(備 <--- reference)
I'm never sure of the stroke order of this character. I don't know why.
Is it always top then the left side?

I was thinking of using this as a mnemoric:
When pushed off a "cliff" you always go straigt down.
*Imagine a guy being pushed to the left and then falling down, tumbling and making that curve in some characters.

Thank you for your attention and response.

http://www.raisethehammer.org/images/bis..._cliff.jpg

You could just flip this picture in your mind. Think of the bison running across the top, then tumbling down the side. I'm around frame 1250 and what has worked for me so far has been assigning a visual image to every primitive and sticking with it (e.g. when there is a cliff in the kanji, I always picture the same cliff, a vase=the same vase, etc.). This is just what works for me though. Hopefully it helps.

Sources I find have it mostly being top-then-left-side but not always. For example, I'm finding 備,危,版,厘 as specific left-then-top cases.

~J

皆さん、コメントをありがとうございます！
I think I will use the same cliff to memorise the stroke order and when it is reversed I will use Mattimus's idea.

Mattimusさん、I just got to 1247 today! ^_^;

[Katsuo]

If the horizontal stroke of "cliff" is (a) not cut by another stroke and (b) does not end in a hook, then it is drawn first.

I can't think of any exceptions, certainly among the Joyo kanji.

What can be confusing is the "drag" primitive which appears first in number 1853 (盾). This primitive looks similar to "cliff", but differs in that the first stroke slopes more and is drawn from right to left.

OK, Thank you katsu for your input.
The drag ratical looks confusing! >.<

Thank you everyone!