Card Analysis #1 - Dreadhorde Invasion
Challenges and Articles forum
Posted on Oct. 6, 2022, 10:05 a.m. by TheOfficialCreator
Hello, everyone!
I thought I would try my hand at creating an article series centering around the beauty of different card designs, as each card truly is unique in its own way, and I wanted to make my appreciation of that into a tangible form so that everyone could experience it.
A general outline of how this article series will go is this: a basic introduction (similar to what you’re reading now), cost versus effect, the flavor of the card, how the card interacts with its limited environment, cards that are similar to it and a short little blurb on what makes them different, a custom card inspired by the analyzed card and a short explanation of the process used to create it, the legacy of the card, and finally, a conclusion to round it all out.
That being said, let’s begin!
The card of today’s analysis is Dreadhorde Invasion, a card I chose to kick off the series with not only because War of the Spark is my favorite set, but also because it will give us a good platform to walk through the steps of this article series.
Dreadhorde Invasion is an oft-overlooked card that provides its user with a Zombie Army (a mechanic introduced and incredibly localized to War of the Spark, excluding a few exceptions such as Lazotep Chancellor) at the cost of a single life each turn. Obviously this adds up quickly, and the Army that is produced is rather clunky, as it is easier to remove (a la Fading Hope), non-evasive, and rather small even in its beginning stages. For it gives you a 1/1 creature on turn 3. That’s not a great payoff, especially for more advanced formats.
This is where the second clause comes in. If your Army can make it to six power, then Dreadhorde Invasion rewards you handsomely with an added lifelink, allowing you to gain back all that lost life and quickly breaking symmetry with your life versus your opponents. It’s not incredibly cost-effective (heck, a Forced Adaptation is more cost-effective in general), but it’s very fun to play with and can provide a lot more when juxtaposed with the rest of the game. But we’ll get into that later.
The flavor of Dreadhorde Invasion is perhaps my favorite part of the card. The Eternals are probably one of the most unique MTG villains (I mean, come on, they’re blue metal zombies that can cross between worlds and steal planeswalker sparks), and definitely one of my personal favorites. The idea of Dreadhorde Invasion is that Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker is executing his plan to become Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God, invading the plane of Ravnica with his army of Eternals empowered by The Elderspell in order to steal the sparks of the planeswalkers, trapped there by The Immortal Sun and invited there by the Interplanar Beacon. The invasion is eventually quelled by a joint effort by Liliana, Dreadhorde General, Gideon Blackblade, Ugin, the Ineffable, God-Eternal Oketra, and God-Eternal Bontu, with the defeat of Bolas wrapped up in the brilliant card Despark. Dreadhorde Invasion more than anything flavor-wise represents the whole of War of the Spark, perhaps better than any other individual card in the set (except maybe Enter the God-Eternals). And that is why I love it so much; it is a testament to my favorite set of all time.
As far as Dreadhorde Invasion’s performance in Limited goes, I must say that it has quite an unitive feel to how it operates in multiple deck strategies, similar to how it unites the flavor of the set. It has the keyword amass on it, which is the new ability introduced in the set, and which synergizes well with proliferate. Zombie Armies themselves receive gracious tribal support in the form of Gleaming Overseer, Eternal Skylord, Widespread Brutality, and the like. Beyond this fairly obvious synergy, however, there are many more options for how Dreadhorde Invasion can function in this set. For example, the creation of a creature every turn lends itself very well to sacrifice strategies revolving around Spark Reaper, Ahn-Crop Invader, and Spark Harvest, or even Liliana, Dreadhorde General and God-Eternal Bontu. In addition, the lifelink that can be attained on later turns goes well with Ajani's Pridemate and fits into a subtheme of life gain that the set has.
Dreadhorde Invasion-style effects are somewhat rare, but there is precedence for their existence. The most obvious example is Bitterblossom, an enchantment well-known for its splashes in Modern and which creates small flying threats every turn at the cost of some life. However, there is also Ophiomancer and Endless Ranks of the Dead, or more recently Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia. The thing that sets Dreadhorde Invasion apart from these other cards is its unique combination of losing life and gaining life alongside its ability to make a token larger versus just creating a new token.
Here is a custom card that I made that was inspired by Dreadhorde Invasion.
The process I went through to design this card went something like this.
1) Look at Dreadhorde Invasion and think about what the card is wanting you to do. What's the general theme of the card?
2) Build a general shell around the idea of losing life to gain life, pulling in inspiration from cards like Bloodghast.
3) Adding a tribal element to make it feel like a Dreadhorde card.
4) Adding a fitting name. "Vowmage" gives a feel of some kind of sacrifice to fufill an obligation, especially to a being like Bolas.
5) Adding flavor text that is both quippy and fits the situation. In this case, I chose to show who the Vowmage's vow is to.
6) Finding some art from DeviantArt that fit the theme. This art is from user Ryushadow, and is the only Eternal art I could find.
Dreadhorde Invasion, like most of its amass kin, is largely forgotten especially in competitive play where it is not a contending strategy. Zombie Armies are incredibly weak to removal and usually aren’t very cost-effective, so their weakness of being a single lone creature that just gets bigger and can be chump-blocked can’t really be ignored. War of the Spark as a whole is a largely forgotten story arc, and despite its misgivings it’s still a shame. Dreadhorde Invasion does not truly have a legacy, though it was reprinted in the Midnight Hunt commander set as a part of Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver’s commander deck. Hopefully, one day, we will see Amass return in a future set with greater support so that Dreadhorde Invasion may one day be viable.
Alright, everyone! That is the end of my article for today. Please let me know what worked for you and what didn’t so that I can sculpt this new article series to your feedback!
Speaking of user feedback, I would like to have every tenth card be voted upon by the community. If you want to submit an idea for what card we will go over, just let me know in your comment. The comment with the highest number of upvotes will have their card in the tenth article of the series.
Thank you all for the wonderful community we’ve made together! See you soon.
TheOfficialCreator says... #3
Gleeock absolutely. I never thought of that combination but it definitely has its places in some Commander decks. It's just very difficult to track every single legendary creature that exists sometimes, which is why I tend not to include EDH in a lot of my considerations unless the card is a commander itself.
I might look cards up on EDHrec in the future though to see what decks run them :3
October 6, 2022 10:42 a.m.
Yeah, you might actually be entertained by the evolution of that deck, since you like War of The Spark alot. I've actually totally Bolus'd my own walkers before with The Elderspell, speaking of less-used bombs from that arc. Crazy what you can do with counters, weenies, lifegain, & Orzhov-friends. But yeah, opponents don't typically remember the ever-important lifelink clause on this spell - this was just good card design with the addition of a simple keyword (WoTC design take note!)
October 6, 2022 11:07 a.m.
I loved Afflict & Amass both. Afflict has a ton of potential too depending on the secondary abilities that could be put on a creature with the ability. I too hope to see more amass, particularly spells with a slow-grow amass like this one.
October 6, 2022 11:09 a.m.
I really like the card in my zombie deck. It can put in work if I get it out early. You brought up the people who stopped bolas but forgot Rakdos, the Showstopper. Did you somehow forget this?
October 6, 2022 11:10 a.m.
TheOfficialCreator says... #7
Gleeock Agreed! I love afflict, I've been thinking of ways to incorporate it into a future plane for my custom sets.
And if you could link the deck so I could take a gander? I'd love to see it. I run Dreadhorde Invasion as a way to get chump blockers in my Toluz deck or as a token generator for a custom commander I had, but I've never really seen it used to its full potential.
And no, shadow63, I didn't forget Unlikely Aid or Rakdos. But the effort that actually defeated Bolas was after that failed stab that Rakdos set up. I guess I did forget Niv-Mizzet Reborn since he stabbed Bolas with Hazoret's spear, distracting him from the God-Eternals for a second, but again that's not really what finished him. A LOT of people on Ravnica contributed to Bolas's downfall, so I chose to focus on the most directly important :P
October 6, 2022 11:14 a.m. Edited.
Metroid_Hybrid says... #8
Dreadhorde Invasion's similarity to Bitterblossom and Ophiomancer was mentioned, but this trio of cards also represents what is generally available in Mono-Black to establish a soft-lock with Contamination and/or Smokestack..
October 6, 2022 1:15 p.m.
Your analysis of “what sets Dreadhorde invasion” apart from Bitterblossom and Opheomancer is a little simplistic, and you might want to flesh out that kind of section moving forward.
For starters, you missed the fact that a hoard of 1/1s is, outside of things like an opposing Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, is better than a single large creature. Either way you are getting 1 power and 1 toughness per turn, but 6 1/1s are harder to block, provide more flexible attacking/blocking options, work better with many strategies (Skullclamp, for example) and form a better defensive barrier than a single 6/6. Additionally, Flying and Deathtouch are both vastly superior to Lifelink - and Dreadhorde only provides conditional Lifelink that requires significant investment of time or other resources to even get online.
Frankly, I think it is more fair to say “Lifelink sets Dreadhorde back from these other cards”, not that it “sets it apart.”
October 6, 2022 2:47 p.m.
TheOfficialCreator says... #10
Caerwyn for sure! I will definitely take note to expand more in the future about that, and I'll watch my wording more carefully; it definitely wasn't my intent to suggest that Dreadhorde Invasion was better than Bitterblossom XD
October 6, 2022 4:06 p.m.
Since nobody's suggested an Article #10 card yet, I'm going to nominate Vedalken Heretic. It's not a card that gets a lot of use, but it has a distinct flavor tied to its home plane, and it has an effect similar to more well-known cards like Curiosity, but with one important distinction. I think it could be a good subject for analysis.
October 6, 2022 5:59 p.m.
TheOfficialCreator. I just updated it to lean into the planewalkers theme a bit more. It originally was my deck that I made to be a bit different, but then I found that I was actually keeping up with some decent midrange decks & occasionally either getting some ults in or just aggro-stomping. Here it is: Birdlock
October 6, 2022 6:12 p.m.
Also, as far as comparison to the aforementioned token-hoard producers there are some perks to this spell. There aren't any one-size-fits all responses though. For chump blocking... it is ok at the early stages. It is a later payoff that works pretty well in an aggressive shell (sometimes if I have a 6+ power lifelinker I don't even worry about the crackback). I've had many times where deathtouch just falls short for me compared to the more stable benefit of lifelinking.
War of The Spark was pretty loaded with proliferate & +1/+1 counters, particularly if you played . It didn't necessarily take as long as you'd think to hit the lifelink threshold on this card if you played that type of deck. As far as aggressive midrange growth targets this spell is actually superior to the others, particularly if you play growing weenie style.
October 6, 2022 6:23 p.m.
DoomNoodle says... #14
War of the spark was possibly the funnest pre-release event I attended (though ashiok was absolutely the most powerful card to play in that limited environment) going from 10am to 1am, the last event being a byob (seriously want to do that again) and those memories stuck. To this day WotS is the only set I completed in foils, Japanese,and stained glass. I'll peruse through it every so often looking back at those times! I thought I was the weird one who genuinely enjoyed that set so much.
Gleeock says... #2
It is pretty solid in Breena, the Demagogue even without any Zombie tribal
October 6, 2022 10:39 a.m.