So our playgroup started playing more EDH and less constructed formats so the next logical step was to build a horde deck. We talked for a little bit and rather than the traditional zombies we decided to go a little bit more esoteric and ended up deciding on the forever hated Slivers
Rules for this deck (they're mostly the same as a standard horde, but check 'em out for the few differences):
Horde VS Survivors
Survivors get a set number of setup turns, then the game begins. You can adjust the number of setup turns to adjust difficulty. This Horde is built to do battle with EDH decks as most EDH decks are able to produce very powerful creatures, however you can use any deck against this horde. Banlist is in progress, feel free to suggest why cards should/shouldn't be included. This banlist is in addition to the standard EDH banlist. If you have a card from the banlist in your deck, simply cycle that card (exile and re-draw) rather than try to rebuild your deck for this format.
The horde reveals the top card of their deck, if that card is a vanilla/token sliver (Metallic Sliver, Sliver Construct, or Venser's Sliver) the Horde puts that creature into play and reveals another card. This process repeats until the Horde reveals either a Sliver Lord or a non-creature spell. The Horde casts that last card.
COMBAT
All of the creatures controlled by the Horde attack and then become tapped.
END STEP
There are no actions the horde can take during this step, this is in place for the survivors to make final plays before the beginning of their turn.
SURVIVORS TURN
The Survivors' turn is exactly the same as a regular game of magic, however all survivors must execute their actions simultaneously (similar to a 2HG game), and cannot move on from one step to the next until all players are finished. Ex. 3 player game, P2 cannot announce attackers because P1 and P3 are still casting sorceries and creatures.
General Horde Rules (you can use these rules for any horde):
-Whenever the Horde is dealt damage, mill a card for each point of damage dealt.
- Survivors battle the horde collectively. All players use the same life total, and when attacked, block collectively. Ex. 4 player game, collective life is 30, the Horde attacks with five 2/2 creatures, P4 blocks three and P1 blocks one. The survivors life total decreases by 2.
- Survivors win if they mill the Horde out of cards. Horde wins if it knocks the Survivor's life to 0.
- If the Horde draws a card or adds a card to it's hand for any reason, it is given suspend and then exiled with one time counter on it.
- If the Horde must discard X cards, mill the Horde for X cards.
- All creatures the Horde controls have Haste and must attack.
- The Horde has infinite mana.
- Any choice the Horde has to make is done so randomly (roll a die, cut a deck, etc)
Horde v. Planeswalker Rules (refer to these rules if the survivors cast any planeswalkers):
- The Horde will attack any planeswalkers every turn if possible.
- For each planeswalker, the Horde will assign two token attacker. If the Horde does not control any non-lord creatures planeswalkers will not be targeted.
- If the number of planeswalkers controlled by the survivors is greater than the number of non-lords controlled by the Horde the survivors can choose which planeswalkers are attacked.
- The Horde will never choose to redirect damage to a planeswalker.
Sliver Horde Rules (these rules are specific to this horde):
- The Sliver Horde's Lords only buff the Horde, other slivers on the battlefield remain unaffected, and any slivers controlled by the Survivors will only buff the Survivor's slivers, not altering the Horde.
- The Sliver Queen is treated as a "boss creature", and is put aside from the regular Horde deck. This creature can be swapped out for Sliver Legion if desired to alter the difficulty. When the Horde has no more cards in it's library it will cast the "boss creature"
- The activated ability on Sliver Queen is activated two times for each survivor. This ability is activated on only one occasion, immediately after the Horde's untap step, every turn.
FAQ about this deck:
Q: Why Oak Street Inkeeper instead of Crystalline Sliver? A: Because giving all of the horde's creatures shroud all the time is rather difficult to deal with sometimes.
Q: Is there any reason to include Winged Sliver instead of Galerider Sliver? A: Nope, just there for budget reasons.
Q: Why do you bother including Sliver Lords with redundant abilities (trample, double strike, etc)? A: More for flavour than anything else. They can be swapped out for extra tokens if you really want.
Sounds pretty interesting. However, with so many vanilla slivers, the horde could get out of hand to quick to make it worth while. How has it been while testing? By the way, Oak Street Innkeeper should be eliminated on account of it not being a Sliver.
I also see no reason why it can't be a singleton deck (to keep in with the flavor of commander) except for the vanilla sliver being more than one. Here's my take on it:
Game setup:
Shuffle all the cards except for the 3 bosses. Make 3 piles from the shuffled cards: a 32-card pile, a 32-card pile, and a 33-card pile. Beneath the first face-down pile, a face-up Sliver Legion that will enter play when the other cards have been cast or milled. Beneath the second face-down pile, a face-up Sliver Overlord that will enter play when the other cards have been cast or milled. Beneath the last face-down pile, a face-up Sliver Queen that will enter play when the other cards have been cast or milled.
Rules:
Sliver Overlord uses its first ability once before The Hive's attack step to search the remaining pile for a Sliver card and put it into play.
Sliver Queen uses its ability twice for each survivor before The Hive's attack step.
Damage to The Hive is milled.
The Hive doesn't lose as a result of not having any creatures in play, only by having no creatures in play and no cards remaining in the piles.
Sliver creatures controlled by other players don't affect nor are affected by The Hive's Sliver creatures.
If a vanilla Sliver is played, keep playing a card until a lord Sliver is played.
The survivor team loses if all members lose. Conversely, the entire team wins if at least one player survives.
Each survivor may start the game with up to 3 Hero cards.
What do you think about my suggestions? At least the name (Survive the Hive) is awesome, if I do say so myself
My YouTube Channel: The Commander Tavern - a channel I just started where I'll post deck techs and gameplays. Please support by checking it out. Maybe you'll like its content and subscribe! Thanks!
Well, with the new M15 spoilers, we are shown some many potentially epic cards for the horde.
Sliver Hivelord:
A new miniboss! Apart from some other great lords that may appear (Constricting Sliver, Leeching Sliver, and Venom Sliver are great as well), Sliver Hivelord could be the last miniboss for the horde deck. So it's basically 24 slivers then a lord until reaching sliver 99 and revealing the Sliver Queen. This last lord makes this horde that much more dangerous!
So get your multiplayer, mass-removal spell saturated decks! It's time to Survive the Hive!
My YouTube Channel: The Commander Tavern - a channel I just started where I'll post deck techs and gameplays. Please support by checking it out. Maybe you'll like its content and subscribe! Thanks!
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Now without further adieu, here's the deck list:
55x Metallic Sliver
35x Sliver Construct
10x Venser's Sliver
LORDS
1x Battering Sliver
1x Bonescythe Sliver
2x Bonesplitter Sliver
1x Brood Sliver
2x Fungus Sliver
1x Fury Sliver
1x Horned Sliver
1x Megantic Sliver
2x Might Sliver
4x Muscle Sliver
2x Oak Street Innkeeper
4x Predatory Sliver
1x Root Sliver
1x Shadow Sliver
2x Sidewinder Sliver
1x Striking Sliver
1x Two-Headed Sliver
2x Vampiric Sliver
2x Virulent Sliver
2x Watcher Sliver
2x Winged Sliver
1x Sliver Queen
Rules for this deck (they're mostly the same as a standard horde, but check 'em out for the few differences):
Horde VS Survivors
Survivors get a set number of setup turns, then the game begins. You can adjust the number of setup turns to adjust difficulty. This Horde is built to do battle with EDH decks as most EDH decks are able to produce very powerful creatures, however you can use any deck against this horde. Banlist is in progress, feel free to suggest why cards should/shouldn't be included. This banlist is in addition to the standard EDH banlist. If you have a card from the banlist in your deck, simply cycle that card (exile and re-draw) rather than try to rebuild your deck for this format.
0 Aurification
0 Balustrade Spy
0 Barbed Foliage
0 Caltrops
0 Consuming Aberration
0 Crawlspace
0 Dueling Grounds
0 Dread
0 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
0 Ensnaring Bridge
0 Eradicate
0 Frozen AEther
0 Haunting Echoes
0 Keening Stone
0 Kismet
0 Island Sanctuary
0 Lethal Vapors
0 Leyline of Singularity
0 Magus of the Moat
0 Mind Funeral
0 Mind Grind
0 Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker
0 Moat
0 No Mercy
0 Platinum Angel
0 Platinum Emperion
0 Silent Arbiter
0 Solitary Confinement
0 Stormtide Leviathan
0 Surgical Extraction
0 Tainted AEther
0 Teferi's Moat
0 Time Stretch
0 Trepanation Blade
0 Undercity Informer
0 Urabrask the Hidden
1-2 players - 4 setup turns
3-4 players - 3 setup turns
5-6 players - 2 setup turns
Life Totals:
1-2 players - 40
3-4 players - 30
5-6 players - 20
HORDE TURN
The Horde's turn goes like this:
UNTAP
END STEP
SURVIVORS TURN
The Survivors' turn is exactly the same as a regular game of magic, however all survivors must execute their actions simultaneously (similar to a 2HG game), and cannot move on from one step to the next until all players are finished. Ex. 3 player game, P2 cannot announce attackers because P1 and P3 are still casting sorceries and creatures.
General Horde Rules (you can use these rules for any horde):
- Survivors battle the horde collectively. All players use the same life total, and when attacked, block collectively. Ex. 4 player game, collective life is 30, the Horde attacks with five 2/2 creatures, P4 blocks three and P1 blocks one. The survivors life total decreases by 2.
- Survivors win if they mill the Horde out of cards. Horde wins if it knocks the Survivor's life to 0.
- If the Horde draws a card or adds a card to it's hand for any reason, it is given suspend and then exiled with one time counter on it.
- If the Horde must discard X cards, mill the Horde for X cards.
- All creatures the Horde controls have Haste and must attack.
- The Horde has infinite mana.
- Any choice the Horde has to make is done so randomly (roll a die, cut a deck, etc)
Horde v. Planeswalker Rules (refer to these rules if the survivors cast any planeswalkers):
- For each planeswalker, the Horde will assign two token attacker. If the Horde does not control any non-lord creatures planeswalkers will not be targeted.
- If the number of planeswalkers controlled by the survivors is greater than the number of non-lords controlled by the Horde the survivors can choose which planeswalkers are attacked.
- The Horde will never choose to redirect damage to a planeswalker.
Sliver Horde Rules (these rules are specific to this horde):
- The Sliver Queen is treated as a "boss creature", and is put aside from the regular Horde deck. This creature can be swapped out for Sliver Legion if desired to alter the difficulty. When the Horde has no more cards in it's library it will cast the "boss creature"
- The activated ability on Sliver Queen is activated two times for each survivor. This ability is activated on only one occasion, immediately after the Horde's untap step, every turn.
A: Because giving all of the horde's creatures shroud all the time is rather difficult to deal with sometimes.
Q: Is there any reason to include Winged Sliver instead of Galerider Sliver?
A: Nope, just there for budget reasons.
Q: Why do you bother including Sliver Lords with redundant abilities (trample, double strike, etc)?
A: More for flavour than anything else. They can be swapped out for extra tokens if you really want.
WURG Thrasios, Triton Hero + Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder
UBR Inalla, Archmage Ritualist
I also see no reason why it can't be a singleton deck (to keep in with the flavor of commander) except for the vanilla sliver being more than one. Here's my take on it:
Survive the Hive:
25 Metallic Sliver
15 Sliver Construct
10 Venser's Sliver
SLIVER LORDS: 47
1 Battering Sliver
1 Battle Sliver
1 Blade Sliver
1 Blur Sliver
1 Bonescythe Sliver
1 Bonesplitter Sliver
1 Brood Sliver
1 Crystalline Sliver
1 Frenzy Sliver
1 Fungus Sliver
1 Fury Sliver
1 Galerider Sliver
1 Ghostflame Sliver
1 Groundshaker Sliver
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Heart Sliver
1 Horned Sliver
1 Hunter Sliver
1 Lymph Sliver
1 Megantic Sliver
1 Mesmeric Sliver
1 Might Sliver
1 Muscle Sliver
1 Plated Sliver
1 Predatory Sliver
1 Pulmonic Sliver
1 Reflex Sliver
1 Root Sliver
1 Sentinel Sliver
1 Shifting Sliver
1 Sidewinder Sliver
1 Sinew Sliver
1 Spined Sliver
1 Spinneret Sliver
1 Spitting Sliver
1 Steelform Sliver
1 Striking Sliver
1 Synchronous Sliver
1 Talon Sliver
1 Thorncaster Sliver
1 Toxin Sliver
1 Two-Headed Sliver
1 Vampiric Sliver
1 Virulent Sliver
1 Ward Sliver
1 Watcher Sliver
1 Winged Sliver
1 Sliver Legion
1 Sliver Overlord
FINAL BOSS:
1 Sliver Queen
Game setup:
Shuffle all the cards except for the 3 bosses. Make 3 piles from the shuffled cards: a 32-card pile, a 32-card pile, and a 33-card pile. Beneath the first face-down pile, a face-up Sliver Legion that will enter play when the other cards have been cast or milled. Beneath the second face-down pile, a face-up Sliver Overlord that will enter play when the other cards have been cast or milled. Beneath the last face-down pile, a face-up Sliver Queen that will enter play when the other cards have been cast or milled.
Rules:
What do you think about my suggestions? At least the name (Survive the Hive) is awesome, if I do say so myself
BGU [Primer] Sidisi, Brood Tyrant BGU | BG [Primer] Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest BG | G [Primer] Polukranos, World Eater G
My YouTube Channel:
The Commander Tavern - a channel I just started where I'll post deck techs and gameplays. Please support by checking it out. Maybe you'll like its content and subscribe! Thanks!
A new miniboss! Apart from some other great lords that may appear (Constricting Sliver, Leeching Sliver, and Venom Sliver are great as well), Sliver Hivelord could be the last miniboss for the horde deck. So it's basically 24 slivers then a lord until reaching sliver 99 and revealing the Sliver Queen. This last lord makes this horde that much more dangerous!
BGU [Primer] Sidisi, Brood Tyrant BGU | BG [Primer] Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest BG | G [Primer] Polukranos, World Eater G
My YouTube Channel:
The Commander Tavern - a channel I just started where I'll post deck techs and gameplays. Please support by checking it out. Maybe you'll like its content and subscribe! Thanks!