Horde Magic Format

[Zogura]

It's loosely based off the Theros challenge decks, with its main theme being Zombies but it can comprise of other creatures.
How will your friends band together to take down The Horde? And what will The Horde be?

Participants
Horde Magic is divided up into two factions: The Horde (the deck that runs automatically) and The Survivors (the players).

Win conditions
The Horde wins if The Survivors' group life total is reduced to zero or below.
The Survivors win if The Horde has no cards in its library, no cards in its hand, and no creatures on the battlefield.

Rules for The Horde
The Horde has no player, it pilots itself.
Any choice The Horde must make should be made as randomly as possible.
The Horde has an infinite amount of mana at all times.
The Horde's turn starts by revealing cards from the top of its library until a non-token card is revealed. All revealed tokens are then cast. The revealed non-token is cast. Then, if applicable, The Horde casts any cards that can be cast from its graveyard as well as any cards it has in its hand.
All creatures controlled by The Horde have Haste and "This creature must attack each turn if able."
The Horde has no life total. Damage dealt to The Horde causes that many cards from the top of The Horde's library to be put into its graveyard.

Rules for The Survivors
The Survivors have three turns to set their defenses before The Horde gets its first turn. Then turns alternate like normal.
Like in Two-Headed Giant, The Survivors are a team and all take their turn simultaneously. The Survivors attack and block as a team.
Each Survivor contributes 20 life to the group life total.

Adjusting the difficulty of The Horde
Depending upon the number of players and/or the type of decks being used by The Survivors, it may be necessary to adjust some of the aspects of the game in order to set the difficulty of the game to a preferable level.
The following are ways to adjust the difficulty and power level of The Horde:

Adjust the number of turns in which The Survivors have to prepare.
Adjust the amount of life each of The Survivors contributes to the team.
Exile a random portion of the Horde Deck prior to the first turn.
Card Selection during Horde Deck deck construction and/or a sideboard.
Replace random choices by The Horde with consensus decisions by The Survivors.
Allow tokens to remain in the graveyard instead of ceasing to exist.
Allow or disallow The Survivors to attack The Horde during their set-up turns.
Adjust the token to non-token ratio.

Horde deck construction
A Horde Deck is a 100-card constructed deck. Sixty of the cards should be tokens, the remaining forty are regular Magic cards. Cards included in the deck should not cause the Horde to have to make choices. This excludes almost any card that targets individual objects. Cards and Tokens included in the deck should be thematic, flavorful, and/or fun as well.

[Zogura]

Decklist
50 2/2 Black Zombie creature tokens
10 5/5 Black Zombie Giant creature tokens
2 Grave Betrayal
2 Waste Not
2 Call to the Grave
2 Quest for the Gravelord
2 Open the Graves
2 Endless Ranks of the Dead
2 Bridge from Below
2 Graf Harvest
2 Zombie Infestation
2 Liliana's Mastery
2 Sarcomancy
2 Necromantic Selection
2 Army of the Damned
2 Dread Summons
2 Stir the Sands
2 Syphon Flesh
2 Moan of the Unhallowed
2 Gisa's Bidding
2 Feast or Famine
2 Reap the Seagraf

Rule Set
Whenever The Horde has no creature cards in its library or on the battlefield, The Survivors win the game. Cards with “win the game” in its rules text deals 60 damage to The Survivors.

At the start of The Horde’s turn, reveal the top card of its library until a noncreature spell is revealed, The Horde casts the revealed creature spells then casts the revealed noncreature spell.

Whenever a player taps a land for mana, Add one black mana to The Horde’s mana pool. The Horde’s mana is not lost between steps and turns. Noncreature spells not cast from lack of mana goes to The Horde's hand, and is cast when it has enough mana.

Creatures in The Horde have Haste and must attack each turn if able.

If a source would deal damage to The Horde discard cards from the top of The Horde’s library equal to that damage instead.

[Zogura]

Decklist (Two Separate Libraries)
-Catacomb Library-
1 Scythe Leopard
1 Initiate's Companion
1 Pouncing Cheetah
1 Riparian Tiger
3 Generous Stray
3 Feral Prowler
8 Aetherstream Leopard
1 Feral Maaka
1 Chartooth Cougar
5 Twilight Panther
2 Graceful Cat
3 Felidar Guardian
1 Fortified Rampart
3 Wall of Resurgence
11 Portcullis Vine
1 Wall of Vines
3 Wall of Forgotten Pharaohs

-Maze Library-
30 Wall of Wood
14 Wall of Ice
5 Wall of Stone
1 Battle Rampart
---------------------------------------------
-Maze Library- (Medium)
1 Consulate Turret (Charges to 3 energy counters and fires the next turn)
9 Wall of Swords
3 Fog Bank
12 Wall of Vapor
25 Wall of Shadows
---------------------------------------------
-Maze Library- (Hard)
2 Consulate Skygate
3 Amaranthine Wall
30 Wall of Heat
9 Wall of Bone
6 Wall of Bramble

Rule Set
Whenever Catacomb Maze has no non-Wall creature cards in its libraries or on the battlefield, The Survivors win the game.
Cards with “win the game” in its rules text becomes “Lose the game.”
When Battle Rampart dies, discard the entire maze library into its graveyard.

At the start of Catacomb Maze’s first turn, cast the top six cards of the maze library onto the battlefield in a row, then cast the top six cards of the catacomb library onto the battlefield facedown in a row behind the first. (Facedown cards are flipped face-up when the Wall creature in front of it dies.)

Whenever a creature that was casted from the catacomb library dies, cast the top card from the catacomb library and cast the top card from the maze library.

Whenever a player taps a land for mana, add one mana of all colors to Catacomb Maze’s mana pool.
Catacomb Maze’s mana is not lost between steps and turns.

Mana abilities are triggered before Catacomb Maze’s combat step.
Doing so uses mana Catacomb Maze accumulates.
Trigger abilities activate accordingly.

Cards that causes Catacomb Maze to draw doesn’t trigger if Catacomb Maze has 12 permanents on the battlefield, otherwise its casted.

[Morganator 2.0]

Alright, I have to try this, it looks fun.

https://deckstats.net/decks/82803/1229376-horde-magic-goblins

Special rules:

• Non-token creatures don't have haste. Token creatures still have haste and attack each turn if able.
• Krenko, Mob Boss does not attack. Instead, he uses his ability each turn if able.
• Purphoros, God of the Forge never uses his activated ability.

[Morganator 2.0]

Gonna revive this topic real quick. My playgroup has gotten into horde decks as of late and they are a lot of fun. It takes a lot of planning and cooperation to beat a horde deck. It really is an experience like no other.

Tips for building a horde deck:

• Don't be scared to make it strong. You'll be surprised by how well three or more players can combat these decks. Stronger hordes are more of a challenge and therefore more fun.
• Some horde decks should "scale". As you add more players, the horde should do more flips. Our rule of thumb is horde flips = half the number of players, rounded up. So if it's three players, the horde will flip twice. The goblin horde I posted above is an example of a deck that scales. The ones I'm about to showcase do not need to scale.
• One of the best ways to start making a horde deck is to find a cool token and use that. I have a friend with a horde deck who uses the 3/3 fish token from Reef Worm. It makes you think really hard about how you block.
• I recommend two modifications to the rules.
• Assume the horde always has lands, and has more than you. That way cards like Exotic Orchard and Land Tax aren't useless.
• The horde has infinite mana but doesn't use it to pay for its opponents' effects. So it will never pay for Spell Pierce or Rhystic Study.

So here are some of the horde decks I've recently made.

Assassins
https://deckstats.net/decks/82803/1602114-horde-magic-assassins

This one is a real challenge, because you could die at any moment. It uses a bunch of conditional sacrifice effects and boardwipes to try and get the assassins through. Nothing fully wipes the board, but there are a lot of cards that have the potential to do so. And the vote cards are a source of much debate between players.

Stax
https://deckstats.net/decks/82803/2686328-horde-magic-stax

One of the inherit weaknesses of horde decks is that they can't stop combos. I wanted a horde deck that could. This one uses a bunch of stax pieces to deny resources of the survivors, while the horde is unaffected. The faerie tokens give card draw, which in turn lead to more stax coming out. Also this horde can hard-lock you with Solemnity and Decree of Silence. Bring your strong decks for this one, it's gonna be tricky.

Zombies
https://deckstats.net/decks/82803/2723509-horde-magic-zombies

Unoriginal, I know. And I get that reanimation isn't really a twist when you're talking about zombie tribal, but man does this deck do it well. Flashback cards like Ghoulcaller's Harvest and Army of the Damned are a real problem. Gravecrawler, Prized Amalgam, and Ebondeath, Dracolich just don't stay dead. Best of all, as the game goes on, the graveyard fills up, so this deck naturally scales with the challengers.

[CleanBelwas]

I can vouch for Horde being fun as hell.

My playgroup have had several horde phases and they're always a blast.

Ours is a Zombie horde. We've tweaked it somewhat from your more traditional horde decks so that it plays like a Zombie movie.

The horde deck has random "items" in it to represent scavenging for resources as you progress. Things like Bonesplitter, Revitalize, Spiked Pit Trap. That kind of thing. When one pops up, you decide in your party who gets to use it. We even put in things like Resolute Watchdog so we can pick up companions along the way.

Another rule we added was when a player dies, the horde takes a turn cycle off (while they devour the victims corpse), leading to the now infamous "Banefire for lethal" where one of our playgroup Banefire'd another one for exactly lethal so he died and the rest of us had a turn cycle to regroup. It was so funny that he built a whole Galazeth Prismari deck where the win con is to Banefire for lethal. For his birthday the other year I bought him (among other things) a foil pre-release promo Banefire. Horde is great for creating those story moments in a playgroup.