This is the coolest Horde deck I've ever seen, and I'm planning to copy it and play it with my friends. Kudos to you for the deck and the detailed writeup.

Realy nice horde variation. i like the loot thing. but i aksed myself if it would be nice to add some mechanic like an endboss instead of foil cards which drop loot. the bosses enter with every new wave. there are some cool rule ideas in the stranger things horde deck here: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/stranger-things-halloween-zombie-horde/ Maybe there is a way to merge both rulesets... but my big question to your loot is: there are many cards which say "if a player" but the horde is no player. is this how it should be? is the horde a "opponent"?

And why the Swamps in the sideboard?

@bustabuzz:

Thank you for your upvote!

• The Swamp depict the Wave cards. See point 4 of Game Setup section. However, they aren't part of the Environment Deck.

• About the loot cards that use the words "player" or "opponent", you pointed a weakness in my rules set. I am still trying to figure how to make them work. At this moment, we just apply rules-exception for the artifacts issued from the loot deck.
  Making the Horde not an opponent helped a lot to protect it against silver bullet cards that could ruin the game experience. I have the choice between removing that special rule; or rewriting it; or removing the problematic loot-artifacts, but I really like how they can help the players to survive.

I bookmarked your Horde deck long ago, I really like how it's inspired by the TV show Stranger Things. I enjoyed watching this story.
The idea of using mini-bosses is clever, I love it. I am trying to apply it and I got some ideas since I played several games of a boardgame called Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game.

Dear followers and Horde-chasers,

I updated all the rules for this Horde deck. There are lots of changes.

About new cards,

• No cards from KLD, AER, AKH, HOU made the cut into The Horde's deck.

• 1 card from DOM will probably be added to its deck: Josu Vess, Lich Knight.

Added Josu Vess, Lich Knight. —Eligible to Loot when killed. The Horde always pays the kicker cost. Yes, it's a 20-power attack with Menace, be prepared for!

(Removed Dead Wight. That card was very cool, but its textbox was too complicated.)

It says 2-5 players, but have you played this solo? Any changes you'd make? Interested in something I can play when I have some downtime by myself.

@superfierostatus: Yes of course, solo play is an option. I myself often playtest alone. But be prepared, it's cutthroat (you should probably increase your life total a bit, 80 or 100), and less fun.

Do you have a ban list for the survivor decks? Also, was Nihil Spellbomb excluded from the loot deck list because it's too powerful? Edit: one more question, do you consider the Horde playing zombie tokens as "playing black spells", for Demon's Horn triggers?

4 of us played three games against this exact list last night for Halloween and had a blast! We definitely learned that graveyard hate is extremely important. Our meta is semi-competitive so we thought we'd have an easy time but we only won once.

First game we lost to the Horde resolving a Wave 1 Plague Wind and then never got our board state back.

Second game we won with infinite combat phases from Najeela and a Relic of Progenitus from the loot deck.

Third game we lost because our Borborygmos player got a little too trigger happy and milled the Horde's entire library, but we couldn't deal with the flashed-back Past in Flames because we had no graveyard hate or counterspells available.

Hi Supertek!

Thanks for your feedback.

I didn't think of a banlist for this format, but I strongly suggest to avoid the following cards:

• Grafdigger's Cage, Rest in Peace, etc. (permanent graveyard-removals)
• Iona, Shield of Emeria
• Profane Memento

Extra notes:

• Nihil Spellbomb was omitted from the Loot deck because there are already two very good grave-hate cards, and also the shovel.

• The Horde's Zombie tokens are put onto the battlefield, not cast. Therefore, they don't trigger Demon's Horn.

Thanks for the response Stefouch!

We really enjoyed playing against this deck. I might make some small tweaks to it, such as changing which cards are foiled, or maybe putting a couple Bad Moons in the main deck.

What about Authority of the Consuls and Blind Obedience? I haven't seen them on anybody's ban lists but I feel like they're complete blowouts; particularly AotC.

I'm putting together a bunch of budget survivor decks tuned (but not overtuned) to play against the Horde, and box the whole set up. Kind of a pet project while I'm on leave from work. We played our main EDH decks in this format and we either got completely trounced or someone combo'd off and it was too easy. I want to make this a consistent challenging experience but be tuned for cooperative magic rather than free-for-all semi-competitive pods.

Profane Memento is too strong because it gave extra life also when The Horde was attacked.

Authority of the Consuls follows the same path. It's very good against The Horde, undoubtedly. It's on the fine line, but I wouldn't ban it because I see this card played a lot. We should avoid to force people modifying their deck only to play Horde Magic. Maybe just house-rule the card to give life only to nontoken creatures. Or add more Bad Moon effects to The Horde to counterbalance the lifegain.

The "extra turn" this card is giving the Survivors' team by tapping The Horde's creatures, like Blind Obedience, is also neat. It's a great advantage to see what's coming. But not ban-worthy according to me.

I would like to say that a few Horde-chasing cards are acceptable in a 99-cards deck.

I've already taken a look at your "Survivors' decks." I really like the idea and themes you built. I'm curious if it works well for you. If it does, I would probably follow your idea and build mine based on your lists.

And of course this format doesn't suit to (semi-)cEDH decks. It's for casual playtime!

Thanks, I wanted to make these premade decks because I didn't think it would be fun to ask people to make swaps to their EDH decks, and also didn't think it was very fun to just win off an infinite combo. Could make a house rule that infinite loops are limited to 3, or house rules for specific cards, but I figured it would just be easier to create some custom decks instead.

I'll test AotC and see if it makes the game too trivial. It will for sure act as a shield that will buy us a turn, and I think it might be a good idea that the life gain only triggers from non-tokens, just like Demon's Horn.

Thanks for taking a look at the survivor decks! I've still got about 7 or 8 more to make, so stay tuned.

Hi there!

I made some changes:

• Updated the Loot deck with more and better artifacts.

• Removed 3 big zombies from The Horde's deck: Diregraf Colossus, Soulless One and Unbreathing Horde. Counting the number of zombies every turn is boring and time consuming.

A few recent updates:

• Rule 4 of the Dead has been changed: The Horde is immune to "you lose" effects and decking.

• Added "Appendix IV - Build your own Horde" to the description, with a few links to other Hordes created by the community.

• Environment Deck: +Underworld Dreams, −Phyrexian Tyranny. Phyrexian Tyranny wasn't really in the Zombie theme. I'm planning to add more nasty black enchantments in a near future.

Hey mate, amazing layout you got over here. I've been considering myself a Horde-enthusiast since the first articles spead years ago. I love the idea of the loot-pile, didn't know about that one!

If you like to, check out my horde builds Darksteel Doom (HORDE Co-op Magic!)... cheers!

Hi chilbi! Thanks for your upvote.

Actually, I really like your Golems-Myrs horde list and added a link to it in my description :-)

Sweet. I've put a link in there to your elaborate explanation of the format here. .. good to see people are still playing this.

Stefouch how do you feel about Rise of the Dark Realms on the mainboard for the Horde deck? Makes a scary clock for the survivors to keep burning the bodies. Too scary?

The rules for this variant are still somewhat unclear regarding how the Horde declares attackers. Are they attacking the Survivors' team life total, and cannot be treated as though they're attacking "you"? Do effects like Riot Control , Selfless Squire not work here?

Hi Supertek!
Like Archenemy, use this rule: CR 802. Attack Multiple Players Option.

Rule 802.3 says this is the Horde who chooses which creature attacks which defending player. Since the Horde can't choose, the choice must be done at random. As it could become very cumbersome when the Horde has a lot of creatures, it can be simpler to just choose which single player the Horde is attacking with all its creatures, when it matters. Or for the ease of play, the Survivors could choose themselves as an exception to this rule.

But the Horde is not that dumb. If an effect is applying a detrimental effect to the Horde's creatures depending on the defending player, and if the Horde is aware of it (meaning it happened before it declares its attackers), the Horde will try to avoid that player if possible.

Playtested my first 4 survivor decks today: Bard, Cleric, Paladin and Wizard, plus a fifth player playing one of their standard EDH decks. Got two games in before we had to depart to do other things. First game we got blown out hard by someone attacking the Horde early and hitting a Swamp in the top 3 cards, which flipped Destructive Flow from the environments. We couldn't catch back up after that. Ended up losing to a wave that had about 14 tokens into both Josu Vess and Mikaeus.

Game 2 went much better, with the Bard and Cleric landing Essence Warden and Soul's Attendant early, into a turn 3 Orim's Prayer. The life gain kept our heads above water so well, we could've been a water polo team (sorry for the ridiculous analogy). The Paladin deck laid down heavy beats while the Cleric and Bard ran support. The Wizard countered all the scary stuff, like Zombie Apocalypse and All is Dust, and cast a bunch of 2-damage sweepers to kill off most of the tokens. We joyfully flipped cards from the loot deck after killing some of the scarier stuff, which is a pretty "feelsgood" moment for everyone, and collectively stressed about how hard to attack the Horde deck in case we flip more Swamps we weren't ready for. Lots of strategizing, lots of planning, and a little bit of convincing people not to attack at all.

The players all had a really good time and will be giving me more feedback soon, but so far the premade survivor decks are a success!

I really enjoy your gamelogs Supertek. Thanks for sharing!

The idea of having preconstructed themed deck is very pleasant. I will explore it.

So, for clarification, does the horde start with an opening hand?