tl;dr I will teach you how to win with Dwarven Pony on turn 4.

Let’s skip the opener and just show up for the mane event. It's Friday at 5 PM and I bust in to my local FNM store. A group of my buddies gathers for a friendly game of EDH. I ask what everyone is playing.

"Yuriko"

"Kenrith"

"Ur-Dragon, how about you?"

"Horse tribal."

Everyone pauses and laughs. They are all fools.

The game begins with me rolling first. I tap my garbage dual land to play the magnificent Tarpan. More of what I assume is nervous laughter as the next few players do their thing.

Turn 2 is Capashen Unicorn. More laughter. They say that it isn't a horse, but that's just racist.

Various horses and their terrible cousins come and go, most dying to Diabolic Intent but some face the enemy head on shiny and chrome as glorious chump blockers ensuring my life total remains stable.

Yuriko ramps and quickly becomes the dominant board threat. Kenrith and Ur-Dragon take the brunt of her hits. While they’re constantly jockeying for position I cast Kenrith's Transformation turning Yuriko into a beautiful stallion. But more importantly several players have expended the majority of their removal and countermagic. It's time to stop horsin' around.

End of my last opponent's turn I flash in Breaching Hippocamp. No one has a response. Untap upkeep draw later I reveal Splinter Twin. An opponent taps out to try and counter it. "Neigh" I reply, dropping a card to the table. It is Pact of Negation. I’m saddled with the burden of victory as the board is swarmed with trillions of horse-fish. I let out a victory screech and blurt out some random Rick and Morty quote, but their IQ is too low to understand.

"Why did you make that deck?"

"It was a spur of the moment decision."

"God damn it."

And so with great pride I reveal to you the absolute worst best deck to ever exist. 5 color horses, aka Jegantha, the equine king.

With all that said, let's get on to how a person can try to make this utter garbage function. Horses are utter trash at aggro and control, but by jumping through a few hoops we can at least cheese a combo win.

I tried to pick the best horses but being the best horse is like being the fastest turtle.

Capashen Unicorn and Ronom Unicorn are really bad removal spells. Wispmare is technically an Elemental but that's just a wet horse.

Crested Sunmare is one of the few real Horse tribal cards. I don't run much life gain so I don't think I'll ever win with 5/5 horse swarms but making my combo pieces Indestructible is neat.

All 6 Core Set 2019 horses. They're all pretty bad in commander but the CMC is low and they have decent enough bodies and abilities.

Opaline Unicorn and Golden Hind are mana dorks. Crappy mana dorks.

Keleth, Sunmane Familiar can in some extraordinarily rare circumstances let Jegantha threaten lethal in just three swings.

In rare cases Timbermare's ability can come in handy. It actually never has even one single time so far but anything is possible.

Sacred Prey, Tarpan, Dwarven Pony, Hipparion, Phantasmal Mount, Fleshmad Steed and Temur Charger are bad. If you thought I would mention an upside there is none. They are all terrible.

Wavebreak Hippocamp is by far the best horse in the game which is an exceptionally low bar to clear.

Bill Ferny, Bree Swindler is relatively useless but since he is Horse tribal, he must be used.

Shadowfax, Lord of Horses gives anything Haste meaning Intuition combos can go off even with an empty board.

Thurid, Mare of Destiny is horse tribal, or something like that.

Oko, Thief of Crowns, Trickster's Elk, and Kenrith's Transformation aren't horses but they can turn things into them, sort of.

Beast Within should be used with the specific Ikoria Beast token which looks like an Elk.

Rolling Earthquake is almost a Horse themed board wipe. Not actually, but almost.

Horses of the Bruinen is a wildly overcosted removal that is crippled by being Sorcery speed. But you know... Horse.

Throw from the Saddle is inefficient yet horse-y removal.

Smuggler's Surprise functionally costs 3 mana to get 3 cards (including itself) in the GY while "drawing" 2.

Take for a Ride is a terrible threaten effect.

Anyhow since most of the creatures in this deck are cripplingly weak I included as many cards that reward me for casting or sacrificing creatures as I could think of. Diabolic Intent and wheels / looting effects all exploit my weak tribe by turning useless horses into something more valuable. Running cute tribal synergy cards like Kindred Discovery is nice but only really works if the tribe is good to begin with.

The rest of the deck is just packed with as many tutors, draw, ramp, removal, and countermagic to assemble one of my combos as soon as I can. My land count is low but the average cmc of the deck is 2 so what do you want from me.

Some cards that will make the list once I find time to test. Or maybe none of them will be tested. I don't know man.

The Spear of Leonidas makes a horse and loots.

Chrome Mox turns a Horse into some glue, making it actually useful.

Riding the Dilu Horse makes Jegantha unblockable and lets him kill in 3 swings.

Workhorse was in the deck for a long time but the mana cost was far too high especially with JeGANtha already in the command zone.

Takenuma, Abandoned Mire. Self mill is really good in an Intuition combo deck and I can re-use a Capashen Unicorn or something.

Misdirection and Force of Will are of course amazing. Force of Negation is also pretty decent. Then there's stuff like Flusterstorm, Miscast etc.

Reins of Power - Takes someone with a winning board state and turns it against them. Also horse themed.

Clutch of the Undercity - Tutors for Hippocamp and Splinter Twin or can be removal.

Thundering Mightmare - While this is not an aggro deck playing this early can quickly turn even something like a Zodiac Horse into a dangerous threat, or allow the commander to swing for lethal.

Phantom Steed - Interesting ability but little to no synergy.

Trenching Steed - One of the worst cards in the game. I'm sensing a pattern here.

Ebony Horse and Noble Steeds are garbage yet horse themed cards that do nothing useful.

Polymorphist's Jest - Art has a bunch of horses looking at things that were turned to frogs.

Ride Down - Art is some guy getting crushed by a horse. Pretty useless for the deck. But horse.

Force Away - Horse art. Kind of bad unless I can cast my commander to activate Ferocious.

Spontaneous Combustion - Exploding Horse!

More tutors - Lim-Dul's Vault / Grim Tutor / Cruel Tutor / Solve the Equation. Since the deck generally just wins with Intuition in hand going all-in on tutors / searches might be worth it, even at the cost of some counter / removal cards. Honestly the deck is so dependent on tutoring Intuition that there's probably no number of tutors that's too many. Even Beseech the Queen, Dimir Machinations, Mausoleum Secrets, Praetor's Grasp, and Bring to Light. Also Tainted Pact can be good.

Wheel / loot effects - Horses are so incredibly bad. Sometimes I just get flooded with them and need to flush my hand, or I cast a bunch early game and they just sit there waiting for a wrath / chump block. I could cut down on countermagic and just add a bunch of cheap Wheels. There's also cards like Burning Inquiry that simultaneously help me dig for a win con while filling my graveyard with Breach fodder. In particular Notion Rain and Mission Briefing are all pretty good.

Additionally my horse racism might have to allow a few more horse-like but still non-horses into the deck in support roles. Non horses like Pegasus, Unicorns etc. Not centaurs though f*ck them.

Starnheim Courser makes most of my wincons a little cheaper.

Cloudsteel Kirin - Robot platinum angel spirit horse. Could be niche useful which is a nice change from how bad the average horse is.

Boreas Charger - Significantly worse in practice than you'd think.

Plated Pegasus / Benevolent Unicorn - Slightly protects from burn.

Hinata, Dawn-Crowned - Reduces the cost of my stuff and makes the opponent's cost a little more.

Sun Quan, Lord of Wu - Teaches my horses to ride horses. Meme-y but not actually useful.

Spitemare - Bad but can be a reasonable blocker.

Lastly there's some alternative commander options.

Princess Twilight Sparkle - Cheaper than Jegantha and buffs horses. Someone less useful abilities than Jeg's mana burst but I do like that it only costs 2 cmc to get a body in play. She also lets you play cards like Fierce Guardianship more reliably so she's probably the stronger commander overall. It is silver border though and it might lead people to believe that you jerk off to child horses.

Ersta, Friend to All - Mystical Tutor in the command zone. Shame this isn't a "real" card because it would be the best commander I could hope for.

Morophon, the Boundless - Technically a horse and makes horses cheaper. But by the time you hit 7 mana you've already played them all or won the game. Also I'm not a fan of changelings as a stand in for a tribal creature. Hilariously this combos with Dwarven Pony to 4HKO a red player which is the only time in human history where Dwarven Pony could be a legitimate threat to anyone.

Horde of Notions - There's probably a horse in the art, somewhere. Has some synergy with a handful of elementals in the decks.

Hinata, Dawn-Crowned - Removing Green and Black doesn't really alter the deck's game plan so you can go all in on American horses. Just like the cowboys used to.

Also though many of them are not horses or horse-like, these cards all have horses in the art https://scryfall.com/search?q=art%3Ahorse&unique=art&as=gridℴ=name

First version of the deck found here: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/horse-of-notions-2/ Current version here is magnitudes more effective.

Okay, let's talk about the bad cards in the deck. Weak cards worth replacement. Other than all the horses, of course.

Wishclaw Talisman needs to win on the turn I activate it, or I need to cast removal to blow it up. So I either need to hard cast Intuition -> combo which takes at least 7 mana for everything or I need to spend removal to win the next turn. However it can search something like Pact of Negation or removal so it's really adaptable.

Gamble. This is definitely a good card, but it's fucked me enough that I'm willing to look at alternatives.

My goal is to have 20 horses but just like Clever Hans I can't count and added 21. Armored Warhorse is weirdly hard to cast sometimes making it the worst horse, so it could be replaced with something better. Edit: Armored Warhorse has been removed but my Clever Hans joke was clever so I'm leaving it.

Let's be honest, no one is going to blow $8k on horse tribal. But some of you might spend 30 dollars on a printer. As far as horse themed meme decks that win on turn 3 go, you could do worse. Also much better. But then you wouldn't be able to win with Dwarven Pony now would you? If you can't win with Dwarven Pony, are you ever really winning at all? Neigh.

Suggestions

Updates Add

Comments

Casual

90% Competitive

Top Ranked
Date added 4 years
Last updated 3 weeks
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

6 - 0 Mythic Rares

47 - 0 Rares

30 - 0 Uncommons

17 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.32
Tokens Beast 3/3 G, Copy Clone, Elk 3/3 G, Food, Horse 5/5 W, Morph 2/2 C, The Ring, The Ring Tempts You, Treasure
Folders EDH Decks, edh fun, Flavorful AF, saves, Decks with great themes, Fun EDH Decks, EDH, decks i want to do, Decks to steal, Cool decks
Votes
Ignored suggestions
Shared with
Views