Apocalypse Horde

[Hays413]

Many of you may have seen in the following link; http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/sf/183

Horde magic is fun. I've made a variant. I'll post a quick piece from the article to give you the idea, then the way my group plays. House rules are always coming up and it's always changing. I'd love some more ideas from you guys!

"In Brief: Horde Magic is a multiplayer variant where all players work together as "Survivors" to defeat an opposing "Horde" deck.

Rules Rundown: There's a lot going on in Horde Magic. We'll break it down into Game Play, Player, and Horde rules.

Game Play Rules:

The objective is for the allied team to survive, and eliminate, the Horde. Survivors win when the Horde deck has no cards remaining in its library, no cards in hand, and controls no creatures.
If the Survivors deal damage to the Horde, that number of cards are put from the top of the Horde's deck into its graveyard.
Player Rules:

Up to four players total, and each player brings his or her own deck.
All players share their turns, a la Two-Headed Giant, and contribute 20 life to the starting total (one player is 20, four players is 80).
The Survivors take the first three turns, then alternate with the Horde.
Horde Rules:

The Horde is a hundred-card deck. (Take away a random twenty-five cards for each Survivor less than four on the team; three players face seventy-five cards, two players face fifty.)
The Horde is both token cards as well as regular Magic cards; the standard is fifty-five 2/2 Zombie tokens, five 5/5 Zombie Giant tokens (from Zendikar), and forty assorted Zombies and other spells.
The Horde's turn starts by revealing the top card of the library. If it's a creature token, it is set aside. This process repeats until a nontoken spell is revealed. Then, all of the creature tokens are cast (as a Zombie creature spell that costs 0). Finally, the revealed spell is cast.
The Horde will only cast spells once per turn, at the start of the turn. (Anything that is returned to the Horde's hand remains there until the next turn, when it is then cast after the revealed spell for that turn.)
The horde deck has any amount of mana needed and will always pay additional costs required (such as from {Sphere of Resistance}; {Propaganda}; and {Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs}).
All creatures the Horde controls have haste and must attack each turn if able.
If there is a choice presented for the Horde, such as when a Survivor casts {Fact or Fiction}, the choice is made randomly.*
Tokens put into the graveyard, returned to the Horde's hand, or exiled, disappear from the game as per normal token rules.

That covers most of what you need to know. The rest is a more complicated piece noted above as "randomly." The original rules state "as randomly as possible," which is a great default: dumb Zombies are just randomly clawing about.

But after many games against the Horde, I've found most decks more than capable of handling the onslaught. Two variations I commonly run are:

"Smart" Horde, where the Survivors look at the board and intelligently decide what the most brutal thing to do it. Sometimes, it's a little easier (spells that kill things kill the best things) but other times it's much harder (splitting {Fact or Fiction} always is).
"Intelligently Random" Horde, where decisions are mostly random. This sets the horde up to still be kinda dumb, but it actively avoids hurting itself. It's a good mix between the chaos of pure randomization and the selectiveness of making the call for the Horde."

Now for my variant;

Zombie Horde: Apocalypse
Same rules as above, but instead of trying to work as a team to defeat the horde, the object is to be the last man/woman standing.

This complicates things slightly.

Firstly, you not only have to worry about the Horde, but also your "friends". Just like it could happen in the real world, the people around you may not be the people you WANT around you. If you want to survive, you'll have to make the tough decisions. Attack the horde, or throw the person next to you into the crowd of flesh eating undead and live another day.

Some changes have to be made to the above.
Each person starts with 30 life (after playing a few times, 20 is not enough!).
You no longer share turns save for the first 3 as before. In the first 3 turns you cannot target an opponent (except the horde) or otherwise affect them.

After the first 3, the fun begins.
The horde will take its turn as normal. When it's time to attack, each player will roll a D20 lowest roll (remember your roll as you will need it later!) to see who the horde will attack.
The horde attacks, lowest roll defends. The other players can use instants or other activated abilities if they so choose, even block the horde. (ability to block the horde becomes needed as it can get out of control and it's hard to stop. You may benefit in the long run, plus next turn, the horde may attack you, take em down a notch).

After the horde's turn we must decide the order of turns. The player who was just mauled by the horde, goes first. Of the other players, highest roll goes next, then carry it on until the last player. Then once everyone has taken they're turn, roll again to see who the horde attacks.
Hopefully you survive.

Other notes and "house rules"
- When there are more than one players still alive, no player can be attacked by the horde three times in a row, max two! Roll again.
- Players have no maximum handsize.
- Players can work together to defeat the horde, but once it's gone, it's time to turn on each other. If this happens, the player who got the last blow on the horde goes first, then clockwise.

This variant is brutal, cold, and most times just cruel. Just like multiplayer games .politics. plays a major role. Trust no one.

[Thorn]

Cool but I'm confused about something.
Do you have to vs the Horde with a commander deck?

[Hays413]

Cool but I'm confused about something.
Do you have to vs the Horde with a commander deck?

You can use any deck you want really

[cltrn81]

This sounds pretty cool actually.

[Hays413]

This sounds pretty cool actually.

Oh it is, actually a ton of fun. Sometimes you actually get nervous and all psyched up when the horde attacks you. Give it a try!

[Gorzo]

This does sound pretty fun. I'll have to put together the zombie deck and try it, after I find some more tokens. Are there any cards you recommend as "must haves" for including in the zed deck? {Grave Titan}, {Army of the Damned}, {Zombie Apocalypse}, and {Call to the Grave} for example sound like no-brainers (no pun intended - happy accident) to put in there.

[cltrn81]

This does sound pretty fun. I'll have to put together the zombie deck and try it, after I find some more tokens. Are there any cards you recommend as "must haves" for including in the zed deck? {Grave Titan}, {Army of the Damned}, {Zombie Apocalypse}, and {Call to the Grave} for example sound like no-brainers (no pun intended - happy accident) to put in there.

I just photo copy tokens, cut em out, and stick them in a sleeve with another card in behind the photo copied token.  They look pretty good if you have a nice printer.  I do the same for proxies......like when you have 2 or 3 U/W decks and you don't want to keep flopping land from deck to deck and what not.  Rules are you gotta own the card if your using it as a proxie......at least at my hizhouse.

[Hays413]

This does sound pretty fun. I'll have to put together the zombie deck and try it, after I find some more tokens. Are there any cards you recommend as "must haves" for including in the zed deck? {Grave Titan}, {Army of the Damned}, {Zombie Apocalypse}, and {Call to the Grave} for example sound like no-brainers (no pun intended - happy accident) to put in there.

Lol you gotta have those alright! I basically just got all my zombie tokens together (about 70 ish, 8 or 9 5/5 giants) then put in any other zombies I happened to have from the last few blocks. Even a doom blade in there for extra fun.

[Gorzo]

This does sound pretty fun. I'll have to put together the zombie deck and try it, after I find some more tokens. Are there any cards you recommend as "must haves" for including in the zed deck? {Grave Titan}, {Army of the Damned}, {Zombie Apocalypse}, and {Call to the Grave} for example sound like no-brainers (no pun intended - happy accident) to put in there.

I just photo copy tokens, cut em out, and stick them in a sleeve with another card in behind the photo copied token.  They look pretty good if you have a nice printer.  I do the same for proxies......like when you have 2 or 3 U/W decks and you don't want to keep flopping land from deck to deck and what not.  Rules are you gotta own the card if your using it as a proxie......at least at my hizhouse.

Never would have thought of that in a million years. Looks like my scanner/printer is getting a workout tonight! Thank you sir!

[BlackJester]

I'd recommend not including cards that involve decisions of any kind.  Otherwise you need to ask, are the Zombies smart and choose the most devastating choice, or dumb and pick randomly.  You could play with smart zombies, but then everyone might argue over which would be the best choice for the zombies to make and that's getting silly.

[Wally]

This sounds awesome!

[Hays413]

I'd recommend not including cards that involve decisions of any kind.  Otherwise you need to ask, are the Zombies smart and choose the most devastating choice, or dumb and pick randomly.  You could play with smart zombies, but then everyone might argue over which would be the best choice for the zombies to make and that's getting silly.

We basically do it this way. If the horde has to make a decision, it's semi random as much as possible. Like with planes walkers, randomly decide if they attack a planes walker or not. If so, they will use enough to kill the walker, if not, they don't attack them at all. There aren't many arguments when it comes to horde decisions. Most brutal is the way to go!

[MasteroftheCraft]

PLAYER #1:
"And let us now have a moment of silence for Player #3, who i killed-I mean that was killed by tha Hoard..."
PLAYER #3 (from across table):
"Douchbag..."

[Hays413]

PLAYER #1:
"And let us now have a moment of silence for Player #3, who i killed-I mean that was killed by tha Hoard..."
PLAYER #3 (from across table):
"Douchbag..."

Haha nice!!

[Thorn]

Does the horde deck have to be commander or can it have multiples.
Do you think anyone will mind if I do not have the real zombie cards but I still want to play horde so I print them. Since its not a competetive deck would anyone cary if i proxied (even though I do not actually own the card)
Thanks