Vanquish the Horde – Midnight Hunt
Date Reviewed: October 15, 2021
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.17
Casual: 3.00
Limited: 3.67
Multiplayer: 4.17
Commander [EDH]: 3.83
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
David
Fanany
Player
since
1995
Vanquish the Horde is an interesting card – it feels to me sort of like an inversion of Hour of Reckoning from Ravnica: City of Guilds, a sweeper designed to be used against token swarms rather than by them. The more obvious reference is, of course, to another characteristically Innistrad-ish card in Blasphemous Act, and they will indeed play very similarly in many situations. It’s the sort of card you definitely want to have around when you’re facing those aforementioned herds of Saproling or Zombie tokens, and which you won’t feel so good holding in the face of a single Kalonian Behemoth-style threat. That makes it more of a sideboard card at most for constructed, but it scales well to multiplayer and Commander matchups – and comes online much earlier, so watch out for it.
Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 3/5
Limited: 4/5
Multiplayer: 4/5
Commander: 4/5
Going from an act of blasphemy in Innistrad to this, Vanquish the Horde is a good way to clean out a board; four creatures puts this on-par with Day of Judgment, which is always a favorable point of comparison. While this is far worse at killing one creature, it’s far stronger at killing a lot of them, and this may well be white’s Wrath effect of choice for the foreseeable future. It’s not for every deck, but most decks that want mass removal could do worse, and it’s surprisingly easy to cast this for two mana against the right deck.
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 4.5
Commander: 4.5
Vanquish the Horde
I like this card but I don’t love it. I am sitting here and thinking about games I’ve had recently and thought about how many creatures were on the board at the worst point in the game. Unless I was playing elves or my opponent had dragons there wasn’t a point where someone had an arsenal of creatures out, let alone 6 or more, and this would have come in handy. More often than not I would have cast this for 4 or 5 which isn’t bad but that is where the value is in this card…the fact that you could cast this for 2 is where the draw power is for this card. It works and it functions, but it misses the boat more often than not. Late game it helps, but so would a Wrath of God or Day of Judgement in modern or legacy. In standard sure, absolutely but I’d rather run the Meathook Massacre over this 9 out of 10 times and that 1 time is when I’m not running black. If you are playing mono white or mostly white, definitely sideboard worthy in standard as a one or two of for sure. In multiplayer is where this card shines, the higher the likelihood of there being 6 or more creatures on the battlefield and it could really turn the tide in your favor or give the person who is about to alpha strike the disadvantage. Commander is similar, I like it in multiplayer commander and not so much in 1v1 commander, again it goes back to the likelihood of how often there are going to be 6 creatures on the field that you want to get rid of. In draft I would take this as a backup if my back is against the wall and I need a board wipe, I think it is worth it if there’s no bombs in the pack that are better to take. At the end of the day Wizards could have reprinted Wrath of God and it would have been the same experience without the little gimmick that they were trying to make for flavor reasons.
Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 2/5
Limited: 3/5
Multiplayer: 4/5
Commander: 3/5
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