Group hug commanders

Group hug decks are found around the fringes of Commander, taking a very unusual approach to playing the game. Group hug commanders filled with cards that benefit the entire table, usually in the form of drawing everyone cards, group hug commanders, gaining everyone life or generating everyone extra mana. Winning isn't a priority for these decks - generally, they're here to accelerate games and get to the "good part", where everyone has 15 lands in play and 15 cards in hand - and that's when the real mayhem begins. Let's have a look at some of the best group hug cards in the business!

While Magic: The Gathering is a game that is often played one-on-one, the largely popular Commander format is designed to be played with additional players, with many made-for-Commander cards being designed around four-player games. For this reason, Commander is home to a unique deck archetype that can't be found in any other format: Group Hug. Group Hug decks look to garner favor with other players by offering them helpful effects and bribes, incentivizing your opponents to attack each other. It's common for a Group Hug deck to include cards that can help reverse a board state such a Reins of Power, potentially allowing a game to be swung in your favor once one or more players have been eliminated from a game. Group Hug Commanders come in a variety of forms, offering a wide array of abilities that you can utilize. Updated on June 2, by Chris Stomberg: Group Hug Commanders aren't printed all too often seeing as their effects interact specifically with more than one other opponent.

Group hug commanders

In Magic the Gathering's Commander format, fun is meant to be put before winning. If everybody gets some time in the spotlight, with their deck popping off and being a threat, it's generally considered a good game regardless of who wins. They just want to help everybody have a good time, right? Well… no. Not exactly. Here is everything you need to know about Group Hug. A Group Hug deck is a deck that focuses on lifting the entire table up. With a good Group Hug deck, everybody gets to be scary in a game at least once, and Magic designers achieve that with goal in two key ways:. He can be tapped to let every player draw a card, and those who do also gain one life. There's no downside to this built into Kwain; no catch, gotcha, scam or ruse.

Here is everything you need to know about Group Hug. My favorite kind of group hug card is one that offers everyone a slight benefit while also offering you a significant benefit. By tapping Selvala to group hug commanders the ability, you force each player to reveal the top card of their library.

.

With cards that provide benefits to all players, not just yourself, group hug decks try to help all players in the match until they put themselves in a position to win the game. Some of the best group hug cards provide card advantage to your opponents while giving you a bigger boost. This incremental increase of value over your opponents helps everyone feel good, but you slowly take the lead in a game. Some of the best group hug cards are those with asymmetrical benefits for you and your opponents. Rootweaver Druid is one of those cards, letting players search for up to three extra basic lands when it comes into play, under the condition that one of them has to go to you.

Group hug commanders

A group hug deck is designed to help out every player at the table in some way and is often not even built with the idea of winning in mind. Instead, these decks are focused on fun, helping out other players, and sometimes on wacky hijinks. One thing to keep in mind when discussing a group hug deck is how you need to reframe cards in your mind. For example, a counterspell is usually seen as a mean card. However, if you run counterspells specifically to stop infinite combos or someone taking a bunch of extra turns , most people at the table are going to be pleased with you. That means some of these commanders, while they could otherwise be pretty nasty, still make for good group hug commanders when played correctly. Kruphix, God of Horizons Illustration by Daarken. Group hug commanders are legendary creatures or planeswalker commanders that enable you to make the game better for everyone at the table. Sometimes this means they have specific abilities that can give other players a benefit.

Chivas va tigres online

If you can sneak through a powerful spell by getting the player with all the counterspells on board, you're Group Hugging correctly. He can be tapped to let every player draw a card, and those who do also gain one life. With a Braids, Conjurer Adept on the battlefield, it's likely that things will get very silly, very quickly as free threats start to stack up. As you can also target yourself as one of the players to be affected by Gluntch, you can always guarantee yourself whichever benefit will help you the most in a given moment. Ever since it was printed way back in the first Kamigawa block, Heartbeat of Spring has been speeding up mana production like nobody's business. Outside of Commanders, most of the Group Hug cards just give players more of what they already have. You can't exactly Group Hug an opponent in a one-on-one game, after all. Thanks to the flying keyword, this is a lot easier than it might first sound. At the end of your turn, Kynaios and Tiro allows each player the ability to either draw a card or put a land from their hand into play. A group hug deck wouldn't be a group hug deck without Howling Mine, and all the other Howling Mine variants that end up meaning you draw in excess of five extra cards every single turn.

Magic is a challenging game. This requires some finesse and politics, especially in multiplayer formats like Commander.

This is severely frowned upon in Magic, as the people who lose to them feel like you ganged up on them, while the person who wins doesn't feel the victory was deserved. Group Hug Commanders come in a variety of forms, offering a wide array of abilities that you can utilize. They include cards like Braids, Conjurer Adept again highlighting how Group Hug is the polar opposite of Stax by letting players put a permanent onto the battlefield each upkeep instead of sacrifice one , Kenrith the Returned King, and Kynaois and Tiro of Meletis. There's no downside to this built into Kwain; no catch, gotcha, scam or ruse. Group Hug decks look to garner favor with other players by offering them helpful effects and bribes, incentivizing your opponents to attack each other. Sometimes it can be nice, like a Teferi's Ageless Insight, while other times it could be something much worse, like a Nine Lives that could knock them out of the game. Tidal Barracuda is a great example of this kind of card: everyone will enjoy having a free Leyline of Anticipation in play, but the compromise they have to accept is that they can't mess up your plans. This not only allows you to easily draw many additional cards, but it encourages opponents to make all-out attacks at each other in the name of card draw. Kingmaking is when you pick a player and do everything in your power to help them win. Games very quickly fall apart after that, as you can imagine, and it ends up as glorious, wild and often very short-lived carnage. With such a flexible suite of abilities, Kenrith is easily the most multifarious and adaptable Commander on this list, able to help both its owner and other players. As this mana is green, a Shizuko deck may include spells that allow you to benefit from this mana more than opponents, such as Helix Pinnacle. For the cost of a green, a white, and a blue, you can tap Angus to prevent all combage damage that would be dealt this turn. As these abilities can be activated several times, a player can effectively use Phelddagrif to convert their mana into benefits for their opponents. Hail to the King.