yea so after a few more playtests, it seems to me that this was pretty tough.
actually, i had a few copies of skull rends in there before instead of some of the zombie chumps, but it always weighted the game waaaay too far against the survivors. Unlike some of the other lists i've seen here that sport plague wind and decree of pain, i figured that not having one-sided board wipes makes this horde pretty weak. But that was definitely not the case!
So in one of the later playtests, i removed the extra-flips effect added by the revealed endless ranks of the dead, and started a 2 survivor game starting at 200 life instead, and we won (barely, after sitting on single digit life, and winning with an alpha-strike followed by a disk), due to an amazingly good (and with extra cloned copies) lord of the void (which exiles 7 cards from the library and mills), and the fact that one of the 2 survivors was a dedicated wrexial-mill deck (wrexial was useless though, no decent targets). We also made a rule during the game that for the sake of mind grind, tokens counted as lands.
At the moment though, the list is probably going to stick around more or less as it is (barring someone else suggesting something brilliant i could add), but adjusting the rules to make sense and work better.
A horrible hordes horde would be pretty epic. Having said that though, it'd probably need special rules like all creatures able to block horrible hordes must do so (otherwise it's rampage wouldn't be effective at all).
Just curious, what did you mean by a numbers error? you mean the horde shouldn't be able to gain buffer life? its not very common for the horde to gain life (since barring a radiated congregation, its just necromancer's covenant). On an average turn, i'd say that the horde has somewhere between 4-10 creatures, so somewhere between 8 to 30 lifelinked-lifegain. having to deal with 30 extra life is quite a big deal.
Though in hindsight, it was a huge pain keeping the numbers in check. Maybe i'll just leave it as the shuffling back in rule that everyone else has.
this horde is actually a bit of a beast. we never noticed it before, but one of the few things that allows the survivors to survive the onslaught was essentially intense-lifegain and graveyard resources. being able to recur whatever we've lost to the yard/using their citp abilities really helps. and since the horde doesn't have in-built graveyard hate, and having JUST spotted a zombie-imitation of bojuka bog, agent of erebos goes straight in!
anyways, having ran it once, the agent didnt make any significant contributions to the game; although we can see it being quite painful against a self-mill kinda strategy. so far, it doesn't seem like the horde needs any more graveyard hate triggers from enchantments.
we might also need to tone the horde down at some point, since it's actually quite a beating every time we try it out (even on normal mode).
So I've been a player since revised era, but stopped between mercedian masks and just recently come back for innistrad. We generally have pretty untuned edh decks to power up against the horde, so we wouldn't really hold up against most of the other hordes here (barring possibly the [HTML=http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=537316]kobold horde[/HTML]).
So this is the current decklist of my original zombie-horror-death-themed-horde (and apologies to the purists who don't believe in spirit and skeleton tokens. I just can't seem to find more).
I've also nicked some brilliant ideas from other horde decks and they are as follows:
The survivors (the players) start the game with 3 turns (not drawing a card for the first one), and start at 100 life, minus 20 per player beyond one.
The Horde starts with a d6 set aside, with the '1' faced up. This is the wave-strength indicator.
During the horde's turn, flip cards from the top of the horde library until a number of non-token cards are revealed equal to the number indicated on the wave-strength indicator-dice.
Whenever the horde draws cards, the horde resolves all cards in its hand as soon as possible, in the order in which the cards were drawn.
All creatures in the horde have haste, and all non-lord zombies must attack each turn if possible.
If there are two or more zombie lords in play, only the lord with the most recent timestamp doesn't attack. All other lords must attack with the horde (in other words, there is only one 'lord' position, which is taken over by the most recent lord coming into play).
Whenever a endless ranks of the dead is shown or milled, change the wave-strength indicator up by one.
The survivors may choose to attack into the horde OR burn the bodies, if they so choose (within one turn, the survivors attack either the horde or burn bodies, not both).
When the survivors attack into the horde, mill one card from the top of the library into the graveyard per two damage dealt, rounded down.
When the survivors burn the bodies, remove one card at random from the horde's graveyard from the game.
When an effect in game creates tokens, these are not considered to be creature cards (so they disappear when killed or bounced) but creature tokens that started in the deck do count as creature cards.
Whenever the horde gains life, instead shuffle one token at random from the horde's graveyard and the horde gains 1 buffer life for each two life the horde gains, rounded up.
If the survivors damage the horde when the horde has any form of buffer life, the buffer life takes the damage first before burning the bodies or milling the horde.
For example, the horde gains 7 life. Instead, shuffle 4 random tokens back into the library from the horde graveyard, and the zombie horde gains 4 buffer life. Then, the survivors send out draco to burn zombie bodies. Draco removes the 4 buffer life, and then burn 5 bodies at random.
The survivors win if the horde runs out of cards in the library AND out of zombie creatures in play at any time.
I think thats about it for the rules. But there are some specific card rules which are a bit wonky and probably needs work on:
Grimoire of the dead: instead of discarding a card, the horde just mills the top of the horde deck, limited to one time per turn, every turn. When it hits three counters, it instantly activates the second ability.
living end: Since I can't afford another living death, i had to use this. When living end is suspended, in the upkeep of the horde's turn, roll a d6, and remove that many time counters on it. I had to do it this way to keep the game more random, and to stop the players from trying to benefit from it too much.
army of the damned: After it is cast, suspend it with 10 counters. During each upkeep of the horde, roll a d6, and remove that many counters from it. When it hits 0 counters, it is resolved.
BFM (left and right): Whenever any side of the BFM is drawn by the horde, set it aside. When the horde draws the second side of BFM, it is instantly resolved and cast. If either side of the BFM is milled when there is one side of the BFM set aside, put both sides in the graveyard. If either side is affected by an ability, it also affects the other (so if gravedigger finds BFM left, it finds BFM right too).
I can't remember if it was SAUS9001 or another member, but someone had suggested adding swamps to the deck to scale up the horde. I figured this was a great idea, but i instead tied it to endless ranks of the dead, just 'cuz it seemed to flavour-fit, its quite scary having 3 or 4 in play at the same time, and it does actually scale quite well (possibly too well, since 7 cards of ~150 happens quite a bit, meaning the survivors would want to try to mill these out).
And a quick word on kjeldoran dead, zombie outlander and haunted ghoul: these guys were first added in because i was running low on zombies to fit in. But then after playing it a few times, it became pretty awesome, as the horde gains a lot of randomness in its flips. For example, the survivors are clinging on after a flashbacked army of the damned and a grave defiler, just to flip into a..... haunted ghoul! its this weird 'whew' (or possibly anti-climatic) moment that makes the survivors think they had just hit a time walk.
questionable cards though, are oath of ghouls, breaking point, spiteful visions and necromancer's covenant.
Its not that they are bad, per se, but at least breaking point and spiteful visions aren't very on-theme (but i like how they work).
Oath of ghouls can be very irritating (especially if the survivors know that 2 of the cards in the horde graveyard are BFM), but if the survivors spends a few attacks to thin the graveyard, the survivors might start getting some space to use it to their own ends. Never happened yet though. Necromancer's covenant is and has always been a bit of a strange one. I really like that it can remove a survivor's graveyard (it targets randomly), but at times it can be really disheartening (though i suppose that is the point). One somewhat memorable [read: scarring] moment of this horde was with 2 endless ranks of the dead, the domri rade emblem, flipped into a necromancer's covenant. needless to say 35 or so zombie tokens that double-struck, trampled, hexproofed, and now with lifelink. Brilliant.
So yea, not sure if i should take out the covenant or change something else.
Added an Angel of Glory's Rise, just because the horde is simply too hard otherwise. its been a while since we've felt like we were even close to winning, and its becoming a bit of a downer. I took a page from my werewolves horde (where i added a Slayer of the Wicked in the deck as a 'werewolf village defector' to help the survivors), and added something that helps the survivors against the horde.
just curious if anyone has an opinion on necromancer's covenant? i've been trying to get it to work, thinking that:
1. it gives almost everything the horde has lifelink
2. it targets (and exiles) any graveyard (meaning the horde can 'intelligently' target a survivor if they have a lot of creatures) or exile all cards from survivor's graveyards or self-exile (for a heck of a lot of tokens)
3. its an enchantment, so it is freaking hard to deal with
4. combined with practically anything non-token, it could be a near game-breaker. Think death baron, giving 4 tokens and him/herself +1/+1, deathtouch, WITH lifelink coupled on.
I would remove things like graypelt refuge, shimmering grotto and irrigation ditch and add in some basic snow lands, and snow duals and scrying sheet. And i suppose depending on how many basics you end up with, possibly thawing glaciers?
I'm also slightly questioning the effectiveness of academy ruins here. How often would this be any better than just a basic island? there are only 4 potential targets. I think some non instant/sorcery wipes could be useful too (Nevinyrral's Disk, oblivion stone and planar collapse comes to mind).
And here's a little somewhat hidden gem for ya: obzedat's aid. ever get sick of having one of your planeswalkers whacked? for 3WB and it comes back! I've been thinking of how i'd be able to abuse it (via buried alive or things to that effect), but none so far.
So I just recently joined (though i've been reading a lot from this forum), and I thought since everyone else has been of great help in giving me ideas for my zombie horde, I might as well add the latest horde I've been working on. So here it is, the Skyrim horde!
For those unaware, Skyrim is a open-ended fantasy RPG game released not too long back, based around the legend of the main protagonist in the middle of a civil war and the return of dragons. Within the game, there are a whole cast of varying characters and lootables and so on.
And since the horde should scale (somehow), the easiest way i could do this was by using 2 tiers. Its a little annoying, but i shuffle in the tier 2 deck into the bottom half of the tier 1 deck (so the first half of the game is just tier 1, and then the second half becomes a mix of tier 1 and 2). And theres also a loot deck.
I started by grabbing as many dragon tokens as i could, and ended up with:
Special rules I have for this horde:
Unlike other horde decks, you roll a d6, and then reveal that many cards and then resolve them all.
Whenever a dragon, goat or a plant token gets killed directly by a player (i.e. not a mass effect kill, but a targeted or blocking the plant/goat) draws that player 1 card from the loot deck.
When a dragon with devour comes into play, all non-dragon tokens are consumed by that dragon. If a player would destroy directly kill a dragon that devoured a plant or goat, that player draws 1 extra loot for those too.
For every 3 loot the players have (total in play and in the graveyard), the players roll another d6 to reveal from the horde deck.
The horde DOESN'T all have haste. Only the ones that specifically mention the word haste, has haste.
If any of the legendary dragons hit, their abilities are automatically activated (hence the reason why Numot isn't there).
I can say that for now, it doesn't really work. It just isn't fun, for some reason. Its not easy, per se, but it's pretty unexciting generally in the first tier, gaining some loot and rocking out, and then suddenly, the dragons come out left right and center, and a huge whooping is in order.
The thing is that skyrim has such a varied creature base that having a tribal anything makes it difficult to pull off well.
Yeah, I'll probably put it together once M14 comes out and I can just go to my LGS and buy EVERY SLIVER TOKEN EVER then do some tests. My own EDH decks tend on the weak side because I figured it'd be more fun to have 15 different decks to choose from that are balanced rather than 3 really awesome ones that'd get boring to play against quick. Because of that I might have over-nerfed the Sliver horde here.
My own zombie horde has four different sleeve colors so I can keep them separate. For one player I've got 75 cards and kind of the typical zombie horde stuff. Couple bombs, one reanimation, and a Damnation to just kinda keep things calmer. I use it as my sort of testing ground for new decks I make; if they can't consistently beat a weak zombie horde by themselves then something needs to be adjusted. Then for 2 players I put in more of the usual and throw in some one-sided stuff. 3 players is another 50 (5 giants, 25 tokens, 20 nontokens) but has more reanimation and "screw you" kind of stuff like No Mercy and Death Pits of Rath to make interacting hard. Then the last layer I just pack in the zombie giants and the Plague Winds, zombie lords, etc. That's actually where I put in my own Nether Void, which I see you have in your list. It once hit on the zombies' first turn, after two giants and four tokens. We just scooped
Basically the layers just turn up the one-sidedness in the zombies' favor.
Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. I probably will. Definitely would be helpful against those Mirrodin sword effects.
Yeah, I put this list together in probably 5 minutes so the wraths are probably way too much. I like Destructive Flow, that could be interesting, and the Lurking Predators like Espuma suggested above could be fun, especially for slivers 'cuz they're predators that kinda just lurk all over the place. Collective Blessing is great, BUT! there's actually a new sliver coming out that does the same thing, so that would probably be put in instead or in addition, depending on how strong you'd want the deck to be.
Don't buy up ALL the sliver tokens! I'd just use metallic slivers, sliver constructs and venser's slivers (that way, there'd also be a bit more variety rather than the stream of 1/1s coming out). Though then again, the math might start getting messy (more so with sliver legion knocking about).
Also, don't you have a sliver overlord or queen? if you do, you could for the overlord reveal from the deck until you reach the next non-token and then play it. And for the queen, roll a d6 to put that many 1/1s into play (kinda like mini-bosses).
And if you want to add some one-sided wrath effects (because the horde never plays fair), instead you could put in day of judgements, catastrophe and breaking point in combination with clot sliver instead. That way, the horde needs at least a 2 card combo to get the one-sided board wipe, giving the survivors a target to remove from the game in response to the board wipe.
might i suggest Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper as commander, using bloodbond march to combo with shadowborn apostles? with a blood artist, thats a lot of life loss/lifegain, with a harvester of souls, it just becomes
B: sac 6 dudes, find a demon and put it into play, then gain 6 life, an opponent loses 6 life, draw 6 cards, put 6 3/1 hasty attackers into play.
Then of the 6 drawn cards, presumably there'd be another shadowborn apostle for you to cast and put back the 6 you sacced in the first place (because of bloodbond march)
For the sliver deck, since sliver tokens are nearly impossible to come by, i'd suggest finding metallic slivers, sliver constructs and venser's sliver, just to add a bit of variance. It'd be easy to recognise the differences between artifact slivers and other lord slivers.
you know, i had completely missed bloodbond march. I had (because i was being silly) put it in with 40 shadowborn apostles, and a few demons in my Sek'Kuar, hoping to combo it with bloodbond march, and had COMPLETELY forgotten that it'd work miracles with the zombie horde! thats a good call!
i can't remember where i read this actually, but someone came up with an idea of putting swamps in the horde deck as indicators of stepping up the pressure. And as they are revealed and/or milled, they automatically add 1 more wave to the horde's attacks. that way, if the survivors are in a defensive enough position and are able to mill the horde deck brings on the more advanced waves earlier. i cant remember the specifics of how many swamps goes in though.
For lifegain, we played it as shuffling 1 token back into the deck per life gained, to a maximum of the number of tokens in the start of the game. It made it so rather than having 3-4 zombies popping out per turn it became 6-7, and that makes a pretty huge difference.
I suppose the self-'yard-hate isn't the best way forward, but its one of 200 or so cards. Also, do you guys count tokens as creature cards (when in the graveyard)? i actually take them out of the 'yard and have a separate pile. Maybe in hindsight, it makes more sense to have them in the graveyard, as jarad, unbreathing horde and soulless one just aren't as scary otherwise.
on a complete aside: no lord of tresserhorn? I thought after the errata he became a zombie. And a 10/4 zombie with a regeneration shield is one heck of an irritating guy to get rid of!
Just a few questions though, how would you use invasion plans? it'd mean that the horde gets to choose how the defenders block.
I think only limited decks or extremely casual decks would be the only ones with problems dealing with a bunch of 0/1s. So in lieu of that, I think the horde might need a bit of a power boost.
Not sure how long you've been playing either, but do you know how banding works? It seems to me that since they are so weak individually (and i think cowards, lore-wise), the kobolds in the horde should start with an emblem much like the zombie horde, but also gain bands with other kobolds, and they cannot attack unless they are in a bands of 3 (kinda like a raiding party!).
But i suppose if that's the case, you'd need a higher percentage of tokens than normal (otherwise the kobolds wouldn't be able to attack as often). Hrm... maybe it wasn't such a brilliant idea in the end.
I've played with necromancer's covenant, and let me tell you, it is completely insane. Barring it appearing early in the game or having a player wipe the graveyard, it usually ends up adding like 20-30 zombies, giving them all lifelink, which means something like 50-60 tokens shuffled back into the deck. This also means that unlike normal, we'd end up flipping like 10 tokens and then a spell rather than just 3.
Much like having the 4th endless ranks of the dead or 3 army of the damned hitting at the same turn, it can get out of hand very quickly. Except the covenant is a one card über-effect.
actually, i had a few copies of skull rends in there before instead of some of the zombie chumps, but it always weighted the game waaaay too far against the survivors. Unlike some of the other lists i've seen here that sport plague wind and decree of pain, i figured that not having one-sided board wipes makes this horde pretty weak. But that was definitely not the case!
So in one of the later playtests, i removed the extra-flips effect added by the revealed endless ranks of the dead, and started a 2 survivor game starting at 200 life instead, and we won (barely, after sitting on single digit life, and winning with an alpha-strike followed by a disk), due to an amazingly good (and with extra cloned copies) lord of the void (which exiles 7 cards from the library and mills), and the fact that one of the 2 survivors was a dedicated wrexial-mill deck (wrexial was useless though, no decent targets). We also made a rule during the game that for the sake of mind grind, tokens counted as lands.
At the moment though, the list is probably going to stick around more or less as it is (barring someone else suggesting something brilliant i could add), but adjusting the rules to make sense and work better.
A horrible hordes horde would be pretty epic. Having said that though, it'd probably need special rules like all creatures able to block horrible hordes must do so (otherwise it's rampage wouldn't be effective at all).
Just curious, what did you mean by a numbers error? you mean the horde shouldn't be able to gain buffer life? its not very common for the horde to gain life (since barring a radiated congregation, its just necromancer's covenant). On an average turn, i'd say that the horde has somewhere between 4-10 creatures, so somewhere between 8 to 30 lifelinked-lifegain. having to deal with 30 extra life is quite a big deal.
Though in hindsight, it was a huge pain keeping the numbers in check. Maybe i'll just leave it as the shuffling back in rule that everyone else has.
100 zombie token (2/2)
20 zombie giant token (5/5)
1 Domri Rade emblem
Lords 6
4 Diregraf Captain
1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
1 Zombie Master
Reanimators 10
4 Gravedigger
4 Ghoulraiser
1 Crypt Champion
1 Living death
graveyard hate 2
2 agent of erebos
Themed/Utility enchatments 5
1 Necromancer's Covenant
1 Call to the Grave
1 Oath of Ghouls
1 quest for the gravelord
1 Tombstone Stairwell
3 Grave Defiler
3 Army of the Damned
4 Zombie Apocalypse
1 Temporal Extortion
4 grave titan
Wipes 1
1 Breaking Point
Disruption/annoyance 7
2 Liliana's Reaver
1 Syphon Mind
2 Dread Slaver
1 Carnage Gladiator
1 Anathemancer
Random zombie chumps 8
1 Lord of Tresserhorn
1 Hunted Ghoul
1 Zombie Outlander
1 Tresserhorn Skyknight
1 Unbreathing Horde
1 B.F.M. (right)
1 B.F.M. (Left)
1 Kjeldoran Dead
7 endless ranks of the dead
Lucky angel for the survivors
1 Angel of Glory's Rise
this horde is actually a bit of a beast. we never noticed it before, but one of the few things that allows the survivors to survive the onslaught was essentially intense-lifegain and graveyard resources. being able to recur whatever we've lost to the yard/using their citp abilities really helps. and since the horde doesn't have in-built graveyard hate, and having JUST spotted a zombie-imitation of bojuka bog, agent of erebos goes straight in!
anyways, having ran it once, the agent didnt make any significant contributions to the game; although we can see it being quite painful against a self-mill kinda strategy. so far, it doesn't seem like the horde needs any more graveyard hate triggers from enchantments.
we might also need to tone the horde down at some point, since it's actually quite a beating every time we try it out (even on normal mode).
So this is the current decklist of my original zombie-horror-death-themed-horde (and apologies to the purists who don't believe in spirit and skeleton tokens. I just can't seem to find more).
14 zombie giant token (5/5)
2 skeleton token (1/1 regenerator)
5 zombie wizard token (1/1)
12 spirit token (1/1 flying)
1 Domri Rade emblem
Lords
4 Diregraf Captain
1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
1 Zombie Master
Reanimators
4 Gravedigger
1 Ghoulraiser
1 Crypt Champion
1 Living End
1 Necromancer's Covenant
1 Spiteful Visions
1 Call to the Grave
1 Oath of Ghouls
1 quest for the gravelord
7 Endless Ranks of the Dead
1 Tombstone Stairwell
Horde's wave-enablers
3 Grave Defiler
3 Army of the Damned
4 Zombie Apocalypse
1 Temporal Extortion
1 Grimoire of the Dead
Wipes
1 Breaking Point
1 Forced March
2 Liliana's Reaver
1 Syphon Mind
2 Dread Slaver
1 Carnage Gladiator
1 Anathemancer
Random zombie chumps
1 Lord of Tresserhorn
1 Hunted Ghoul
1 Zombie Outlander
2 Tresserhorn Skyknight
1 Unbreathing Horde
1 B.F.M. (right)
1 B.F.M. (Left)
1 Kjeldoran Dead
I'm not exactly a rich player, so I have trouble acquiring cards like Death baron, Cemetary Reaper, lord of the undead, damnation, decree of pain and undead warchief.
I've also nicked some brilliant ideas from other horde decks and they are as follows:
I think thats about it for the rules. But there are some specific card rules which are a bit wonky and probably needs work on:
Grimoire of the dead: instead of discarding a card, the horde just mills the top of the horde deck, limited to one time per turn, every turn. When it hits three counters, it instantly activates the second ability.
living end: Since I can't afford another living death, i had to use this. When living end is suspended, in the upkeep of the horde's turn, roll a d6, and remove that many time counters on it. I had to do it this way to keep the game more random, and to stop the players from trying to benefit from it too much.
Regenerators: They have a permanent regeneration shield. So zombie master, lord of tresserhorn and skeleton token are pretty annoying to deal with.
army of the damned: After it is cast, suspend it with 10 counters. During each upkeep of the horde, roll a d6, and remove that many counters from it. When it hits 0 counters, it is resolved.
BFM (left and right): Whenever any side of the BFM is drawn by the horde, set it aside. When the horde draws the second side of BFM, it is instantly resolved and cast. If either side of the BFM is milled when there is one side of the BFM set aside, put both sides in the graveyard. If either side is affected by an ability, it also affects the other (so if gravedigger finds BFM left, it finds BFM right too).
Anathemancer, Liliana's reaver and other cards that target: these targets are chosen randomly. I tried with both Anathemancer and Liliana's reaver to make it affect all survivors, but it was devastating every time (Anathemancer more than the any other).
I can't remember if it was SAUS9001 or another member, but someone had suggested adding swamps to the deck to scale up the horde. I figured this was a great idea, but i instead tied it to endless ranks of the dead, just 'cuz it seemed to flavour-fit, its quite scary having 3 or 4 in play at the same time, and it does actually scale quite well (possibly too well, since 7 cards of ~150 happens quite a bit, meaning the survivors would want to try to mill these out).
And a quick word on kjeldoran dead, zombie outlander and haunted ghoul: these guys were first added in because i was running low on zombies to fit in. But then after playing it a few times, it became pretty awesome, as the horde gains a lot of randomness in its flips. For example, the survivors are clinging on after a flashbacked army of the damned and a grave defiler, just to flip into a..... haunted ghoul! its this weird 'whew' (or possibly anti-climatic) moment that makes the survivors think they had just hit a time walk.
questionable cards though, are oath of ghouls, breaking point, spiteful visions and necromancer's covenant.
Its not that they are bad, per se, but at least breaking point and spiteful visions aren't very on-theme (but i like how they work).
Oath of ghouls can be very irritating (especially if the survivors know that 2 of the cards in the horde graveyard are BFM), but if the survivors spends a few attacks to thin the graveyard, the survivors might start getting some space to use it to their own ends. Never happened yet though.
Necromancer's covenant is and has always been a bit of a strange one. I really like that it can remove a survivor's graveyard (it targets randomly), but at times it can be really disheartening (though i suppose that is the point). One somewhat memorable [read: scarring] moment of this horde was with 2 endless ranks of the dead, the domri rade emblem, flipped into a necromancer's covenant. needless to say 35 or so zombie tokens that double-struck, trampled, hexproofed, and now with lifelink. Brilliant.
So yea, not sure if i should take out the covenant or change something else.
Added an Angel of Glory's Rise, just because the horde is simply too hard otherwise. its been a while since we've felt like we were even close to winning, and its becoming a bit of a downer. I took a page from my werewolves horde (where i added a Slayer of the Wicked in the deck as a 'werewolf village defector' to help the survivors), and added something that helps the survivors against the horde.
1. it gives almost everything the horde has lifelink
2. it targets (and exiles) any graveyard (meaning the horde can 'intelligently' target a survivor if they have a lot of creatures) or exile all cards from survivor's graveyards or self-exile (for a heck of a lot of tokens)
3. its an enchantment, so it is freaking hard to deal with
4. combined with practically anything non-token, it could be a near game-breaker. Think death baron, giving 4 tokens and him/herself +1/+1, deathtouch, WITH lifelink coupled on.
thoughts?
I'm also slightly questioning the effectiveness of academy ruins here. How often would this be any better than just a basic island? there are only 4 potential targets. I think some non instant/sorcery wipes could be useful too (Nevinyrral's Disk, oblivion stone and planar collapse comes to mind).
And here's a little somewhat hidden gem for ya: obzedat's aid. ever get sick of having one of your planeswalkers whacked? for 3WB and it comes back! I've been thinking of how i'd be able to abuse it (via buried alive or things to that effect), but none so far.
I run my own kaalia deck too, but i don't run any tutors (outside basic land fetch) in any of my decks since i lend out my decks to others (and its tough to sit and watch someone who has no idea what they are looking for look for things).
For those unaware, Skyrim is a open-ended fantasy RPG game released not too long back, based around the legend of the main protagonist in the middle of a civil war and the return of dragons. Within the game, there are a whole cast of varying characters and lootables and so on.
And since the horde should scale (somehow), the easiest way i could do this was by using 2 tiers. Its a little annoying, but i shuffle in the tier 2 deck into the bottom half of the tier 1 deck (so the first half of the game is just tier 1, and then the second half becomes a mix of tier 1 and 2). And theres also a loot deck.
I started by grabbing as many dragon tokens as i could, and ended up with:
10 1/1 dragon tokens
5 2/2 firebreathing dragons (when attacking, roll a d6 to firebreath that much)
5 phantasmal dragon
4 exalted dragon (don't ask why i have them, i just do)
10 human tokens
10 soldier tokens
5 plant tokens
5 goat tokens
10 springjack shepherd
10 cat tokens
10 wolf tokens
10 3/1 elemental tokens
5 elephant tokens
2 4/4 giant tokens
1 Norin the wary (in skyrim, some of the characters disappear and reappear on a whim, it seems)
1 mirri, cat warrior
1 thalia, guardian of thraben
12 4/4 dragon tokens
12 5/5 dragon tokens
5 zombie tokens
8 5/5 giant tokens
10 7/1 elemental tokens
1 bladewing the risen
1 arcades sabboth
1 chromium
1 crosis, the purger
1 daarigaz, the igniter
1 draco
1 dromar, the banisher
1 horde-smelter dragon (whenever he attacks, destroy one artifact the defender controls at random, then horde-smelter gains +x/+0 equal to the CC of that artifact)
1 intet the dreamer
1 karrthus, tyrant of jund
1 malfegor
1 nicol bolas
1 oros, the avenger
1 palladia-mors
1 rith, the awakener
1 teneb, the harvester
1 treva, the renewer
1 vaeviticus asmadi
1 vorosh, the hunter
1 domri rade token
1 jareth, leonine titan
1 jedit ojanen
1 mirri the cursed
1 leonin arbiter
1 shivan dragon
1 sunscour
1 breaking point
1 hour of reckoning
1 march of souls
1 coat of arms
2 azorius cluestone
2 boros cluestone
2 dimir cluestone
2 golgari cluestone
2 gruul cluestone
2 izzet cluestone
2 orzhov cluestone
2 rakdos cluestone
2 selesenya cluestone
2 simic cluestone
1 icy manipulator
2 howling mine
1 voltaic key
3 mana flare
4 accumulated knowledge
1 heartless summoning
2 zhur-taa ancient
Special rules I have for this horde:
Unlike other horde decks, you roll a d6, and then reveal that many cards and then resolve them all.
Whenever a dragon, goat or a plant token gets killed directly by a player (i.e. not a mass effect kill, but a targeted or blocking the plant/goat) draws that player 1 card from the loot deck.
When a dragon with devour comes into play, all non-dragon tokens are consumed by that dragon. If a player would destroy directly kill a dragon that devoured a plant or goat, that player draws 1 extra loot for those too.
For every 3 loot the players have (total in play and in the graveyard), the players roll another d6 to reveal from the horde deck.
The horde DOESN'T all have haste. Only the ones that specifically mention the word haste, has haste.
If any of the legendary dragons hit, their abilities are automatically activated (hence the reason why Numot isn't there).
I can say that for now, it doesn't really work. It just isn't fun, for some reason. Its not easy, per se, but it's pretty unexciting generally in the first tier, gaining some loot and rocking out, and then suddenly, the dragons come out left right and center, and a huge whooping is in order.
The thing is that skyrim has such a varied creature base that having a tribal anything makes it difficult to pull off well.
Any ideas?
Don't buy up ALL the sliver tokens! I'd just use metallic slivers, sliver constructs and venser's slivers (that way, there'd also be a bit more variety rather than the stream of 1/1s coming out). Though then again, the math might start getting messy (more so with sliver legion knocking about).
Also, don't you have a sliver overlord or queen? if you do, you could for the overlord reveal from the deck until you reach the next non-token and then play it. And for the queen, roll a d6 to put that many 1/1s into play (kinda like mini-bosses).
And if you want to add some one-sided wrath effects (because the horde never plays fair), instead you could put in day of judgements, catastrophe and breaking point in combination with clot sliver instead. That way, the horde needs at least a 2 card combo to get the one-sided board wipe, giving the survivors a target to remove from the game in response to the board wipe.
B: sac 6 dudes, find a demon and put it into play, then gain 6 life, an opponent loses 6 life, draw 6 cards, put 6 3/1 hasty attackers into play.
Then of the 6 drawn cards, presumably there'd be another shadowborn apostle for you to cast and put back the 6 you sacced in the first place (because of bloodbond march)
i can't remember where i read this actually, but someone came up with an idea of putting swamps in the horde deck as indicators of stepping up the pressure. And as they are revealed and/or milled, they automatically add 1 more wave to the horde's attacks. that way, if the survivors are in a defensive enough position and are able to mill the horde deck brings on the more advanced waves earlier. i cant remember the specifics of how many swamps goes in though.
I suppose the self-'yard-hate isn't the best way forward, but its one of 200 or so cards. Also, do you guys count tokens as creature cards (when in the graveyard)? i actually take them out of the 'yard and have a separate pile. Maybe in hindsight, it makes more sense to have them in the graveyard, as jarad, unbreathing horde and soulless one just aren't as scary otherwise.
on a complete aside: no lord of tresserhorn? I thought after the errata he became a zombie. And a 10/4 zombie with a regeneration shield is one heck of an irritating guy to get rid of!
Just a few questions though, how would you use invasion plans? it'd mean that the horde gets to choose how the defenders block.
I think only limited decks or extremely casual decks would be the only ones with problems dealing with a bunch of 0/1s. So in lieu of that, I think the horde might need a bit of a power boost.
Not sure how long you've been playing either, but do you know how banding works? It seems to me that since they are so weak individually (and i think cowards, lore-wise), the kobolds in the horde should start with an emblem much like the zombie horde, but also gain bands with other kobolds, and they cannot attack unless they are in a bands of 3 (kinda like a raiding party!).
But i suppose if that's the case, you'd need a higher percentage of tokens than normal (otherwise the kobolds wouldn't be able to attack as often). Hrm... maybe it wasn't such a brilliant idea in the end.
Much like having the 4th endless ranks of the dead or 3 army of the damned hitting at the same turn, it can get out of hand very quickly. Except the covenant is a one card über-effect.
Other than that though, looks like a cool list. When I try to scale it, I add in up to 7 additional endless ranks of the dead, army of the damned, tombstone stairwell and zombie apocalypse, and then another 2 tokens per card added. It scales up quite nicely for very well tuned edh decks.
Can't hold a candle up against those very well tuned vintage decks though.
possibly crypt rats? when visions first came out, it was that plus lifelink as a mass removal/mass life gain