Comments, suggestions and ideas are greatly appreciated. If I make any changes to the deck based on someone's suggestion, I will acknowledge them here in the description with a link to their profile. Don't forget to +1 if you like it!
--Recent Updates--
UPDATE: 02/06/11 -- Orb continues to perform well for me. Plus it's just a really fun deck to pilot. I took a somewhat more expensive list with me (running Mental Misstep, Ancient Tomb and Misty Rainforest mainboard) to a small, local, Legacy tournament and had a very good chance of placing fourth but I had to drop out because of time constraints. I played against Zoo, White Weenie, Suicide Black and some weird artifact combo deck. There was a lot of aggro there which made this deck a fairly good meta choice. The element of surprise was great too. Other players had never seen anything like this before and so they didn't know how the combo worked, what to side in, etc.
UPDATE: 05/18/11 -- I've decided it's just better to start off running two Gaea's Blessings instead of one Gaea's and an Elixir. This way, the Elixir can be dropped and an extra slot in the SB is opened up. Other than that, the deck is pretty solid.
I played against a couple of my buddy's considerably more expensive decks about a week ago and did great. He had a funky R/W Legacy deck that was somewhere in the realm of $100-$200. I also played against his Standard legal Jace deck. That one pounded my face in because it had eight mainboard artifact hate cards, plus loads of counters. It had the slowest kill clock (meaning it took him many turns to kill me) but it kept me locked down. In legacy, we typically don't see as much artifact hate so that was a very interesting match. I've been thinking about what kind of SB I'd have to run to deal with that.
--- Also check out these similar decks ---
Orb Control Original -- This is the original Orb Control deck that I built which is based off Manuel Bevand's extended deck. Where it all began.
Pro Orb -- This is the new, more powerful and less budget version of Orb Control that I am working on.
houdinis-millionaire-proto-orb-control -- Another awesome, less budget friendly version of Orb Control by qwertyqazxsw.
Orb-ital Bombardment -- My best friend's variation of Orb Control. Not as budget as Orb Control but not nearly as expensive as Pro Orb. This is a great deck by Beekhead.
Illusions of Shuko -- This is deck that blends concepts from Orb Control and Cephalid Breakfast decks to create something truly unique (and budget friendly!). A great build by DapperDane.
------------Description------------
The core card in this deck is Mesmeric Orb. It does a number of things in this list. First, it lets us mill cards off of our opponent's library and provides a potential means of killing them. Second, it works in tandem with Basalt Monolith to provide a self-milling engine. Monolith is able to tap and untap itself indefinitely so that you can mill yourself. Gaea's Blessing keeps you from actually milling yourself out and losing.
Once the self-mill engine is in place, you can mill into your Narcomoeba which come into play and then Dread Return for a fatty, which, first game will probably be Stormtide Leviathan. Then remill your deck to get your Narcomoeba back into play to function as extra damage or free blockers each turn. Stormtide not only acts as a big scary creature but also has a Moat-like ability to help lock down your opponent.
The rest of the deck is built around disrupting, protecting and tutoring. You've got
Seal of Removal
s, Echoing Truths, Mana Leaks, and Muddle the Mixtures to keep your opponent at bay. Muddle the Mixture also works as a tutor for your Mesmeric Orb as does Fabricate. Fabricate also grabs your Basalt Monolith. Careful Study and Impulse help you move through your deck quicker.
Finally, cards like
Ensnare
keep your opponent's creatures at bay to buy you time and also force them to be milled for more cards. Cursed Totem locks down creature-based mana abilities and stops cards like Qasali Pridemage. Elixir of Immortality serves as life gain and manual grave reshuffling in case you accidentally draw Gaea's Blessing or it is removed by a card like Extirpate.
------------Card Listing and Strategy------------
The Engine:
4x Mesmeric Orb -- This is the bread and butter of the deck. With this, you are able to "hunker" down and play control by locking your opponent down and milling them to death while comboing this with Basalt Monolith for free Narcomoeba and, hopefully, a fatty (Stormtide Leviathan, etc).
4x Basalt Monolith -- This is the card we abuse. It lets us mill infinitely while also giving us extra mana. Turn 4 is a pretty common time to combo off. If we've got 4 mana, one free after playing Basalt, we are able to drop cards like Mana Leak in response to our opponent playing Swords to Plowshares on our fatty that we combo in. Why? Once you are done milling yourself, it always ends untapped, ready for us to use when we need it. Also, Basalt plays copies of itself for free which makes it more difficult for our opponent to wipe out all of the necessary artifacts for our combo. With two Basalts out, our opponent is forced to use Krosan Grip on Mesmeric Orb which we can tutor for much more easily.
The Google Cards:
3x Muddle the Mixture -- This serves double-duty as a helpful counterspell and also a tutor for Mesmeric Orb and Cursed Totem or any of our other two mana spells.
3x Fabricate -- This tutors for any of our needed artifacts. Very useful, if a little expensive.
3x Impulse -- It helps you dig deeper into your deck at instant speed. A great card to help you find your combo pieces early on if you end up with a less-than-optimal starting hand and also a great late-game card for grabbing up additional bounce and counter spells.
3x Careful Study -- This is cheap card draw as well as a way to put combo cards like Dread Return back into your library when you are ready to mill.
The Combo Cards:
2x Dread Return -- This gets us our fatty which is either Stormtide Leviathan or Terastodon or one of our SB creatures. We start off running a 2 of because there is a chance that the first will be FoW'ed. The chances of them being able to drop a second Force of Will on our second Dread Return is a lot more slim however. We don't worry about counters like Daze and Spell Pierce because Basalt gives us the mana to pay for those.
3x Narcomoeba -- These guys let us Dread Return and also provide amazing creature defense when paired with Gaea's Blessing. When attacked, simply block with the Narcomoeba and then mill yourself again to put them back onto the field for free after they die. This means you have constant defense for free while also leaving your mana free for disruption.
1x Stormtide Leviathan -- He locks down the board and provides an alternate win condition until your opponent finds an answer for him like Swords to Plowshares. If you're lucky, you can keep him on the board and win with him. If you aren't, your opponent wastes precious time and resources trying to get rid of him while you gain control of the board and keep milling their deck down.
The Disruption:
3x Muddle the Mixture -- Refer above.
3x Memory Lapse -- A cheap efficient counterspell that puts their spell on top of their library to be milled by Mesmeric Orb. It's also better than Counterspell in this deck because of it's one colorless, one blue cost. It is playable when we have a Basalt and only one untapped Island.
4x Echoing Truth -- This is easily the best bounce spell in the game. It has so many uses. This is definitely a staple card. It can get rid of token creatures, bounce scary artifacts, etc.
3x
Seal of Removal
-- This is a cheap, turn-one drop. It keeps their creatures at bay and forces them to consider how they play while it is on the board. It's also better than Unsummon in the sense that it can get rid of Emrakul.
The Other Cards:
1x Gaea's Blessing -- This card is necessary for the combo to work most efficiently although it's not a combo card itself. gaea's Blessing works as mill protection and a way for you to continually put your Narcomoeba into play for free.
1x Elixir of Immortality -- This is an alternative to Gaea's Blessing. Elixir might be one of the most challenged cards in the deck list. Is it really necessary? I would argue that it is. Elixir has gained me life when I've desperately needed it, is a great turn one drop if you start with it, serves as additional protection against grave hate because it can be cracked in response to something like Tormod's Crypt and also serves as an alternate to Blessing, if it is wiped out by Extirpate or something like that.
2x
Ensnare
-- This is also a card that's been challenged. Is it absolutely necessary for the MB or even at all? I think it is. It buys you time against your opponent if needed and also forces them to get milled if they think they can be smart by not doing anything. It forces them to tap stuff.
1x Cursed Totem -- This locks down creature-based mana ramp as well as annoying creatures like Qasali Pridemage among others.
The Manabase:
18x Island -- This is a real strong point for the deck. Being able to run all basic lands means that you are practically immune to all of the land hate running around in Legacy right now. It also makes things cheap and simple and lets you run Back to Basics, a card that shuts down a lot of current Legacy decks. 18 Islands may seem like a low number but with a mana curve that effectively tops out at 3cmc, this is almost never an issue.
The Sideboard: (to be written)
------------Matchups------------
Recently, I have been testing the deck against another of other Legacy lists, most of them here on Tapped Out. All of these games can be considered first game match ups because neither I or my opponent used our sideboard in any of these games.
7-1 against naya-zoo-5. Orb Control really seems to have the advantage in this match up.
4-5 against Nature Show. These were really tough matches and my wins were close. Orb Control has to act fast when Emrakul or Progenitus keep getting dropped on the field turn 2 or 3. I confess that Nature Show's Show and Tell won me some games.
1-7 against Zoo. Got absolutely wrecked against this particular Zoo deck because they were packing more artifact hate, more creature hate and Gaddock Teeg mainboard.
4-1 against hot-sushi-combocontrol. Against my own budget Cephalid Breakfast deck, Hot Sushi, Orb Control faired well. Sushi's combo is pretty easily stopped and Orb Control was easily able to disrupt it for the win.
1-4 against merfolk-tournament-legacy. Orb Control had troubles fighting the Merfolk. However, I want to play a few more games against Merfolk because in at least two of the matches Orb lost, it drew absolutely terrible hands and had to mulligan into oblivion. Don't know why but against Merfolk, I just couldn't draw a good hand.
2-0 against gabriel-nassifs-countertop. I want to play more games against this deck. I was surprised Orb Control faired so well. It was able to pound through multiple FoW each game as well as the dreaded CounterTop lock down for the win. Mesmeric Orb really screws with that. This may not be representative of Orb's chances against this deck, however.
Overall, I have been really impressed with Orb Control's performance. I understand it is still probably not tournament worthy but it's still really awesome to see a $15 deck face off against multiple different $600+ decks and have a chance of winning.
