks have gotten better in general. Then comes Avacyn restored (and Dark Ascension in between for good measure) to make matters even worse: Now Counterbalance is something to worry about and the most commonly played deck maindecks four answers to Progenitus. Griselbrand makes Reanimator better and Sneak & Show becomes a deck. You have also lost a good matchup in Maverick (partially replaced by Death & Taxes, which is likely much harder to beat because Thalia, Waste, Port).

I might mess around with the deck after the GP since I still own most of the cards, but I honestly don't expect much.

[moseby]

If you are concerned about your NO sac target staying alive play dungrove elders.

[nedleeds]

In the current meta does anyone believe NO Rug or NO Bant could make a come back?

I think Innistrad especially, DRS, and printing a 3 mana progenitus that you can just cast make it tough to justify some of the old card choices.

If you built the deck as a UGx deck, red or black likely making the most sense as X you could sneak up on some decks with Natty-O. Even boarding it out when you smell Priest or Cage. There's a NO target that stones almost every internet deck

Progenitus vs. Dnt
Ruric thar vs. Combo
Elderscale vs. Merfolk, elves, burn, rug
Worldspine wurm vs. Bug
Terastadon, Dromoka, have some play vs. Miracles

Sneak attack seems rough, you have have to fight that on the stack.

[Wombo Combo]

4 Tarmogoyf
4 Abrupt Decay
2 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Ponder
3 Daze
1 Snapcaster Mage
3 Vendillion Clique
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Force of Will
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Sylvan Library
4 Brainstorm
4 Natural Order
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
4 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Island
1 Forest
1 Progenitus
1 Spell Pierce
1 Dismember

1 Toxic Deluge
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Thoughtseize
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Flusterstorm
2 Disfigure
1 Sylvan Library
1 Elderscale Wurm
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Golgari Charm

I was bored and had some fun with this on Cockatrice. I didn't get to face Miracles, but I'm not sure Jace belongs here. I never cast him. Overall it seems like an ok deck. Maybe not tier one, but you could probably take down a local with this. The best part of playing BUG colors is that all of your opponents assume you're playing Shardless. I had a Grixis player name Shardless Agent with his therapy and then I revealed Clique and NO. :smile:

[monovfox]

playing the following list at a weekly tomorrow

4 Tarmogoyf
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Daze
3 Vendilion Clique
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Force of Will
2 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 Spell Pierce
1 Chain Lightning
1 Ponder
SB: 1 Bonfire of the Damned
SB: 1 Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 1 Ancient Grudge
SB: 1 Pyroblast
SB: 2 Relic of Progenitus
SB: 1 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 1 Sylvan Library
SB: 2 Kitchen Finks
SB: 2 Grim Lavamancer
SB: 1 Trygon Predator
SB: 2 Pithing Needle


Gonna have a lot of fun. If I still find lands to be problematic I am going to HAVE to put 2 wasteland into the main.

[Asthereal]

Gonna have a lot of fun. If I still find lands to be problematic I am going to HAVE to put 2 wasteland into the main.
List looks pretty good. Have fun, and be sure to let us know how it went. :smile:

Don't focus too much on Lands. It doesn't see that much play, and you have Pithing Needle. If it's really popular in your meta, you could perhaps add Surgical Extraction or so, but try to keep the hate as versatile as possible. :wink:

[monovfox]

Went okay, 2-1, beat miracles and eldrazi and lost to a miracles player who was 1) knew what I was on before game 1 (he's my friend and saw the list beforehand) and knew my 61 and 2) I had to mulligain to 5 in game 2.

Switching the following sideboard for thursday/next week. Still deciding between spell pierce and pyroblast.

SB: 1 Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 1 Ancient Grudge
SB: 1 Pyroblast
SB: 2 Relic of Progenitus
SB: 1 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 2 Kitchen Finks
SB: 2 Grim Lavamancer
SB: 1 Pithing Needle
SB: 1 Krosan Grip
SB: 1 Bonfire of the Damned
SB: 1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
SB: 1 Spell Pierce

[monovfox]

Played at a local event tonight. Went 1-2 (due to my own misplays/bad luck).


I played against sneak and show, infect, and storm. I beat sneak and show in 3 games (dropping prog off of show and tell, which is probably the best play we can make in that matchup. Hydra > demon). I lost to infect 0-2 (I got immensely unlucky in games 1 and two, drawing 3 natural orders and a jace in game 1 and drawing prog, ruric thar, and 3 pyroblasts without any actual removal with a and of 2 brainstorm, a ponder, 2 lands, and a pyroblast). I lost to storm 1-2 when he adnaeseumed at instant speed in response to clique, when in reality I should have held force of will and clique in hand with mana to us relic of progenitus. Basically greedy play.


I think Infect is still a pretty terrible matchup. They're basically a faster version of us with a worse eldrazi and a worse shardless matchup (both matchups that are pretty good for us). I always felt in control during the games I played, regardless of outcome, and I think I'm coming to understand how to properly play blue (as where I didn't before jamming a lot of matches with this deck). Sideboard could STILL use more work, and I think I'm moving up to 2 maindeck dryad arbor, as he's just a hose when you're playing grindy matchup where you accidentally topdeck Natural Order. I also might play an elvish spirit guide in a flex spot. Someone mentioned the merits of elvish spirit guide to go for turn 2 prog, and at worst it sacrifices to natural order lategame. I might try it out come tuesday

Current sideboard
2 pyroblast
1 red elemental blast
1 krosan grip
1 ancient grudge
1 umezawa's jitte
2 kitchen finks
2 relic of progenitus
1 bonfire of the damned
2 grim lavamancer
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
1 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed


The idea of playing different natural order targets really appeals to me, so I'm going to experiment with those in the coming weeks. I'm looking for something that miracles literally cannot beat (and I'm not afraid to side in painters servant to grab griselbrand). I think in the fair game the deck is mostly fine, I really want to dedicate more sideboard hate to miracles, but it's so difficult to hate that deck out.

[Asthereal]

Cards that can help beat Miracles include:
- REB/Pyroblast
- Pithing Needle (for Top)
- Planeswalkers (Jace, Garruk Relentless, Xenagos)
- Reclamation Sage (nice Zenith target, versatile too)
- Vendilion Clique (EOT cast, then attack their Jace)

If you encounter a lot of Miracles, I'd recommend you playtest the matchup as much as you can. Too much dedicated hate in the sideboard will eventually cause you to lose other matchups, and I don't think it's necessary to dedicate a lot of slots to Miracles, since there are so many options for cards that are already good against other matchups as well.

Your latest list:
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Vendilion Clique
1 Progenitus /13

4 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
2 Spell Pierce
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order
1 Sylvan Library
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Chain Lightning /29

4 Wooded Foothills
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
1 Taiga
1 Island
1 Forest /19 (total: 61)

My suggested sideboard would be something in this order:
2 Pithing Needle
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Flusterstorm
2 Submerge
2 Grim Lavamancer
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Garruk Relentless /15 (minus one card, not sure what to cut though)

Siding against Miracles would be something like this:
-1 Chain, -4 Bolt, -3 Daze, +2 Neelde, +2 REB, +2 Fluster, +1 Sage, +1 Garruk

Hope this helps.

[monovfox]

Yeah, that really helped. I'll let you know how it goes in a couple days ^_^ ! I'm not running scavenging ooze since I think it's a bit slow/fragile for what it does.

[square_two]

I think Infect is still a pretty terrible matchup. They're basically a faster version of us with a worse eldrazi and a worse shardless matchup (both matchups that are pretty good for us). I always felt in control during the games I played, regardless of outcome, and I think I'm coming to understand how to properly play blue (as where I didn't before jamming a lot of matches with this deck). Sideboard could STILL use more work, and I think I'm moving up to 2 maindeck dryad arbor, as he's just a hose when you're playing grindy matchup where you accidentally topdeck Natural Order. I also might play an elvish spirit guide in a flex spot. Someone mentioned the merits of elvish spirit guide to go for turn 2 prog, and at worst it sacrifices to natural order lategame. I might try it out come tuesday

I talked with a RUG NO player on Sunday at GP Columbus. He was very enthusiastic about the deck, and mirrored your thoughts that Infect is a bad matchup - he said those were his main losses. He had a Hornet Queen in the side for Lands/Emrakul decks, and also a Ruric Thar for Storm, Infect, and others. He mentioned making specific sideboard slots for Infect, mainly thinking about something like Forked Bolt or Melira to help. He did have a misplay where NO into Ruric Thar would have won a match - he'd forgotten that the guy has reach.

His list had Wastelands - what are the general thoughts on those in the deck? He had Dazes, no Spell Pierces though, and said that often his opponents would put him on RUG Delver initially, and that even with 19 lands (4 of them Wastelands) and 3 Hierarchs, he felt like he flooded out often.

[monovfox]

I talked with a RUG NO player on Sunday at GP Columbus. He was very enthusiastic about the deck, and mirrored your thoughts that Infect is a bad matchup - he said those were his main losses. He had a Hornet Queen in the side for Lands/Emrakul decks, and also a Ruric Thar for Storm, Infect, and others. He mentioned making specific sideboard slots for Infect, mainly thinking about something like Forked Bolt or Melira to help. He did have a misplay where NO into Ruric Thar would have won a match - he'd forgotten that the guy has reach.

His list had Wastelands - what are the general thoughts on those in the deck? He had Dazes, no Spell Pierces though, and said that often his opponents would put him on RUG Delver initially, and that even with 19 lands (4 of them Wastelands) and 3 Hierarchs, he felt like he flooded out often.

How did he do? Did you happen to get his list? He's pretty much spot on. I've been considering wasteland but don't know where it fits in without opening the Dec up to wasteland.

I would love to talk to him

[square_two]

How did he do? Did you happen to get his list? He's pretty much spot on. I've been considering wasteland but don't know where it fits in without opening the Dec up to wasteland.

I would love to talk to him

Here was his list as I scribbled it down:

2 Dryad Arbor (he was adamant about 2)
3 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Progenitus

4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Natural Order
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Fire//Ice
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Forest
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
1 Taiga
4 Wasteland

side:
1 Hornet Queen
1 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
2 Pithing Needle
2 Pyrostatic Pillar
2 Pyroblast
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Krosan Grip
1 Firespout
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Empyrial Archangel
1 ?

He said he wanted to make room for a second Clique main, as well as adding some Git Probes. Talked about maybe the Probes looking odd, but having early hand knowledge could really help with early sequencing as well as knowing what to counter. Daze was most sided out (not surprisingly).

For the side, he said he liked everything from Hornet Queen down to Krosan Grip. The last few would be replaced by Engineered Explosives, Tormod's Crypts, Forked Bolt, and possibly Melira. The Explosives and Crypts would better grow the Goyfs.

That's all I have. I don't know how he did in the main event, but judging from him playing a friend of mine in the last round of the sunday super series, he might have been 5-3 in that. Yeah I wish he would drop by.

[monovfox]

I'm definitely on the same wavelength as him when it comes to arbor. I think 3 clique is necessary, and I think he's starting to realize that

In his fire//ice slots I have a ponder and a top. In his Jace slots I have a lavamancer and a jace.

[wcm8]

While I suppose Melira would be a fairly definitive answer to Infect, another option ya'll could consider that isn't quite so narrow and has more application (and is also more easily GSZ'able) is Granger Guildmage. The guy provides a pseudo-Grim Lavamancer effect and is particularly excellent against any deck running 1-toughness creatures (DNT, Elves, Goblins, and yes, Infect). Just an option to throw out there.

[Juice11]

I don't play much RUG Order now. But I have played almost every version of the Natural Order Archetype at some point. I am currently on Shardless Bug Order.

As far as Natural Order targets, I think Ruric Thar is a great addition to the board. I play it in my board, the only way to get rid of it is if they have removal in hand. But, I think Hornet Queen and Archangel are a mistake. I also play Hoof main in mine, but I do have far more creatures available to me maindeck.

The one advantage to Rug is playing low costed counters and playing GSZ. I would take advantage of GSZ targets like Dryad Millitant or Rec Sage or something like that to play in the board. I also would play no less than 2 cliques in the main. It is everything that you want in a creature besides being able to be sacced to order.

I think Fire//Ice is too clunky. I would look at something like forked bolt for more removal or probes to help with sculpting a game plan.

[wcm8]

I think Fire//Ice is too clunky. I would look at something like forked bolt for more removal or probes to help with sculpting a game plan.

Clunky, perhaps, but also Blue. If this deck intends to play Force of Will, it needs to maintain a reasonable number of Blue spells. I actually like the added utility of having the Ice side if Fire isn't needed against something like, say, a combo deck.

[monovfox]

Fire/ice doesn't seem terrible. Worst comes to worst you're drawing into gas by using it eot. I tried glass eyed selkir today, but I felt like I might have been better served by fire/ice to tap down angler or win the air war with clique against shardless and grixis.

My record tonight was as follows

Grixis win (2-1) spells pierce really showing how bad it is hear
Eldrazi lose (1-2) spell pierce bad again, I also should just mulligain to natural order in this MU. I didn't and was deservedly punished.
Death and taxes win (2-0). G1 I got a strong hand that generated me 6 mana on turn 3 with a natural order. There was nothing he could do. G2 I had needle, double force, two basics and a ponder with a natural order in hand. Easy game. Easy life

Going to run sideboard bloodmoon for eldrazi and shardless. Seems pretty neat. Might take a play from the rug delver thread and sideboard some orbs for miracles.

This deck is very good and a serious contender.

Also infect is still a shitty matchup. GGWP.

[wcm8]

I've been play-testing the following list:

3 Noble Hierarch
3 Vendilion Clique
3 Tarmogoyf
2 Dryad Arbor
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Progenitus
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Natural Order
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Fire // Ice

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island (I wonder if perhaps these should be swapped, i.e. 3 Trop and 2 Volc)
1 Taiga
1 Forest
1 Island
3 Wasteland

SB:
1 Umezawa's Jitte (this and/or the Guildmage could maybe be Izzet Staticaster instead)
1 Pithing Needle
1 Granger Guildmage
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Flusterstorm
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Submerge
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Pyroclasm (while Rough//Tumble saves your Cliques, you want Pyroclasm to hit flipped Delvers and other flying threats -- it's important to time casting this spell at just the right moment to avoid too much damage to your own board)

Observations:

The deck is a lot of fun to play, and could definitely sweep a local tournament with a little luck and some tight play skill. But to be entirely honest, I don't think this archetype is quite capable of consistently beating the Tier 1 meta-game. Ordering for Progenitus actually feels comparatively weak in the modern format, and I sort of wonder if there should be a different or additional N.O. target in the main deck, perhaps something that can help definitely beat Miracles.

3 Clique seems necessary. You want it for your Plan B Exalted + Bolt beatdown plan as an evasive threat to get past ground blockers (and carried the SB Jitte like a champ), and the card also serves multiple purposes for the Plan A Natural Order plan: it can chuck back a Progenitus or other N.O. target stuck in your hand in case you don't have a Brainstorm or Jace handy; it can be cast at EOT to make sure the coast is clear or at least swipe away any counterspells so you can resolve Natural Order; it increases your Blue count to a more acceptable range for consistently casting FoW (also why I am running Fire // Ice instead of alternative removal spells); it disrupts Terminus from Miracles as an 'out'; it disrupts other combo decks to maybe grant you enough time to kill them before they can 'go off'; it's one of the best ways of killing other Planeswalkers, especially Jace and Liliana of the Veil. Clique is a Swiss Army Knife, and for this deck 3 copies seems correct and I'm almost tempted to run the 4th.

I am playing a copy of both Basic Island and Forest just to avoid dying to Blood Moon and Back to Basics; with the help of a Noble Hierarch we should be able to cast all of the cards in our deck even under one of these enchantments. While Wasteland is good, this deck is not really dedicated to mana denial and it's being run more as a method of keeping your opponent from reaching their end-game 4-drops before we do. It's also helpful for getting rid of utility and combo lands that present problems, e.g. Glacial Chasm, Tabernacle, Dark Depths/Thespian's Stage.

I cut the 4th Goyf for a Scavenging Ooze, this is just to give us a main deck answer to graveyard strategies and also can grant us incidental life gain and disrupt stuff like Snapcaster Mage, DRS, Reanimator/Dredge, Loam, Punishing Fire, etc. It gets backed up with the 2 Surgical Extractions in the board. Scooze can occasionally grow to outsize opposing Goyfs or other threats; keep Mongoose small; also if deployed and activated early enough, can prevent an opponent from casting stuff like Tombstalker, Gurmag Angler or Cabal Therapy (flashback) and Cabal Ritual (threshold). So I think it's justified.

Only 1 copy of Jace because he's yet another 4-drop in a deck that's running Daze. That said, he's so amazing at doing what he does that he deserves at least 1 slot. Against a deck like BUG Delver, him resolving is practically just as much an "I win" spell as Natural Order.

The only other card I want to fit in the 75 somewhere is Sylvan Library. Not sure yet where to put it.

The sideboard is by no means perfect and is really just my idea of what is needed to beat most of the Tier decks right now. What I'd really like are some more super-powerful Natural Order targets to make the card more worthwhile and a competitive option for modern Legacy. Any ideas? Also, Winter Orb could be another spicy option that is essentially 1-sided as another poster mentioned.

The other idea I am toying with is dropping Red for White. This would obviously change quite a few aspects of the deck, especially the sideboard, but the main plan would still be kept relatively the same. Anyone have any comments as to how White affects how this deck plays?

So yeah. RUG Order is kind of like my "fun" deck that I might jam at some smaller local events and FNMs, but I'd rather play something like RUG Delver for a huge tournament like a Grand Prix (which is what I did play last weekend at GP Columbus, going 11-4... if only I didn't face DNT, perhaps the deck's worst matchup, 4 times on Day 1!!)

[monovfox]

Honestly you don't need pyroclasm to beat delver at all. Usually a beatdown plan with clique is enough. You run 7 tarmogoyfs (though I think 4 goyf 3 zenith is better due to naturally drawing into GSZ being worse than naturally drawing into goyf. That being said I also run a peer through depths, I forgot to mention, which is weird that I forgot to mention it because the card is total house in every matchup (it can filter you at instant speed into natural order, force, daze, bolt, etc. through chalice on 1 which is a HUGE deal against eldrazi).

Miracles I have found to be around 50/50 with the rug version and 40/60 with the bug version (while abrupt decay might be good, pyroblast/friends out of the sideboard is better).


I actually think progenitus is super strong in the current format before/after a current turn threshold depending on the MU. In grindier matchups like Grixis you just draw Order and win, same goes for shardless. Dnt and Eldrazi actually cannot beat Prog (well, eldrazi before a certain turn. 2 reality smashers beforre turn 3/4 is Gg), which is nice.

[wcm8]

I also run a peer through depths

Don't you think Impulse is better? Yes, you get to look at 1 less card, but it will *always* get you something, and sometimes you're digging for another land or creature and not a spell.

edit: also, main deck Trygon Predator seems pretty cool, as does Edric, Spymaster of Trest. Anything that has that kind of utility and is searchable via GSZ (and Natural Order) seems worth considering.

[monovfox]

I tried predator and he always died due to miracles plethora of snapcaster mages, terminus, and swords to plowshares.

edric seems pretty slow, and we don't really want to play lots of creatures out unless it's against Grixis.

Also here are some dumb ideas that will never work against miracles but are worth mentioning because if storm can cast a 7 mana creature, so can we

Nivmizzet, Dracogenius

Stormbreath Dragon

Teferi (and a cavern of souls in the sideboard)

4th clique

Ruric Thar (against ponder miracles)

Cry on their sensei's divining top so it is no longer tournament legal

hope//pray they don't hit the 2nd terminus

Hypersonic dragon (instant speed natural order in response to an STP doesn't seem bad)

[Asthereal]

I tried predator and he always died due to miracles plethora of snapcaster mages, terminus, and swords to plowshares.

edric seems pretty slow, and we don't really want to play lots of creatures out unless it's against Grixis.

Also here are some dumb ideas that will never work against miracles but are worth mentioning because if storm can cast a 7 mana creature, so can we

Nivmizzet, Dracogenius

Stormbreath Dragon

Teferi (and a cavern of souls in the sideboard)

4th clique

Ruric Thar (against ponder miracles)

Cry on their sensei's divining top so it is no longer tournament legal

hope//pray they don't hit the 2nd terminus

Hypersonic dragon (instant speed natural order in response to an STP doesn't seem bad)
There's another option for battling Miracles: Switch from red splash to black splash.
This gives us Abrupt Decay, which is pretty neat.

You also forgot one card: Pithing Needle.
If Top is your nightmare, just add Needles, cast them and then proceed to turn your Goyf sideways.

Edit@wcm8: Yes, Impulse is better. If I REALLY want to find Natural Order asap, I'd play Personal Tutor though.
Personal Tutor is not a great card, but you can justify running one or two for matchups that rely 90% on NOPro.
(Side note: this idea works best in black splash versions, since Personal Tutor also finds you Duress to protect the combo.)

[Stan]

The idea of playing different natural order targets really appeals to me, so I'm going to experiment with those in the coming weeks. I'm looking for something that miracles literally cannot beat (and I'm not afraid to side in painters servant to grab griselbrand). I think in the fair game the deck is mostly fine, I really want to dedicate more sideboard hate to miracles, but it's so difficult to hate that deck out.

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.

[Juice11]

There's another option for battling Miracles: Switch red splash for black splash.
This gives us Abrupt Decay, which is pretty neat.

You also forgot one card: Pithing Needle.
If Top is your nightmare, just add Needles, cast them and then proceed to turn your Goyf sideways.

Edit@wcm8: Yes, Impulse is better. If I REALLY want to find Natural Order asap, I'd play Personal Tutor though.
Personal Tutor is not a great card, but you can justify running one or two for matchups that rely 90% on NOPro.
(Side note: this idea works best in black splash versions, since Personal Tutor also finds you Duress to protect the combo.)

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.

[monovfox]

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.

[monovfox]

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!

[monovfox]

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.

[wcm8]

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.

[monovfox]

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.

[Asthereal]

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.
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.

[wcm8]

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. :cool:




(well, bannings aside)

[monovfox]

Speaking primeval titan: It would be super hilarious to run a single kessig wolf run and a primetime as a no target.

[wcm8]

Speaking primeval titan: It would be super hilarious to run a single kessig wolf run and a primetime as a no target.

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.

[Asthereal]

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.
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?

[wcm8]

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.

[wcm8]

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/legacy/22656_Streamlining_Natural_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.

[Asthereal]

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.


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.
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.

[monovfox]

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

[wcm8]

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.

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?


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.

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 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 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.


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.

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.


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.

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).


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.

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.


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.

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.

[monovfox]

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

[monovfox]

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

[LewisCBR]

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

[monovfox]

You basically need Jace to beat miracles(postboard) as you don't have as many tools as RUG thresh to fight miracles on the stack to protect your much more vulnerable creatures

@LewisCBR I don't really consider sneak and show a top deck, and I think I would rather keep natural order in over JTMS against that deck because HYDRA > DEMON. Most decks nowadays have no problem 2-0ing sneak and show. It's fairly linear, and thus easier to disrupt (and with DnT as popular as it is you'll be hard pressed to see anyone do well with it)

[wcm8]

http://i.imgur.com/pps6V1M.png

This graph is taken from the following article: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/ban-miracles/

The article's premise (in support of banning a card from UWr Miracles) is irrelevant for this topic; the important part I am discussing here is the graph above, which shows how many players of each archetype made it to the top 32 of the most recent Grand Prixs.

To be honest, I think it would've been useful to extend the information down to Top 64 to give a wider scope of what's going on, but honestly the top 32 from two GPs should give a fairly accurate portrayal of 1) what is being played commonly, and 2) what is successful/most competitive.

Looking at the format in this way eliminates a lot of "noise", e.g. fringe strategies like Enchantress or The Gate, which while arguably legitimate decks, should not really be considered for your deck building process unless you happen to *know* that you will face such a deck in your local metagame. Hate cards for decks like this should probably overlap with hate for Tier 1 strategies instead of being too specific, e.g. Krosan Grip geared towards fighting Miracles that functions as splash hate for Enchantress, instead of Back to Nature to fight Enchantress specifically. (note: I'm only picking on Enchantress specifically because it used to be a pet deck of mine many years ago. I actually have a fondness for the deck and always root for those piloting it in a tournament (unless I am playing against them)).

Based on this graph, we can make the following conclusions about the state of Legacy's Top Tier Decks in Summer 2016:
1. Miracles takes up a whopping 28.1% of the top 32 slots, and should be considered Enemy Number 1 in terms of gearing a deck towards tournament competition. Unless a card actually *does* get banned from this archetype, RUG Order needs to be capable of consistently defeating this deck to regain its position as an acknowledged competitive strategy and not just an outdated, semi-competitive fringe deck.

2. If we consolidate all of the Delver decks and consider it a singular archetype (even though there are admittedly a few notable differences in how each variant plays out), they collectively account for 25% of the metagame. Their popularity in general and also the fact that fighting them with the tools available to RUG Order are mostly the same (regardless of variant) means this is Enemy Number 2. This percentage is also calculated without considering UGx Infect as a Delver deck, although in all actuality it is fought on a very similar axis and has a similar game plan (in terms of playing a small number of threats and disrupting our efforts in killing said threats with cards like FoW, Daze, etc.) If we include Infect to our calculations, then collectively we are talking about 32.8% of the Top Tier metagame. We simply can't ignore this strategy if we want to do well in a tournament.

3. If we consolidate all of the combo decks into one calculation (based off of whether the ideal first Natural Order target is Ruric Thar or not), my calculation yields 12.5% of the metagame. So perhaps Ruric doesn't quite justify himself as main-deck material for a major tournament. That said, *my* local metagame has a high enough combo presence that I would say it's probably closer to 20% or more (collectively speaking), hence the justification for me running him in the main 60. However, it is perhaps worth considering the fact that this list is *only* looking at the top 32 decks. If you combine the percentage of Miracles and Delver decks, they account for over 50% of the Top Tier metagame (and even more if you include UG Infect). The reason I am pointing this out is because both archetypes *crush* combo as they have the tools necessary to beat them -- Counterbalance, Force of Will, Spell Pierce, Delver of Secrets, etc. It is possible that had the chart extended down to include the top 64, we would be seeing a lot more combo decks that were kicked out of the top 32 contention by Miracles and/or Delver decks. I certainly saw a fair amount of it when I was playing in Day 2 of GP Columbus, and faced a few combo decks myself (easy matchups for RUG Delver). In any case, I think that Combo.dec is not a matchup we want to throw away, especially when we are already running Force of Will, Daze, and Vendilion Clique. Spending a slot in the main 60 for a Natural Order target that can ensure Game 1 victory makes it that much more likely we can win either game 2 or 3 and thus the match.

4. If we consolidate all of the decks that have a significant graveyard-centric component to their strategy that could be disrupted with either Scavenging Ooze and/or Deathrite Shaman, I collectively get a mere 11% of the Top Tier metagame (this is counting ANT for cabal ritual/Past in Flames; Reanimator; RG Lands and Dredge). However, the percentage becomes much higher if you include decks that use their graveyard to some incidental extent (Miracles via Snapcaster Mage, Shardless Sultai via Deathrite Shaman, Grixis Delver via DRS, Cabal Therapy flashback + casting Gurmag Angler, Jund for Punishing Fire, RUG Delver with Nimble Mongoose, *any* deck running Tarmogoyf including those previously mentioned, etc.). So I think it *is* worth running at least 1 maindeck GSZ target to attack our opponent's use of the graveyard in Game 1 instead relying entirely on our sideboard slots. A lot of these decks are banking on the fact that most decks don't have hate available in the maindeck, so once again being able to steal a Game 1 makes it easier to win the match. Additionally, Scavenging Ooze and Deathrite Shaman are both good cards on their own and function quite well in a variety of circumstances, regardless of how graveyard-centric the opponent's deck really is, so either (or both) of them would be fine considerations for the main 60. Once again, we also have to consider how many graveyard-centric decks were suppressed from top 32 slots by the overwhelming presence of UWr Miracles, which gains access to both Rest in Peace and Surgical Extraction + Snapcaster Mage -- perhaps the most powerful forms of grave hate in the format.

5. I'm not even going to bother calculating a percentage here, but collectively speaking, there are plenty of decks that run some form of non-basic hate, whether it be Back to Basics, Blood Moon, Wasteland, Price of Progress, etc. While Painter (a deck centered on resolving an early Blood Moon) only accounts for 1 top 32 slot, non-basic hate in general is a common method of winning in Legacy. Seeing as RUG Order has a higher curve than Delver decks and can arguably justify running a few Basic lands, I think a basic Forest is absolutely justified at minimum, and an Island is another worthwhile consideration. A basic Mountain probably isn't essential *unless* you are running Grim Lavamancer, in which case you might appreciate a reliable source of Red mana for repeat activations and/or casting your Red removal against aggressive Wasteland decks. As for us, I think Winter Orb might be the most effective form of mana-denial available to us, seeing as we can sidestep its symmetrical effect with Noble Hierarchs *and* we can also temporarily 'turn it off' at the end of our opponent's turn with Fire // Ice. I make this suggestion particularly because it is a savage card against UWr Miracles, the format's biggest bully.

6. I could continue on, but I won't. I think it's up to you (the reader, a person playing RUG Order these days and configuring the deck towards modern optimization) to decide how much value should be placed in these results and/or what sort of conclusions can be drawn and how they should be applied towards configuring the deck. If you think top 32 results aren't useful, fine, ignore this entire post. But I think 15 rounds of Legacy tend to let the cream rise to the top, and even if the results are partially a result of how many players chose to register a particular archetype, I think it still provides a rough guide to what decks are the biggest threats and in what sort of numbers. I am certainly going to make some adjustments to my list with this all in mind, and will make further tweaks based on testing results from online play.

[Asthereal]

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.
We're both. Against some matchups we're a slow combo deck with a valid backup plan, and against some others we're a midrange Goyf deck with the potential of a combo finish. I think wcm8 and I mostly disagree about when we should be the combo deck and how important the combo really is. I am a big advocate for going full combo in many matchups, which is why I am strongly against running less than four Natural Order. I am also a big advocate of siding out the combo entirely when it's not as effective.

But my advocating full combo mode doesn't mean I feel we should put less emphasis on plan B. Against Miracles, for instance, I feel plan A and plan B should both be optimized. We are the aggressive player here, and I feel we need all the threats we can cough up. We should make space by cutting cards that would stop their threats. Our deck should be mana, threats, cards that protect our threats and cards that find us what we need.



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?
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I feel the combo is too important to not run the full set of, and when it's bad I'll have to try and shuffle pieces away with Brainstorm and fetches in game one, siding it all out in game two.

My remark about tempo threshold was indeed mostly about numbers. Right now Grixis and to lesser extent Sultai Delver make up the tempo portion of the meta, but together they hardly make up 20% of the meta I usually encounter. Back when Misstep was there, Canadian Threshold and Dark Tempo Thresh (with Confidants and Ghastly Demise) were the most played decks here in the Netherlands. Maybe it was a Dutch thing, but in every top-8 we had 3/8 tempo threshold variants somehow. Team Nijmegen even temporarily dropped their beloved Storm decks in favour of tempo decks in order to win their byes for the then upcoming GP.

Tempo isn't nearly as effective right now, being weak against the hate pieces of Eldrazi Stompy and having difficulties beating Miracles. Besides, against Grixis it might actually be optimal to keep the combo, since Young Pyromancer going nuts can make our plan B a lot worse. They also don't attack our mana base as much, so casting a CMC4 card shouldn't be as hard against grixis as it would be against for instance RUG.



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.
I disagree about the idea that Miracles makes Natural Order so bad. Terminus always costs us multiple threats if we consider playing two "plan B threats" a valid strategy. Secondly, I don't consider a mana dude a threat. It's one damage per turn, which is way too slow. A mana dude plus a sorcery spell netting me a 10/10 that really only dies to Terminus seems a very good deal to me. If they manage to counter it, I will also have lost two cards, so this is a bit of a high risk high reward thing, but their main control tool Counterbalance has serious issues hitting a CMC4 spell, and apart from those they have 4x Force of Will, 2-3x Pierce/Counterspell. That's pretty limited, so we should have good chances to protect Natural Order from that.
(More about the meta numbers in a minute.)



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).
I would like to have Ruric Thar against Storm, Delver and maybe Miracles. I feel that's hardly enough for a sideboard slot, and definitely not enough to warrant a main deck slot.



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.
My experience is this: you encounter random chunks of the meta at random intervals. My local game store Legacy scene has every possible deck in multiple numbers. One day everybody is on Eldrazi, the other day I play against Elves two times in a row. Miracles and Shardless are constant factors, but their numbers are not as extreme as you projected. If your meta is 25% Miracles and 25% Delver strategies, this means there's only 50% left for Shardless, D&T, Elves, Eldrazi, Storm, S&T, Dredge, Burn, StoneBlade, Infect and so on. That doesn't happen here. Last tourney, for instance, I played against Shardless, Elves, Merfolk, OmniTell and Storm. There are so many decks you can play competitively it's very dangerous to tune a deck with only a few matchups in mind.

My latest meta analysis looked like this:

META BREAKDOWN 01-05-2016

Tier 1: Miracles
Tier 1: Eldrazi Stompy
Tier 1: Shardless BUG
Tier 1: Grixis Tempo
Tier 1: BUG Delver
Tier 1: Storm
Tier 1: Death&Taxes
Tier 1: Infect

Tier 1.5: Elves
Tier 1.5: Blade Control
Tier 1.5: RUG Delver
Tier 1.5: Omnitell
Tier 1.5: Burn
Tier 1.5: Reanimator
Tier 1.5: Sneak&Show
Tier 1.5: Jund
Tier 1.5: Dredge

Tier 2: Tezz.dec
Tier 2: Maverick
Tier 2: Painter
Tier 2: MUD
Tier 2: WUR Delver
Tier 2: RG Lands
Tier 2: Merfolk
Tier 2: Goblin Stompy
Tier 2: Affinity
Tier 2: Bant
Tier 2: Junk
Tier 2: 12Post
Tier 2: Pox

Cases could be made for promotion or relegation of certain decks, but this should show the diversity of the meta. All decks in Tier 1 and Tier 1.5 are capable of winning a tournament here, and should be taken into account when tuning a deck and sideboard. I tend to ignore Tier 2, but I still encounter them every now and then.

[wcm8]

Right now I am testing 3 Deathrite Shaman in place of Noble Hierarch (so a 3/1 split, just the other way around). To fully take advantage of this beyond just the creature/land modes, I cut one of the fetch-lands to add a Bayou for access to Black mana.

I found this helpful in the following ways:
1. DRS provides main-deck disruption for opposing graveyard strategies, whether it be their lands, creatures or spells. I previously pointed out how important this can be in the current Legacy format. Cards like Punishing Fire become more easily dealt-with if you have an early DRS and can counter the first casting, similarly Life from the Loam itself can be removed and/or its targets can be exiled in exchange for mana. Snapcaster Mage becomes less useful if you're able to exile its targets. Dredge can sometimes be slowed down enough for us to cast a Natural Order and race them. There are plenty of other scenarios I'm sure you can imagine where DRS saves the day where Hierarch wouldn't.
2. Exalted, while useful, is made up for by the fact that DRS can tack on 2 damage of its own in most situations. Frequently this ability adds up damage faster than exalted triggers would. It's also helpful in that cards like Ensnaring Bridge, Maze of Ith or Moat (or really them just having a bigger threat or [whatever] that otherwise prevents us from attacking) can be ignored. In combination with our Burn, it's an easy way to land the last few points of damage. DRS is also a relevant singular threat against Miracles, whereas Hierarch by her lonesome is underwhelming -- this helps us to avoid over-extending into a Terminus and yet still put them on a clock.
3. The extra toughness is surprisingly relevant. Cards like Forked Bolt and Golgari Charm won't 2-for-1 us, and Darkblast is no longer quite as awful.
4. DRS is actually a great answer to opposing DRS. And we have 'more' copies of them than our opponents (Elves aside) thanks to GSZ.
5. DRS sacrifices itself just as well as Hierarch to Natural Order if necessary. I've also rarely had issues having a Land in the graveyard to get mana as needed. So in the majority of situations, it is functionally the same as Hierarch in terms of providing mana and sac'ing to NO.
6. Life-gain is surprisingly relevant too. Some games against aggressive decks were won because Shaman gave me some buffer room. Even if we don't 'need' the extra life, it it also makes it a lot safer to utilize Sylvan Library.
7. I haven't splashed for any Black (or White) cards yet, but DRS does open us up to the possibility of running some cards outside of RUG's selection.
8. This isn't typically an issue, but DRS can provide Red mana where Hierarch can't.

The downside of course is that we lose consistent Exalted triggers which is helpful in Goyf stalls, and it also makes stuff like Rest in Peace more effective overall as our Goyfs *and* mana dorks are affected. To offset this somewhat, I am not running the full playset of DRS and still have a singleton Hierarch, but I am actually thinking that just dropping Hierearch entirely for the full 4 copies of DRS might just be better. Alternatively, Birds of Paradise instead of Hierarch as an additional source of Black mana (and also to chump block a flying threat) might be even better.

[monovfox]

Birds of paradise might better against DnT due to the presence of RIP postboard. The matchup is rough if you don't have a dork online/keep a landlight hand

[wcm8]

Birds of paradise might better against DnT due to the presence of RIP postboard. The matchup is rough if you don't have a dork online/keep a landlight hand

Agreed.

I have been arguing in the RUG Delver thread that D&T needs to be addressed specifically and taken seriously as it is one of Temur's most difficult matchups. I would say it's probably a lot worse for our Delver cousin than it is for Order, because Delver doesn't have the benefit of Mana dorks nor the possibility of casting a 4-mana Sorcery that essentially wins the game. I realize 4 mana is difficult to achieve with all of their taxing and mana disruption, but at least it's *doable*. Here, Progenitus really helps out a lot assuming you're able to get him onboard quickly and race them (and also hope that they haven't drawn one of their Council's Judgment).

My point in the other Temur thread is that based upon both local tournaments and my perception at the last Grand Prix, D&T continues to be one of the most popular creature-centric decks in Legacy. This is true for both experienced and entry-level players. There are multiple factors playing into this:
1. Compared to your typical UXx deck that plays Brainstorm, Force of Will and a Fetch/Dual mana base, D&T is comparatively more affordable. This makes it a more attractive option for a player new to Legacy who wants to be competitive, but not necessarily spend several grand buying into the format.
2. With recent sets *and* reprints, the cost of many of the archetype's expensive cards has come down or at least stabilized. Had Karakas not been reprinted, it's entirely possible that it'd be seeing a similarly astronomic jump in price as some of the other powerful rare cards from Legends. I'm sure that Rishadan Port will see a paper reprinting before too long, but a fairly competitive version of the deck (though perhaps not optimal) can still be played even without Port.
3. The deck continues to have new competitive Legacy-level cards printed for it from almost every block, and this trend will likely continue (whereas Blue tends to less-frequently get new cards from an Eternal-playable standpoint). The most recent spoiler from the newest set brings a new version of Thalia into the fold, which is a card that seems like a nightmare for Blue decks to deal with if they don't have an immediate answer in-hand.
4. There are multiple variations of the deck that makes it difficult to perfectly metagame against. Sure, there are common trends such as Aether Vial, SFM, Thalia... but there are multiple Color splashes that see play, multiple options for the 2 and 3cmc slots, and a varierty of Sideboard cards that can greatly impact how much harder the matchup ends up being. The matchup is difficult to begin with, but it can be made even worse depending on which configuration you end up facing.

There are other factors of course, but my point is simply that this deck is definitely Tier 1-1.5, and RUG Order should have some sideboard cards to address it. Right now I am playing Granger Guildmage and Sudden Demise -- and there are plenty of other options to consider. Sulfur Elemental is admittedly quite narrow, but it does a great job of clearing the field of their X/1 creatures and making the survivors easier to Bolt without Mom around to protect them. Depending on how popular this deck is around your area, I would suggest playing more slots than typical to deal with it.

[monovfox]

Went 1-2 today.

Went 1-2 in both the matches I lost. (losses vs infect and to find)

Against tinfins I played poorly and was punished. I went for q greedy turn 3 ruric thar rather than a scavenging ooze, losing me the game to chain of vapor into grislebrand >.>

Lost game one to infect. Game two I won at 1 life and 9 poison, and game 3 I lost to turn three 3x invigorate + berserk into my hand of double bolt and force because invigorate is really good against us >.>

[square_two]

I made it to top 4 of a 66-person Win a Mox event yesterday.

Still unsure of the deck, I had a buddy play it on a different Saturday event, and he made it to the finals out of nowhere. So that convinced me to give it a go. We tweaked a few cards and this is what I ran on Sunday:

1 Dryad Arbor
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Vendilion Clique

1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Fire//Ice
3 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder

4 Natural Order
1 Progenitus
1 Elderscale Wurm
1 Reclamation Sage

1 Forest
1 Island
3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
1 Taiga
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Scalding Tarn

side:
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Pyroblast
2 Flusterstorm
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Bonfire of the Damned
1 Electrikery
1 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Krosan Grip
1 Granger Guildmage

The Rec Sage main was because we noticed a ton of D&T when we arrived, so it felt like a good call for the event. Probably will switch to 2nd JTMS in main for normal play. The Elderscale Wurm was pretty amazing in the main, allowing me to win game 1's where otherwise I would not have been able to.

M1: Grixis Delver 2-0
Goyfs and board control game 1 - even managed to Fire and take out Delver + Pyromancer. Game 2 got Proggy out after some back and forth, and his DRS's couldn't save him.

M2: Grixis Delver 1-2
Can't remember too many details but this was a very friendly guy who had older legacy experience and was able to put me on NO Rug. Gurmag was hard to beat, pretty sure I sided incorrectly, should have had both Jace's in.

M3: Death/Taxes 2-0
Early Progenitus makes him regret not killing my sacc'd Goyf earlier. Game 2 was longer but he did not have much action - I Clique'd in response to his SFM activation and saw Council's Judgment. He eventually had to use it against a large goyf, but I had NO and Bonfire in hand if the game went much longer.

M4: Burn 2-0
T3 Elderscale wins - although Progenitus -might- have won, he was at 10 life and I think I would survive another turn. Second game, another Elderscale absorbs 7 damage and allows me to get damage in...I'll note that I drew 4 or 5 lands from Goblin Guides here :)

M5: Maverick 2-1
Game 1 I got early Prog into play, he scoops. Game 2 I'm able to trick him into blocking my goyf with his Thalia, then I bolted his DRS for a nice 2-for-1...but his Choke caught me and I wouldn't pull out of it. Game 3 is slow going, he eventually is at 3 life with a Sigarda and full crew, including Mom, while I have 3 Hierarchs, Clique, Arbor. We go to turns and I topdeck a Bolt after fetching out some lands.

M6: Burn 2-0
Elderscale again for the win, even on a mull to 6 and drawing against Burn. Second game I was able to Force an Eidolon which made my next two Goyfs into big boys and he had to use double removal on both, which let me live easily to get another Wurm out.

M7: ID into top 8

Quarters: Moggcatcher Stompy 2-1
Game 1 I force his T1 Moggcatcher, then Bolt Rabblemaster, then play goyf and block/kill a second Rabblemaster. 2nd Goyf gets damage in and kills creatures he deploys until I topdeck a Fire to finish him off. Game 2 goes long but he eventually gets Bridge/Blood Moon out and I can't NO...he eventually gets Moggcatcher and goes to town, and I can't topdeck a Fire or Bonfire to get out. I -could- have GSZ into Hierarch which might have gotten me there in time. Game 3 I got Goyfs and a Proggy out, but then he laid down a Bridge. Finally found a Krosan Grip to allow the team to swing.

Semis: Slivers 0-2
Had my worst misplay of the tournament here. I mull to 5 and play out lands and Hierarch...used a Fire against his Sinew guy which I figured was correct. Then I decided for some reason to force the Hibernation Sliver which I just should have ignored. I try to NO next turn but then don't have the force backup to protect from Daze. If I'd just sat back with Force backup, I could have gotten Elderscale out and then probably lived quite easily until another NO into Progenitus or just slowly burn him out. Game 2 he quickly overwhelmed me.

Definitely a wierd top 8 - Moggcatcher, Slivers, Reanimator, Elves, Grixis, me on NO Rug...can't remember the others. Lots of D&T and Elves made up the 66 at the tournament.

Was a great time, I'm in love. Going forward will probably have 2 JTMS in the main, move Rec Sage to board. Change Elecktrickery to something else. So many times I just wanted to find a Bonfire, so I'm considering going to a 2nd, although having a Needle is probably better. Didn't have any mana issues and the one Arbor felt ok. Fire//Ice was great, I really liked it. Not sure if I want to replace the Tormod's Crypts for anything.

People were visibly frustrated at how easily I could get Goyfs onto the board thanks to GSZ :cool:

I'll be doing more of this online, I need to shore up my combo and Miracles matches since I have little experience with those.

[monovfox]

Miracles is difficult as hell

[square_two]

Miracles is difficult as hell

So uh...is it just me or does Progenitus seem really nice right now? The downside is that Fatal Push has made 'goyfs quite a bit worse, which was often the regular beatdown plan here.

BUG NO gets Leovold and can DRS-battle it out with all the other BUG lists, I suppose.

[Megadeus]

So uh...is it just me or does Progenitus seem really nice right now? The downside is that Fatal Push has made 'goyfs quite a bit worse, which was often the regular beatdown plan here.

BUG NO gets Leovold and can DRS-battle it out with all the other BUG lists, I suppose.

You are right. Seems sweet. I could see RUG or maybe a BUG variant coming up here. Is the advantage of red for blasts better?

[square_two]

You are right. Seems sweet. I could see RUG or maybe a BUG variant coming up here. Is the advantage of red for blasts better?

Looking at prior BUG NO lists on this thread (and the old linked NO BUG thread) seem to be a simple switch of Deathrites over Hierarchs, and Decay over Bolts.

Red gives you a lot of burn reach along with handy Fire//Ice. Hierarchs were meant to pump goyfs and Cliques for solid beatdown plan. It is much easier to win when you only have to swing once with Progenitus.

[Yonthan]

I think NO RUG became worse not because of miracle; I would think it's Sneak and Show: our Progenitus is just not as good as their Griselbrand/Emrakul. After top was banned, i would expect different combo decks including Sneak&Show showing up, so I am not sure if it's still time for NO RUG, but don't get me wrong, this is my all time fav deck and i always want to play it again.

edited: oh and this deck fell off the top table after mental misstep was banned; this card is pretty critical in our aggro plan.

[Megadeus]

I think NO RUG became worse not because of miracle; I would think it's Sneak and Show: our Progenitus is just not as good as their Griselbrand/Emrakul. After top was banned, i would expect different combo decks including Sneak&Show showing up, so I am not sure if it's still time for NO RUG, but don't get me wrong, this is my all time fav deck and i always want to play it again.

edited: oh and this deck fell off the top table after mental misstep was banned; this card is pretty critical in our aggro plan.

What about Worldspine Wurm? It gains a lot from no terminus and is even fine to drop in off Show and Tell because it beats either of the creatures they drop.

[Jonathan Alexander]

edited: oh and this deck fell off the top table after mental misstep was banned; this card is pretty critical in our aggro plan.

The banning of Misstep wasn't the problem, the deck was at least decent before Misstep. The real problem was the printing of Delver, which reintroduced Canadian Threshold into the format, and Wsteland + Stifle + Daze alongside it. Beating Delver is the real challenge for this deck and I'm not sure you can if they even remotely try to manadenial people.

[Megadeus]

I'm trying out a BUG list over RUG. I feel like it's a bit less streamlined, but I believe that the plan in games where Natural Order isn't drawn are maybe better. I could be wrong about that though. Also Deathrite is (obviously) a pretty ridiculous card. I could see running into issues however with him not creating mana consistently unlike hierarch. Being in a Deathrite mirror where you're trying to resolve a sorcery speed 4 mana spell is probably not the place you want to be

[Megadeus]

Went 3-1 tonight with BUG on a less than ideal list because I'm still acquiring the stuff. Lost to Cheerios, beat Reanimator, Grixis Vial Smasher, and URW True Blade. In the last match against true blade I really ravaged him with Llawan. Man I love that card

[Xod]

Can you share your list (or would be list) with us Megadeus?

[Megadeus]

4 Deathrite Shaman
1 Birds of Paradise
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Vendillion Clique
1 Progenitus

3 Fatal Push
2 Abrupt Decay
4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
1 Force of Will
1 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare
2 Ponder
3 Natural Order
2 Jace, The Mindsculptor
2 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Thoughtseize

2 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Polluted Delta
2 Verdant Catacombs
3 wasteland
1 Dryad Arbor

SB:
2 Krosan Grip
1 Llawan, Cephalid Empress
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Dread of Night
2 Cabal Therapy
1 Thoughtseize
2 Lost Legacy
1 Divert
1 Ruric Thar
2 Submerge


I think that's it. I thought I had a second Thoughtseize in there somewhere. Maybe I'm playing 61. I think Swamp should just be a second USea. And I only have 1 force at the moment, so take from that what you will. I'm sure second and third force are warranted, but the blue Count is kind of low. Also unsure of what's better between Reclamation Sage and Trygon Predator. Noble Hierarch also over Bird most likely

[Megadeus]

Another 3-1. Beat UWR Stoneblade with Moat, Jace, Nahiri and stuff. Lost to Dragon Stompy, games 1 and 2 were great back and forths and I think I was slightly unlucky game 1, but game 3 he had a turn 1 moon on the play and I immediately lost. Beat Jund in a weird game where he had active library for a long time, but I kept him off of mana and got there eventually. Beat Esper Standstill. He mulled to 5 game 2 and it was fairly uneventful

[monovfox]

Interested in this deck again

Here's my list I'm playtesting right now. Don't really know what the right numbers are for anything. Leovold should probably be a 1 of, and I should probably add a birds of paradise or a noble hierarch in that slot.

// 60 Maindeck
// 15 Creature
3 Tarmogoyf
3 Vendilion Clique
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Reclamation Sage
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Leovold, Emissary of Trest

// 1 Enchantment
1 Sylvan Library

// 16 Instant
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
3 Fatal Push
2 Abrupt Decay

// 18 Land
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Tropical Island
1 Island
1 Forest
3 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
1 Verdant Catacombs

// 1 Planeswalker
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

// 9 Sorcery
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order
2 Ponder


// 15 Sideboard
// 2 Artifact
SB: 1 Relic of Progenitus
SB: 1 Pithing Needle

// 2 Creature
SB: 1 Elderscale Wurm
SB: 1 Kitchen Finks

// 1 Enchantment
SB: 1 Dread of Night

// 7 Instant
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 1 Krosan Grip
SB: 1 Surgical Extraction
SB: 1 Hydroblast
SB: 1 Golgari Charm
SB: 1 Invasive Surgery

// 1 Planeswalker
SB: 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

// 2 Sorcery
SB: 2 Cabal Therapy

[Echelon]

Is it just me or did you forget to put a big fattie in your main 60?

[Chatto]

Is it just me or did you forget to put a big fattie in your main 60?

I think you're on to something, can't see a big fattie either...

[Nekrataal]

Progenitus incoming . . . although it is weaker than ever with all these Edicts flying around in everybodies SB and even main.

[Echelon]

He can always split the risk and include a Worldspine Wurm. And add a Dryad Arbor or 2 as fetchable NO-food/Edict-counter. Should run more green fetches in that case though. Catacombs over Deltas. You'll have a harder time getting an actual Island, but a much easier time powering out Dryad Arbor.

[monovfox]

Y'all are right, but I did play 62(by accident) today (prog as 62)


anyways, here's what i would change after going 3-1 (the last opponent conceded, we played some game 1's tho) tonight.

Don't know if I want 3 clique and 1 hierarch. I definitely want to find room for clique #3 (maybe relegating jace to the sideboard?)

Beat 4 color weirdness, lost to elves (in 2 incredibly close games that I lost at 0 life to 1), beat infect (2-1), played some games against UWR delver (hard matchup. 8 removal spells 2-3 lavamancer).

Leovold is amazing and literally everything I'd ever want out of a card in this deck. I had 3 daze instead of 2 spell pierce and ponder, and was actually at 62 cards tonight because sylvan library was in here too.

I also prefer double arbor (regardless of color scheme), fantastic when grinding, which this iterartion of order is all about (hence spell pierce over daze, which I will be testing tomorrow). Leovold turn 3 is always better than order turn 3 (even with countermagic). The leovold inclusion also means were are less weak to mana denial (a-la rishadan port and wasteland) as well as to edict effects, spot removal, etc etc.

Thoughts on sideboard would be great. I don't usually play BUG color schemes, so any suggestions on sideboard would be swell.

Honestly wouldn't mind going up to 62 if it means I get the 3rd clique, though the curve might be a little suspect at that point.

Part of me thinks if you're gonna play Order you should just play deathblade. You get stoneforge mystic and wasteland, which is big. That being said we do have a good deathblade matchup (they can't beat resolved prog, and combo was never deathblades strong MU)

// 61 Maindeck
// 17 Creature
3 Tarmogoyf
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Dryad Arbor
1 Scavenging Ooze
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
2 Noble Hierarch
1 Progenitus

// 15 Instant
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
3 Fatal Push
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Spell Pierce

// 18 Land
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
1 Island
1 Forest
3 Underground Sea
1 Polluted Delta
4 Verdant Catacombs

// 1 Planeswalker
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

// 10 Sorcery
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order
3 Ponder


// 15 Sideboard
// 4 Artifact
SB: 1 Relic of Progenitus
SB: 2 Pithing Needle
SB: 1 Umezawa's Jitte


// 7 Instant
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 1 Surgical Extraction
SB: 3 Golgari Charm
SB: 2 Invasive Surgery

// 1 Planeswalker
SB: 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

// 2 Sorcery
SB: 2 Thoughtseize


Considering a sideboard melira for infect.

[Megadeus]

I like the more tempo style play with wasteland and such because it gives a very different angle of attack and I also just can't stand when my opponent plays a non basic land that I can't interact with. Two arbor seems pretty bad tome, but again I like this deck on a different Play style. I tried an Eli Kassis shardless style this past week. Got dumpstered a quick 0-2. Kind of hated it. I hate Shardless Agent

[H]

A new NO RUG list floating around on MTGO:

3 Gilded Goose
2 Noble Hierarch
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Scavenging Ooze
3 Ice-Fang Coatl
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Arasta of the Endless Web

4 Oko, Thief of Crowns

4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
4 Force of Will
1 Spell Pierce
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Green Sun's Zenith

2 Arcum's Astrolabe
1 Sylvan Library

3 Natural Order
1 Progenitus

1 Dryad Arbor
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Prismatic Vista
3 Snow-Covered Island
2 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island

Seems pretty interesting. Ark4n11 (https://www.twitch.tv/ark4n11) has been streaming the deck today, it looks pretty decent, but I think some of the numbers might be a little sub-optimal.

I kind of feel like maybe 4 Oko is too much. Also, not sure about one Snapcaster. As with most mid-range RUG decks, you are a little weak to fast combo decks.

[kombatkiwi]

I think Uro can be a pretty good addition to this deck as well.
It's an interesting decision what to make the splash colour because the core of the deck is just UGx
Whether you want to play Bolt/Plow/Decay etc or whether you want some other G/x creature (Leovold, Teeg) could make the deck a good meta-call without changing the main build of the deck much.
I guess there is already the Sultai Zenith deck that is relatively popular so it depends whether you want to add NO to that.

[Clark Kant]

Ignoble Hierarch makes me want to brew up...

[Deck] Natural Order RGB

4 Ignoble Hierarch
4 GSZ
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Eternal Witness
10 Various Utility Green/Multicolor Creatures
4 Natural Order
2 Progenitus

4 Thoughtseize
4 Lightning Bolt
6 Other Utility Spells

Perhaps Cabal Therapy and Veteran Explorer are worth exploring in such a shell.