The ‘Magic the Gathering: MTG’ fangroup on Facebook has seen a massive influx of custom MTG horse cards, spurred on by the passion of horse lover David Harold Strand. Scryfall can find just 44 Magic cards with the “horse” creature type, but that hasn’t slowed Strand’s efforts to build a stable of horse decks.
“I’m known as the horse guy, or at least that’s what people in my area call me…”, Strand says in his first post to the Magic the Gathering fangroup in May 2023. He adds that he’s played Horse decks “non stop” since the M19 MTG Set, in both the MTG Modern and Standard formats. Now he’s constructing horse Commander decks, and plugging holes in the line-up with custom cards.
Strand even runs a YouTube channel about horse cards (or cards with horsemanship):
The first card he shared into the group was a mock-up for Shadowfax, before the MTG Lord of the Rings Shadowfax: Lord of Horses card was revealed. Since September he’s shared another 20 custom horses, including horse Planeswalkers, horse creatures, horses-matter spells, a few pegasus, and some potent MTG commanders (that happen to be horses).
The flagship commander is ‘The Wandering Horse’. At five generic and one of each colored mana it comes with a stack of abilities: hexproof, indestructible, lifelink, and trample. It grants lifelink and indestructible to other horses, gives them hexproof and trample whenever it attacks, lets you untap all creatures once per turn, and allows you to take an additional combat phase if you’ve gained at least 25 life in the turn.
Some people in the group have responded favorably, offering their own custom horse creations, like Kane Benjamin’s ‘Phane, Death Denier’, and James McNally’s ‘Bucephalus’. These are perhaps a little closer to standard Commander cards, while remaining very horse-centric.
Others have resisted the horse invasion, inventing cards like ‘Horseocalypse’, an artifact that can trivially exile all horses, ‘Sparricus the Unhorse’, a Kirin that synergizes with non-horse creatures, or ‘Ketamine’, a joke artefact that certainly works in the horse deck but feels rather against the spirit of the thing.
Not sure when your next chance to get new horses for MTG will be? Follow our guide to the MTG release schedule for 2023. We’ve also got advice on the best MTG Arena decks – horses don’t feature prominently in them, but who knows what the next set will bring.