In this horde, Bloodcrazed neonate is the small token and Barony Vampire is the large token.
Normal Horde Rules: Horde magic is a cooperative variant of commander. The horde is an autonomous deck that pilots itself. This is one of my horde decks. Check out my folder "Horde Magic Decks" for more.
To quote the original article that spawned my interest in Horde magic: https://www.quietspeculation.com/2011/09/horde-magic-a-new-way-to-play-magic-and-survive-zombie-invasions/
I have tweaked the rules listed above to make the variant most enjoyable for me. If you want the original rules, check the link above. I will list mine below.
Horde is made for 1-4 players. The players have 3 turns to set up until the horde arrives at the gates. This is the average number. For harder hordes you can change that up or down, for difficulty. I note decks which have different than 3 turns in the description. The players have a shared life total of 40 and take their turns simultaneously as in 2-headed giant. The players cannot attack the horde until the horde has had their first turn.
At the end of the players' 3rd turn, the horde goes. The horde draw the top card until they hit a non-token card. (In some hordes, there are no tokens available for a creature type I am building or there is a card which is a better fit for "token" than a token itself. Decks with non-token "token" creature are denoted as such.) If the horde draws again, for howling mine or similar effects, they draw a single card. They do not repeat the flip-until-non-token-spell sequence. Once all tokens and a single non-token card is drawn for the turn, they are all played simultaneously and all enter at the same time, seeing each other. Creatures of the horde have haste, attack each turn if able, and cannot block.
The horde is mindless. Their only desire is to kill, so they make no choices. Any choices required of them is random. Effectively the horde has infinite mana and infinite lands. -If a card asks for a tax, such as ghostly prison, the horde rolls a die for each creature's trigger and if they roll odds, they pay the tax. -If a card has to do with number of land cards they control, such as land tax, a die is rolled each upkeep because "effectively infinite" still means random. On an odd, you get a trigger. -If a card has to do with a land card itself, such as mind funeral or trepanation blade, I have house ruled to make it fair, after each card is flipped from the top roll a die and if it is odd it found a land card. Otherwise you would have an instant win situation and that takes the fun out of the game. -If a player has bloodchief ascension or similar effects on the field, so prevent an instant win situation, I house rule that the effect that made the horde mill triggers the ascension, but the cards it mills from the ascension's effect do not trigger it again. -I have also house ruled that if one player has a ghostly prison it counts for the whole team. However in the case of "each opponent loses 1 life" type of effects, the players are still individual players.
The horde cannot block, so if the players damage the horde, they mill that many cards. If the horde gains life, they unmill cards. Because of this I try to keep the horde graveyard in roughly the same order at all times. All cards in the horde deck go to the graveyard - tokens included.
Once the horde has no creatures on the battlefield and no cards left in the deck the players win. If the players' life total hits 0 or a single players would "lose the game" per an effect, the players lose.
As noted above, some cards must be house ruled to make fair and fun in horde. Being a casual variant, feel free to figure out how to make fair all the cards in your deck in relation to the horde.
