Free Hugs: Update

So I was actually able to build and play the list in my last update, the group hug deck. Got in a total of 4 games, and managed to win 2 of them (one win was possibly undeserved as one player scooping out of frustration clenched my victory, though as I was resolving a Vicious Shadows when that player scooped, it seems pretty likely I'd have come out ahead anyway. Vicious Shadows is not exactly a "fair" Magic card!).

More importantly, the games I lost were pretty fun and epic, too. I like the way group hug plays when you're actually using it as a strategy for winning, rather than simply propelling whoever gets luckiest or has the best deck to an easy victory. That said, there were times when I felt like I was helping out one player more than the others, so a BIT more spot-removal and other utility to keep things relatively fair and balanced might be in order.

Oh, and there were a few more changes I made after the first game or two...

1. Cut Arcane Denial for Gaea's Blessing. This change was inspired by my realization that playing Oath of Druids in a deck with only about 20 creatures is not actually brilliant. I managed to make myself quite sad almost every time I resolved an Oath trigger, milling away lots of goodies. Blessing is essential if you're keeping Oath but running a low creature count. I'd also consider Elixir of Immortality as well (in case you draw Blessing, as I did once).

2. Couldn't find the Mystifying Maze that I recommended adding in the last post (I know I have a few of them, but for some reason just couldn't locate any), so I put in Alchemist's Refuge instead. Well, that was a very fortuitous happenstance, as it turns out flashing in Group Hug stuff like Heartbeat of Spring so you get to benefit first is actually really good. No matter what version of this deck you build, the Refuge is almost certainly one of the best lands you can have. Run it!

3. Cut Prismatic Geoscope for Well of Ideas. After a few games I just really wanted more draw, but I still didn't want to add back in Howling Mine or something like Font of Mythos. Then I remembered Well of Ideas was in my Essential Additions post, yet I didn't add it! Oops! Well, turns out my instincts were good on that point, because it played really well once I slotted it in. Wasn't sure what to cut for it, but Geoscope showed up a few times and was never very good for me. I either badly needed to cast other things and couldn't afford to take a turn off to play a ETBF-tapped, five mana, do-nothing mana rock, or I had tons of mana already and it just didn't matter.

Another issue I had was in the early game, not having quite enough mana. I figured their would be enough ramp, plus our commander enabling extra land drops, but most of the games I played had some tense early turns where I was praying for either land or a cheap ramp spell (another reason I cut the Geoscope - the only times I ever WANTED to draw ramp was when I was stuck on 3 or 4 lands).

I did have one game where I got to play Kynaios and Tiro on turn two thanks to a T1 Burgeoning and having a bounceland in hand. That was actually a game I lost, though, believe it or not!

Anyway, cutting two lands seemed like a great idea at the time, but I was having trouble getting enough land to have a natural land drop each turn AND have a land to play off K&T. That said, most of the time I'd still rather be drawing actual gas and not just barfing lands to no real effect.

All things considered, though, I did enjoy the deck quite a bit and found it fun to play, despite normally hating group hug decks. I think gearing the deck toward actually wanting to win some games and not just enable others to win is a big improvement, for me at least. It's never going to be my favorite deck to play and it's certainly not going to win a ton of games, but I like it well enough to keep around.

EDIT: Update to my update - I just realized I missed Alliance of Arms. You see, I somehow mistakenly believed it was already in the pre-constructed list to begin with, but obviously that is not true. Alliance of Arms definitely needs to be in the deck as well. I am not sure what to cut, but it 100% for sure has to go in. Sorry!

Free Hugs

Sorry for the delay in posting, folks, but you know how the holidays can be – full of food, family and… stress. Anyway, I was planning to write up either Saskia or Ydris next, but got distracted when I finally got inspiration for the group hug deck, Stalwart Unity, led by Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis.

This one remained a conundrum to me up until the moment something suddenly clicked. And I’m not sure my solution is actually a viable one. I haven’t yet had the chance to test this out, so this write up is a lot more theoretical than I’d like. But whatever, it’s the thing I’m most excited about and I want to get my ideas down on paper before I move on to something else and forget! So, on we plow.

Let’s just start with the original list…

Creatures

Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis

Veteran Explorer

Humble Defector

Hushwing Gryff

Orzhov Advokist

Chasm Skulker

Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer

Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist

Selvala, Explorer Returned

Edric, Spymaster of Trest

Akroan Horse

Selfless Squire

Windborn Muse

Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa

Horizon Chimera

Zedruu the Greathearted

Psychosis Crawler

Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs

Kraum, Ludevic's Opus

Realm Seekers

Rubblehulk

Progenitor Mimic

Blazing Archon

Spells

Minds Aglow

Collective Voyage

Swords to Plowshares

Swan Song

Arcane Denial

Benefactor's Draught

Evolutionary Escalation

Oath of Druids

Hoofprints of the Stag

Cultivate

Kodama's Reach

Beast Within

Oblation

Ghostly Prison

Propaganda

Rites of Flourishing

Entrapment Maneuver

Tempt with Discovery

Reins of Power

Wave of Reckoning

Sphere of Safety

Migratory Route

Sylvan Reclamation

Seeds of Renewal

Lurking Predators

Reverse the Sands

Treacherous Terrain

Blasphemous Act

Sol Ring

Empyrial Plate

Howling Mine

Commander's Sphere

Temple Bell

Assault Suit

Prismatic Geoscope

Venser's Journal

Keening Stone

Lands

Ash Barrens

Azorius Chancery

Command Tower

Evolving Wilds

Exotic Orchard

Forbidden Orchard

Frontier Bivouac

Gruul Turf

Homeward Path

Izzet Boilerworks

Jungle Shrine

Krosan Verge

Myriad Landscape

Mystic Monastery

Opal Palace

Rupture Spire

Seaside Citadel

Selesnya Sanctuary

Terramorphic Expanse

Transguild Promenade

Plains x5

Island x5

Mountain x5

Forest x5

So, yeah, a fairly typical group hug deck, though a bit unfocused as these precons tend to be, and with a few legit win-cons. As I’ve said before I’m not a fan of pure group hug decks; I’ve tried them before of course, but eventually decided the archetype was not for me. But I always prefer to stay true to the intentions behind these precons as much as I can. If I were to go in a radically different direction with one of these decks, as I have occasionally done in the past, it’d be this one. But I kinda liked some of what this deck hinted at, in that it’s group hug with an actual plan to win.

One of my favorite little details about this list is how you bait everyone with free lands, then punish them for it later with Treacherous Terrain. This is the one deck where that card makes complete sense, in that it directly benefits from our commander’s ability and all the other ramp-for-everyone cards in the list. The best part is, even if your opponents see the trap, and refuse to take the bait, then you’re just turning all those symmetrical ramp cards into asymmetrical ones that benefit just you. So they either take the bait and get punished later, or you get to pull way, way ahead.

I like that Sophie’s Choice aspect: take the gifts I offer, or don’t; if you do, you get punished later, but if you don’t I get to pull way ahead. Unfortunately it’s still pretty hard to find exactly the right pairings of cards – for this plan to work you need two things: cards that give everyone a resource (including yourself), and cards that punish people for having a lot of that resource. I was having trouble coming up with ideas – I could find ways to give people resources, but not ways to punish them, or vice versa. Not having access to Black is a big factor, as it’s the #1 color for “punishment” effects.

I also like the idea of pairing cards like Edric and Gahiji with cards like Alliance of Arms, and backing those up with stuff like Propaganda. As long as everyone is fighting each other, it’s good for you, but it’s also good for them. Of course giving everyone free lands and card draw is a risky move that could backfire easily. So, again, you want to punish your opponents for greedily accepting your gifts. Let them have their fun, but be ready and able to drop the hammer if need be.

So after some brainstorming on my own, and a good bit of help from the folks over at the official EDH forums, I finally solidified my idea. Again, I still don’t know how well it’ll actually work, but this is probably about as good as it’s going to get if I’m forcing myself to work within the archetype of group hug. Let’s start this time by talking about what we want to add.

First of all we want to supplement the Alliance of Arms plan by adding more effects that give everybody tokens.

Sylvan Offering

Tempt with Vengeance

Benevolent Offering

Curse of the Swine

Genesis  Chamber

Hunted Phantasm

Hunted Dragon

Hunted Troll

And because this is EDH and we either go big or go home, let’s add Primal Vigor and Parallel Lives as well.

I like the interaction between the Hunted creatures and Oath of Druids. We let our opponents get ahead by giving them tokens, and that lets us take more advantage of the Oath than they will. Parallel Lives means we’ll be getting more mileage out of cards like Sylvan Offering, while Primal Vigor lets everyone reap double the benefits. Which one is better for our strategy will depend on a number of factors, but it’ll be important to not just run those out without a plan. Hunted Lammasu got left out for being kinda boring and only making one token. Curse of the Swine is really just more of a removal spell, but will have other possible interactions we’ll cover later.

Next up we need to make sure our opponents don’t just turn on us and kill us with all these tokens:

Gahiji, Honored One

Soul Warden

Essence Warden

Fumigate

Gahiji compliments Edric in the politics department by making it more profitable or enticing to attack someone other than us. Soul Warden and Essence Warden obviously just gain us craploads of life so we can weather a few storms if need be. There’s already a pretty solid suite of pillow-fort in the deck, via the likes of Propaganda and company, so we’ll obviously be leaving those intact. Fumigate is just an emergency out if we start to go for our plan but something goes wrong and we need to hit the release valve.

Now here’s where I start to reveal a little bit of my true intentions. Next up we need to add:

Suture Priest

Purphoros, God of the Forge

Vicious Shadows

Insurrection

Yeah. See, we really are group hug, but I want to win games with this deck, dammit. Sure there’s a minor bit of anti-synergy here, in that if you play out one of these before you cast Tempt with Vengeance, you aren’t likely to get any takers, but the other mass-token producers aren’t really optional. They’re going to get tokens whether they want them or not. Vicious Shadows should often just end games immediately. I wanted to include a sac outlet like Goblin Bombardment or similar, but couldn’t find room. Still, it’s no trick getting stuff to die in EDH, so we can just wing it. Insurrection is a gimme. Boring, but clearly too on-point for what we’re doing to ignore.

Now we need to ensure we have lots of mana to cast things like Sylvan Offering or Alliance of Arms for huge amounts (thereby creating a reliable kill with Purpohros, for instance).

Keeper of Progenitus

Heartbeat of Spring

Mana Flare

Oh man these things are risky! But what’s the difference if we’re already playing stuff like Collective Voyage? We’re already committed to giving people extra lands, so might as well. The hope here is, we’ll be better equipped to exploit all this extra mana than they will, which brings me to the next batch of cards…

Sphinx’s Revelation

Comet Storm

(plus the other x-spells already mentioned)

Those mana doublers are there to service what is quite a high count of x-spells. In addition to the two above we also have Mind’s Aglow, Alliance of Arms, Sylvan Offering, Tempt with Vengeance, Collective Voyage, and to some extend Curse of the Swine. So we make lots of mana, draw lots of cards and create lots of tokens. Hopefully we find a way to translate all of that into a win. Simple, no?

To ensure we stay ahead or at least caught up in the mana race, and to help our little Treacherous Terrain trap along, we need a few helpers.

Burgeoning

Exploration

Horn of Greed

Nice little feedback loop with our commander, we draw extra cards to play extra lands, and play extra lands to draw extra cards. Plus Horn of Greed helps our plan of being a group hug deck superficially, while helping along are actual plans as well.

There’s one last card I want to add just for the hell of it, because why the hell not:

Warp World

Now, usually a “serious” Warp World deck wants to ensure it has far, far more permanents than anyone else, so that when it resolves, they stand a very high chance of coming out WAY ahead. There are certainly ways we could do that. For instance, if we cast a huge Tempt with Vengeance and no one wants to take us up on that offer for fear of a Vicious Shadows or because we have Suture Priest of the board, we could easily pull miles ahead in the permanent department, fueling a Warp World that is very favorable for us. Or we can just cast it on a massively cluttered board and say “screw it, let’s just see what happens”. There was a very strong argument for leaving this out and including something like, say, Invoke the Firemind or Clan Defiance, but the idea seemed far too fun to disregard. It may get cut later if I find it backfires too often or causes groans among the other players.

So these are all the cards I could actually find room for. There are other cards I wanted to add, of course, and those include:

Intellectual Offering

Invoke the Firemind

Clan Defiance

Seed the Land

Echoing Courage

Arachnogenesis

Mogg Infestation

March of Souls

Skullclamp

Crown of Doom

But alas, I could not find room for all of those. It’s possible I should be running something from the above list instead of Primal Vigor and Parallel Lives, I don’t know. It’s also possible the correct package for my mana-doubling section would be Academy Rector, Mirari’s Wake and Mana Reflection, but I don’t think I have any copies of any of those three cards not already in decks! Plus, we do want to function as an actual group hug deck, so being selfish with our things is probably not the way to go.

By the way that brings me to a critical point. Typically you see group hug come in two flavors: decks that actually ARE group hug and just want to help everyone out indiscriminately, and decks that pretend to be group hug but have a nasty surprise waiting at the end. The problem with the former is that they often ruin games by playing “kingmaker” and rather than help everyone equally, they just propel one player in particular to a steamroll victory. The problem with the latter is that they are like movies with big twists as the end – they work once based on the surprise factor, but on repeat viewings you see the twist coming and it no longer works. Once people know you have a knife up your sleeve to backstab them with, they just use your “gifts” to kill you first.

Now, my hope is that I have avoided falling into either of those camps. I’m not out to play kingmaker, I want to win games myself. But I’m not trying to surprise anyone with “gotcha!” cards. I fully expect that my opponents will be fully expecting cards like Insurrection, Treacherous Terrain and Vicious Shadows to bite them in the ass, but if I’ve done this right, it won’t matter that they see the trap coming. They either play right into it, or let me get way, way ahead and I just beat them above-board with superior mana and armies of tokens.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about cuts. We need to dump quite a bit of the original list to make room for all these new goodies, so what gets thrown out?

Let’s start with the easy part. 40 lands is too much. We have lots of ramp and draw anyway, so we’re going to be hitting land drops, I’m pretty confident. Let’s cut the atrocious Transguild Promenade +Rupture Spire duo in favor of cards that, hopefully, don’t suck balls. Actually I’m pretty confident nothing we’ve added will suck as badly as these two turds.

Creature-wise we can lose the following:

Hushwing Gryff

Orzhov Advokist

Chasm Skulker

Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer

Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa

Horizon Chimera

Zedruu the Greathearted

Psychosis Crawler

Kraum, Ludevic's Opus

Realm Seekers

Rubblehulk

Hushwing Gryff is an obnoxious card that I despise playing with or against, so out it goes. Orzhov Advokist was needed for another deck (Queen Marchesa), and it doesn’t really do much here anyway. Chasm Skulker would certainly have been a respectable card to keep around, but Ydris, the deck with all the Wheel effects, wanted it more, so… cut! Gwafa just doesn’t have nearly enough gold coins in his pouch to bribe all the masses of tokens we’ll be handing out, so he’s out. Sidar Kondo actually seemed worth keeping as he could do some cool things with Edric and an army of 1/1’s but was a casualty of theme. He’s one card I might try to squeeze back in if the overall plan works out but needs tweaking. Horizon Chimera is just “meh” and we’ll gain far more life off the Wardens. Zedruu does virtually nothing in this list. Psyhosis Crawler, like Chasm Skulker just makes me think “why the f*** aren’t you in the Ydris deck?!” so he gets cut just so he can move to that deck. Kraum has zero synergy so out he goes. Realm Seekers was fine, but mostly just a generically-huge thing. Boring, so… gone. Rubblehulk came very close to not getting cut, as I did like the idea of one-shotting someone with our 2/8 commander, but ultimately he was just another big, generic thing that didn’t contribute much to the synergy of the deck.

From our spells, we will be dropping:

Swan Song

Benefactor's Draught

Evolutionary Escalation

Hoofprints of the Stag

Entrapment Maneuver

Wave of Reckoning

Migratory Route

Lurking Predators

Reverse the Sands

Empyrial Plate

Howling Mine

Assault Suit

Venser's Journal

Keening Stone

I dislike countermagic in general, so Swan Song was an easy cut (kept Arcane Denial, for now, just because it’s a good political counterspell). Benefactor’s Draught is a card I just don’t like much, despite having never cast it. Evolutionary Escalation was needed for a different deck (Marath). Hoofprints of the Stag is a bit slow and clunky, and doesn’t fit the deck we’re building well. Entrapment Maneuver is pretty mediocre. Wave of Reckoning was originally supposed to stay in, but then I remembered Fumigate just got printed and that seemed like a much better option. Migratory Route is painfully underwhelming and not on theme, so it’s an easy cut. Lurking Predators was a card that didn’t make a lick of sense to begin with, as the deck only has about 22 creatures to start with. And since I’m pretty sure my build is going to have even fewer creatures, it definitely seems terrible. Easy cut. Reverse the Sands is cute, but no real synergy or way to ensure it will win us any games. Empyrial Plate is generic beatdown, which is not what this deck is about. Assult Suit is much the same. Venser’s Journal seems superfluous as we’re not likely to have massive hands, and we have plenty of lifegain elsewhere. Keening Stone was a bad win-con that wasn’t likely to ever pan out even with our mana-doublers. Howling Mine only gets cut because I like Horn of Greed much, much better in this deck.

Overall there were a few painful cuts (Sidar Kondo, Chasm Skulker) but overall, nothing we cut feels essential to me. What I am slightly concerned about is that with our additions we didn’t really beef up our defensive capabilities or interaction much. It is possible that, over time, I will slowly have to beef up our pillow fort cards, and throw in more combat hosers like Arachnogenesis and Aetherize. As I explained in my Atraxa article, I prefer to err on the side of theme/synergy and then add good stuff and utility over time as I get a feel for the deck’s weaknesses.

But before we put the list all back together, we have one last section to take a look at - the mana base.

We’ve already cut the two worst lands in the list in favor of non-land stuff, getting us down to a healthy 38 lands. But there’s still more to do. Firstly, Opal Palace strikes me as a do-nothing card in this list. We don’t really care about casting our commander with a bunch of counters on it, and it isn’t great at just being a mana fixing land. I think we easily ditch this in favor of Kor Haven. I would also accept Mystifying Maze here, but not Maze of Ith because Maze of Ith should always count as a spell, not a land.

I also don’t like Myriad Landscape much, as how often are we going to want to get two of the same Basic? We’re better off with Blighted Woodland, which costs more to use, but can get two different basics.

Of course the inclusion of Krosan Verge makes me really want Shocklands (or ABUR duals if you got ‘em). I recommend going with, at minimum: Hallowed Fountain, Sacred Foundry, Stomping Ground and Breeding Pool. This way you have a Plains and Forest each that come with one of the other two colors. To make room for these 4 duals I’d just cut one of each Basic.

Finally, I want to try and reducer our ETBF tapped land count. I like the tri-lands and the Ravnican bouncelands, so they get to stay. This means Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic are out. With Krosan Verge and Blighted Woodland, plus all the spells that fetch basics, I don’t mind getting rid of these at all. We’ll just replace then with Mana Confluence and Reflecting Pool.

I’m comfortable stopping here with the changes to the mana base, but of course if you have the duals at hand, you can always go further. The important thing here is not to get carried away with the nonbasics. Remember, we need a lot of basic lands in our deck for stuff like Collective Voyage to be beneficial to us. But 16 is probably a sufficiently high number. I certainly wouldn’t go below 12 and even that might be too few. Hard to say without testing first, though.

With that done, we are now ready to put it all together into a final list! Behold:

Creatures

Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis

Essence Warden

Soul Warden

Veteran Explorer

Suture Priest

Humble Defector

Hunted Phantasm

Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist

Selvala, Explorer Returned

Edric, Spymaster of Trest

Hunted Troll

Keeper of Progenitus

Akroan Horse

Purphoros, God of the Forge

Selfless Squire

Windborn Muse

Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs

Hunted Dragon

Gahiji, Honored One

Progenitor Mimic

Blazing Archon

Spells

Burgeoning

Exploration

Minds Aglow

Collective Voyage

Swords to Plowshares

Arcane Denial

Oath of Druids

Cultivate

Kodama's Reach

Beast Within

Oblation

Ghostly Prison

Propaganda

Mana Flare

Heartbeat of Spring

Rites of Flourishing

Benevolent Offering

Tempt with Discovery

Parallel Lives

Reins of Power

Sphere of Safety

Fumigate

Primal Vigor

Sylvan Reclamation

Seeds of Renewal

Vicious Shadows

Warp World

Treacherous Terrain

Insurrection

Blasphemous Act

Sylvan Offering

Tempt With Vengeance

Comet Storm

Curse of Swine

Sphinx's Revelation

Sol Ring

Genesis Chamber

Commander's Sphere

Horn of Greed

Temple Bell

Prismatic Geoscope

Lands

Hallowed Fountain

Sacred Foundry

Stomping Ground

Breeding Pool

Azorius Chancery

Gruul Turf

Selesnya Sanctuary

Izzet Boilerworks

Command Tower

Mana Confluence

Reflecting Pool

Homeward Path

Exotic Orchard

Forbidden Orchard

Frontier Bivouac

Jungle Shrine

Mystic Monastery

Seaside Citadel

Krosan Verge

Blighted Woodland

Kor Haven

Ash Barrens

Plains x4

Island x4

Mountain x4

Forest x4

One idea that didn’t make it into the final list, sadly, was a Repercussion plan, where we give everyone a bazillion tokens, drop Repercussion, then cast Blasphemous Act, Wave or Reckoning or something along those lines. But for that to not kill us and just draw the game, we’d need a sac outlet to ditch our creatures or something like Mark of Asylum to prevent the damage. Soulfire Grandmaster would also likely play a big role in this version, but it seemed a bit too unreliable even for me. That said, there is certainly an argument for Soulfire Grandmaster in the final version as well. We have lots of spells we’d like to buy back, and the mana doublers to enable that. So, yeah, Buyback Monk is definitely a card I’d like to fit in somewhere down the road.

In the meantime, since I don’t have any actual playtesting experience to help me further refine and improve this list, I just have to call it done, for now.

Enjoy!