White is the trickiest color for group hug and possibly the most well equipped to protect you if your play group keeps knocking you out of the game despite all your efforts to hug them!

Taxing your opponents to attack you keeps your shields up! White in group hug excels at watching from the sidelines while the other players fight it out! If you are accelerating the card draw at the table many times the other more aggressive decks will have to deal with each other allowing you to build up a nice pillow fort strategy. This gives you a big late game advantage in case you want to swoop in for a win! White also has a lot of board wipe protection, let’s take a look!

Group hug strategies rely heavily on a variety of permanents to keep the board accelerated and a board wipe can really set that back. This can be particularly devastating if you don’t have a way to get those permanents back. Luckily white has a few solid options for protecting the board! Cosmic intervention is great because you can Foretell it to avoid discard strategies and also be protected from wipes for only two mana! And Second Sunrise can make you everyone’s hero… Well except the player who cast the board wipe!

All of these cards are great fun and make some very memorable plays! Reverse the Sands is really funny! It probably won’t make you many friends but that will be a memorable game for all involved! Heliod’s Intervention and Beacon of Immortality can both keep you or an ally in the game! It should be noted that if you use these cards to save someone at the table other than yourself it will make your ally’s and enemies at the table very clear so be ready for the snapback!

White’s color identity has been confused for a long time but that makes for some great group hug cards! Having access to the entire history of Magic is one of the things that make Commander so fun and exciting! I love sitting down to play and seeing old cards that are new to me across the table!

Oath of Lieges is my favorite group hug card in white! It ensures that everyone has mana and ramps to keep up with the player with the most lands in play. Sound familiar? Two new cards that came out in Commander 2021 make it pretty clear that this is to be the direction white is gonna take going forward! Archaeomancer’s Map isn’t a group hug card but it functions in a very similar way. Scholarship Sponsor is a fantastic group hug card and a great way to catch the table up on mana! I can’t wait to see more cards like these!

Card draw in white is getting better and that is especially true if you are playing group hug! Truce and Temporary Truce are good and have been around for a long time but the two newer additions, Secret Rendezvous and Cut a Deal, are even better! Being able to pick the player that is behind and yourself to draw three for three mana is a great deal! And as long as you are in a full pod, Cut a Deal draws you three while only giving one to each opponent!

This has been a brief overview of the group hug cards in white, for my playstyle that is! How do you play white in group hug? Reach out on Twitter and let me know!

- marksquare