Was just reminded of this card in another thread: Pyreheart Wolf. I started thinking that maybe it is a better replacement of Iroas in this deck:
Pros of Iroas, God of Victory :
Indestructible
Is an enchantment so it can be found by enchantment tutors and is invulnerable to removal.
Also provides protection from combat damage (not just evasion)
Pros of Pyreheart Wolf :
Creature so it can be found by Recruiter and has synergies with all the other cards in the deck.
Can be returns by Alesha
Even without Alesha is double use unless hit by exile removal
Is one cheaper than Iroas
What do you think, is this a good swap?
I'd keep Iroas.
As good as Pyreheart Wolf is, his ability is useless the turn he's played/reanimated or the turn he undies, as he doesn't have haste. Iroas's abilities are in effect the instant he hits the battlefield and the indestructibility is a nice addition too.
Loyal Retainers is okay. It can bring back Kiki-Jiki, Iroas, or Grenzo in my decklist but it's a bit of a dead draw unless one of those 3 cards is in the graveyard and Grenzo isn't even crucial enough to bring back with the Retainers as Alesha can recur him. I like the infinite combo with Kiki-Jiki but it lacks synergy with other cards in the deck.
capitacom - I might be missing something here but how does your deck keep Alesha, Who Smiles at Death alive? In order to utilize her ability and reanimate creatures, you'll need to attack with her. I don't see anything in your deck that gives her any sort of evasion or indestructibility to ensure that you can continue her shenanigans, especially in the late game.
I like the premise of this deck a lot. I think Wrath of God and Day of Judgement would work really well here -- draw into them and use them to wipe the board while keeping your indestructible general around for general damage.
Haha very true. I'm glad everlasting torment worked out for you all the zombies having wither is quite awesome too. It makes blocking really interesting. My friend's Uril had 9 -1/-1 counters on him once from blocking zombies because we couldn't afford taking the damage.
That's a reason I want to put self-mill in my horde deck so that some of the crazy graveyard stuff will trigger itself. Making each horde move really scary makes the game really interesting.
How many cards do you have in your horde deck? I'd also love seeing it if you don't mind posting it
Sorry for leaving you hanging SAUS...real life came in and took over everything for a while.
I've found, as others have said, that the games tend to be incredibly lopsided due to bad draws for the horde. I've been playing around with the rules and believe that what works best for our playgroup is if the horde draws cards equal to the number of players each turn before its usual Reveal step. After all the cards are revealed, the horde plays the cards from its hand, as expected.
I'll post my horde deck here when I get home tonight - I'd love some suggestions.
Lol found a possible bannable card. I don't really want to ban cards, but this one is busted - collective voyage
Collective Voyage isn't so bad as long as there's a bit of a rules adjustment. The point of this card is that your opponents benefit from the effects as well. Although the horde isn't allowed to contribute mana to the card, my playgroup lets it draw X cards to help even it out.
Player my horde deck over the weekend with 3 of my good friends. We had 2 once-standard decks (alara-zendikar) and 2 EDH decks.
The horde had quite a rough time. We got planeswalkers out (because the mono-green standard deck had 8 planeswalkers in it) and grouped up to defend them constantly, and then just crapped on the zombies. The planeswalkers were nissa revane and garruk wildspearker, and both could dump out creatures that could beat zombies.
The problem was simply that 2-4 zombies a turn was FAR from enough creatures to get around our blockers, and we got more and more each turn. Once nissa's -7 went off, we just alpha swung for 100+ damage.
After 3 roflstompy games against the horde, we decided to up the difficulty. We were playing with only 2 turns of setup, but we switched it back to 3 for this. We had the horde basically reveal twice (reveal until 2 non-zombies) each turn starting from their first turn.
The games were definitely much more interesting, but were ultimately too hard. We played twice and then went to play some fighting games.
I want to ask for help on deciding on/creating rules to make horde more difficult for extra players. Here's some example ideas that I have/have gotten from other people:
Espuma's Rules - You add a swamp to the deck for each player above the first (shuffling them in). You treat them sort of like tokens, but when they get milled, you still put them into play. They just sit there and are untargettable/destroyable. They basically aren't even lands/permanents - more like emblems. Each one means that when they reveal cards, they do it an extra time. Basically, at some random point in the game, the horde will start getting extra reveals and become much harder. (Note: If you'd like to see Espuma's horde, he has posted on the front page of this thread a whole bunch and even on this page. He's replied a lot to my thread and I've viewed his thread quite a bit.)
Turn Counter - Some sort of turn counter would be interesting. Basically, at some threshold, it would increase the zombie reveals by one. For example, every 10 turns, the horde starts taking an additional turn. It counts EACH player turn, so with 4 players, it would go up 4 at a time (5 if you want to include zombies). This could be nice since it would be more consistent than the swamps, and it would mean we wouldn't have to add/remove/shuffle the swamps. The main thing would be keeping track of this number (not hard, but potentially annoying, and easy to forget).
Zombie Apocalypse - Some sort of turn threshold like the second idea, but basically, it would always be the single reveal (as normal), and then once the threshold is met, the zombies start revealing X times where X is the number of players. With my deck, it is typically split into 2 piles, so I could maybe make it once the first pile is gone, then the zombies start taking extra turns, but that's probably too slow, and doesn't scale amazingly with the number of players. Perhaps just a similar turn counter but with a higher threshold like 20-30.
What are your thoughts? Which one would be best? Any additional ideas would be great!
Also, for funsies, I was playing horde with my friend (just the 2 of us) and we decided to throw in our planechase cards. It was amazingly silly lol.
I like the Turn Counter idea the best. I think the one where the Swamps act as emblems is ideal but because players mill the horde deck when they damage it, the Swamps could get lost in the mix, so to speak. I'll be trying this Turn Counter business this weekend.
I know what you mean. I used to have more vanilla zombies, but slowly upgraded them into scarier cards because they were just too easy. I've also had issues with life gain I think card selection can help against it though. I use a few enchantments that read "players can't gain life" to prevent lifelink from being too strong. Running more removal for the zombies helps as well since it can clear out the lifelink creatures.
A couple Everlasting Torments cleared that up quite nicely. I have a Turbofog EDH deck I enjoy playing so those shut it down for a turn. One thing I learned: cards like Prosperity are terrifying. I had everyone draw 20 cards which was great, except I forgot to save enough mana for answers to the Horde's next turn which now had +20 cards....we took 285 damage that turn...
Then again, I think that's one of my favorite parts of this variant -- if any of the survivors makes a single mistake, everyone could be done for in the blink of an eye. It's very apocalyptic and fits the theme/situation very well.
This thread has inspired me to create my own Zombie Horde deck - I'm the guy in our playgroup that brings random variants to light. I took the liberty of throwing in a few fluff creature (e.g. Maggot Carrier, Severed Legion, etc.) because I thought that too many Army of the Damneds, Death Barons, Plague Winds, etc. would be too much to handle. Turns out that 4 EDH decks are far more powerful of a force than I thought. Given a few turns, 2/2s tend not to matter in small numbers as the survivors generally have bigger creatures on their board. Lifegain turned out to be an issue as well -- the survivors were dong too well once something with lifelink and a defense of 3+ hit the field. I'll be adding more creatures that pump up the zombies.
On another note altogether, one card I really like is Bottomless Pit. I like them over Gibbering Descent and added 4 of them into my build for some beautiful hand disruption.
Gideon is the only planeswalker where you can use all of his abilities the minute he comes out, but the 0 ability never was used because he didnt have haste. Basically, if Gideon is a creature when he died, you can mimic vat him and beat for 6 every turn, OR kill a tapped creature. Repeatable removal or beater when the times demand it is pretty good.
It seems that you're saying that the reason he's in is to be used with Mimic Vat. Doesn't that seem too conditional?
Sun Titan variation. I think Sun Titan has too much synergy with Vat to ignore. Also, I think Baneslayer Angel is still going to shut down the new wave of RDW (and First Strike will kick any rogue Infect decks in the teeth most of the time).
Also: Vampire Hexmage is the nuts. So many uses in Standard already, let alone once we start seeing Proliferate and Wither shenanigans. Add to this, Sun Titan/Vat recursion...
I've tried a bunch of these decklists out and I'm going to have to say that Prop's build seems the most stable, thus far (though I've made some subtle changes -- +1 Mana Leak, -1 Island, +1 Grave Titan, +1 Baneslayer Angel). I'm not quite convinced of Vampire Hexmage mainboarded, though I haven't really given that a fair chance yet.
Also, I've just recently gotten back into playing T2 (figured that the start of a new set is as good time as any) and although I understand that Gideon Jura is for attacking after we've wiped the field with Ratchet Bomb or Day of Judgment, it seems to me that based on the curve, we'd be better off with something that we can cast earlier (e.g. Abyssal Persecutor). I also understand that placing him on a Mimic Vat is possible, but that doesn't really get us anything other than a 6/6 beater or the ability to destroy a tapped creature each turn.
If my reasoning is incorrect, will some please explain why he's (Gideon Jura) good in a Mimic Control deck?
Unless I'm missing something super-basic, neither OP nor Alex (if I may address both of you as such) seem to be maindecking any artifact removal. What do you do if the other player gets a Mimic Vat through or puts something on a Prototype Portal or many of the other artifacts that are now prevalent because of SoM?
@KingLear329: maybe you want to read Mimic Vat again. It says: "Whenever a creature is put into the graveyard from the battlefield..."
Your plan with Hedron Crab doesnt work :/
I'd also like some Everflowing Chalice in it, since we're playing quite a few 6-drops..
Isn't having "to much sweeper" the point though? It allows you to clear the field to make way for whatever's on Mimic Vat and fuels it at the same time. Then again, I'm never averse to more counterspells....
Also, I'll have to second the Everflowing Chalice suggestion and I still kinda like Marshal's Anthem in here to recur all the good stuff if Mimic Vat shows up late, even though that's another, at minimum, 6cc card....
I'd go with Rhys the Redeemed. Although he's green/white, you can just ignore the white part and still make the deck all green. He'd generate tokens for you to throw Overrun at.
It seems to me like they gang up on you because they believe you'll take them all out if they don't take you out first. So my suggestion would be to try a deck where you're not a threat.
For example, I have an Angus Mackenzie Turbofog deck. There's a couple ways to beat the deck: have everyone else turn on you ASAP or constantly bounce all your card-drawing cards. The problem, however, is that when you make everyone draw cards (aka the turbo), they see the other players as more of a threat (seeing as with that deck, you don't do much else). Then, when they finally come at you, you have a hand full of fog effects. The best part is that if they try the other method and bounce the card draw, other players will hate the player who did that because it slowed them down (be nonchalant about it and they'll be even more confused).
So basically, I'm saying you should play a deck that's far more political. If Turbofog isn't your thing, which I totally understand, might I suggest a mono-white Atalya, Samite Master? A Cleric deck would allow you to pick and choose who to save and give life, at times, to other players.
I play a LOT of casual, usually multiplayer, and I have to say that these cards would be very, very good in multiplayer.
They say "target opponent", meaning it'd be only 1 opponent who reaps the benefits, and you'd get to pick which opponent. Therefore, the card becomes highly political, which goes a long way in a multiplayer free-for-all.
Frankly, in multiplayer, I think these would be just as good, if not better than the original duals.
Rhystic Study is also fantastic (should be right up there with Mind's Eye). Unfortunately, with Sen Triplets, you'll be playing cards from your oponents hands, so you won't be able to draw cards via Rhystic Study when you do so.
Actually, not at all. I have a Sakashima the Impostor deck and it's always a blast to play in our play group. It has every possible "Steal ~~~" card (I think) and tons of "Copy/Clone ~~~" cards as well (if not all...). The best part of it is that every game is 100% different because you end up, essentially, playing other people's decks. As long as you don't focus on 1 person and steal every thing from them, the game can be pretty fun (if you do steal everything from 1 person, everyone will see you as a huge threat, so don't do that).
Another time, I was playing a 1v1 game (it's not too much fun for the other person -- I try to avoid playing 1v1s with this deck, but it was requrested) and my opponent pulled out his general (Doran, the Siege Tower). I threw down a Sower of Temptation and took his general and started beating him with it. So he played some 1/1 creatures and played Quietus Spike. The next turn, he ended up playing Wing Shards, making me sacrifice his general. I top-decked a Carry Away, took his Quietus Spike and proceeded to beat him in with my Sower of Temptation.
So my advice would be to make the deck -- it really is a lot of fun -- but you'll quickly learn how to play it. Depending on your playgroup, you may avoid making some good moves, just to avoid drawing attention to yourself. It's multiplayer politics at its best.
I'd keep Iroas.
As good as Pyreheart Wolf is, his ability is useless the turn he's played/reanimated or the turn he undies, as he doesn't have haste. Iroas's abilities are in effect the instant he hits the battlefield and the indestructibility is a nice addition too.
Loyal Retainers is okay. It can bring back Kiki-Jiki, Iroas, or Grenzo in my decklist but it's a bit of a dead draw unless one of those 3 cards is in the graveyard and Grenzo isn't even crucial enough to bring back with the Retainers as Alesha can recur him. I like the infinite combo with Kiki-Jiki but it lacks synergy with other cards in the deck.
How'd the playtest go?
Sorry for leaving you hanging SAUS...real life came in and took over everything for a while.
I've found, as others have said, that the games tend to be incredibly lopsided due to bad draws for the horde. I've been playing around with the rules and believe that what works best for our playgroup is if the horde draws cards equal to the number of players each turn before its usual Reveal step. After all the cards are revealed, the horde plays the cards from its hand, as expected.
I'll post my horde deck here when I get home tonight - I'd love some suggestions.
Collective Voyage isn't so bad as long as there's a bit of a rules adjustment. The point of this card is that your opponents benefit from the effects as well. Although the horde isn't allowed to contribute mana to the card, my playgroup lets it draw X cards to help even it out.
I like the Turn Counter idea the best. I think the one where the Swamps act as emblems is ideal but because players mill the horde deck when they damage it, the Swamps could get lost in the mix, so to speak. I'll be trying this Turn Counter business this weekend.
A couple Everlasting Torments cleared that up quite nicely. I have a Turbofog EDH deck I enjoy playing so those shut it down for a turn. One thing I learned: cards like Prosperity are terrifying. I had everyone draw 20 cards which was great, except I forgot to save enough mana for answers to the Horde's next turn which now had +20 cards....we took 285 damage that turn...
Then again, I think that's one of my favorite parts of this variant -- if any of the survivors makes a single mistake, everyone could be done for in the blink of an eye. It's very apocalyptic and fits the theme/situation very well.
On another note altogether, one card I really like is Bottomless Pit. I like them over Gibbering Descent and added 4 of them into my build for some beautiful hand disruption.
It seems that you're saying that the reason he's in is to be used with Mimic Vat. Doesn't that seem too conditional?
I've tried a bunch of these decklists out and I'm going to have to say that Prop's build seems the most stable, thus far (though I've made some subtle changes -- +1 Mana Leak, -1 Island, +1 Grave Titan, +1 Baneslayer Angel). I'm not quite convinced of Vampire Hexmage mainboarded, though I haven't really given that a fair chance yet.
Also, I've just recently gotten back into playing T2 (figured that the start of a new set is as good time as any) and although I understand that Gideon Jura is for attacking after we've wiped the field with Ratchet Bomb or Day of Judgment, it seems to me that based on the curve, we'd be better off with something that we can cast earlier (e.g. Abyssal Persecutor). I also understand that placing him on a Mimic Vat is possible, but that doesn't really get us anything other than a 6/6 beater or the ability to destroy a tapped creature each turn.
If my reasoning is incorrect, will some please explain why he's (Gideon Jura) good in a Mimic Control deck?
Isn't having "to much sweeper" the point though? It allows you to clear the field to make way for whatever's on Mimic Vat and fuels it at the same time. Then again, I'm never averse to more counterspells....
Also, I'll have to second the Everflowing Chalice suggestion and I still kinda like Marshal's Anthem in here to recur all the good stuff if Mimic Vat shows up late, even though that's another, at minimum, 6cc card....
For example, I have an Angus Mackenzie Turbofog deck. There's a couple ways to beat the deck: have everyone else turn on you ASAP or constantly bounce all your card-drawing cards. The problem, however, is that when you make everyone draw cards (aka the turbo), they see the other players as more of a threat (seeing as with that deck, you don't do much else). Then, when they finally come at you, you have a hand full of fog effects. The best part is that if they try the other method and bounce the card draw, other players will hate the player who did that because it slowed them down (be nonchalant about it and they'll be even more confused).
So basically, I'm saying you should play a deck that's far more political. If Turbofog isn't your thing, which I totally understand, might I suggest a mono-white Atalya, Samite Master? A Cleric deck would allow you to pick and choose who to save and give life, at times, to other players.
It's all about how you present yourself.
They say "target opponent", meaning it'd be only 1 opponent who reaps the benefits, and you'd get to pick which opponent. Therefore, the card becomes highly political, which goes a long way in a multiplayer free-for-all.
Frankly, in multiplayer, I think these would be just as good, if not better than the original duals.
Rhystic Study is also fantastic (should be right up there with Mind's Eye). Unfortunately, with Sen Triplets, you'll be playing cards from your oponents hands, so you won't be able to draw cards via Rhystic Study when you do so.
Let me give you a couple scenarios:
I was playing a 3-headed dragon (3v3) game and the player across from me played a Mana Reflection and one of my teammates played a Gauntlet of Power. I played a Copy Enchantment on the Mana Reflection, a Copy Artifact on Gauntlet of Power, and then played Steal Enchantment on the Mana Reflection. So by turn 5, I was tapping each Island for 5 blue and each non-Island land for 4 colorless. Granted, we lost to Uril, the Miststalker the next turn, but it was still an awesome play.
Another time, I was playing a 1v1 game (it's not too much fun for the other person -- I try to avoid playing 1v1s with this deck, but it was requrested) and my opponent pulled out his general (Doran, the Siege Tower). I threw down a Sower of Temptation and took his general and started beating him with it. So he played some 1/1 creatures and played Quietus Spike. The next turn, he ended up playing Wing Shards, making me sacrifice his general. I top-decked a Carry Away, took his Quietus Spike and proceeded to beat him in with my Sower of Temptation.
So my advice would be to make the deck -- it really is a lot of fun -- but you'll quickly learn how to play it. Depending on your playgroup, you may avoid making some good moves, just to avoid drawing attention to yourself. It's multiplayer politics at its best.