[Deck] Natural Order Rock

[Echelon]

I've been tinkering with a deck that tries to capitalize on Natural Order pretty much like Elves! does but has more disruption available to it. I came up with the following list:

Lands (22)
2 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
4 Crystal Vein
2 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Plains
1 Savannah
1 Bayou
1 Scrubland
1 Petrified Field
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath

Creatures (18)
3 Birds of Paradise
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Young Wolf
4 Tukatongue Thallid
1 Worldspine Wurm
1 Progenitus

Spells (20)
4 Pernicious Deed
4 Crop Rotation
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Diabolic Intent
4 Natural Order

The main goal for the deck is to resolve Natural Order, obviously. To do so, one needs mana, a creature and some way to either figure out if your opponent has an answer for it or a way to ignore your opponents' answer.

For mana, we have 22 land + 8 dorks. Four of these lands (Crystal Vein) are capable of making 2 mana, if need be. When facing an opponent that isn't playing blue, these lands help you cast NO as early as turn 2.

The next requirement is having a creature on the battlefield. Along with our 8 dorks, I wanted something cheap yet robust. This is where Tukatongue Thallid and Young Wolf come in. These critters don't mind being blown up or chump blocking an opposing 'Goyf. Seeing as these creatures don't care about dying all that much, Diabolic Intent becomes a great tool to help find Natural Order (or any other card you might need).

The last thing we need to do is to make sure it's safe to cast our Natural Order. Here I chose a two-way approach. First off there's Crop Rotation and Boseiju, Who Shelters All. Boseiju'll ensure your opponents' counters are useless against the NO and Crop Rotation'll help you drop Boseiju at the opportune time. Crop Rotation also gives us Bojuka Bog to use in our sideboard and coincidentally Boseiju can make Diabolic Intent uncounterable, which is pretty good when you're in a jam. The second approach is via Cabal Therapy, which has a nice synergy with Tukatongue Thalling and Young Wolf.

That leaves us with 4 free slots which I filled with Pernicious Deeds for the moment, simply because I like the card quite a bit. I did include white mana to be able to swap it for Swords to Plowshares if necessary (and for some extra sideboarding options if need be). Also, seeing as we maindeck 4 Cabal Therapy Gitaxian Probe might fill the last 4 slots since those two are quite close friends.

So, what do you guys think of the deck? I must admit, I still have to take it for a testride so no testresults yet.

[apple713]

first off this deck doesn't really have an edge on other decks currently existing in the meta. the main issue is it's lack of consistency since you only have 4 natural orders. Diabolic intent i an understand but its forcing you to play bad cards like young wolf...

Id scrap the deck altogether and start new but if you must at least make the changes below

remove these as they do nothing for your deck

-4 Young Wolf + liliana / sylvan library / mirri's guile / anything else
-4 Tukatongue Thallid + tarmogoyf / anything else
-1 Petrified Field + anything
-4 Crystal Vein + 4 ancient tomb

[Echelon]

first off this deck doesn't really have an edge on other decks currently existing in the meta. the main issue is it's lack of consistency since you only have 4 natural orders. Diabolic intent i an understand but its forcing you to play bad cards like young wolf...

Id scrap the deck altogether and start new but if you must at least make the changes below

remove these as they do nothing for your deck

-4 Young Wolf + liliana / sylvan library / mirri's guile / anything else
-4 Tukatongue Thallid + tarmogoyf / anything else
-1 Petrified Field + anything
-4 Crystal Vein + 4 ancient tomb

Dropping the Wolves and Thallids means you'd have to drop the Diabolic Intents as well, since your creature count is getting too low to support those together with the NO's and Cabal Therapies. When doing that, you might as well move to either BUG, Maverick or Nicfit altogether.

The Petrified Field I can agree on - it's probably too much of a fringe thing to bring back a land you need for some random reason.

Concerning the Ancient Tombs - I've considered those, but the only cards in the deck able to use it's mana are the NO's where both Pernicious Deed and Diabolic Intent are perfectly happy with just 1 colorless mana, so why bother taking 2 damage for something you don't need all that often? That's why I chose to stick with the Crystal Veins.

I do like the idea of Mirri's Guile. They could go in the Pernicious Deed slots to let you use your fetchlands more effectively and increase your chances to draw the NO you need (helping the much needed consistency). Perhaps I can drop a Crystal Vein together with the Petrified Field in favor of 2 more fetchlands (Marsh Flats) to help with the shuffling.

Taking your suggestions into consideration this would give us the following list:

Lands (22)
2 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
3 Crystal Vein
2 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Plains
1 Savannah
1 Bayou
1 Scrubland
2 Marsh Flats
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath

Creatures (18)
3 Birds of Paradise
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Young Wolf
4 Tukatongue Thallid
1 Worldspine Wurm
1 Progenitus

Spells (20)
2 Mirri's Guile
2 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Crop Rotation
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Diabolic Intent
4 Natural Order

This gives us 4 Natural Order, 4 Diabolic Intent to dig up NO (or whatever you need post-board) and 4 Mirri's Guile/Sensei's Divining Top + 10 fetchlands to sift through the top of your library in search of said NO.

Edit: Switched out 2 Guiles for 2 Tops since having one of each would let you enable you to sift through even more cards on 1 shuffle (peek with Guile, shuffle, peek with Top and you'll have seen 6 in 1 turn before drawing a card).

Edit 2: I just realised the only disruption this deck has at this point during game 1 are the Cabal Therapies, pretty much making this just a slower Elves!-deck during game 1 (though with a higher chance of casting NO through counters & removal). The only hope the deck has at this point is having a better SB-ing plan then Elves! does. Maybe just sending a 'Goyf to someones face is indeed easier then what I'm trying to do here.

Thoughts, anyone?

[uncletiggy]

I have a brew of a similar concept ill post my list later but for now my best advice to you is take a maverick/rock shell trim some numbers and fit no into hoof in realistically hoof plus two creatures will alpha strike currently youll durdle for days with no real disruption.

[AngryTroll]

Strangleroot Geist is probably better than the Thallid or the Young Wolf.

I'd suggest Green Sun's Zenith over Diabolic Intent. Getting Dryad Arbor[/cards on turn one is both ramp and your [cards]Natural Order target, and you can include a small utility package in the slots currently occupied by your recursive one drops.

With GSZ as a tutor that can get protection (in the form of Xantid Swarm), I'd probably cut the Crop Rotations for some more disruption. Abrupt Decay and Thoughtseize both look tempting.



-4 Tukatongue Thallid
-4 Young Wolf
-4 Crop Rotation
-4 Diabolic Intent

4 Thoughtseize
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Strangleroot Geist
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Xantid Swarm
1 Eternal Witness
+1 something

[Echelon]

With all those 2-drops it's definetely moving towards a worse (mostly just too slow) Rock-deck.

I guess it's best to just leave this one to die :smile:

[Zupponn]

Veteran Explorer seems good here.

[Lemnear]

Veteran Explorer seems good here.

I agree. It's strange to think of Therapy and Diabolic Intent but not of Explorer. The joke is, that going the Explorer-Route makes Natural Order pointless to cheat on mana for gigantic threats. I guess this is a dead end of design in green/black atm. Either you work with Gaea's Cradle or with Explorer to do unfair things as the classical, fair BG Midrange has a tough time.

PS: I still dream of Living Dead Rock to return one day. loved the deck in my youth :D

[Echelon]

The joke is, that going the Explorer-Route makes Natural Order pointless to cheat on mana for gigantic threats.

And that's exactly why I didn't include the Explorer :wink:

[Lemnear]

And that's exactly why I didn't include the Explorer :wink:

Not including the Explorer (whike still running Therapy/Intent) as a justification to run NO instead?

[Echelon]

Yup. I never said it was very sensical, but still. I chose to include other creatures that work well with Diabolic Intent and Cabal Therapy instead. This deck tries to lean more on having creatures in play at all times to further it's gameplan rather then purely ramping mana (and perhaps accidentally giving your opponents lands as well). It tries to let you constantly sacrifice creatures to have your opponent discard cards, help you search for whatever it is you need at that moment or to NO a big threat on the battlefield whilst ignoring your opponents' removal as much as possible.

It is an attempt to achieve a goal using resources other than just lands/mana. Think of it as inspired by decks like Manaless Dredge, if you will, also using your creatures as a resource to cast spells.

Still the sad truth is that this deck'll spend far too much time durdling about trying to accomplish it's goal to be effective in any way in the current meta.