Is Winter Orb Playable in Legacy?

[jrw1985]

Winter Orb

Is it playable?

I've been thinking about this recently, given how Blood Moon, Choke, and Back to Basics tend to lead to blow-outs. Winter Orb acts in a similar way to the above mentioned cards, but it's cheaper, more symmetrical, and less situational. The obvious advantage to playing it is that you can shut down your opponents' resources while gaining a competitive edge of your own. The downside is that you kinda need to build a whole deck around it.

The other obvious downside is that a lot of decks manage to do a lot with very few lands. Take Reanimator for instance. Winter Orb won't have any affect against that deck. T1 Entomb, T2 Reanimate - Winter Orb does nothing against that line of play. Or against Show and Tell. T1 Brainstorm, T2 City of Traitors > Show n Tell.

I guess that Legacy just has too many overpowered cheap spells for Winter Orb to still be useful. Orb only really stops 3drops from being played, which most Legacy decks won't be effected by.

Maybe if Gush comes off the banned list Winter Orb could be playable again, since it was Gush that allowed Miracle Grow to draw cards while making land drops.

Or, maybe, the format has just gotten so fast and cheap that Orb is underpowered. Orb really only works when fair cards are being played. It doesn't do much against decks that don't play fair. Decks like...

Belcher
TES
ANT
Combo Elves
Food Chain Combo
Affinity
MUD
Dredge
Reanimator
Sneak and Show


Then there are the decks where it has some effect against, just not much, like...
RUG Delver (only ever has 3 lands in play)
Maverick (Noble Heirarchs, Crucible of Worlds)
Goblins (lackey, Aether Vial)
XBlade (Orb doesn't do much to stop T3 Batterskull)


So... yeah. Seems pretty bad. I think I just answered my own question. It's too bad though. I used to have a lot of fun pissing of my friends while playing that card.

[Koby]

Winter Orb is pretty good against mana hungry blue-based control (Counterbalance, Lingering Souls, Stoneblade etc). And that's about it.

RUG can operate on 1-2 mana easily.
Maverick can either ignore the effect or destroy it.
Combo kills you before Winter Orb can become effective.

I think the better uses of it include combining with Tabernacle. However, Tabernacle is good on its own independently, so Winter Orb is superfluous.

The errata to make it work no matter what also didn't help.

[rxavage]

I wish it was playable. Winter Orb has been one of my favourite pieces of art since I cracked one in a revised pack.

[jrw1985]

The errata to make it work no matter what also didn't help.

Oh man, I had no clue they'd errata'd it! It's funny though that their errata is to make the card do exactly what the original card says. I miss some of the weird old rules. Being able to "shut off" static effects by tapping artifacts was awesome, and also one of those rules that made 0 intuitive sense whatsoever.

And you're right about Orb only being at all useful against contol decks. Control decks and High Tide. That's about it.

So it's not unplayable because it doesn't work anymore. It's unplayable because it's not relevant anymore. Legacy decks aren't trying to tap out every turn. They're trying to keep mana open to respond to opponents' plays.

[Octopusman]

Indeed. One of my favorite cards.

Aside from the symmetry, which you can build around, you already pointed out why Legacy is too fast for this card.

However, Winter Orb paired with Chalice @ 1 is quite good.
I think that blue is the optimal choice of color since it is the color of tapping and bouncing.

Unfortunately, I think that it would have to be a stompy mana base since it is too slow otherwise.
Plus, things like Moxen help you circumvent the orb.

Here's the thing though. You're not going to have Chalice and Orb at the same time more than you will. Even if you do, you're likely going to have to answer your opponent because they've been busy dropping goyf or stone forge mystic while you have spend many cards and much mana not producing anything that is threatening.

I'd be interested in seeing a list. Though, it's definitely too slow on its own, let alone if you try to tutor for it. If you run redundant pieces (i.e. Rising Waters), now you need to get to 4 mana and there are up to 8 slots that don't pressure the opponent.

Another problem with pairing chalice at 1 with orb is that it forces you to avoid cmc1 spells yourself. What's fantastic about swords to plowshares, even more so in a winter orb deck, is that you can remove a threat that likely cost more than 1 mana. The same is true for 1cmc bounce spells... keeping it somewhat certain that it could be several turns before your opponent gets the threat back online.


I still think it's worth running chalice... especially with the meta we have now, it's good anyway.

You know what else is fantastic when paired with winter orb? Aether vial... again that costs 1. Derp.

You just want to avoid dropping lots of weak lock pieces while you're getting beat on by a delver or insta-losing to an Emrakul. Even waterfront bouncer is too slow for reanimator.


The last time I used Winter Orb... I was tapping lands with Icy that I was accelerating into with blood pets/rituals and getting some board presence with priest of gix simultaneously. Pretty awful. :frown:

Shame you can't relic barrier your orb anymore to break it. Even then, "danger of cool things".

It seems cool with things like Rhystic Study but how can you use Winter Orb to augment the strategies imposed by the other, synergistic, cards in the deck to make the opponent lose?

I think is more of a top-down kind of discussion. "How can we make Winter Orb useful in Legacy?" vs. "It seems that Legacy is particularly vulnerable to Winter Orb right now. Perhaps there's a place for it.".

[cuthbertthecat]

If you REALLY want to beat 43 Lands outside of red and blue, it seems hilariously good. Unless they have tabernacle.

[edgarps22]

It works very well with Tanglewire and Welders. That can work out well, but Stax is a bad strategy at the moment. I had been playing that for a while, but it can be very rough in a lot of matchups. If you want to use it though, it can be abused alongside a tanglewire + some sphere effects.

[Julian23]

I've actually lost my fair share of games to Winter Orb Tempo decks in the past. Back then I was running Wuascht Survival. Even with turn2 Survival, finding, resolving and activating QPM took like 4 turns. Even more when Daze was involved. All while some 1 mana dorks were beating you down.
I can see it working in some Delver deck. Actually, I can see a lot of things working when Delver is involved :eyebrow:.

[Koby]

I can see a lot of things working when Delver is involved :eyebrow:.

Truth. Also points out the problem with marginally powerful cards compared to actual powerful cards like Delver.

[Gui]

I'd say it is at least sideboard material for specific solutions...

Also, change topic title to "[SCD] Winter Orb" ?

[Humphrey]

Its not played in Legacy -> Its not playable in Legacy
Why? You pretty much described it.

I like this card though

[(nameless one)]

It works very well with Tanglewire and Welders. That can work out well, but Stax is a bad strategy at the moment. I had been playing that for a while, but it can be very rough in a lot of matchups. If you want to use it though, it can be abused alongside a tanglewire + some sphere effects.


Actually Winter Orb, Chalice of the Void and Master Transmuter seems like a nice Stompy package.

[edgarps22]

The main problem with Orb right now is that it punishes primarily fair decks by keeping them mana starved. That will not do much at the moment because the best tempo deck can operate on 1 mana, orb does not stop that, the best combo decks ignore their manabase pretty much, and yeah as a general tool, it does not do a lot right now, not without a lot of help. Chalice Stompy could be fun, but you do need a lot of pieces to make it work well, I would be more apt to play say Tezzeret Affinity than anything else, and Winter Orb does not fit the bill there. Right now, it is just not in a good position in the meta, if decks like Maverick, the older Natural Order decks, and mana hungry control lists were more prevalent, it would be very good, but very often it will not be even noticed, much less crippling.

[Vacrix]

At the moment, I'd actually say that Rootmaze is far better than Winter Orb for what its trying to accomplish. Orb prevents the opponent from doing too much with their turn but cards like Vial, fetching basics, and Noble Hierarch get around Winter Orb fairly easily.

Rootmaze, however, gives you a leg up against decks that aren't prepared to be severely slowed down. Its great against decks that play heavy fetchlands. Whenever they play a fetch, it taps, then the land they find taps, and then 2 turns after they play their land can they actually use it. Its even good against decks like RUG that need 1 or 2 lands to operate because then they will be unable to cantrip and play creatures within the first couple turns like they might normally.. and are discouraged from playing Daze unless they want to wait another full turn to use that land. Its also randomly good against storm combo sometimes when they need that Chrome Mox or Lotus Petal to combo. They have to wait a turn if they are still setting up. If they are actively going off, it prevents them from using artifact mana sources post-nauseam to combo.

Granted, its a dead card if you draw it later in the game, but you can avoid that with cantrips. I probably wouldn't play either card unless I could find a good build for Rootmaze but I'd play Rootmaze before I played Winter Orb.

[Trentemoller]

Winter Orb is terrible in the current metagame, it's only good against full on control decks and it's decent against Stoneblade. RUG, burn, maverick and basically all combo decks laugh at Winter Orb.

[LOurs]

orb is a nice card but the fact is that it is incredible difficult to find a competitive use of it currently

the card is good to provide advantage mostly along with :

> asymetrical untap effect : reset, sword of feast and famine …
> "enter into the battlefield tapped" permanent effect : root maze, kismet …

and as well pretty more efficient against any deck mana hungry.

To me, orb doent seem to fit well in the current power level of the legacy meta : it is not locking the opponent enough to justify to play it, and mor. There are a lot of mana producer (noble first), and the average cmc legacy spells is pretty low (1,5 / 2) which is totaly unsynerrgical : you always can untap a land per turn, and this is enough to blank the prison effect. In most case, you just prefer 3sphere, blood moon or even stasis which all are much more harmful than orb in average in a prison card view, md but even sb.

It could deserve a focused deck on it, but a deck focused on making a non-wincon playable is often (always?) a very bad concept on its own, especialy when the strategy is not optimal in the current meta.


I also like orb a lot, dont get it wrong, I ran it more than 15 years ago with great success (stasis / land denial) but I'm in the opinion orb is today edh material at best.

[nedleeds]

The wording change castrated Winter Orb pretty severely. Richard Garfields intent was that artifacts would "shut off" while tapped. Several years later some artifacts had that added to the rules text. Winter Orb didn't. The rules team at WotC hate the fact that I own beta Winter Orbs so they pooned the card.

If it worked as it used to, and legacy had a good white or blue prison deck the orb would be pretty useful.

[edgarps22]

Like I said before this card is really only good with an active Wire in play, and the ability to recur one. If you can force that through, or just force through a Welder and keep him there, the combination of Winter Orb and Tangle Wire can be very crippling, but you need to have Wire first in most cases. That puts you on Welder MUD and not a lot of breathing room deckbuilding wise.

[nedleeds]

Eh ... the old tap it end of turn mechanic was better than 'I izz goods with Tangle Wires'. It fueled a world championship deck.

[(nameless one)]

You know it is actually better now with Tangle Wire in play. You can tap your orb and still lock down your opponent's lands. I use both cards in the build I posted above. Trinisphere is the opposite and I don't use it.

Am I missing something here? I guess Winter Orb doesn't work like Static Orb anymore.



But yes, that is actually good to know. For the longest time I have been misinformed with Winter Orb. I actually want to test it with MUD build now.

[Koby]

Just so we're all on the same page:

http://magiccards.info/scans/en/4e/376.jpg

Winter Orb
:2:
Artifact
Players can't untap more than one land during their untap steps.

FINIS. No other rules text or explanation. You cannot disable the ability by tapping it anymore.

[Finn]

Winter Orb is pretty good against mana hungry blue-based control (Counterbalance, Lingering Souls, Stoneblade etc). And that's about it.

RUG can operate on 1-2 mana easily.
Maverick can either ignore the effect or destroy it.
Combo kills you before Winter Orb can become effective.

I think the better uses of it include combining with Tabernacle. However, Tabernacle is good on its own independently, so Winter Orb is superfluous.

The errata to make it work no matter what also didn't help. This is entirely true. It WAS a powerful card - in a completely different time. It is not anymore.

BTW, you can sub in Aether Vial, Hokori, Dust Drinker and Karakas to approximate the effect of tapping your Orb with Icy Manipulator back in the day. But, to give you an idea how effective that strategy is, it was used and then discarded by Death and Taxes players at a time before there were sufficient good disruptive white creatures to fill out the deck. It is only effective against board control. And there just aren't a lot of those in Legacy.

The ship on Winter Orb has sailed.

[sco0ter]

So with Eternal Masters they finally reprinted Winter Orb and they took the opportunity to change the wording to the original behavior:

As long as Winter Orb is untapped, players can't untap more than one land during their untap steps.

Does that change anything for the playability?

One good interaction I can see is in some Stax-like artifact control deck with Ghirapur Aether Grid with Sol lands.

[nedleeds]

http://magiccards.info/scans/en/ex/68.jpg

This is old news, its discussed in another thread. Its good vs. Lands and Miracles, a bad joke vs. Daze decks and FuckElves. I built a red artifact deck around it and a Mana Breach deck aroud it when they fixed it. I lost to the internet.

[sco0ter]

This is old news, its discussed in another thread. Its good vs. Lands and Miracles, a bad joke vs. Daze decks and FuckElves. I built a red artifact deck around it and a Mana Breach deck aroud it when they fixed it. I lost to the internet.

Where is this thread? The only relevant, but very short discussion I've found is here in the Eternal Master spoiler thread (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?30412-Confirmed-Eternal-Masters-June-10-2016/page27).

I couldn't find any discussion about a red artifact deck and/or one with Mana Breach.

Yes, it's still bad against Daze decks and Elves, but maybe combined with Tangle Wire and Trinisphere and some way to make it one-sided, it could work.

[Sidneyious]

The main problem with Orb right now is that it punishes primarily fair decks by keeping them mana starved. That will not do much at the moment because the best tempo deck can operate on 1 mana, orb does not stop that, the best combo decks ignore their manabase pretty much, and yeah as a general tool, it does not do a lot right now, not without a lot of help. Chalice Stompy could be fun, but you do need a lot of pieces to make it work well, I would be more apt to play say Tezzeret Affinity than anything else, and Winter Orb does not fit the bill there. Right now, it is just not in a good position in the meta, if decks like Maverick, the older Natural Order decks, and mana hungry control lists were more prevalent, it would be very good, but very often it will not be even noticed, much less crippling.
Actually a buddy was building modern affinity and was sans a few cards for a legacy night so he used winter orb in place of a few cards and wrecked house.

I can't recall all the decks that played that night but I remember a few saying"who the hell plays winter orb in affinity!".

That same guy also tore apart and sold his affinity deck that was identical to my affinity deck. He got salty in a mirror match because I used hurkys recall in the side against the mirror and other decks that frequent with many artifact's.

"Who the hell uses recall in affinity!" Well I do in response to a board wipe among other things.

He had all the money but couldn't buy how to play, I lost to another player so I never goy to see how orb would of done against me as I was on some pile of 75 I was working on.

[tescrin]

Pros of winter orb:
* Good against Midrange; especially if they're lacking GB
* Good with Wasteland
* your curve can be low enough that it doesn't effect you
* good against Miracles/Lands

Cons:
* It doesn't do anything, so an opp doesn't *have* to remove it.
* It's hot garbage against D&T, Delver, and combo
* It makes opponent's Dazes *REALLY* good

Basically, it's a sideboard card because when it's good, it's pretty good. But it's also complete garbage against a host of decks that are very popular. I think if I were to run it main, I'd run it in Delver as a 1 or 2-of. You ignore most of the card and you get to make your dazes more relevant for a long time. Also, being in blue with only 1-2 copies means you can toss it to Brainstorm when it's bad.


EDIT: Also, keep in mind that DRS is probably the most used creature in legacy and that the Orb doesn't normally hold you at 1 Mana, but 2-Mana because your op can play a land. This is part of why it makes Daze so good; allowing you to make another land drop that is untapped.

Note: Winter Orb got a slight legacy buff with Thalia 2.0; but would've been *WAY* better with a Root-Maze color shifted card.