Creature (169)
- 1x Corrosive Mentor
- 6x Diregraf Captain SL
- 1x Ghoulcaller Gisa
- 1x Grave Sifter
- 2x Gravecrawler
- 2x Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
-
10x
Gurmag Angler
- 1x Khabal Ghoul HP
- 2x Lich Lord of Unx
- 1x Lord of the Undead
- 1x Midnight Banshee
- 1x Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
- 1x Nekusar, the Mindrazer SL
- 2x Null Champion
- 4x Rotting Rats
- 1x Servant of Tymaret
- 1x Soulless One
- 1x Stitcher Geralf
- 4x Unbreathing Horde
- 2x Undead Alchemist
-
1x
Undead Alchemist
- 1x Vulturous Zombie MP
-
121x
Walking Corpse
- 1x Zombie Master MP
Sorcery (25)
Enchantment (5)
- 1x Blind Obedience
- 1x Call to the Grave
- 1x Curse of Stalked Prey
- 1x Endless Ranks of the Dead
- 1x Grave Betrayal
Artifact (3)
Instant (4)
Maybeboard
Enchantment (3)
Creature (4)
^This deck is best viewed with Custom Categories enabled.
What is the Horde format?
The Horde Format was a casual multiplayer variant of Magic: the Gathering involving all players working cooperatively to defeat an automated deck. This format was created in 2011 by Peter Knudson and introduced to a wider audience by author Adam Styborski. The original rules for the format can be found here.
This game is meant to simulate a Zombie Apocalypse in the more traditional hollywood sense. Unlike regular MTG games which simulate planeswalkers dueling, the Horde format is meant to simulate an outbreak of a zombie virus, where all players work together to survive it. The whole experience is more that of a tabletop RPG than a traditional adversarial MTG game.
Why Play Horde Format?
This format is an excellent vehicle for teaching the game to new players, because the friendly co-op environment allows experienced players to look at the hands of newbies and teach the game.
If you've ever wondered how well your Commander-deck would survive a zombie apocalypse, now you can find out!
The Emblems
I have created a series of emblems for use with the Horde Format. The Zombie Horde deck begins the game with the 5 oversized emblems, and slowly accumulates the smaller emblems as time goes on.
The rules on my emblems do feature some changes from the original horde format rules. These rules changes developed from a combination of my own experiences with the format, the combined wisdom of other posters on reddit, and the wisdom contained in SAUS9001's horde post, here. In all cases, these slight rules changes were intended to make the horde deck function less stupidly, or to eliminate conditions which would otherwise break the game due to the autonomous nature of the format.
These emblems were made in May and June of 2015. I spent countless hours making, photoshopping, testing, and perfecting them. All background art was found by google image searching for pictures of zombies. Flavor text is from a variety of zombie pop culture sources. These were made for personal use in my horde deck and I have no intention of selling them or making money off of them.
Supplementary Emblems
As the game progresses, that second oversized emblem generates these supplementary emblems. The way it's worded, the power level of the deck scales with the number of opponents it faces:
One Opponent: Takes 7 turns to generate the first Emblem.
Two Opponents: Takes 5 turns to generate the first Emblem.
Three Opponents: Takes 4 turns to generate the first Emblem.
Four Opponents: Takes 3 turns to generate the first Emblem.
I made 6 such emblems, each has identical rules, but different art & flavor text:
Rules Commentary
The Horde Magic format is an unpolished, janky, unofficial rule-set written in 2011 by an intern at WotC.
The rules on my emblems are an attempt to develop this hot mess into a much more playable rules system.
Below you will find commentary explaining the rules changes.
Emblem 1
Why the life total is 1: In Horde, we are simulating a hollywood-style zombie apocalypse. There is no mastermind behind this catastrophy. No planeswalker controlling things in the background.
Cards such as Ebonblade Reaper, Havoc Festival, Quietus Spike, Raving Dead, Scytheclaw, and Shahrazad break the spirit of the game because they are designed for games where planeswalkers are fighting one another, while in this format there is no entity whose life-force could be targeted by such effects. It never felt right having quietus spike mill half of the horde deck all at once, especially since the format's rules prevent the horde deck from blocking attackers. This rule is thus worded to prevent such effects which interact with life totals from breaking the spirit of the game.
Emblem 2
Note on Card Drawing: Only during the upkeep and draw step does the Horde keep drawing until it finds a non-token spell. Cards like Nekusar, the Mindrazer and Jayemdae Tome cause an extra draw-until-nontoken as they should, but the card-draw rule is worded in such a way that mass-card-draw cards like Decree of Pain are prevented from being game-breakingly crazy (since they result in a totally normal card draw instead of getting a bunch of instances of drawing until you get a nontoken).
Emblem 3
In the original format's rules, the horde was simply described as having infinite mana. This new wording is designed to allow cards such as Worldpurge, Pygmy Hippo, Mana Short, Drain Power, etc. to still function more or less as designed, but without totally breaking the game.
Under the original rules, with the horde's infinite mana, spells with X in their cost generally could not be included in the deck at all because that would get crazy. I was inspired by the MTG card Lich Lord of Unx to write the wording of this rule, so that X is limited to the number of zombies controlled by the horde instead of being infinite.
Emblem 4
"Tokens in your maindeck exist in all game zones" is a funny one. Under the original format rules, there was all sorts of confusion as to how to handle the maindeck tokens. Some people would have them disappear when they left play, some people treated them as nontoken spells with cmc 0, (which could then break cards which interacted with tokens specifically). This rule is worded prevent the game from being broken while also allowing cards which interact with token permanents to still function.
Another problem this solves: Under the original rules - because tokens were sometimes treated as spells with cmc of 0 - storm-count effects could easily break the game. "play with your hand revealed [...] put all tokens from your hand into play" was worded to prevent tokens from being cast as spells, and thus prevent the number-of-spells-cast-in-a-turn from reaching absurd levels.
Note on Non-token creatures and 'semi-Haste': The way it's worded, zombies with abilities like Khabal Ghoul, Midnight Banshee, Vulturous Zombie, Diregraf Captain, Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, Zombie Master, Undead Alchemist etc., have one turn to fully use their abilities, before they are thrust into combat to die.
Note on Activated Abilities being required ONCE, and ASAP: The way it's worded, creatures like Lich Lord of Unx or Grimgrin, Corpse-Born which could potentially use their abilities infinitely, are limited to one usage per zombie turn. Things with regenerate are likewise limited to one usage. This also means that effects like Jayemdae Tome will tap to activate before the draw step. Also note, tap abilities like Stitcher Geralf and Ghoulcaller Gisa are forced to activate during upkeep.
Also, teeeeechnically, with the horde's infinite mana, it could teeeechnically use a Gravecrawler to give infinite power and toughness to Grimgrin, Corpse-Born. The above wording prevents this too.
Cards which Level-up will immediately try to level up to maximum as soon as they hit the field (So in the case of Null Champion, you have a few moments to hit it with spot removal before it gains regenerate).
Emblem 5
Note: Remember that the Supplementary Emblems add to dice-rolls.
Under the original format's rules, the horde deck had to play flashbacks immediately as soon as it was able. That made cards like Army of the Damned too silly. Early on, I experimented with various coin-flipping and dice-rolling mechanics to randomize flashbacks and unearths. The dice-roll+counter emblem is the culmination of online collaboration as we tried different mechanics and figured out what worked best. This rule makes cards like Past in Flames scale in power level as the game goes on.
Everything Else
What's In My Deckbox: Show
EDIT 2023: Download Link
As per a request by Julien F. - you can now download a 600dpi full-resolution copy of these emblems. This contains individual images, plus pre-formatted 8.5"x11" .PDF sheets for easy printing! 88.7 MB filesize. Enjoy!
Want the original editable .PSD files I used to create these? Shoot me an email (Spend 5 mins cyberstalking me, and you should be able to figure out my email address - it's not hard).
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| Date added | 6 years |
| Last updated | 11 months |
| Splash colors | WRG |
| Legality | This deck is Unknown legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 11 - 0 Mythic Rares 33 - 0 Rares 16 - 0 Uncommons 146 - 0 Commons |
| Cards | 206 |
| Avg. CMC | 3.02 |
| Tokens | Zombie 2/2 B, Zombie Wizard 1/1 UB, Zombie */* U |
| Folders | [1] My Best Work (Past & Present) |
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