Natural Order Rock

After some experimenting, I think I've found the perfect shell for Natural Order/Progenitus combo:


6 x Forest
4 x Bayou
4 x Wooded Foothills
3 x Swamp
2 x Bloodstained Mire
1 x Dryad Arbor

4 x Eternal Witness
4 x Kitchen Finks
4 x Tarmogoyf
4 x Wall of Roots
4 x Birds of Paradise
1 x Progenitus

4 x Thoughtseize
4 x Cabal Therapy
4 x Maelstrom Pulse
4 x Natural Order
3 x Sensei's Divining Top

SB: 4 x Leyline of the Void
SB: 3 x Krosan Grip
SB: 3 x Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 2 x Duress
SB: 2 x Extirpate
SB: 1 x Empyrial Archangel


Despite the name, it sort of functions more like a combo deck than a traditional rock deck. You stall out with Wall of Roots, Finks, and Goyf until you can Natural Order for the win. Use Therapy and Thoughtseize to disrupt your opponent so that you can ensure that NO resolves.

If you can't find/resolve NO, Goyf and Finks beat to secure the victory. Kind of simple, really, but very effective. Honestly, it's kind of hard to lose with this list.

Couple of points;

Why did you choose to make this only G/B? If you can find room for 9 Basic Land, it's likely you would be able to splash another color.

You have no removal outside of the fairly slow Maelstrom Pulse. Have you considered running Smother/Edicts, or even something like Pernicious Deed?

Your board looks a bit weird. 2x Extripate isn't going to show up enough of the time to remove specific cards such as LftL. Are you running it purely to supplement Leyline? If so, wouldn't Crypt or even Relic be better?

The deck looks fairly generic/unpolished. Why do you say that this is the perfect shell for NO/Pro?

Throwing up explanations for cards, as well as some testing results would be appreciated.

- I was running Smother, but with so much mana accel in the deck, Pulse comes out just as fast and hits more targets and sometimes 2-for-1s.

- Why splash for anything else? What other color could you possibly want in this?

- You're right about the sideboard being unpolished. How would you change it?

- Pernicious Deed is good, but anti-synergistic with Walls/Goyf/Birds.

Have you tested splashing white for Vindicate and StP?

I ran a B/g/w Rock deck with the Progenitus combo with success at a local tournament last weekend. It was heavily based off of this list.

Beat Dragon Stompy, Belcher, and almost beat CounterTop, but time ran out. :tongue:

Vindicate isn't really much better than Pulse.

StP is nice, but in testing I've found that Pulse (and recurring with Witness) is really all you need.

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Originally Posted by MTG-Fan

Vindicate isn't really much better than Pulse.

StP is nice, but in testing I've found that Pulse (and recurring with Witness) is really all you need.

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Unless you post...

1. A well thought-out match-up analysis.
2. The theory behind your card selection.
3. The way your deck is played.
4. Legitimate play-testing results.
5. Ideas to improve off the skeleton list.
6. Sideboard strategies.
7. New cards to consider for improvement.

...no one will take this seriously. It's like you tossed a list together and posted it without putting hardly any thought into it. We need factual information and more to work with so we can try and make it better, not preposterous claims like:

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Honestly, it's kind of hard to lose with this list.

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Originally Posted by Hollywood

flame

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I agreed to stay out of your thread, I hope you do the same for me.

Uh, that wasn't a flame as far as I can tell. I agree with all of those points. Just saying its hard to lose with a deck and its "the perfect shell" doesn't legitimize a list. Seeing your reasoning and analysis would provide some sort of cash value to the proverbial check you just wrote.

I would probably run Wall of Blossoms over Wall of Roots for better synergy with sacrifice effects/recursion.

Reminds me of Secret Force.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hollywood

Unless you post...

1. A well thought-out match-up analysis.
2. The theory behind your card selection.
3. The way your deck is played.
4. Legitimate play-testing results.
5. Ideas to improve off the skeleton list.
6. Sideboard strategies.
7. New cards to consider for improvement.

...no one will take this seriously. It's like you tossed a list together and posted it without putting hardly any thought into it. We need factual information and more to work with so we can try and make it better, not preposterous claims like:

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Payback Mike? You're better than that.:tongue:

Honestly, this list looks like you did throw it together overnight and posted it and said "play this, it's teh goods". I would strongly consider splasing white, or at least adding deed and more spot removal. Merfolk will out tempo this deck until your ass hurts, and lanstill would be salivating at the mouth to play against a deck like this.

Merfolk runs into walls until you get Natural Order with discard backup... Landstill dies to 8 maindeck discard effects, basically.

Also: this deck is based on a list that took 17th place at Grand Prix: Chicago, losing a 13th round match to Nassif's CounterTop deck only because the guy drew his Progenitus:

http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckd...p?DeckID=27708

referenced in the article:

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...Deep_Dish.html

all the way at the bottom.

I saw it, liked it alot, playtested it, and it has been just insane for me in playtesting. I just changed the Smother to Pulse because it hits more stuff, and added Tarmogoyf as an aggro B plan, and changed the sideboard a bit.

I think the guy's deck clearly has lots of potential, based on its performance at GP:Chicago, and my playtesting has reflected that. So I think it deserves some attention on the forums.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MTG-Fan

Merfolk runs into walls until you get Natural Order with discard backup... Landstill dies to 8 maindeck discard effects, basically.

Also: this deck is based on a list that took 17th place at Grand Prix: Chicago, losing a 13th round match to Nassif's CounterTop deck only because the guy drew his Progenitus:

http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckd...p?DeckID=27708

referenced in the article:

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...Deep_Dish.html

all the way at the bottom.

I saw it, liked it alot, playtested it, and it has been just insane for me in playtesting. I just changed the Smother to Pulse because it hits more stuff, and added Tarmogoyf as an aggro B plan, and changed the sideboard a bit.

I think the guy's deck clearly has lots of potential, based on its performance at GP:Chicago, and my playtesting has reflected that. So I think it deserves some attention on the forums.

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Accidentally, I was working on such a list, too - wow, this one looks great (except for the lack of Tarmogoyf as back-up plan).

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Originally Posted by MTG-Fan

Vindicate isn't really much better than Pulse.

StP is nice, but in testing I've found that Pulse (and recurring with Witness) is really all you need.

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First of all, I gotta say that this is completely false. I play Eva Green and I have tested extensively with Vindicate and a fair amount with Pulse. I use Vindicate 35% of the time to destroy a land. Yes this is a different deck than Eva Green, but regardless I believe that Vindicate is superior.

The one thing that jumps out at me is SDT. It's a good card yes, but I would probably change that slot to removal considering you don't run Bob to get the full effect out of SDT.

The changes I would make to your list would be:
Splash white (you can figure out the manabase)
-3 SDT, -4 Pulse, +4 STP, +3 Vindicate

Maybe you could put a couple Dorans in there, I dunno that'd be a personal call.

If you don't splash white though you might wanna consider 4 Wasteland and going up to 21 land. Just a thought.

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Originally Posted by Patrunkenphat7

First of all, I gotta say that this is completely false. I play Eva Green and I have tested extensively with Vindicate and a fair amount with Pulse. I use Vindicate 35% of the time to destroy a land. Yes this is a different deck than Eva Green, but regardless I believe that Vindicate is superior.

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Sure if you run Sinkholes and Wastelands, you want to use Vindicate to do further LD, but this deck is not concerned with LD, otherwise it would be running Sinkholes and Wastelands, see? So there is no reason to use Vindicate.

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The one thing that jumps out at me is SDT. It's a good card yes, but I would probably change that slot to removal considering you don't run Bob to get the full effect out of SDT.

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SDT helps you find NO faster, which is the #1 goal of the deck.


Why do you think the guy who played this deck to 17th place finish at GP:Chicago didn't splash white?

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Originally Posted by MTG-Fan

Sure if you run Sinkholes and Wastelands, you want to use Vindicate to do further LD, but this deck is not concerned with LD, otherwise it would be running Sinkholes and Wastelands, see? So there is no reason to use Vindicate.



SDT helps you find NO faster, which is the #1 goal of the deck.


Why do you think the guy who played this deck to 17th place finish at GP:Chicago didn't splash white?

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Well he also didn't run Pulse, so that doesn't really mean anything about Vindicate being not as good for him. One guy's list also doesn't mean that much, there are millions of Rock lists that run white, so I don't see your deck different in that respect even though it has NO. I think STP would be a great addition to your deck, and I just see no reason to not splash white for it. And regardless of how much better Vindicate is in your deck, it's still better, so you could run those while you're at it.

The deck needs some kind of answer to turn 1 Goblin Lackey...
And that's the main reason to splash :w: for Swords to Plowshares.

I played a few test games on MWS with the list MTG-Fan posted, except:

-2 SDT, -1 Wall of Blossoms, -1 Kitchen Finks, -3 Smother
+4 Tarmogoyf, +3 Putrefy

Among other things, I played against 2x Death Guy and 1x Goblins.

- Goblins raped me. Oh well, 2x Goblin Lackey two times in a row at the beginning of the game was way too much to handle for me. The removal suit seems somewhat ill-suited, but
- I don't think splashing White for Stp and other goodies isn't a solution either. I felt quite comfortable while sitting on many basics. Decent mana disruption would ruin your day.
- Goyf is a house (as always) and an absolutely necessary Plan B. It draws attention from your opponent and puts pressure on them. Just relying on SDT to find NO against heavy disruption looks like a bad plan.

I don't see how Goblins "rapes" you with so many blockers MD, and then Jitte from the SB.

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Originally Posted by Patrunkenphat7

Well he also didn't run Pulse, so that doesn't really mean anything about Vindicate being not as good for him. One guy's list also doesn't mean that much, there are millions of Rock lists that run white, so I don't see your deck different in that respect even though it has NO. I think STP would be a great addition to your deck, and I just see no reason to not splash white for it. And regardless of how much better Vindicate is in your deck, it's still better, so you could run those while you're at it.

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The only reason EVER to run Vindicate over something like Pulse is because it can hit lands. And this deck doesn't really care about destroying lands. So why bother with it?

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Originally Posted by MTG-Fan

I don't see how Goblins "rapes" you with so many blockers MD, and then Jitte from the SB.

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Ok, my bad, I was talking about the list from SCG you linked, so no Jitte.