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. (note, I accidentally posted this in the wrong forum, so this is a repost)
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 Innkeeper 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.
acidic sliver! c'mon, dude! our rules are that if a sliver dies, it auto-saccs via acidic sliver targeting the creature that killed it or the player that controlled the spell/ability.
also, frenetic sliver. If a sliver would die, and the acidic sliver isn't around, it tries to phase itself out this way. But then if its a mass board wipe, we'd generally just randomly keep half of them on the board.
i actually have a sliver horde that i'm too lazy to post here. but i run it so per survivor, the horde flips over 2 non-token cards. And there are i think like 10 muscle sliver, 10 sinew sliver and 10 predatory sliver. A couple of lymph slivers also makes dealing with slivers freaking hard.
All in all though, i think its a pretty cool list... I'm a bit unsure about the oak street innkeeper just for flavour sake, but i see what u mean by shroud just being too much of a pain. but how about opaline sliver instead?
this brings me back to the days when i was playing type2 5-c sliver tempo-control. it was glorious.
I'm not sure why the non-creature spells weren't included in the list, there are some in the horde. I've fixed that though.
As for the Oak Street Innkeeper over Crystalline Sliver, I'm not a fan of it flavour wise, but it made it a little bit easier to deal with (I have a playset of Crystalline I could include if I want). I do like Opaline Sliver though, so I've tweaked the list slightly to include that and I'm going to do some testing with it.
As for Acidic Sliver and Frenetic Sliver, I had them in the original list, but the game ended way too quickly with every sliver pinging the survivors life total for 2, and flipping coins was just a pain to do for every sliver that died.
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
NON-CREATURE SPELLS
2x Day of Judgment
4x Hive Stirrings
2x Patriarch's Bidding
2x Everlasting Torment
3x Door of Destinies
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
also, frenetic sliver. If a sliver would die, and the acidic sliver isn't around, it tries to phase itself out this way. But then if its a mass board wipe, we'd generally just randomly keep half of them on the board.
i actually have a sliver horde that i'm too lazy to post here. but i run it so per survivor, the horde flips over 2 non-token cards. And there are i think like 10 muscle sliver, 10 sinew sliver and 10 predatory sliver. A couple of lymph slivers also makes dealing with slivers freaking hard.
All in all though, i think its a pretty cool list... I'm a bit unsure about the oak street innkeeper just for flavour sake, but i see what u mean by shroud just being too much of a pain. but how about opaline sliver instead?
this brings me back to the days when i was playing type2 5-c sliver tempo-control. it was glorious.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
As for the Oak Street Innkeeper over Crystalline Sliver, I'm not a fan of it flavour wise, but it made it a little bit easier to deal with (I have a playset of Crystalline I could include if I want). I do like Opaline Sliver though, so I've tweaked the list slightly to include that and I'm going to do some testing with it.
As for Acidic Sliver and Frenetic Sliver, I had them in the original list, but the game ended way too quickly with every sliver pinging the survivors life total for 2, and flipping coins was just a pain to do for every sliver that died.
WURG Thrasios, Triton Hero + Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder
UBR Inalla, Archmage Ritualist
by the way since you have in day of judgement, is there any plans on trying to combo it with clot sliver? that'd be an effective one-sided wipe.
And if your mates play a lot of protection stuff, maybe a ghostflame sliver or two could help the horde a bit too.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom