I have a gripe to iron out in the Magic: The Gathering Commander community. It's something I hear all the time, something close to my own heart, that I think should be reexamined.

Group Hug players are NOT Chaos players.

Overall, this article will discuss a lot of misconceptions about Group Hug, and hope to reset the conversation on them.

What is Group Hug? Is a strategy that provides resources such as card draw, mana, permanents, and free spells at little or no cost. A great example of a group hug card is Tempting Wurm. All other players get to play all permanents onto the battlefield for free when it enters. For most players, that is where the definition ends. This is why so many people find that Group Hug is a Chaos Deck. A Chaos deck has no win con, designed only to bring about game states that are bizarre. Group Hug is not this. Group Hug's goal is to win like everyone else.

What a lot of players get wrong is the rest of the definition of Group Hug which is to moderate interaction to encourage a balanced game state, use the effects and resources they provided as a weapon to win the game, and provide themselves with the most resources. Group Hug is a control deck strategy. All the successful Group Hug win cons require mitigating loss and interaction on their own pieces, as they load the board up in other directions. Players are forced--or better yet--encouraged to eliminate each other.

This might sound like cope, but there are tried and true strategies and combinations that reward the Group Hug players enough to win. Group Hug is often a control and punish strategy. I'll demonstrate.

Combat Restrictions

One of the biggest assets to a group hug player is to pillow fort up. It's hard for players to get at you if you make it hard to attack. Things like Propaganda, Ghostly Prison, Norn's Annex, and Sphere of Safety are going to get you far, but these often don't provide enough resources to the table to be seen as an asset to the other players. Things like Noble Heritage and Nils, Discipline Enforcer are a little more insidious. The first gives you protection from a player for power and the second, makes the player pay to attack with creatures based on +1/+1 counters. It's an exchange that keeps you out of trouble with certain pieces.

Duelist's Heritage is another piece that allows you to control some aspects of combat between other players and make them more lethal. Being able at the start of combat to make an opponent's Lord of the Void have double strike is crazy work. It deals double damage to the blocking player and exiles 14 cards and gives the attacking player two creatures potentially.

Mana Production

Some typical mana accelerators in a Group Hug strategy are things like Collective Voyage. With Join Forces, players can all pay into things to give more resources to the table. This is where Strategy kicks in. It's deeply important that you do not tap out for Collective Voyage. It's important to hold up interaction because the turns after a collective voyage are back breaking and often game winning. You need to hold something up to hopefully keep a win for yourself. Better strategies for going mana positive without pushing others too far ahead of you is to play Tempt with Discovery and Rootweaver Druid. It gives mana and lands to other players but the amount you received is far more than the rest.

But that's not all, one integral part of Group Hug is to punish for the rewards. You need to play Overabundance, that makes lands tap for double but pings players. It steadily brings down life totals, but puts the game in overdrive. You need to be able to follow up lands coming in and all that ping damage with a Treacherous Terrain when it might eliminate 1-2 players.

Card Draw

This is one of the critical pieces of the group hug strategy. You need to be able to build up enough cards in hand to react to anything that threatens to steal a win up from under you. Combinations that give card advantage to the whole table and you at the same time can be very dangerous. You have to mitigate that by drawing more than them or discarding less or punishing them for additional draws.

Psychosis Crawler or Niv Mizzet, Parun punishes for your own draws, but with pieces like Heartwood Storyteller will encourage players that are storming off to stop, because they're being pinged by each draw. It also gives interaction to other players who are trying to win, so they might stop a win for you. Cards like Minds Aglow with a Reliquary Tower or Thought Vessel will put you in a good position to play out cards in your hand. Approach From the Second Sun isn't too bad here either, considering how much you could draw and how much mana you would have late game.

Interaction

This is the core of the control aspect of this deck. You might punish for draw but you're still giving players opportunities at answers for your hands and deck. A stax player could very well lock you out of winning. It's deeply important to run removal and interaction, that you will draw throughout the game to push you through uncomfortable stax pieces. A Beast Within, or a Generous Gift or a Swords to Plowshares.

For bigger game winning effects running cards like Comeuppance, Reins of Power, Perch Protection are essential. Comeuppance protects you from a burn or combat based win. Reins of Power steals a juicy board when it is beneficial and capable of destroying the table. Perch Protection is a Teferi's Protection that gives the biggest threat a whole extra turn to take out the rest of the table.

These kinds of interactions are essential because giving out all those resources can come back to bite you if you don't protect against it. I prefer to consider Group Hug a Turbo strategy to get pieces on the board early when I have interaction and can better pick and choose when to use it.

Conclusion

So, yes, Group Hug REQUIRES a win condition to be considered a Group Hug deck. It is a viable strategy as much as stax is. Yes, it's a strategy you don't have to play if you don't like to or don't want to, but we need to clarify the slander. It's a strategy trying to win in a unique way just like any other deck. It is based on reaction and control, and careful resource management. Thanks for coming to my TED talk. I'm @strixhavendropout on Blue Sky. Thank you so much for taking the time to read. I hope this helps in your next deck-building session!