I've loved this variant on traditional Magic ever since I first heard about it on CommanderCast two years ago. It's a blast, even when I just play against it solo. However, the thing that always bothered me about Horde was how it could completely blow you away out of nowhere with a single good run of tokens/sweepers off the top of the deck.
After reading a couple of Richard Garfield's old "solitaire Magic" articles from back in the day, I got the idea to turn Horde into more of a turn-based strategy game, ala Final Fantasy X (which I know isn't a TBS game, but I'll explain the reference in detail later on in this post), where you, as the survivors, can get a clearer picture of what you're up against and adjust accordingly, even if you're not always able to deal with it.
Rules:
Deck construction for the horde remains the same; approx. 100 cards, mostly tokens (I use a 60/40 cards to tokens split, but season to taste).
You start with two decks: one traditional horde deck of 100 cards and tokens, and a land deck comprised of seven swamps.
I use 40 life as my starting total, but again you can change that to whatever you like to suit your playgroup.
SETUP: survivors go first. I like to draw for the first turn, but if you're feeling hardcore, you can skip it.
Unlike the original version of Horde, there is no grace period to setup before the horde starts rolling. After your first turn, the Horde starts its turn as normal.
Here's where most of the changes take place, though.
At the beginning of the game, the Horde gets an emblem that reads:
1) Lands controlled by the Horde are indestructible and may be tapped for mana of any color.
2) Mana does not empty from the Horde's mana pool as steps and phases end.
3) During the Horde's upkeep, if the Horde has less than seven cards in hand, draw cards equal to the difference.
At the beginning of the Horde's turn, you draw seven cards from the top of the Horde deck and lay them out side-by-side in a straight line at the far end of the battlefield from the survivors. This is the Horde's hand, and maybe interacted with in every way that a human player's hand may be interacted with, except that "player chooses..." effects are decided by a random dice roll/number generator, etc. At this point, none of the spells in the Horde's hand is cast; they exist only as potential threats for now and require mana to cast, in the amount specified on the card, just like traditional spells.
Next, you grab a land from the land deck and put it into play. This happens every turn, for the first seven turns (until you run out of lands), like clockwork. The Horde never misses a land drop.
The Horde may now cast spells as a normal player would, with one small caveat: the Horde never chooses, so spells must be cast in order, like an assembly line, in a "first drawn, first cast" method. This is where the turn-based strategy elements come into play, as you can see and prepare for what's coming down the pike, as you might in a strategy RPG. (I know I'm mixing my videogame metaphors here, but I first envisioned this variant of Horde Magic as something similar to the turn order in FFX, where you can see, in line order, who's turn is coming up next for several turns, allowing you to better plan for specific attacks; hence, while I know that FFX isn't strategy RPG, that's the image I have in my head as I'm setting up the Horde.)
It's important to note the Horde's minions do not have haste as they would under normal Horde rules, unless the creature has that ability printed on it or the Horde has an active creature, enchantment, or artifact ability that grants the Horde's creatures haste. Side note: I suppose you could stick an Anger in the deck, just to spice things up a bit when you mill it :).
There is some leeway built-in here for adjusting the difficulty, too. Specifically, how much mana—if any—should the tokens cost?
For solitaire games, I like to use the tokens' power and toughness as their CMC; so, most zombie tokens would cost two, zombie giants would cost five, etc.
For co-op games, I would suggest a CMC of one for standard 2/2 tokens, and maybe a bit more for the giants, but it's up to you. If you're up for a challenge, make the CMC zero and see how long you can stand the heat :).
I enjoy this setup more than traditional Horde, because it still allows for giant zombie armies to murder you with ease, but it removes a lot of what I term the "blow-out" factor from the game. Anyone who's played Horde for more than a few games is familiar with the feeling of finally stabilizing your board, only to have the Horde deck fart out 20 tokens in a row and top it off with a Grave Titan or Plague Wind that wrecks your whole day.
Win-cons remain the same as in the regular version of Horde: reduce the Horde's library to zero and eliminate all threats on the board.
Small additions to the rules:
Planeswalkers become priority targets for the Horde the moment they hit the board. Any direct damage that the Horde could redirect to a Planeswalker from a player is automatically redirected to that Planeswalker; the Horde automatically directs all creatures to attack a Planeswalker during every combat step in which a Planeswalker remains in play on the survivors' board. (Lately I've been toying around with a rule I call "Planeswalker splash damage," which states that every point of damage above the amount necessary to reduce the number of a Planeswalker's loyalty counters to zero is redirected back to that Planeswalker's controller. I dig it, especially because it removes the awkwardness of choosing which of the Horde's creatures target me and which target my Planeswalkers, as the Horde usually has more then enough creatures with power available to strike both targets in a given attack step.)
Tips: I find it handy to have a d20 on hand to keep track of the Horde's mana pool (particularly if I'm running Omnath in my deck and I'm already having trouble keeping track of my own mana pool).
There are a ton of corner case scenarios in Magic, whereby I'm sure you could get around the indestructible lands caveat via sacrifice effects, or go old school and try to drain all the mana from the Horde's mana pool every turn, etc., but those tricks would defeat the purpose of the game. My golden rule is "when in doubt, go with the ruling that allows for the most fun." As such, I have a house ban on all Ghostly Prison and Propaganda-type effects when I play Horde; ditto for Pendrell's Vale-type upkeep effects.
I've tried to retain all the flavor of Horde with these rules changes and smooth out the ridiculous swings that could result from a big glut of hasty tokens hitting the board all at once. After all, if I wanted to play a co-op game with crazy all-or-nothing wins, I'd go back to playing Archenemy.
If you see something I've overlooked, or if you'd like to offer any advice/changes, I'd love to hear them.
At the beginning of the Horde's turn, you draw seven cards from the top of the Horde deck and lay them out side-by-side in a straight line at the far end of the battlefield from the survivors. This is the Horde's hand, and maybe interacted with in every way that a human player's hand may be interacted with, except that "player chooses..." effects are decided by a random dice roll/number generator, etc. At this point, none of the spells in the Horde's hand is cast; they exist only as potential threats for now and require mana to cast, in the amount specified on the card, just like traditional spells.
Next, you grab a land from the land deck and put it into play. This happens every turn, for the first seven turns (until you run out of lands), like clockwork. The Horde never misses a land drop.
looks interesting actually, but i didn't really get the hand part.
does that mean that the horde always has 7 in hand at the beginning of their draw step? or are they limited to one per turn?
have you actually tested this? it sounds like it'd be way too easy (if its limited to just 7 lands at least). i'd have the land count at like 15 or so even. or maybe starting at 7, and then +4 swamps per player beyond the first?
i might wanna give this a go actually. the thing is though, one of the nice things about the horde is that the players have to be prepared for a huge blowout. that was part of the fun, trying to guess and take calculated risks where appropriate. this way though, it would seem that you would know exactly what is gonna come out.
maybe to combat the lack of randomness, the players only get to see the top 1 card during their turn. then when it's the horde's turn, they keep casting till they reveal a card it can't cast, then it sits in the hand. that way, say its a Crypt Champion, the players can either attempt to force a discard (guessing that the Crypt Champion is the worst that would come for the time being), or leave it thinking that the next coming up would be even worse.
i'll give it a go in the coming days if i have time, and i'll let u know at least how it goes for me.
I like the concept, but one of the scariest parts of the Horde is the possibility for a whole lot of tokens to show up at once. I'd probably play it as tokens are just 1, so that you don't have a flooded field at the beginning, but if a chain of tokens shows up mid-game you're not just having to deal with 3 2/2 tokens and nothing else.
I also like schweinnefett's idea of adding +4 swamps per player beyond the first.
After reading a couple of Richard Garfield's old "solitaire Magic" articles from back in the day, I got the idea to turn Horde into more of a turn-based strategy game, ala Final Fantasy X (which I know isn't a TBS game, but I'll explain the reference in detail later on in this post), where you, as the survivors, can get a clearer picture of what you're up against and adjust accordingly, even if you're not always able to deal with it.
Rules:
Deck construction for the horde remains the same; approx. 100 cards, mostly tokens (I use a 60/40 cards to tokens split, but season to taste).
You start with two decks: one traditional horde deck of 100 cards and tokens, and a land deck comprised of seven swamps.
I use 40 life as my starting total, but again you can change that to whatever you like to suit your playgroup.
SETUP: survivors go first. I like to draw for the first turn, but if you're feeling hardcore, you can skip it.
Unlike the original version of Horde, there is no grace period to setup before the horde starts rolling. After your first turn, the Horde starts its turn as normal.
Here's where most of the changes take place, though.
At the beginning of the game, the Horde gets an emblem that reads:
1) Lands controlled by the Horde are indestructible and may be tapped for mana of any color.
2) Mana does not empty from the Horde's mana pool as steps and phases end.
3) During the Horde's upkeep, if the Horde has less than seven cards in hand, draw cards equal to the difference.
At the beginning of the Horde's turn, you draw seven cards from the top of the Horde deck and lay them out side-by-side in a straight line at the far end of the battlefield from the survivors. This is the Horde's hand, and maybe interacted with in every way that a human player's hand may be interacted with, except that "player chooses..." effects are decided by a random dice roll/number generator, etc. At this point, none of the spells in the Horde's hand is cast; they exist only as potential threats for now and require mana to cast, in the amount specified on the card, just like traditional spells.
Next, you grab a land from the land deck and put it into play. This happens every turn, for the first seven turns (until you run out of lands), like clockwork. The Horde never misses a land drop.
The Horde may now cast spells as a normal player would, with one small caveat: the Horde never chooses, so spells must be cast in order, like an assembly line, in a "first drawn, first cast" method. This is where the turn-based strategy elements come into play, as you can see and prepare for what's coming down the pike, as you might in a strategy RPG. (I know I'm mixing my videogame metaphors here, but I first envisioned this variant of Horde Magic as something similar to the turn order in FFX, where you can see, in line order, who's turn is coming up next for several turns, allowing you to better plan for specific attacks; hence, while I know that FFX isn't strategy RPG, that's the image I have in my head as I'm setting up the Horde.)
It's important to note the Horde's minions do not have haste as they would under normal Horde rules, unless the creature has that ability printed on it or the Horde has an active creature, enchantment, or artifact ability that grants the Horde's creatures haste. Side note: I suppose you could stick an Anger in the deck, just to spice things up a bit when you mill it :).
There is some leeway built-in here for adjusting the difficulty, too. Specifically, how much mana—if any—should the tokens cost?
For solitaire games, I like to use the tokens' power and toughness as their CMC; so, most zombie tokens would cost two, zombie giants would cost five, etc.
For co-op games, I would suggest a CMC of one for standard 2/2 tokens, and maybe a bit more for the giants, but it's up to you. If you're up for a challenge, make the CMC zero and see how long you can stand the heat :).
I enjoy this setup more than traditional Horde, because it still allows for giant zombie armies to murder you with ease, but it removes a lot of what I term the "blow-out" factor from the game. Anyone who's played Horde for more than a few games is familiar with the feeling of finally stabilizing your board, only to have the Horde deck fart out 20 tokens in a row and top it off with a Grave Titan or Plague Wind that wrecks your whole day.
Win-cons remain the same as in the regular version of Horde: reduce the Horde's library to zero and eliminate all threats on the board.
Small additions to the rules:
Planeswalkers become priority targets for the Horde the moment they hit the board. Any direct damage that the Horde could redirect to a Planeswalker from a player is automatically redirected to that Planeswalker; the Horde automatically directs all creatures to attack a Planeswalker during every combat step in which a Planeswalker remains in play on the survivors' board. (Lately I've been toying around with a rule I call "Planeswalker splash damage," which states that every point of damage above the amount necessary to reduce the number of a Planeswalker's loyalty counters to zero is redirected back to that Planeswalker's controller. I dig it, especially because it removes the awkwardness of choosing which of the Horde's creatures target me and which target my Planeswalkers, as the Horde usually has more then enough creatures with power available to strike both targets in a given attack step.)
Tips: I find it handy to have a d20 on hand to keep track of the Horde's mana pool (particularly if I'm running Omnath in my deck and I'm already having trouble keeping track of my own mana pool).
There are a ton of corner case scenarios in Magic, whereby I'm sure you could get around the indestructible lands caveat via sacrifice effects, or go old school and try to drain all the mana from the Horde's mana pool every turn, etc., but those tricks would defeat the purpose of the game. My golden rule is "when in doubt, go with the ruling that allows for the most fun." As such, I have a house ban on all Ghostly Prison and Propaganda-type effects when I play Horde; ditto for Pendrell's Vale-type upkeep effects.
I've tried to retain all the flavor of Horde with these rules changes and smooth out the ridiculous swings that could result from a big glut of hasty tokens hitting the board all at once. After all, if I wanted to play a co-op game with crazy all-or-nothing wins, I'd go back to playing Archenemy.
If you see something I've overlooked, or if you'd like to offer any advice/changes, I'd love to hear them.
looks interesting actually, but i didn't really get the hand part.
does that mean that the horde always has 7 in hand at the beginning of their draw step? or are they limited to one per turn?
have you actually tested this? it sounds like it'd be way too easy (if its limited to just 7 lands at least). i'd have the land count at like 15 or so even. or maybe starting at 7, and then +4 swamps per player beyond the first?
i might wanna give this a go actually. the thing is though, one of the nice things about the horde is that the players have to be prepared for a huge blowout. that was part of the fun, trying to guess and take calculated risks where appropriate. this way though, it would seem that you would know exactly what is gonna come out.
maybe to combat the lack of randomness, the players only get to see the top 1 card during their turn. then when it's the horde's turn, they keep casting till they reveal a card it can't cast, then it sits in the hand. that way, say its a Crypt Champion, the players can either attempt to force a discard (guessing that the Crypt Champion is the worst that would come for the time being), or leave it thinking that the next coming up would be even worse.
i'll give it a go in the coming days if i have time, and i'll let u know at least how it goes for me.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
I also like schweinnefett's idea of adding +4 swamps per player beyond the first.
Commander
BBB - Erebos, MBC
GB - Glissa, Recursion Valuetown
UB - Wrexial/Phenax Mill
UBR - Nekusar, Mindwheeler
R - Feldon, God of Reanimation(?!?!)