The Commander
Vigilance, trample, haste
: You may play target Elemental card from your graveyard without paying its mana cost.
Guide
Gameplan
Horde of Notions is a five-color Elemental tribal commander that grinds value by recurring Elementals from your graveyard for a WUBRG payment, turning every removed creature into card advantage. You ramp into a wide Elemental board, leverage ETB-heavy bodies, and eventually overwhelm with creatures or assemble an Elemental-based combo. Its built-in evasion and vigilance also let it attack and pressure life totals while staying back on defense.
Strengths
- Access to all five colors gives unmatched flexibility in removal, ramp, and answers
- Self-recursion makes the commander resilient and turns the graveyard into a second hand
- Elemental tribe has deep, high-value ETB creatures for grindy value
- Vigilance, trample, haste make it a competent attacker the turn it lands
Weaknesses
- Five-color mana base is expensive and prone to color-screw without good fixing
- WUBRG activation cost is demanding and clunky on a tight mana base
- Commander does little to protect itself and dies to spot removal easily
- Tribal payoff plan can be slow and grindy in a fast meta
Key Cards
- Risen Reef — Premier Elemental value engine that draws cards and ramps every time an Elemental enters.
- Cavern of Souls — Fixes color while making your key Elementals uncounterable in a deck that wants to resolve threats.
- Omnath, Locus of the Roil — A flexible Elemental payoff that draws cards, ramps, and acts as removal as you build the board.
- Smokebraider — Generates mana specifically for Elemental spells and activated abilities, easing the WUBRG strain.
- Chromatic Lantern — Turns all your lands into any color, smoothing out the brutal five-color costs and the commander's activation.
Upgrade Path
Prioritize the mana base first: dual lands, fetches, shocks, Cavern of Souls, and mana rocks like Chromatic Lantern make the five colors functional. Then add high-impact Elemental ETBs and engines (Risen Reef, Omnath, Locus of the Roil, Mulldrifter) and recursion enablers, trimming weak vanilla tribal members. For higher power, lean into a focused combo or stax shell rather than pure goodstuff, since the commander's raw value plan is slow without tight synergy.
Core Cards
The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.
Win Conditions
- ▸Go wide with Elemental tokens and payoffs, then alpha strike with trample threats
- ▸Grind out the table with recurring ETB value until opponents run out of resources
- ▸Assemble an Elemental-based combo (e.g., recursion loops with Risen Reef or token generators) for overwhelming advantage
- ▸Beat down with buffed Elementals using anthems and Omnath-style payoffs
Archetypes
- Elemental Tribal — The commander rewards a deck full of Elementals with recursion and synergy payoffs like Risen Reef.
- Value Midrange — Grindy ETB Elementals plus graveyard recursion let you out-card opponents over a long game.
- Reanimator/Recursion — The activated ability cheats expensive Elementals back from the yard, rewarding self-mill and sacrifice.
- Combo — Five colors and Elemental loops enable engines like Spark Double or sacrifice-recursion chains for infinite value.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (BGRUW), by popularity.
