From: RKaneDeath@aol.com Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 02:09:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Forgotten Orb 101 Forgotten Orb Survives!!! ==How to Play the FOrb== Basically play coupla weenies at a time, never overdo it unless you got the Lapse and WOrb in hand and have courage. Never play like emptying your hand; this requires brain like any deck, yes, even burn requires brain. Play like two creatures and have back up in hand ready to play. if you can apply pressure try to do so by forcing them to cast a huge spell, you just lapse it and hurt them for more while droppin the WOrb. Nekrataal should be fairly easy as you should hold them until you can bury their creature, never cast it when you need another attacker. Man'o'war should be cast before attacks to remove a blocker. These can serve well under WOrb as they return a creature and they can't cast it again until many turns pass. Weenie WOrb w/ control. ==Four Color Black, Yuck!!!== People see this deck still alive through the fashion of making it a four color deck utilizing red for incinerates and lancers and white for the permanent control (or optionally green for monkeys). My only objection to this is that the original idea of memory lapse and bringing on the frost is lost in the shuffle. Instead, the idea is cluttered amongst the many possibilities with this deck. My rendition is to exclude red, since this is just more clutter to an excellent deck. Dervishes can create havoc, but they are easily controlled with man'o'owars, quicksand, etc. You may think, "Oh yeah, you can't draw a dervish stopper everytime!!!" My response is, "I don't have to, you might no draw the dervish." Simple as that. I think white is quite vital to include mostly for sideboard, but possibly main deck. As much as I like Abeyance...this kinda belongs here, but that means you gotta take out creatures, the bane of this orb deck. My inclusion of white is for two or even only one disenchant, dropping a counter or creature. ==The Creatures== Now that WL is in and so is HL and IA, what good creatures do they provide? Sorry to say, not much! Ihsan's Shade comes to thought but imagine trying to cast him while playing an WOrb deck, impossible!!! The only possible idea would be to switch ghost with fledgling djinn, if you can take the damage like a man...woman...er, player. The djinn is better than the ghost sometimes since it can live through pingers. But the discouraging thing about her is that, you deal two, yet you take one, resulting in attack constantly...uh-oh erg raider mutations! Bone Dancer is awesome if you play the meta-game correctly, the opponent's Graveyard will be full of choices while he gets by quickly thanks to Mr. Nekrataal. The controversial thing aobut this dancing fool is whether you really need the extra creature (assuming they play with creatures). In a deck with about 20 -25 creatures, do you really need that extra scryb sprite? =) Remember, this is a weenie deck so we need not analyze fatties like Morinfen and Gallowbraid. Hmm..Hidden Horror. ==The Artificial Aspect== The artifacts we use here are Phyrexian War Beast and Winter Orb. The new sets bring forth a couple of interesting aspects...in come: Icy Manipulator, Serrated Biskelion, and more! I continue to use Phyrexian War Beast in this StP-infected world because they are so big! the life bump never hurts and the loss of land in weenie decks never hurt too. Winter Orb is a no-brainer, but here calls for Abeyance...do you use it??? To insure the WOrb falling? No, becuase you never just cast it unless really early or after a Memory Lapse when they have none or few untapped lands. They shouldn't be able to counter it as it is, since you have your own back with the other counters. Force of Will may hurt ya, but long run hurts them, they lose mass card advantage. So there, Abeyance is a no-no. Now that Icy is back, you could throw in a couple to go maybe for the WOrb/Icy lock as a subtheme, but I find this a detour to the real driving idea behind this deck. If you wanna try this, be sure to do the blue mana trick with the Shadow Guildmage so you have more cards in your deck than him, Serrrated Biskelion may replace other stuff since they can recycle via Shadow Guildmages. ==What White Stuff???== I think I explained the Abeyance already, but there are more white cards that are a possibility. Disenchant is the most useful addition due to the lack of artifact and enchantment control black and blue have. Serenity is pretty useful but it attracts the opponent's disenchants and relatively harmful to you if WOrb is out. I wouldn't recommend this for main deck nor sideboard. One great addition would be Tarrif, since it has potential to tap the opponent out or kill their top creature. Of course, it should never hurt you since you are the caster and will use it at an appropriate time. ==My Red Objection== I don''t use red in this deck cuz the red is too attracting that i will include many things like incinerate (basic), lancer (basic, i guess), torches( basic?), wildifres (um..) and on. I will not stop. The red is no good for this cool colored black-blue combination. Red indicates chaos, something we don't need here. ==New Blue Stuff???== Since blue was used strictly for few counters and the man'o'wars, I will not venture into the possibilties with ophidians, impulse, paradigm shift, bah-blah-blah. I like playin with few counters because you must be selective with the few that you have. Or you just save them keeping in mind the exact spells you want to counter. Supercounter, goes insane countering everything! Against white, save them for Wrath of Gods and Disenchants. Lapsing a Wrath and laying a WOrb during your turn wins you the game practically. You should save the counters for the big scary spells. Never use powersink for they are too expensive when under the Frost. ==Something...== I don't like radical change and don't feel it is necessary. That's all I got to say about that. This is my Infernal Tribute to my favorite type of deck..the awesome Forgotten Orb!. ==Against Buried Alive, AHH!== HA! I laugh at this deck! How can they kill me? I got my Black Knights ready to block those crappy ghouls. What? Bad Moon, you say? Thanks, this is gonna be easier than I thought. If they do start to recurse, man'o''war should help very minimally, but the skulking ghost will destroy them, since nobody flies...! The only thing pissing me off aobut this deck is the robustness under WOrb, it doesn't hurt them ==MaroGeddon, Please?== Can you think back to last year? Who won more matches the Necropotence or Ernhamgeddon? Same story here, Nekrataal laughs in the FatHead of Maro. Quick Maro, followed by Armageddon may be scary at times, but you should be able to pull through. StP will sting a bit, but that's why it's THE removal card. MaroGeddon looks promising, but a Flawless Forgotten Orb, will win many a time. MainDeck=Dystopia!!! ==CounterHammer & It's Other Brother== R/U will be tough with the way it blasts away at creatures and controls the board with flyers, but a quick WOrb is key or weenie jumping them. Forgotten Orb is more versatile than you think, as it will deal with many decks defeating them. I doubt they pack artifact blast straight up, so a WOrb is there to stay. " That hammer is pretty heavy, you can't lift it out of a frozen graveyard...hehe" ==Geez, The Rest of the Field== There are of course manymore decks which i am unable to cover due to the diverseness of it. But, rest assured, Forgotten Orb isn't dead, just cause of the new inclusions within type II. ==Original Forgotten Orb== (the best expample was given by Jeffrey Kuta during Regionals, not sure if perfectly right...) 1 Shadow Guildmage 4 Black Knight 4 Fallen Askari 3 Knight of Stromgald 3 Skulking Ghost 3 Erg Raider 3 Nekrataal 2 Contagion 1 Vampiric Tutor 3 Man 'O War 4 Memory Lapse 2 Arcane Denial 2 Phyrexian Warbeast 3 Winter Orb 2 Quicksand 2 City of Brass 3 Undiscovered Paradise 2 Bad River 2 Underground River 3 Island 8 Swamp Sideboard: 2 Arcane Denial 2 Dream Tides 2 Dystopia 2 Terror 2 Contagion 4 Hydroblast 1 Island Pretty fairly focused and quite robust seeing no true weakness at that time. Nowadays, this deck is crumpled by a single Aether Flash, we can't have that now can we??? Performs really well, like a complex weenie deck, i likes, i likes!!! Perhaps too cleanly focused. I don;t see why you couldn't try the current type II with the same deck, 'cept for possible foil via single card like Aether Flash. I might as well play with this in the upcoming tourney. ==The UGLY Four Color Black== (not even called a Forgotten Orb Deck, cripes! Some copy somewhere,,,) 2 Shadow Guildmage 4 Fallen Askari 4 Skulking ghost 3 Nekrataal 2 Contagion 1 Vampiric Tutor 4 Suq'Ata Lancer 4 Incinerate 1 Pyrokinesis 4 Man 'o War 4 Arcane Denial 2 Uktabi Orangutan 3 Winter Orb 3 Quicksand 4 Undiscovered Paradise 3 City of Brass 3 Mountain 2 Island 7 Swamp I won't incude the sideboard due to the horrnedousness.See what i mean??? No Memory Lapses! These were so good and so funny, because they laugh at it then end up dying because of it. Lancer and Incinerate are nice but not here. The worst thing about these decks are manascrew.. No red mana lands and now you got sum dead cards in your hand, I hate that! What are you gonna do when you have out a mountain and island with a crap load of black knights. i know mana screw happens, but we can take precautions like not playing mulit-junk! These decks...geez. ==Final Note== I think I covered all that I need to, so I hope it provides useful to someone. If you made it this far, congraatulations you have passed Forgotten Orb 101. If you have passed the class, email me and i will verify it with giving you you r final exam question....=) The Forgetful Frostbringer, RKaneDeath