Tech from the Past: IBC Forgotten Orb

Alexander Blumke

One good thing about being a Magic player who started competing eons ago and who kept (more or less) informed about Pro Tour-level Magic is that you can always try to draw on Magic's strategy-filled past when building up a deck in a new environment. And sometimes, the cards fit well enough to make a past strategy become competitive again in a new block.

Who remembers the Forgotten Orb strategy that had some degree of success in 1996? This strategy first introduced the concept of tempo advantage in Magic: drop a couple of threats early and prevent opponents both from removing them and dropping any of their own for long enough to win. This deck looked like this:

4 Skulking Ghost
4 Black Knight
4 Fallen Askari
1 Knight of Stromgald
3 Nekrataal
4 Man-O'War
2 Bad Moon
4 Memory Lapse
3 Power Sink
3 Dark Ritual
1 Kaervek's Spite
4 Winter Orb
23 lands


One of the most-feared creatures in its day.
Man-O'War, Memory Lapse and Power Sink all had a Time-Walk-like function, allowing the attack of the 2-mana, 2-power creatures to go on for one more turn, while Winter Orb was the nail in the coffin for control decks after the opponent had tapped out for a spell that had been countered. By the time they had untapped enough lands to cast something to stop the assault, they had lost. Against other weenie decks, the Nekrataal/Man-O'War combo tipped the scales in your favor.

Looking at the cards present in Invasion, Planeshift and Apocalypse, I noticed there was enough material to make this strategy work again. Black-blue had plenty of counterspells to choose from, and 2-mana, 2-power bears were in sufficient numbers too. Now I had to look for synergy between the cards.

Checking out the bears, I spotted the Weavers - Sky and Hate. Vodalian Zombie was a shoe-in, as was Nightscape Familiar: although he's only 1/1, making all the blue spells cost less gives the deck a further boost in speed and also helps in winning counterspell wars. Then I noticed both Vodalian Zombie and Nightscape Familiar were Zombies. Eight already... Lord of the Undead had to be considered. Besides, wasn't there a Bad Moon in Forgotten Orb?

So I had to look for other Zombies. Maggot Carrier fit the speed theme nicely, but he is... a 1/1. A 1/1 who does close to nothing. That just wasn't good enough. Metathran Zombie was already better, since he could regenerate and has the potential to cost only one mana if a Familiar was on the table, but as another 1/1, he still couldn't provide enough beats on his own. Llanowar Dead and Shivan Zombie were off-color, and the 3-casting cost Zombies were too expensive for the deck I had in mind.

There was always Phyrexian Scuta. He too looked rather expensive for the deck, but as a 5/5 for 4 mana, which could be recurred with the Lord, he couldn't be overlooked.

Now that I had the creatures and the Bad Moon, I had to look for the Time-Walk-like cards. Repulse would be my Man-O'War, netting me a card instead of a 2/2. For the counterspells, I found that Undermine would fit perfectly in the deck; Spite/Malice would give me some removal; Exclude, even if not as good as Repulse in this deck (if an opponent plays with few creatures, he plays a lot of removal, so that there is always a target for Repulse; Exclude may sit around in your hand sometimes, since you rarely want to Exclude your own creature spell), was good enough also; Evasive Action was only slightly better than Force Spike, but some cheap countermagic was needed, and sometimes it would cost only 1 mana to cast anyway; and then there was Disrupt, at its best in this kind of deck.

I had the creatures, I had the Time Walks; Nightscape Familiar would be my Dark Ritual, and Sky Weaver would be both an additional bear and my Kaervek's Spite, since late in the game he could break a stalled ground and allow an alpha strike with flying creatures. The deck was doing well, but I still needed the Winter Orb...


The key to the deck is to punish an opponent for tapping out to cast spells.
There isn't any Winter Orb in IBC. Rising Waters is a Mercadian Masques card, and even if something similar had been printed in IBC, I doubted that it would be good for my deck anyway, since my deck was more mana-intensive than the original Forgotten Orb deck. But the card I was looking for didn't necessarily have to prevent lands to untap: its function was to wreck control players if ever they tapped out. I found such a card in Lobotomy - which happens to work great with Repulse, too. Lobotomy would thus fill the Winter Orb spot.

Then I noticed that Fact or Fiction, one of the best cards in the environment, also provided great synergy with Lord of the Undead, so I had to cut here and there to include it.

Finally, I considered the mana ratio. With 13 black spells, 15 blue ones, 8 black-blue ones, and 4 spells costing double black and 3 double blue, it seemed about right to do a 50/50 split.

To sum it up, my current IBC Forgotten Orb deck looks like this:

4 Nightscape Familiar (bear, Dark Ritual)
4 Vodalian Zombie (bear)
4 Lord of the Undead (bear, Bad Moon, reusable Raise Dead)
1 Phyrexian Scuta (expensive bear)
2 Sky Weaver (bear, Kaervek's Spite)

4 Repulse (Man-O'War)
2 Spite/Malice (countermagic, removal)
3 Undermine (countermagic)
1 Exclude (countermagic)
2 Evasive Action (cheap countermagic)
2 Disrupt (cheap countermagic)
4 Fact or Fiction (just good)
3 Lobotomy (Winter Orb)

4 Salt Marsh
10 Swamp
10 Island


Push past Exclude.
In case anybody wonders why there aren't four Undermines in the deck, I found out that the more I playtested, the more expensive Undermine looked to me compared to the other counterspells in the deck, especially with one or two Nightscape Familiars in play. Besides, the cheap countermagic allows you to win counterspell wars and is really needed when you want to play a second bear to put some more pressure: even if your opponent started the game, you can cast a creature on the third turn without fearing Exclude if you have a Disrupt (or an Evasive Action if your first creature was a Familiar) in hand.

Fact or Fiction is even better here than in other decks, since the Zombies you let go to the graveyard will end in your hand anyway as soon as you can keep a Lord on the table. For the same reason, don't hesitate to trade creatures in combat, since you should be able to get yours back later.

So this is how I transposed the Forgotten Orb strategy to the IBC environment. In my opinion, the strategy is as strong today as it was back in 1996. I'd like to point out that this strategy works well also in blue-green, with Mystic Snake as an excellent Nekrataal for spells, and it has already been played successfully in tournaments. But Nightscape Familiar, Lobotomy, the ability of Lord of the Undead to recover from mass creature destruction and his synergy with Fact or Fiction make me think that the blue-black version should do just as well.

Finally, I'd like to add some advice about when to play Fact or Fiction. Most often, people play it at the end of the opponent's turn. I think it is often better to play it in response to a spell the opponent plays that turn (if one is played, that is), especially if he or she taps out to do so. Take the following example:

You have 4 untapped lands (2 islands), a Nightscape Familiar and a couple of other bears in play. You have two cards in hand. Your opponent, tapping out, plays Rout, hoping your cards are lands or creatures.

Unfortunately for him, your two cards are Fact or Fiction and Disrupt. Now you could chuckle about how good Disrupt is, counter the Rout, draw a card, and then play Fact or Fiction at the end of his turn to refill your hand with two or three good cards. Or you could play Fact or Fiction in response to his Rout, and uncover an Evasive Action with it. Your opponent, knowing you really want to counter his Rout, would most probably put the Evasive Action in one pile and the four other cards in the other one. Then you could take the pile with four cards, counter the Rout with the Disrupt still in your hand, draw yet another card - and chuckle about how good a player you are! So play Fact or Fiction whenever your opponents tap out for a sorcery-speed spell - they might reward you for it.

If you weren't already aware of it, I hope I made you realize that mastering past strategies can be quite an advantage in Magic. So if you play something close to the deck above in an IBC tournament, I wish you good luck (especially since it has not passed a tournament test yet). If you play a build of your own, I wish you even better luck: the past may have been great, but in Magic as in anything creative, the best news is always the new.