I've been playing around with a horde deck for a while now, and decided that 100 cards just wasn't enough. As soon as the players stablized and started swinging at the horde, it was usually game over. The only hope the horde had was a lucky living death. For no particular reason, I figured 200 would be a good size for the deck.
A new problem arised. Since the players could not reliably mill away all the scary spells, it was pretty much only luck that could pull us through to the end. To combat this problem, I implemented a new rule!
Burn the bodies!
Basically, when the players attack the horde with creatures, normally, you just mill the horde deck for the amount of damage you dealt. With my rule, it works like this:
- at the beginning of each combat phase for the players, they choose 'attack the horde' or 'burn the bodies'.
- if they choose 'attack the horde', it works like normal. You attack them, and they mill.
- if they choose 'burn the bodies', then you exile 1 card at random from the horde's graveyard for each 1 damage they would take if you attacked normally.
- you cannot burn the bodies with non-combat damage
- you cannot burn the bodies with some creatures, and attack the horde with others. All creatures go for 1, and can't switch mid-combat (like with doublestrike or something)
- if you get another combat phase, you can choose again for that combat phase.
This rule has allowed me to include some really scary cards that would normally cause the players to lose really badly like past in flames.
Overwhelming Numbers
After much playing and experimenting, I have found that it is too hard to make the horde scale against multiple players without making it too hard for less players. The solution I have come to is a rule to increase the horde's strength over time.
The rule I currently have in place works as follows:
- At the end of each horde turn, a counter is increased by 1 for each player in the game.
- When this counter hits 10 or more, reduce it by 10, and give the horde an emblem.
- The horde starts with 1 emblem.
- The horde reveals cards until X non-token cards are revealed, where X is the number of these emblems they have.
With this rule, the players are "forced" to attack the horde, and the horde will be able to naturally overcome powerful player board states when it gets stronger.
Some ways we handle things for the horde:
Minor Specifics:
- the players always have 60 life to start, and get 3 turns to set up with no draw on the first turn.
- the horde deck always uses all 200 cards.
- if the horde loses life, it treats it as damage and mills that many cards.
- if the horde gains life, nothing happens.
Choosing Creatures:
When the horde needs to choose creatures/permanents for sacrifice, or attacking planeswalkers, they choose the creatures in this order:
1) spawned creature tokens
2) 2/2 zombie tokens from the deck
3) 5/5 zombie giant tokens from the deck
4) non-token creatures chosen at random
5) enchantments/artifacts chosen at random
6) cards in hand chosen at random (if I add descent into madness or something)
Planeswalkers:
At the start of each combat phase for the horde, choose an order of the planeswalkers in play at random. For each planeswalker, going in order, the horde deck chooses a zombie (according to the above rules) for each loyalty counter on that planeswalker, and those zombies attack that planeswalker for that turn. If there are not enough zombies to attack all the planeswalkers like this, then the lucky planeswalkers at the end of the random order are not attacked.
Activated abilities:
There are only a couple activated abilities that the horde will use:
Regeneration - If a zombie would be destroyed at any point, it regenerates in response.
Unearth - If there is a creature with unearth in the graveyard, the ability is activated at the same time the horde plays flashback spells and spells from its hand. The order of all this is randomly chosen.
Decisions:
If the horde has to make a choice, and there is no determined way to handle that choice, it is chosen at random. (cards like browbeat for instance).
Here's the deck:
I went with a 130:70 split. I might try to increase the token to non-token ratio so that the graveyard fills up with more 2/2 zombies more quickly. This will make burning the bodies take a little more work, and make the deck overall more difficult to beat.
Apparently I miscounted the zombie tokens when I put them in so it's 129:71 split. I'm just going to leave it as is for now. This is the exact list I am currently using.
