Is there any defense for the hive?

Mass Phantasm is a great defense against any mass damage. An alternative would be to use Mass Growth, but you'd have to use several to make a difference, and that won't work if anything already has Phantasm on it. Another alternative would be to put a lot of Poison Mind in your deck, and destroy as many threatening cards as you can before your opponent ever gets to play them (of course, you're also showing them their upcoming cards for free, but hey).

Hope this helps!

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Thanks, I will play around and try to find something that works.  I just have to make a hive mind type deck out of homage to the Zerg.  When 1 cyclone whipped out my army after I had them all up to 90'ish vs 2 AI opponents.  I got rather discouraged.  The mass phantasm thing sounds like something to look forward to.

Just pulled a clay idol.  That might help

Yes, that'd definitely help the ants. Tuck the idol away somewhere off the beaten path, toss some Land Protection or Phantasm on him, and go all ant rage on the AI. Also, assuming you're not beefing up any of your creatures' stats via spells or Territory Abilities, you can include a Time Tide or two. Time Tide ignores Phantasm, and resets all creatures' stats back to their original value. In other words, it simultaneously heals all your creatures and removes any enhancements the other Cepters might have done to their creatures. Good times!

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The best approach I've seen is casting Desert Storm or Plague, then following with Revolt the next turn. That'll beef 'em all up to MHP 40. This serves as a nice defense against Sculpture, as well.

I was reading on another forum about phantasm and it said mass dmg spells (like freeze cyclone) by passed phantasm.  Is this true?

link to the forum

No. Single-target and multi-target damage spells alike are nullified by Phantasm and Mass Phantasm (as are healing spells like Refresh, which is why I suggested Time Tide earlier). If you can keep Phantasm on most of your creatures, you have very little to worry about in regard to mass damage.

I forgot to mention earlier that there's yet another way to minimize the effectiveness of mass damage: Ivory Idol. He might get to cast a mass damage spell a time or two, but he'll spend a lot of G doing it each time. In the meantime, you're cruising around the map, dropping low-G creatures that he can't afford to invade. Ivory Idol messes up a human player a bit (because of the tendency to put S and R-rarity cards in, because they're cool), but it *royally* messes up the AI. I've seen the AI go entire laps without doing anything but rolling the die when Ivory is on the map. Then the AI will do insane things like attacking a 0G Goblin on neutral land by spending 200G on the invading creature and another 100 on the item. Fun stuff.

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I built my 1st zerg/ant deck the other day. It's not actually a true ant deck as I also went with a peluda direction. Basically all my creatures are red (fire). Every time I've used it, I've ended up giving up on the ant strategy and going with the peludas. My 1st match with this deck was a 3-way where one of my opponents had several freeze cyclones. I got my ant infestation off to a good start and even increased their MHP with a Mass Growth. A few moves later, 2 Freeze Cyclones in short succession wiped out all my ant related creature and most of my other red creatures. That's when I focused 99% of my efforts on my Peluda startegy since I still had 3 left in my deck. By the time I got a Peluda on the field, 90% of the land territories were occuppied by my opponents. I quickly telegnosed to unleashed peluda's ability (just in time as one opponent paralyzed it the next tuirn and used Invasion to kill it). I followed that up with 2 Insect Swarms and the entire board was cleared except for 3 of my creatures. I got a Hell Pyron onto the field for its special ability but one of my opponents drew a timely Trade card and stole it from me. Luckily, I managed to kill Pyron in the nick of time to prevent my opponent from receiving 2000 Magic. To summarize, when facing a Freeze Cyclone loaded deck, it may be a good idea to have an alternate strategy or alternate way of winning. I basically, had all my Ant Queens as well as Ants wiped out in what seemed like a blink of the eye. Once your Ant Queens are all gone, the ant strategy is pretty much dead. A Revival card might help if this occurs or you could try the Fat Body and/or Poison spellcards to beef up the Ant queen MHP by 20.

Cool, thanks for the info and tips.  As for my hive deck, its just a hobby thats not capable of winning yet.  I only have 1 queen and no real defense for my hive except clay idol and poison mind so its on the back burner.  I was struggling with the AI but since I made my BY bloody pudding deck, I have won 3 straight with ease.  Seems more effective than my GY gogma deck that also ran support creatures.

Just an additional note .... Say you only have 2 or 3 Ant Queens and you have already drawn them all. One way to "get" more of them, is to use the Revival spell to reset your deck. Many veterans add a couple of Revival spell cards to their deck if they are using a very specialized strategy.