Almost everyone who’s ever been involved in a Barigord Studios adventure has been passionate for gaming! We love board games, table games, video games, roleplaying games, and game shows! This post is best viewed on barigord.com.
The last post can be found here:
Back to the Challenge
Last time I had some fatigue. I’m not as exhausted now, but some aspects of gaming just knock me down. Magic is full of those right now. I’m playing OG Final Fantasy VII on the Nintendo Switch as a palate cleanser. It’s a classic, and this is my 10th+ time going through the game.
I played the remake, but 3D button-mash hack’n’slash is not for me, and is not the Final Fantasy experience I’m looking for. A big part of the draw of Final Fantasy games is that you don’t have to frantically mash buttons the whole time, or be a whiz at 3D combat. Some of the games wait for you to take your turn in combat, so you can think about your move, or take a snack break or whatever. It’s a lot more relaxing, without sacrificing the challenge.
Speaking of challenges, this past weekend was another Commander Challenge at my LGS, The Connection Games and Hobbies! I guess I did have some energy for Magic after all!
Group Hug… Sauron???
I took a deck and concept unlike anything I’ve ever built before. If you follow this website, or have played against me in the past, you know I build and play all sorts of janky nonsense in Commander. Here’s a semi-recent example:
But I’ve always had a plan, and a win-con or two in mind. Commander Challenge is a sanctioned Magic tournament, with great prizes, and I do try to do well.
But this time was different. I did what’s known as Group Hug, a style of deck that helps out opponents in some way, either as part of a game plan, or as the whole game plan.
Many ‘Group Hug’ decks are actually ‘Lull You into a False Sense of Security’ decks, which will build you up with resources like extra lands and card draw that comes around to bite you in the end. A classic ‘Group Hug’ Commander is Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis, which gives both lands and extra cards, and the pilot will wait until the late game, then cast something like Price of Progress to finish things off.
I wanted to try pure Group Hug. No tricks, no False Sense of Security, just enabling the table.
When Lord of the Rings came out, I opened a Sauron, the Dark Lord, which was cool and villainous and such, but very difficult to imagine playing fair with. Just by itself it seems OP. It’s hard to kill, makes a big token, draws cards, and makes the Ring Tempt You. It’s pretty extra. Not really my style.
But what about Sauron Group Hug? The Fires of Mordor can instead be warm fuzzies! Seems just demented enough to work.
The List
Yes I played this nonsense in Sanctioned Commander tournament. You can too!
Sauron, Lord of the Bros
What does the deck do? It helps out other players. How does it win? It doesn’t!
It might be tough to sell opponents on an actual Group Hug deck, so your actions have to back it up! No playing with card draw spells that can target anyone, then only using them on yourself!
Why play this then? Because it might be fun, and Commander Challenge rewards things other than winning games outright. Let’s see how it did!
Round 1
Round 1 matched me up with Zabaz, the Glimmerwasp, Imotekh the Stormlord, and Mr. House, President and CEO.
Zabaz leaned heavy into Modular, +1/+1 counters in general, equipment and overall Boros aggro. Imotekh was a modified Necron precon from Warhammer 40k. Mr. House looked to be all about robots! Let’s go!
Zabaz, to nobody’s surprise, got off to a fast start. They had Sword of Hours on their Commander early and started swinging.
Imotekh played Out of the Tombs, a card I didn’t really know much about. I was shocked by the incredible amount of self-mill the card produced. It was really something, and turbocharged the Necrons.
Mr. House played another Universes Beyond card, Transformer Flamewar, Brash Veteran, making me think the deck could be full of cool robots.
I helped by playing Indentured Djinn and Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth, though sadly, nobody was in green. A rarity in Commander. I also played Ghirapur Orrery and gave opponents random mana with Spectral Searchlight.
Zabaz got large pretty quick, and the Commander took out Mr. House before the Fallout Commander could get anything much going. Shenanigans with The Ozolith spelled doom for us remaining players.
Imotekh responded with a wild flurry of cast triggers and artifacts hitting the table. When it was all said and done, there were too many Necrons and Necron tokens to deal with. Zabaz threw a handful of removal at them, but hardly made a dent. Imotekh ran us both over easily one turn later.
Had we gone another round, and had I been a sneaky Group Hug deck, I might have won with Pact of the Serpent naming Necrons, forcing Imotekh to draw 40+ cards and lose that much life. If your meta involves a lot of players piling up 40+ of the same token, Pact of the Serpent is an interesting counterplay, for sure.
Round 2
Round 2 featured Pantlaza, Sun-Favored, Chainer, Nightmare Adept, and Brago, King Eternal.
Pantlaza kind of begs to be played with lots of big fun Dinosaurs, and this deck was no exception. Chainer wanted to discard cards for all sorts of value, including burning the rest of us out. Brago was a solid bunch of fun and practical ETB effects, which is nice because some Brago piles are super-oppressive.
The story of the early game was Brago’s Sanctifier en-Vec, just about the perfect card to completely shut down almost all of Chainer’s gameplan. While Chainer regrouped, I helped the table draw cards, and passed around my Rainbow Vale, a fun reminder of all the derpy Fallen Empires cards on the Reserved List. Rainbow Vale was actually pretty fun, and I’d try to find some way to play it again.
Not fun was Akroan Horse which I played in game 2, and it was bad. I also played it in game 1, and it was bad then too. Why? It’s a trigger and tokens to keep track of, but the payoff is weak and hardly worth it. It was mostly forgettable, which is not great for a trigger.
I gave the Horse to Pantlaza, but it quickly became lost in a herd of Dinosaurs. All good ones too, making tokens and getting stat bonuses and trample.
Chainer fired off lots of removal, and took our life totals down with Glint-Horn Buccaneer‘s discard trigger, and Brago managed to land Ossification on Pantlaza’s Commander briefly, but it wasn’t enough. Brago also put Curse of Echoes on me, and I cast a 5 card Braingeyser on myself, which everyone else got to copy, which was cool.
Then the Dinosaurs ran us all over. I cast Learn from the Past on Pantlaza before I got swept under. It was gruesome. Pantlaza has been a huge force to be reckoned with every time I’ve played it. Once the Commander comes out, you’ve got a turn or two before the board pops with Dinos everywhere, and there’s enough of them now with haste, grant haste or have some other value that an alpha strike can come right out of nowhere! Watch out the next time you’re in Jurassic Park!
Round 3
Round 3 was a group of 3. I think we were 31 players out of a maximum 32, and I got the small table this round. Only small in number of players.
The round featured Urza, Chief Artificer and the partners-with Okaun, Eye of Chaos and Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom. So 4 Commanders total.
I helped out with card draw early while the others built up, but Urza played an early Smothering Tithe and started making an obscene amount of treasures. They quickly followed up with both Urza’s Saga and Urza, Lord High Artificer, making a huge army of huge construct tokens, and turning each treasure into a Mox Sapphire.
I helped by playing Mana Flare.
O&Z had the makings of a big turn, attacking Urza with both Commanders, but the coin flips didn’t accommodate, and it wasn’t enough. Urza took them out soon after.
I had been making Urza draw a lot of cards, and had a few draw spells in hand and that Mana Flare in play. I cast them all out, and Urza drew a ton more cards, but I wasn’t terribly close to making them draw their deck, so I conceded to the robot army.
It didn’t win this game, but forcing opponents to draw a lot is a pretty real strategy. Decking them is in play, and the Zabaz player in Round 1 mentioned a deck they built using Black Vise and friends to deal damage using the extra cards. There’s always Sudden Impact, Storm Seeker and Underworld Dreams, too, all holdovers from the 1990s.
With some tweaking, and abandoning all pretense at real Group Hug, this deck could be a killer. Although you might as well replace Sauron, the Dark Lord with Nekusar, the Mindrazer and do all the Wheel of Fortune stuff. That was a Commander bogeyman back in the day. I wonder how it would do now….
Placing and Prizes!
I did not win any games, but I finished 8th (I think – it was in the 7-9 range, but top third for sure). Votes matter!
My prize of choice was most of the Ravnica Clue Edition! When I say ‘most’ I mean the box was divided up 3 ways into 3 prizes. One prize was the box topper Shock Land (turned out to be a Godless Shrine) and another was 4 of the jumpstart-style card packs.
I got the other 4 packs, the pack of ‘suspect’ cards, and the box with assorted Clue game stuff. The suspect cards are fairly interesting, and I’m going to do a separate review of them. Right here:
The cards include Wrench, Library and Commander Mustard. Common, everyday things that I’m surprised aren’t already Magic cards. Didn’t Urza use a Wrench? And I don’t mean Urza’s Wrench which is also not a card. I mean any old Wrench that could belong to anybody. Maybe one very similar to a Wrench Mishra lost recently. Coincidence for sure.
Conclusion
The Group Hug Sauron was actually pretty fun. I’m not sure I’d do it again, but I’m totally glad I did it once. If you have a fun meta, it might be a good choice for a change of pace. Give it a shot, and if you do, or you have thoughts about playing Group Hug, drop us a comment!
Thanks for reading!