The Rules Starting the Game

To play Horde Magic, each player needs a Commander deck. Any other Magic deck will do, but Horde Magic was developed to play with the multitude of Commander decks that people own.

The Survivors:

There can be anywhere between one and four Survivors, which are the players teaming up to defend against the Horde. The number of Survivors determine the number of cards in the Horde deck, as the difficulty needs to scale accordingly. The Survivors have a collective life total of 20 life per player, and everybody loses when that life total becomes 0.

The Horde:

The number of Zombies you’ll face over the course of the game is based on the number of Survivors. For three Survivors, take your 100 card Horde deck and remove a random 25 cards, bringing your Horde deck to a total of 75. The Horde starts with no cards in hand and no permanents on the battlefield.

Game Play

The Survivors get 3 turns to set up their defenses before the Horde takes a turn. Just like in Archenemy and Two-Headed Giant, the Survivors take turns simultaneously. After the 3 turn set-up, the Survivors and the Horde alternate turns.

On each of the Zombie’s turns, the top card of their library is flipped over. If the card is a Zombie token, then another is flipped over. Cards are flipped over until a non-token card is revealed. Sometimes the card is a Bad Moon, sometimes it’s a Souless One, and sometimes it’s even a Plague Wind. At that point, all of the tokens flipped this way are cast, and the non-token card is cast last.

Then the Zombies enter combat. Since Zombies are generally brainless, they come charging in without thinking twice. All Zombies have haste and must attack each turn if able. That’s just how they roll. Since the survivors are on a team together, when the Zombies attack, they attack every player at the same time, just like in Two-Headed Giant, and when any of the survivors choose to block, they block for the whole team.

If the Survivors control a Planeswalker, flip a coin at the beginning of combat. If it comes up heads, the Horde randomly allocates one Zombie per point of loyalty for each Planeswalker the Survivors control, starting in a random order (in case there are multiples).

Defeating the Horde:

You, as the Survivors, win when the Zombie deck can’t flip over anymore Zombies, and the Horde doesn’t control any more Zombies. You can use anything at your disposal to stem the bleeding, from Walls, to Wrath of Gods, to blocking with huge fatties. However, if you and your teammates feel that you have adequate defenses for the next Zombie attack, you can also attack the Horde at it’s source. Zombies can’t block, and have no life total, so it’s safe to go on the offensive if you think you can survive the next wave of Zombies.

For each point of damage done to the Horde, the Horde mills one card off the top of their deck.

Winning:

The Survivors are victorious when all the Zombies in play are dead, and the Horde deck has run out of cards. The Horde wins when the Survivors’ life total becomes 0.

Rules Notes:

• The Zombie deck is built so that, hopefully, the Horde deck is not presented with any decisions. In order for the deck to gather the co-op experience, many awesome Zombie cards were omitted. However, there are lots of cards that the Survivors might play that cause the Horde to make a choice (such as Fact or Fiction or Chainer’s Edict). In this case, the Horde makes this choice as randomly as possible.
• The Zombie tokens and cards from the Horde deck use the stack, so you can respond to them coming into to play, or counter them.
• The Horde has infinite mana, so cards like Propaganda and Mana Leak don’t work. Sorry!
• If you return a permanent to the Horde’s hand, it gets cast again on their next main phase.
• There are a LOT of Magic cards in existence. If something doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to, just come up with the most fair way to execute the card. If you can’t, cycle it. This is a casual format.

Additional Players:

When you have more Survivors, the Horde becomes easier to defeat. So the number cards that the Survivors face is determined by players.

• Solo – 45 Cards
• 2 Players – 60 Cards
• 3 Players – 75 Cards
• 4 Players – 100 Cards

The Horde deck is 100 cards, so just shuffle and take a chunk at random.

Alternative Rules

Waves: A wave occurs every third Horde turn, with the first wave occurring on the Horde's first turn. After you've finished flipping tokens into your first Zombie spell, you flip up 5 additional cards, regardless of whether they're tokens or not, and cast them as well.

**Start up turns:**scaling the number of start-up turns for 3-4 player games down to 2. It puts people on the back-peddle faster and will certainly help with the scaling problems.

Burn the Bodies: When you're up against 100+ cards, the odds are stacked against you, especially when the dead doesn't want to stay dead. When declaring attackers, you can choose to attack the horde's graveyard. Whenever you deal combat damage, each point of damage exiles one card at random from the horde's graveyard.

Basically, when the players attack the horde with creatures, normally, you just mill the horde deck for the amount of damage you dealt. With my rule, it works like this:

• at the beginning of each combat phase for the players, they choose 'attack the horde' or 'burn the bodies'.
• if they choose 'attack the horde', it works like normal. You attack them, and they mill.
• if they choose 'burn the bodies', then you exile 1 card at random from the horde's graveyard for each 1 damage they would take if you attacked normally.
• you cannot burn the bodies with non-combat damage
• you cannot burn the bodies with some creatures, and attack the horde with others. All creatures go for 1, and can't switch mid-combat (like with doublestrike or something)
• if you get another combat phase, you can choose again for that combat phase.

Emblems: Use a card (like a Swamp or Infect token) to represent an bonus for the horde. Each time one is revealed, the horde gets a bonus to make it more powerful. Some people treat the emblem as an extra turn, one extra reveal from the horde deck, or an emblem which gives the horde an extra reveal each turn. Depending on how powerful they are for your meta, you can choose to give the horde the emblem if they reveal it from a flip, or even when it gets milled to the graveyard.

Targeting: There's a lot of good zombies that the horde could run but because they target a single player, make for awkward rules (like Liliana's Reaver). Simply make any targeted effect target each survivor.

Tiers: Like the idea of an emblem, but want to make it less random? Use a turn counter instead. This way, players can't form a strategy to stall the emblems from appearing or stalling to buy time in order to set up a defense.

Treasure Hunting: You and your survivors are trying your best to fend off the horde, but sometimes you just need more help. What if someone had carelessly left something about for you to find? A treasure deck is a separate mini-deck that your team can draw cards from. Sometimes you will get something beneficial (such as extra equipment or power-ups), and sometimes there's a nasty surprise waiting for you, like a zombie or effect to pump the zombies.

Overwhelming Numbers
After much playing and experimenting, I have found that it is too hard to make the horde scale against multiple players without making it too hard for less players. The solution I have come to is a rule to increase the horde's strength over time.

The rule I currently have in place works as follows:

• At the end of each horde turn, a counter is increased by 1 for each player in the game.
• When this counter hits 10 or more, reduce it by 10, and give the horde an emblem.
• The horde starts with 1 emblem.
• The horde reveals cards until X non-token cards are revealed, where X is the number of these emblems they have.

With this rule, the players are "forced" to attack the horde, and the horde will be able to naturally overcome powerful player board states when it gets stronger.

Banned List

As this is a casual format any card that isn't fun or breaks the game shouldn't be played, but if you need a more formal banned list please use the following list. If you draw a banned card it can be cycled for free then put into exile.

Aether Flash
Aurification
Barbed Foilage
Caltrops
Crawlspace
Dueling Grounds
Dread
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Ensnaring Bridge
Eradicate
Grindstone
Haunting Echoes
Island Sanctuary
Lethal Vapors
Leyline of Singularity
Magus of the Moat
Mind Funeral
Moat
No Mercy
Platinum Emperion
Platinum Angel
Silent Arbiter
Solitary Confinement
Stormtide Leviathan
Surgical Extraction
Tainted Aether
Teferis Moat
Time Stretch
Trepanation Blade
Urabrask the Hidden

Source: Horde Magic: A New Way to Play Magic and Survive Zombie Invasions
The Undying Horde
Zombie Horde - 200 Card List
Horde Deck Simulator