The Undying Horde

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cryogen
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Post by cryogen » 4 years ago

The Undying Horde


Table of Contents
  1. What is the Horde Variant?
  2. The Basic Rules
  3. The Deck
  4. Individual Card Discussion
  5. Cards to Avoid
  6. Change Log
  7. Variant Rules


Through the billowing fog off in the distance, you can dimly make out a shadowy figure, illuminated by the moonlight. A sense of dread overcomes your party, and you silently prepare for the imminent battle. Behind you is the soft clink of metal buckles being tightened as the fighter checks his armor, and off to one side the wizard looks over his components and rehearses the contents of his spellbook. Ahead, the figure lumbers forward, and echoing through the fog you can hear moans and groans all around.
Suddenly, bodies emerge through the fog all around the shadowy figure, which you can now see is a cleric - or at least it was a cleric in a former life. Corpses of people all shapes and sizes come towards you, some rushing at full speed, and others slowly shambling. As they surround your group, you frantically keep them at bay in a desperate struggle that you know will not end until one group is unable to keep moving. You manage to fend off the first wave, but more and more appear. To make matters worse, all around you the fallen corpses stir and begin to rise.





1. What is Horde, Anyway?




Horde is a variant of Magic in which a group of players team up against an autonomous deck (from here on out referred to as Survivors and Horde, respectively). It was first introduced here, and had a follow-up article here. Additionally, the Serious Fun column on the mothership did an article about the horde format here. In general, the Horde deck consists of 100 cards, with a 60/40 split of tokens/non-tokens, although many players adjust their decks to suit their individual needs. Zombies are the most commonly used hordes, but many people use other tokens, such as Dragons, Angels, and Slivers. You're limited only by your imagination (and Magic tokens, of course).

The beauty and appeal of the format is that because the Horde is not controlled by a person, everyone is either a winner or a loser. Additionally, it can be played with as few as one person solitaire, or as many as you want (although much like regular Commander, 3-4 people is generally the perfect number).




2. The Rules




Preface:
The most important thing to keep in mind with these rules is that they are not concrete rules. You can (and should) adjust them to your playgroup. The horde should be challenging enough that the Survivors feel that they just barely win, but can win without a fluke of luck. The ways to accomplish this are by firstly the contents of the deck, and secondly, by adjusting the rules (mostly starting life and starting turns for the Survivors).

The Basic Rules

Setup:
1. Each Survivor contributes 20 life, and 25 cards are removed for each player under four. (So with a typical Horde deck and three Survivors, they would start at 60 life and face a Horde deck with 75 cards.)

(Authors note: I do not like this rule as I have found that it makes it easy for all but the weakest of Commander decks. I prefer using a life total of 30 life +10 life per survivor beyond the first, which caps out at 60 life. A 100 card horde deck should not be lessened below 100 cards, as I've found that even goldfishing a 100 card horde deck against 2 of my own decks has proven to be easily doable with a starting life total of 40 life.)


Gameplay:
1. The Survivors always go first, and take the first three turns before the Horde gets a turn. The Survivors do not get to draw on their first turn.
2. At the beginning of the Horde's turn, it reveals cards from the top of its library until a non-token card is revealed. First, the revealed card is cast, then the revealed tokens are cast. (Author's note: I change it so that the tokens enter the battlefield as a special action not using the stack, so that the players can't interfere.)
3. All creatures have haste, and must attack each turn if able. The Horde has infinite mana, and will pay all costs for cards such as Propaganda or Rhystic Study.
4. If the Horde would lose life, it instead mills that many cards from its library into its graveyard.


Winning the Game (all conditions must be met):
1. The Horde must have no cards in its library.
2. The Horde must have no cards in hand.
3. The Horde must have no creatures in play.


Additional Rules Notes:
1. If a card is put into the Horde's hand for any reason, it is cast during their next main phase.
2. The Horde is supposed to be mindless, so whenever possible, make choices randomly.


Deck-Specific Rules
1. The Horde's turn proceeds in this manner:
a) Upkeep - no special actions (see Rule #4 for flashback exception)
b) First main phase:
1. Reveal cards until a non-token card is revealed.
2. The revealed card is cast, using the stack as normal.
3. All revealed tokens enter the battlefield. This does not use the stack and cannot be responded to.
4. If the Horde has any additional cards in its hand due to an effect or spell, they are cast in a random order. These cards all use the stack, including token creatures.
5. Spells with flashback and creatures with unearth are played from exile as applicable, in a random order.
c) Combat phase - All creatures which are legally able to attack must attack (note that all creatures have haste).
d) Second main phase - Any cards drawn or returned to hand during the first main phase are now cast.
2. If the Horde would gain life, it puts one card per life gained from the bottom of its graveyard on the bottom of its library.
3. If the Horde would ever discard a card, it is done at random.
4. If a card with flashback would be put into the graveyard from anywhere, it is instead exiled with X time counters (where X is the converted mana flashback cost). At the beginning of the Horde's upkeep, 1d6 time counters are removed from the exiled spell. When the last counter is removed, the spell is cast along with the normal spells for the turn. The spell is then exiled as normal. Treat this as a replacement effect that cannot be responded to.
5. If a card with unearth would be put into the graveyard it is instead exiled and then unearthed during the horde's next first main phase after the spells of that phase are cast. Treat this as a special action that cannot be responded to.
6. If a creature with regeneration would die, it may use its regenerate ability once per turn in response to the damage/effect which would destroy it.
7. Choosing who to attack - Whenever there is one or more planeswalker in play, zombie tokens will divert their attacks towards the survivors and attack the planeswalker(s). If there is more than one, they will equally divide among the planeswalkers, with the odd number going for the one with the most loyalty counters.


Optional General Rule
Because this deck is meant to emulate the apprehension and terror of zombies that are hard to kill and relentlessly come at you, I push the undying theme, recursion, and zombies that bring more zombies with each death. As an optional rule, Mikaeus, the Unhallowed can be played as a general. He is cast on the sixth turn, and two turns after each time he dies. If he is tucked, he instead goes to the Command Zone.


Card-Specific Rules
  • Cover of Darkness – Zombie is always the named creature type, naturally.
  • Descent into Madness – The order for exiled permanents is: 1. Created Zombie tokens; 2. Regular Zombie tokens; 3. Zombie Giant tokens; 4. Creatures, starting with the lowest power; 5. Random non-creature permanents; 6. Descent into Madness.
  • Ghoulcaller Gisa - She wants maximum effect, so whenever possible, she sacrifices the creature with the highest power.
  • Pontiff of Blight – PoB does not grant other creatures the Extort ability. Additionally, only non-token cards are cast, so Extort will not trigger for the tokens, but the Extort ability is use once for each spell cast.
  • Pox – Sacrifice creatures totally at random.
  • Relentless Dead – RD will always pay b if it dies, and will always "pay X" to get the top zombie card from the graveyard back to play.
  • Sutured Ghoul – Exile only Zombie tokens (the 2/2 and 5/5 ones), but exile all of them.
  • Temporal Extortion – If for any reason the survivors would cast this and force the horde to make a choice, the horde always pays the life by milling half their library. Note that this will trigger cards with flashback and unearth.



3. The Deck







4. Individual Card Discussion




These are all thoughts on the cards that I'm running, have run, or contemplated running. Cards that I'm currently running are bold for easy identification. I've intentionally left out some zombies that I think don't add enough value or require some special rules.

Zombies
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  • Aphetto Vulture - Pros: It flies, and it recurs creatures. Cons: You have to either modify the "target creature" to make it random or for added difficulty you can always choose the best target.
  • Armored Skaab - Weak by itself, but you build your deck right, milling can lead to epic plays later on.
  • Ashen Ghoul - A zombie that doesn't stay dead. Unfortunately, it makes for more things to keep track of.
  • Balthor the Defiled - You'd have to figure out how to determine when to active his effect, but it's a powerful effect.
  • Bladewing the Risen - A flying zombie, but with the horde having infinite mana, his ability can get out of hand.
  • Blood Scrivener - By virtue of the horde not having a hand size, this zombie will most often draw an extra card.
  • Bone Dancer - A zombie that raises your dead against you.
  • Boneknitter - Regenerating your horde increased the difficulty by a lot.
  • Cackling Fiend - Making your opponents discard is one of the stronger effects for the horde.
  • Cemetery Reaper - A zombie lord, and an ability if you want to make a rule for it.
  • Coffin Queen - A tap ability if you choose to make a rule for it.
  • Dakmor Ghoul - ETB damage zombie.
  • Death Baron - Zombie lord.
  • Deathbringer Thoctar - Even without the second ability, this will get big.
  • Diregraf Captain - Zombie lord that deals damage to the survivors.
  • Dread Slaver - Turns your side against you.
  • Dread Wight - Slows down the survivors creatures.
  • Entrails Feaster - Eats the dead of the opposition.
  • Fleshbag Marauder - Whittles away at the survivors' creatures.
  • Gray Merchant of Aspodel – This card can be a dud or a blow-out, so use caution when adding these to the deck.
  • Ghoulraiser - I like this better than Gravedigger simply because it's random.
  • Ghoultree - A 10/10 zombie makes short work of the survivors.
  • Glissa, the Traitor - even without her ability, first strike and deathtouch are good.
  • Gloomdrifter - Pretty good when you have threshold, which will be quite often.
  • Grave Defiler - One of my favorites, this zombie practically reads "draw four cards". The survivors won't like seeing this zombie get revealed.
  • Gravebane Zombie - I thought about running this because it will be so hard to kill, but I think in practice the smart play is to kill it each turn, effectively stopping the horde from getting reveals and letting the survivors stabilize into a good position.
  • Graveborn Muse - I haven't tried it, but one upkeep with Muse could be brutal.
  • Gravecrawler - A zombie that doesn't die.
  • Gravedigger - Brings the dead back.
  • Grave Titan - The only non-zombie creature I run, but there's no excuse not to run him unless you have a very strict flavor theme.
  • Grixis Slavedriver - A zombie that spawns more zombies.
  • Havengul Lich - You can rule it to limit the number of creatures it can get, or bring everything back to the battlefield under the horde's control.
  • Infectious Horror - 6-8 damage every time it attacks really adds up, or you can just count the survivors as one opponent to lessen the impact.
  • Khabál Ghoul - A zombie that scales over time.
  • Lightning Reaver - Damage dealer.
  • Liliana's Reaver - Powerful effect if it connects.
  • Lord of the Undead - Recursion effect if you choose to rule it.
  • Maalfeld Twins - A zombie that spawns more zombies.
  • Maggot Carrier - ETB damage dealer.
  • Mikaeus, the Unhallowed - Probably the most hated lord out there. Undying is a force to be reckoned with.
  • Necrosavant - Turn your tokens into something bigger.
  • Nested Ghoul - A token generator, although probably won't survive for long.
  • Noxious Ghoul - A good turn for the horde can make this zombie wrath the opposing side.
  • Order of Yawgmoth - Pretty decent discard effect if you can figure out how to rule it.
  • Phyrexian Delver - You can make it random, or control the effect for increased difficulty.
  • Phyrexian Reaper - Situational card, but remember that the effect triggers once blockers are declared.
  • Pontiff of Blight - Personally, I'd rule that extort triggers only once per spell cast, and PoB doesn't grant everything extort.
  • Rotting Rats - Discard + unearth = bad for the survivors.
  • Sedris, the Traitor King - Granting everything unearth is bad news for the survivors, but if they can survive the assault, exiling the horde's creatures actually helps the survivors in the long run.
  • Soulless One - A vanilla zombie, but a big one.
  • Sutured Ghoul - With a big enough graveyard, this can be GG with just one attack, assuming you exile the horde's entire graveyard of creatures.
  • Thraximundar - Yep, he's a zombie. He's just as annoying as part of the horde as he can be in the command zone.
  • Unbreathing Horde - Sometimes big, other times not, but the damage prevention keeps it alive for a while.
  • Undead Warchief - Zombie lord.
  • Vengeful Dead - This will make the survivors work around board wraths (and hope the horde doesn't flip one too).
  • Vengeful Pharaoh - A recurring zombie, if you can figure out how to use the targeted kill effect.
  • Vulturous Zombie - A flying zombie that gets bigger.
  • Wight of Precinct Six - An annoying zombie because it forces you to constantly track its power/toughness.
  • Withered Wretch - On the plus side, it keeps the survivors' graveyards empty, but the downside is that it can work against cards like Grave Betrayal.
  • Woebearer - Constant recursion.
  • Zombie Master - Increase the difficulty by giving all your zombies a regeneration shield. Swampwalk isn't bad, either.
Other Spells
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  • Army of the Damned - 13 zombies suddenly appearing. Another 13 is even worse.
  • Bad Moon - A flavorful anthem.
  • Bedlam - Why bother giving the zombies fear or swampwalk, when you can just make them unblockable?
  • Call to the Grave - If this isn't dealt with, it can make short work of the survivors creatures.
  • Coat of Arms - The mackdaddy of anthem effects, I don't run it because it's practically GG if it's not countered.
  • Cover of Darkness - Flavorfully, this is a beautiful card. Mechanically, it makes the horde hard to block.
  • Dawn of the Dead - Ongoing recursion effect.
  • Deathbridge Chant - Ongoing recursion effect.
  • Death Pit Offering - Anthem effect.
  • Decree of Pain - I love this sweeper because no matter how you flip your cards, wrathing the horde's board just makes them that much stronger next turn.
  • Delirium Skeins - Mass discard spell.
  • Elixir of Immortality - If you find that your survivors tend to stall rather than attack, this will encourage attacking.
  • Empty the Catacombs - Mass reanimation - sort of.
  • Endless Ranks of the Dead - And endless flow of zombies, and by the nature of the deck, wrathing the board will only slow it down for a turn or two.
  • Forsaken Wastes - Stops lifegain, which is difficult for the horde to bypass otherwise.
  • Gibbering Descent - Repeated discard.
  • Grave Betrayal - Let's face it, creatures are going to die. Now they won't stay dead for long.
  • Grave Pact - Makes it difficult to keep the survivors creatures on the board.
  • Immortal Servitude - One-sided mass reanimation.
  • Living Death - Chances are, this will hurt the survivors more than help them, but I want to mix the recursion effects and not just make them strictly one-sided (by running all Zombie Apocalypses).
  • Living End - Living Death with suspend.
  • Mnemonic Nexus - Graveyard reshuffle.
  • Moan of the Unhallowed - Zombie token production.
  • Nether Void - Tax the survivors spells.
  • Painful Quandary – Punish the survivors for trying to stop you.
  • Past in Flames - Recast all those spells from the grave.
  • Patriarch's Bidding - Mass reanimation for the horde, not so much for the survivors.
  • Phyrexian Etchings - Increasing draws for the horde.
  • Plague Wind - A one-sided board wrath.
  • Primal Surge - With the number of spells that the deck runs, this is most likely a powerful, but fair spell.
  • Rise of the Dark Realms - Mass reanimation that all goes to the horde.
  • Skull Rend - Damage and discard.
  • Soulquake - Mass bounce and reanimation.
  • Smallpox - Pox is a brutal card, and I may end up running it as a one-of. Smallpox, on the other hand, is manageable (but awful to see in the first few turns).
  • Syphon Flesh - Turns the survivors creatures into zombies.
  • Syphon Flesh - The card advantage this provides is insane.
  • Temporal Cascade - Refill the horde deck and give them seven more cards to cast next phase.
  • Temporal Extortion - I love the idea of giving the horde extra turns, and this one is neat because it gives the survivors a painful way to counter it without a counterspell. The only downside is that if the survivors have a lifegain method then it loses its effectiveness.
  • Tombstone Stairwell - Zombies!
  • Twilight's Call - A "fair" mass grave reanimation spell, although nothing is fair about seeing all those zombies you killed.
  • Whispering Madness - A repeatable discard spell that fills the horde's hand.
  • Zombie Apocalypse - Lives up to its name.



5 Building Your Own Horde



A horde deck is a lot like a cube: easy to build (just grab a bunch of stuff and throw it together), and difficult to balance for your intended audience. When you're first starting out, the easiest thing to do is to start with 100 cards. Grab 60 appropriate tokens that hopefully have a mix of small and large creatures, and 40 other cards. Your other cards should be tribal appropriate creatures, anthems, board wipes, and some disruption, such as discard. Playtest it some, and if you find that your group has an easy time, consider trading some of the weaker effects for more powerful ones, and/or adding cards to the horde.

Because of the nature and mechanics of the Horde format, there are certain cards that you should avoid if you want your horde to be as mindless and autonomous as possible. Now, I'm not going to list every single cards, because that would be a lot of work and some cards can be worked around with house rules, but I will talk about the types of cards to avoid, with examples.

Cards to Avoid Putting in a Horde Deck
  • Activated Abilities – The horde is supposed to attack each turn, be mindless, and have infinite mana. Most activated abilities will have a conflict with one or more of these. As always, it is up to each group to determine how to utilize these effects.
  • Coin flips – No, I don't mean literal coin flip cards like Stitch in Time, I mean cards that when they resolve are either duds or completely back-breaking (Gray Merchant of Asphodel comes to mind). These cards are good in small doses as they can make for some swingy games, but when you load up on them, they tend to overpower the deck.
  • Oops, I won cards – Properly constructed, your horde deck should make the Survivors dread each turn the horde gets, because each turn there is the possibility for a moment of calm or a moment of terror. What they shouldn't dread is a card that just hands the horde the game. Coat of Arms is one such card, because while it seems like it should be good, flipping over a handful of tokens and CoA doesn't make for a good match.
  • X spells - The horde has infinite mana, so running a spell like Exsanguinate or White Sun's Zenith is pretty boring. There are a lot of X spells out there, so some of them could work. The two ideas I've come up with are using a turn counter, where X=turn number, or making X=# of Survivors. Personally, I like the second one because it doesn't require you to track the number of turns that has passed.

Cards to Avoid Playing as a Survivor
  • Cheaty cards – These are all cards that take advantage of the fact that the majority (or all of the horde) is similar. I'm talking cards like Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, which instantly kills most of a Zombie horde (and to a lesser extent Aether Flash), and cards like An-Zerrin Ruins and Tsabo's Decree unfairly play against the tribal nature of the horde.
  • Combo cards - The horde can't react to the stack, so bouncing Palinchron ad nauseam for infinite mana, taking infinite turns with Time Warp, or Tooth and Nailing for Mike and Trike defeat the purpose of playing horde.
  • Pillowfort cards - While sometimes you can get a breather by playing cards like Silent Arbiter or Moat, I find that it's too easy to tip the tides in the Survivors favor, simply because the horde can't block. If you find that your playgroup starts to build decks to play against the horde, these cards should be avoided, and if they come up naturally, figure out a good rule for bypassing them (such as ignoring them or discarding and drawing a new card).



6. Change Log



Section reset when new thread created. To be updated...



7. Variant Rules




These are all rules that other players use, or we've been brainstorming across the various threads. Feel free to steal, adapt, and suggest ideas.

Burn the Bodies: When you're up against 100+ cards, the odds are stacked against you, especially when the dead doesn't want to stay dead. When declaring attackers, you can choose to attack the horde's graveyard. Whenever you deal combat damage, each point of damage exiles one card at random from the horde's graveyard.

Emblems: Use a card (like a Swamp or Infect token) to represent an bonus for the horde. Each time one is revealed, the horde gets a bonus to make it more powerful. Some people treat the emblem as an extra turn, one extra reveal from the horde deck, or an emblem which gives the horde an extra reveal each turn. Depending on how powerful they are for your meta, you can choose to give the horde the emblem if they reveal it from a flip, or even when it gets milled to the graveyard.

Targeting: There's a lot of good zombies that the horde could run but because they target a single player, make for awkward rules (like Liliana's Reaver). Simply make any targeted effect target each survivor.

Tiers: Like the idea of an emblem, but want to make it less random? Use a turn counter instead. This way, players can't form a strategy to stall the emblems from appearing or stalling to buy time in order to set up a defense.

Treasure Hunting: You and your survivors are trying your best to fend off the horde, but sometimes you just need more help. What if someone had carelessly left something about for you to find? A treasure deck is a separate mini-deck that your team can draw cards from. Sometimes you will get something beneficial (such as extra equipment or power-ups), and sometimes there's a nasty surprise waiting for you, like a zombie or effect to pump the zombies.
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RxPhantom
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Post by RxPhantom » 4 years ago

I love this format, and I love my zombie horde deck. Sometimes, I'll try to take it on 1v1. I can sometimes beat it.
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Post by cryogen » 4 years ago

RxPhantom wrote:
4 years ago
I love this format, and I love my zombie horde deck. Sometimes, I'll try to take it on 1v1. I can sometimes beat it.
Thanks. I'll be honest, I ported this thread over from MTGS and cleaned up the formatting, but the deck has been collecting dust for a long time now.
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Post by RxPhantom » 4 years ago

cryogen wrote:
4 years ago
RxPhantom wrote:
4 years ago
I love this format, and I love my zombie horde deck. Sometimes, I'll try to take it on 1v1. I can sometimes beat it.
Thanks. I'll be honest, I ported this thread over from MTGS and cleaned up the formatting, but the deck has been collecting dust for a long time now.
So has mine. *shrugs* Most of the time, people love it when they give it a shot. Well, I for one appreciate the effort with the thread. I really wish the format had taken off more.
Can you name all of the creature types with at least 20 cards? Try my Sporcle Quiz! Last Updated: 2/18/22 (Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty)

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Post by schweinefett » 4 years ago

Not sure if this is relevnt, but my horde uses endless ranks of the dead as markers to ramp up the difficulty. Basically, for each endless ranks in play, it adds a doom counter onto the horde player. For each doom counter on the horde player, the horde gets 1 extra 'flop' (i.e. reveal cards from the horde library until a non-token card is revealed). The counters stay even after the endless ranks is destroyed. The doom counters are added even if the endless ranks are milled via damage or mill.

It allows hordes to be scaled based off how 'try-hard' the players are. I think I have a 200-250 card horde, with 15 endless ranks. Even in a 4-player with all of our most tryhard EDH decks, we've yet to beat level 8. That being said, when i whip out my legacy deck, it's very winnable even with all 15 endless ranks.

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Post by cryogen » 4 years ago

schweinefett wrote:
4 years ago
Not sure if this is relevnt, but my horde uses endless ranks of the dead as markers to ramp up the difficulty. Basically, for each endless ranks in play, it adds a doom counter onto the horde player. For each doom counter on the horde player, the horde gets 1 extra 'flop' (i.e. reveal cards from the horde library until a non-token card is revealed). The counters stay even after the endless ranks is destroyed. The doom counters are added even if the endless ranks are milled via damage or mill.

It allows hordes to be scaled based off how 'try-hard' the players are. I think I have a 200-250 card horde, with 15 endless ranks. Even in a 4-player with all of our most tryhard EDH decks, we've yet to beat level 8. That being said, when i whip out my legacy deck, it's very winnable even with all 15 endless ranks.
That's a pretty cool idea. I found in playing my horde (which admittedly hasn't been in a long time) that there are a lot of moving parts to track. I really should print out a cheat sheet to include with it.

Do you have a link to your list?
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schweinefett
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Post by schweinefett » 4 years ago

cryogen wrote:
4 years ago
schweinefett wrote:
4 years ago
Not sure if this is relevnt, but my horde uses endless ranks of the dead as markers to ramp up the difficulty. Basically, for each endless ranks in play, it adds a doom counter onto the horde player. For each doom counter on the horde player, the horde gets 1 extra 'flop' (i.e. reveal cards from the horde library until a non-token card is revealed). The counters stay even after the endless ranks is destroyed. The doom counters are added even if the endless ranks are milled via damage or mill.

It allows hordes to be scaled based off how 'try-hard' the players are. I think I have a 200-250 card horde, with 15 endless ranks. Even in a 4-player with all of our most tryhard EDH decks, we've yet to beat level 8. That being said, when i whip out my legacy deck, it's very winnable even with all 15 endless ranks.
That's a pretty cool idea. I found in playing my horde (which admittedly hasn't been in a long time) that there are a lot of moving parts to track. I really should print out a cheat sheet to include with it.

Do you have a link to your list?
Decklist
Approximate Total Cost:

That was the list ive found most recently. I know ive made a few changes since though, with nether shadow, something like 4 prized amalgam and like 6 or 7 relentless dead.
There are some specific rules to my horde though...
- the angel is there as a reprieve that is almost always a welcome sight.
- when one side of BFM is revealed, the card is exiled, then continue flopping as if it wasn't a card.
- regenerate is a constant regeneration bubble if a zombie is able to regenerate. i.e. zombie master is a real pain.

It's always good fun, but more often than not, the game feels like it's starting to break just before the game ends. As in, the game just feels like there are way too many cards on the board, and the game is being pushed a tad too far that it just feels broken. But by that point, the players are either so far behind, or the players are the ones completely breaking the game itself and are winning.

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Post by Drain Life » 3 years ago

Sorry if you see this as a Necro to an older thread, but I was looking this topic up as an alternate way to play with my wife while under quarantine.

I am the same Drain Life from MtGSalvation.

So, the reason I am posting here is to both give my input and ask for follow up advice/recommendations.

From another search, I found a list which included some interesting multicolored and non-black cards.

Anthem of Rakdos
1. This card is a lot stronger when it is free.
2. The horde mills itself, which might be too much of a drawback.
3. It should always be hellbent, meaning normal zombies are 4 power or larger if other anthems are out, and hit for 8+ for the same reason. It should only take a single swing to change the game.
4. I do not see it as an auto win for the horde, as the survivors should be packing disenchant effects. The horde should have enough enchantments and artifacts to justify it, this just being another one.

In Oketra's Name - Self explanatory. A simple single turn +2 anthem for the horde.

Mnemonic Nexus - A random singularity forms and reshapes the game, replenishing the horde deck.

I am interested in reading if there are other global effects which would fit well within the deck.

Ferocity of the Wilds is not 100% on theme, but another anthem (or at least for power) is always nice. The flavor still tells of the dangers of a horde, so it can fit. It certainly fits better than Intangible Virture, which would be insane.

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Post by RxPhantom » 3 years ago

@Drain Life: don't make me go search all these cards up. Card tags work the same here as Salvation.

I run Mnemonic Nexus. I'm of the mind that the Horde deck should be really tough to beat, and Nexus definitely achieves that.
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Post by cryogen » 3 years ago

Drain Life wrote:
3 years ago
Sorry if you see this as a Necro to an older thread, but I was looking this topic up as an alternate way to play with my wife while under quarantine.

I am the same Drain Life from MtGSalvation.

So, the reason I am posting here is to both give my input and ask for follow up advice/recommendations.

From another search, I found a list which included some interesting multicolored and non-black cards.

Anthem of Rakdos
1. This card is a lot stronger when it is free.
2. The horde mills itself, which might be too much of a drawback.
3. It should always be hellbent, meaning normal zombies are 4 power or larger if other anthems are out, and hit for 8+ for the same reason. It should only take a single swing to change the game.
4. I do not see it as an auto win for the horde, as the survivors should be packing disenchant effects. The horde should have enough enchantments and artifacts to justify it, this just being another one.

In Oketra's Name - Self explanatory. A simple single turn +2 anthem for the horde.

Mnemonic Nexus - A random singularity forms and reshapes the game, replenishing the horde deck.

I am interested in reading if there are other global effects which would fit well within the deck.

Ferocity of the Wilds is not 100% on theme, but another anthem (or at least for power) is always nice. The flavor still tells of the dangers of a horde, so it can fit. It certainly fits better than Intangible Virture, which would be insane.
Hey, thanks for the feedback! I actually haven't played or updated the list in a few years, so sorry I can't help out more. What I can say is that I built it trying to make it as on-theme as possible, so random blue cards didn't make the cut, even if they're good. I also didn't want to make it TOO difficult, so even though I didn't see Anthem of Rakdos I probably wouldn't include it.

The great thing about building a horde is that you can make it as hard or as easy as you want, so if you want the challenge of playing on Nightmare mode then go for it.
RxPhantom wrote:
3 years ago
Drain Life: don't make me go search all these cards up. Card tags work the same here as Salvation.
Even easier, as a matter of fact!!! If you use [card]card name[/card] not only does it save time over the traditional [card]card name[/card] but it even helps you finish the card name. Because @Feyd_Ruin is awesome like that.
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Post by cheonice » 3 years ago

:love: Horde! I really love these variants. I guess I'm one of the few players, who still uses the Theros Challenge Decks.

Some thoughts on possible additions:
schweinefett wrote:
4 years ago
Not sure if this is relevnt, but my horde uses endless ranks of the dead as markers to ramp up the difficulty. Basically, for each endless ranks in play, it adds a doom counter onto the horde player. For each doom counter on the horde player, the horde gets 1 extra 'flop' (i.e. reveal cards from the horde library until a non-token card is revealed). The counters stay even after the endless ranks is destroyed. The doom counters are added even if the endless ranks are milled via damage or mill.
I really like this idea! One of the greatest struggles is that my Horde just folds once three players have established some board presence...
RxPhantom wrote:
3 years ago
I run Mnemonic Nexus. I'm of the mind that the Horde deck should be really tough to beat, and Nexus definitely achieves that.
I second this. Nexus is a fine yet unflavourful addition.

So... Corona made the Horde rise again, I guess?

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Post by Atraxian » 3 years ago

This seems a nice variant I could try alone.
"problem" is that I don't really have enough tokens or tribal sinergy to make a good horde, except for dragons and a horde of dragons in 5 colors... Oh, boy...
With things like Silumgar, the Drifting Death, Ojutai, Soul of Winter or Dromoka the Eternal sounds pretty scary.

Another thing to spice up the variety of the horde is to take different kinds of tokens and using them as if they were of the thematic tribe.
For example:
- 4/4 bear tokens (from Khans ofTarkir) treat them like they were zombie bears
- */* ooze tokens and decide that * is cards in graveyards or something like that.
- 1/1 bird tokens with flying become 1/1 zombie birds
ecc...

EDIT:
tried my hand with a sliver horde in solo, it is quite overwhelming. With token variety and the tokens coming onto the battlefield with haste and sometimes 5 at a time, it wasn't uncommon to have the horde deal 20+ damage on T2.
I admit that my deck is not tailored for a horde game specifically, and may be the tokens clumped a little bit, but having 10 hasty creatures attacking me by T2 consistently is prety brutal, even with 40 starting life.
To make things a little simpler I would add these as extra rules for my solitaire:
- Horde's creatures have regular summoning sickness (so haste slivers have a purpose)
- Horde's creatures do not use activated abilities or optional triggers unless the commander sliver is on the board (the brain of the sliver swarm)
- Horde reveals 2 cards at a time and the limit is rised by 1 every 2 turns after the commander sliver is first cast.
As an added bonus to the horde:
- Whenever the horde's library is empty, shuffle its graveyard into its library. (Slivers are meant to be endless and the only way to win is to "attack the graveyard" regularly to make sure they don't come back)
- */* tokens have strenght and toughness equal to the number of slivers on the battlefield (because some big threats should always be there)
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Post by schweinefett » 3 years ago

Atraxian wrote:
3 years ago
This seems a nice variant I could try alone.
"problem" is that I don't really have enough tokens or tribal sinergy to make a good horde, except for dragons and a horde of dragons in 5 colors... Oh, boy...
With things like Silumgar, the Drifting Death, Ojutai, Soul of Winter or Dromoka the Eternal sounds pretty scary.

Another thing to spice up the variety of the horde is to take different kinds of tokens and using them as if they were of the thematic tribe.
For example:
- 4/4 bear tokens (from Khans ofTarkir) treat them like they were zombie bears
- */* ooze tokens and decide that * is cards in graveyards or something like that.
- 1/1 bird tokens with flying become 1/1 zombie birds
ecc...

EDIT:
tried my hand with a sliver horde in solo, it is quite overwhelming. With token variety and the tokens coming onto the battlefield with haste and sometimes 5 at a time, it wasn't uncommon to have the horde deal 20+ damage on T2.
I admit that my deck is not tailored for a horde game specifically, and may be the tokens clumped a little bit, but having 10 hasty creatures attacking me by T2 consistently is prety brutal, even with 40 starting life.
To make things a little simpler I would add these as extra rules for my solitaire:
- Horde's creatures have regular summoning sickness (so haste slivers have a purpose)
- Horde's creatures do not use activated abilities or optional triggers unless the commander sliver is on the board (the brain of the sliver swarm)
- Horde reveals 2 cards at a time and the limit is rised by 1 every 2 turns after the commander sliver is first cast.
As an added bonus to the horde:
- Whenever the horde's library is empty, shuffle its graveyard into its library. (Slivers are meant to be endless and the only way to win is to "attack the graveyard" regularly to make sure they don't come back)
- */* tokens have strenght and toughness equal to the number of slivers on the battlefield (because some big threats should always be there)
If you've played the game skyrim, i have a skyrim horde too (as well as a zombie horde and a sliver horde).
It goes like this; 3x 60 card decks (i use different sleeves per deck), and a loot deck (random assorted junk rares). The first deck is mostly small critters like wolves, elves, humans and so on. As you kill non-token creatures, the player who actually destroys it gets a card from the loot deck. The last card of the first 60 card deck i think was huntmaster of the fells. the 'boss' so to speak. When he pops up, the GY is shuffled back in, and you keep churning through till you kill the boss.
Then the next 60 card deck has trolls and wurms and bigger monsters, and ends with some bigger giant guy. Can't remember which.
The final 60 cards are basically the biggest monsters/dragon tokens. I think it averages 5-7 tokens per flop. The final boss is utvara hellkite or something like that. Makes some silly number of dragons.

I remembered once, i had 1 other mate of mine go through the skyrim horde, and between beating the previous boss and before starting the next deck, we would have a "recouperation" phase, where you would be able to spend some number of 'loot cards' and cashed it in for extra card draws or lifegain and some other minor effects.

There's no wrong way to do horde... so have at it!

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Post by RxPhantom » 3 years ago

I've wanted to post my list for a while, soooo...

Tokens
1 Dreamstealer token
1 Proven Combatant token
4 Zombie Giants (5/5)
3 Zombie Knights (2/2, menace, made by this guy)
51 Zombies (2/2)

Creatures
Archetype of Finality
Ascendant Evincar
Cemetery Reaper
Crow of Dark Tidings
Death Baron
Diregraf Captain
Dread Slaver
Gray Merchant of Asphodel
Liliana's Elite
Lord of the Accursed
Massacre Wurm
Noxious Ghoul
Paragon of Open Graves
Rancid Rats
Sibsig Icebreakers
Siren of the Silent Song
Soulless One
Two-Headed Zombie
Unbreathing Horde
Undead Warchief
Vengeful Dead
Walking Corpse
Zombie Goliath

Spells
Bad Moon
Call to the Grave
Delirium Skeins
Feroz's Ban
Grave Betrayal
In Garruk's Wake
Infest
Mnemonic Nexus
Nocturnal Raid
Plague Wind
Rise of the Dark Realms
Skull Rend
Tasigur's Cruelty
Unnerve
Zombie Apocalypse

I really want the horde deck to be tough to beat, but not impossible. I also wasn't too concerned about being 100% on point with the flavor, hence stuff like Feroz's Ban and Mnemonic Nexus. It was also important for the horde to whiff once in a while with stuff like Walking Corpse.
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