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So, last time Hoard magic was revealed, a bunch of our casual group got really excited. three different people put together hoard decks (two zombies, and a 5 color elemental deck too).  We tried them all out a few times each with a variety of different players and decks.

Not a single one of the 5 games was even close to close.  The worst example, ending life total of the 4 "survivors" - 250  We took a total of 13 damage, 7 of which was self-inflicted.

And all of this was with the following two changes - no three free turns for the survivors.  Survivors go first, hoard is after you from the start. And if the Hoard deck hits a non-token first, keep revealing until you hit a token (we were playing closer to 40 tokens per deck, not 60).

Again, even with those changes to increase the hoard power, the games weren't even close.  It felt similar to the problems we've had with archenemy - either the heroes get rolling and never have a problem, or the archenemy gets rolling and never feals any threat.  We don't play those formats often anymore because they aren't interesting.

Any suggestions out there from people who have tried tweeks and have more success?

Feb 20, 2012 -- 9:36PM, Newanda wrote:

So, last time Hoard magic was revealed, a bunch of our casual group got really excited. three different people put together hoard decks (two zombies, and a 5 color elemental deck too).  We tried them all out a few times each with a variety of different players and decks.

Not a single one of the 5 games was even close to close.  The worst example, ending life total of the 4 "survivors" - 250  We took a total of 13 damage, 7 of which was self-inflicted.

And all of this was with the following two changes - no three free turns for the survivors.  Survivors go first, hoard is after you from the start. And if the Hoard deck hits a non-token first, keep revealing until you hit a token (we were playing closer to 40 tokens per deck, not 60).

Again, even with those changes to increase the hoard power, the games weren't even close.  It felt similar to the problems we've had with archenemy - either the heroes get rolling and never have a problem, or the archenemy gets rolling and never feals any threat.  We don't play those formats often anymore because they aren't interesting.

Any suggestions out there from people who have tried tweeks and have more success?

The power of the Horde comes from the tokens. If you only play 67% of the suggested number of tokens, that drastically reduces the power of the Horde. An easy way to increase the Horde's power is to increase the number of tokens while keeping the non-token cards stable (this also has the nice effect of making the Horde's library bigger, which also makes it stronger). For the rest, I would look at the reasons why you are defeating the horde so easily. Are you overpowering it with creatures? Add a playset of Noxious Ghouls (that's a one-sided wrath every turn). Are you using enchantments and artifacts, like Adam did in the article? You can either choose to not use decks which use these enchantments, or you can "cheat" (only in spirit, but still) and add stuff like Calming Verse (I would suggest this one because the Zombie deck has some pretty nasty enchantments itself) and Creeping Corrosion to the deck.

The game Adam describes shows very nicely that the Horde needs to be able to be reactive, not only to creatures, but also to enchantments and artifacts. A Horde that loses the minute Moat enters the battlefield is a tad...lame.

I read somewhere when Horde Magic was first revealed that cards that fundamentally alter how the Horde deck plays should be soft-banned from the player's decks - if you draw them, you can cycle them for free. Such cards include mill and cards that prevent the decks from attacking.

Specifically building a deck to go against the Horde deck seems like a really awful idea and should be avoided at all cost. I stopped reading the article after I read that you played An-Zerrin Ruins and chose zombies. Seriously, how is the format supposed to be anything like Left 4 Dead when you have easy anti-zombie tech?

Some effects that should be soft-banned from decks while playing Horde Magic (because seriously, if you don't do this it loses half the fun):

Any mill card

Any card that prevents attacking

Any card that prevents losing

Extra turn effects

Cards which target all cards with the same name as a card

Cards which exile cards from libraries with the same name as a card (like the one before it, these are way more powerful in a format where tokens with the same name exist in a deck)

Also, I have read that you decrease the size of the Horde deck based on the number of players playing. I wouldn't do that. Always keep it at 100 cards, just adjust lifetotals to match. The more players you have, the smaller everyone's lifetotal should be because there are more of you drawing cards and casting spells.

Feb 21, 2012 -- 8:56AM, sarroth wrote:

I read somewhere when Horde Magic was first revealed that cards that fundamentally alter how the Horde deck plays should be soft-banned from the player's decks - if you draw them, you can cycle them for free. Such cards include mill and cards that prevent the decks from attacking.

Specifically building a deck to go against the Horde deck seems like a really awful idea and should be avoided at all cost. I stopped reading the article after I read that you played An-Zerrin Ruins and chose zombies. Seriously, how is the format supposed to be anything like Left 4 Dead when you have easy anti-zombie tech?

Some effects that should be soft-banned from decks while playing Horde Magic (because seriously, if you don't do this it loses half the fun):

Any mill card

Any card that prevents attacking

Any card that prevents losing

Extra turn effects

Cards which target all cards with the same name as a card

Cards which exile cards from libraries with the same name as a card (like the one before it, these are way more powerful in a format where tokens with the same name exist in a deck)

Also, I have read that you decrease the size of the Horde deck based on the number of players playing. I wouldn't do that. Always keep it at 100 cards, just adjust lifetotals to match. The more players you have, the smaller everyone's lifetotal should be because there are more of you drawing cards and casting spells.

If you stopped reading there, then you definitely missed the part where the Horde resolved and flashbacked an Army of the Damned followed closely by an Endless Ranks of the Dead .  The "survivors" only won that game with 8 life remaining.  If something is giving your deck problems, you pack answer cards, the same applies to the zombie Horde.

Feb 21, 2012 -- 11:48AM, Nojh wrote:

So I'm really interested in trying out this format for my casual group of friends who don't play magic to often. I do have a few questions though.

So when you determine stuff for the horde randomly, does that also mean allocation of attacking creatures? Like you determine random who each creature is going to attack? If the horde really builds up a huge horde, that seems like it'd be a really long time figuring all that out, or you'd end up cheating and making it semi-random.

Are there tricks or tips someone has for handling that? Or is it a situation that just doesn't come up often? 

the hoard attacks the team, the team blocks as a team.  attacking Planeswalkers was discussed in this article.