Ms. Bumbleflower Commander Deck Guide

Ms. Bumbleflower | Illustration by Marta Nael

Group hug decks have a reputation for sneakiness. They pretend to be your friend, providing cards, maybe some land drops, and everybody has a great time! Until the foot drops and they reveal themselves as the true enemy, having amassed more resources than anyone else through one means or another.

Bloomburrow introduced a powerful new group hug commander, one with plenty of power to take over the game even as your opponents draw cards. Let’s see what nonsense we can get up to with Ms. Bumbleflower!

The Deck

Jacked Rabbit | Illustration by Scott Murphy

This deck lives in Bracket 3, both in concept and due to the presence of Commander Game Changers in Cyclonic Rift and Smothering Tithe. This list also has an incredibly streamlined game plan with a heavy focus on the best and brightest counters card in the game—which isn’t much trouble as Bant () is the ideal shard for +1/+1 counter shenanigans.

You want to slam your commander and spread +1/+1 counters around your team while bribing your opponents with extra cards, land drops, and even some counters of their own to turn a blind eye to the rampant corruption benefiting you. A handful of interaction spells, including countermagic and protection, ward off any intrepid attackers or board wipes.

The Commander: Ms. Bumbleflower

Ms. Bumbleflower holds the deck together as our primary source of group hug, card draw, and counter distribution (though the 99 expands on each category). It holds counters astonishingly well—much of the deck’s defensive potential comes from making the 1/5 body into something Doran, the Siege Tower would be jealous of.

Having constant access to a single card that embodies everything the deck wants to do makes the deck far more consistent. This deck wants to play around its commander, so don’t be afraid to use countermagic and protection to keep Ms. Bumbleflower around.

Counter Distribution

A +1/+1 counter deck is only as good as its ability to distribute said counters. Ms. Bumbleflower does exceptional work, but Mom deserves a day off, so I have other cards to get counters on the creatures.

Bristly Bill, Spine Sower and Scythecat Cub rank among the best counter distributors in the game, and they’re certainly the best from the past year or so. Passively accruing counters for taking basic game actions would be good enough, but these take it further by doubling counters.

Bulwark Ox made the deck as a protection spell, but the additional counter distribution doesn’t hurt.

Proft's Eidetic Memory might be overly cute, but it plays nicely with Ms. Bumbleflower’s draw two ability and plenty of group hug effects to toss extra cards your way.

Court of Garenbrig shines in most creature-heavy decks. The deck has more than enough ways to protect the monarch, and this court dominates games when uncontested.

Innkeeper's Talent has outperformed every expectation I had, going from a mere Limited bomb to a staple in Standard and EDH counter decks. The passive counter accumulation adds up over lengthy EDH games. It’s also one of the better counter doublers; cards like Doubling Season and Branching Evolution have the distinct weakness of not doing anything on their own, but Innkeeper's Talent does plenty.

Group Hug

These cards provide resources to one or all of your opponents to butter up the opposition and turn their aggression elsewhere while you build up your board state. They include additional counter distributors, card draw, and even ramp.

Kwain, Itinerant Meddler might be the most honest group hug card in the deck. Everybody goes up a card and a life whenever you activate it. You can’t do much better to garner goodwill in the early game than throw around extra cards. Selvala, Explorer Returned has a similar ability, though the potential for a burst of mana makes it much more powerful.

Tenuous Truce often holds for a turn or two. This one gets much better the earlier you draw it; most Commander players take an early turn or two off to ramp anyway, and everybody could use some cards.

Gluntch, the Bestower does a bit of everything. Whatever you need—counters, cards, or Treasure—is at your fingertips, and the flying body holds counters well. You never have to target the player that’s ahead on board (unless you’re ahead, of course), so it provides critical resources to handle the table’s biggest threat.

Nils, Discipline Enforcer, Noble Heritage, and Orzhov Advokist throw around plenty of counters, with the added benefit of making it harder for your opponents to turn on you.

Excavation Technique should always be demonstrated with the disclaimer that it can’t target your permanents. The spell clears several problematic permanents with startling efficiency, though you should avoid commanders since the Treasure pays for the commander tax.

Wedding Ring places nicely with your group hug effects since you can make the player you propose to draw cards in their turn with Kwain and the like, providing you with even more cards.

Rites of Flourishing might be my favorite group hug card. The combination of Howling Mine and Exploration puts you and your opponents way ahead; landing this just makes more Magic happen. And if you aren’t the one making it, oh well.

Counter Payoffs

Spreading counters around and buddying up to your opponents is well and good, but you need to find ways to convert all that into a win, which is where counter payoffs come in.

Glen Elendra Archmage strikes me as underrated in the counter space. Putting +1/+1 counters on it after it persists cancels out the -1/-1 counter, allowing you to Negate your opponents for days.

Danny Pink is one of the stronger counter payoffs printed recently. The card advantage spirals out of control, especially with something like Generous Pup.

Generous Pup is firmly a counters payoff since it needs another card to generate counters, but your board becomes incredibly scary incredibly fast once you pair this good boy with Court of Garenbrig or Innkeeper's Talent.

Jacked Rabbit and Esper Sentinel don’t care about counters specifically, but both become far stronger when you buff their power.

Dusk Legion Duelist wears counters well thanks to vigilance, and more importantly it rewards you for deploying them with the best of all payoffs: card advantage!

Conclave Mentor rewards you simply, with additional counters. It's as simple as controlling a Incubation Druid for a surge of mana production.

Fathom Mage earns a slot in virtually every counter deck due to the ludicrous ceiling on its card advantage—which more than makes up for a 4-mana 1/1.

Pollywog Prodigy shines in decks that buff its power. Evolve does fine work, but this deck brings out the best of this draw engine. Dare I call it a Rhystic Study? No, I daren’t.

Evolution Witness provides a different angle on card advantage with a repeatable Regrowth that your counter distributors trigger whenever you like.

Kodama of the West Tree isn’t at its best since this deck has three total basics, but I still prefer it as a source of trample over cards like Tuskguard Captain and Duskshell Crawler.

Damning Verdict rounds out the counters payoffs as an often one-sided board wipe that protects you when your opponents go off. It also works as a finisher, clearing away blockers and giving you plenty of time to beat your opponents.

Interaction

Everybody’s least favorite yet most necessary part of the deck, the interaction includes a variety of protection spells and countermagic alongside some board wipes and spot removal—if your opponents can conceive of it, this deck handles it thanks to the intersection of blue and white.

Cyclonic Rift and Winds of Abandon supplement Damning Verdict as additional one-sided wipes while doubling as spot removal in a pinch, though you should try and save them for a finishing blow. Ghostly Prison and Propaganda provide further protection against decks going wide.

Loran of the Third Path handles artifacts and enchantments while hanging with the other group hug cards.

Hopeful Initiate converts counters into Disenchant effects. The repeatability makes up for the rather high cost of 3 mana.

Counterspells are your first layer of defense against Commander’s endless board wipes. This list has a very standard counter suite with Arcane Denial, An Offer You Can't Refuse, and Swan Song holding things down. Glen Elendra Archmage and Sink into Stupor also interact with the stack. Stubborn Denial takes a little work, but I find the meme worth the dream.

Should you fail to repel Damnation before it resolves, you have the means to shelter yourself. I love Galadriel's Dismissal for the flexibility of protecting a key creature or all of them. Teferi's Protection and Heroic Intervention are simply among the best in class, and Ripples of Potential plays nicely with this deck’s deep counter synergies.

The Mana Base

The mana base emphasizes creatures as accelerants so you have ample targets for your counter distributors. I’ve included the usual suspects like Birds of Paradise and Delighted Halfling alongside some spectacular color fixers like Noble Hierarch and Avacyn's Pilgrim.

I also have more deck-specific ramp. Freestrider Lookout sings with Ms. Bumbleflower committing crimes whenever you cast a spell, and Smothering Tithe has a similar synergy with Mom. Bloom Tender belongs in any 3-color deck, and Exploration works best in decks like this, with huge amounts of card draw.

The land base has plenty of good value lands. Sink into Stupor and Bridgeworks Battle are lands that sometimes kill things. Boseiju, Who Endures, Otawara, Soaring City, and Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire extend the interactive suite further.

Field of the Dead isn’t strictly necessary, but slipping it into this list comes at such a low cost that I couldn’t help myself. You have plenty of draw to facilitate hitting your land drops and having a steady, free source of value keeps pace with the cards you give the rest of the table.

The Strategy

This deck wants to play the helpful little bean for the early turns, giving away cards while it makes land drops and positions itself to reveal that it’s been the villain the entire time. You know, the type of twist that will surprise your pod about as much as the revelation that Darth Vader was Luke’s father surprised German audiences.

Look for ramp in your opening hand; it’s probably the most important thing you can find. The high concentration of card draw makes this deck incredibly mana hungry, plus you want to land Ms. Bumbleflower as quickly as you can to make friends early. Next most important is interaction; I find that counter distribution and group hug elements aren’t nearly as important in the opener given that Bumbleflower works as both (not that I’m mulling away something powerful like Bristly Bill, Spine Sower).

Playing this deck well often correlates with your political prowess as a pilot. A common ploy involves giving cards to a player who’s falling behind with the promise of a favor or six once they’ve found their footing. Similarly, if one player pulls ahead of the pack, giving the other two resources and forming a coalition to wrangle the major threat is an easy sell.

Once you pull ahead, you need to change your angle and focus less on giving favors than cashing them in. You need to carefully evaluate which of the players falling behind you want to give cards to; I try to avoid giving card draw to W/B players once I’m ahead so I don’t help them find a sweeper.

Combos and Interactions

This deck has no infinite combos, and most of the interactions are as simple as one card putting +1/+1 counters on creatures and another benefiting from having +1/+1 counters placed on it. But there are a few neat little interactions.

One interaction worth highlighting comes from Ms. Bumbleflower and The Council of Four. If you control both permanents and trigger Ms. Bumbleflower twice, you can target the same player. That player draws two cards total, and you draw two cards since it’s the second time Bumbleflower’s ability has resolved. Council of Four sees the active player draw two cards, so you get another one for a total of three drawn in a single turn!

Another neat interaction comes from the combination of Ms. Bumbleflower (or any counter distributor), Evolution Witness, and Bulwark Ox. All you need to do is sacrifice the Ox, then get it back with Evolution Witness. This gives you a repeatable protection effect to keep your board safe and enable attacks that might not work otherwise.

Rule 0 Violations Check

I can’t imagine pods having a problem with this deck so long as they agree to play at Bracket 3; just make sure they understand that this is a total rebuild, not a tweaked precon, and everything should be fine.

Budget Options

The mana base is always the best place to start with budget cuts. You don’t need fetches and shocks and duals to build a functioning mana base. Be liberal about replacing them with Temples, Gates, and other tap lands to suit your needs; you can also cut Field of the Dead and get in a few more basics alongside cards like Fabled Passage and Tranquil Landscape.

For some more actionable cuts… Game Changers cost plenty of money. Wave Goodbye does a paltry but acceptable Cyclonic Rift impression, and Smuggler's Share could be mistaken for Smothering Tithe as long as you don’t look at the text box. Note that cutting these cards won’t make the deck Bracket 2; it’s too streamlined for that.

Teferi's Protection and Galadriel's Dismissal have several reasonable budget options, including Mutational Advantage, Dawn's Truce, and Selfless Spirit, which works with Evolution Witness.

You can also replace Damning Verdict with Wave Goodbye if you already have a Rift, or you could use Starfall Invocation or Time Wipe to minimize the impact on your board.

Bristly Bill, Spine Sower, Scythecat Cub, and Innkeeper's Talent have varying but high price tags, so I wanted to offer a few budget alternatives:

• Hadana's Climb
• Master Chef
• Arwen, Weaver of Hope
• Luminarch Aspirant

This list has a host of powerful mana dorks, including Delighted Halfling, Bloom Tender, and Biophagus that you can replace with other forms of ramp. Creatures like Sylvan Caryatid are preferable, but I won’t turn my nose up at Three Visits or Farseek.

Esper Sentinel and Faerie Mastermind are powerful card advantage engines that work with your commander, but you could just as easily use Howling Mine and Kami of the Crescent Moon to enhance the group hug package.

Other Builds

Ms. Bumbleflower decks always have a whiff of group hug, but you could take it a few other ways. I can easily see a more token-centric build that leverages cards like Scurry Oak and Basking Broodscale that create tokens when you put counters on them, plus Magic’s many “create a token when you draw your second card” spells like Thopter Fabricator, Alandra, Sky Dreamer, and Emrakul's Messenger.

You could also do a flash build with cards like Seedborn Muse and Wilderness Reclamation to help cast spells on your opponents’ turns and maximize Ms. Bumbleflower triggers rather than just holding up the odd bit of countermagic or protection.

Commanding Conclusion

Gluntch, the Bestower | Illustration by Olivier Bernard

Group hug decks aren’t exactly my style, but I appreciate them. They tend to make more Magic happen; it’s awfully hard to have your mana fall flat or lack interaction when you’re drawing an extra two or three cards a turn. Ms. Bumbleflower backs that card advantage with some terrifying board presence to win, making it a complete package of a deck, even if it won’t take over your local cEDH meta.

What’s your favorite card to pair with Ms. Bumbleflower? How would you build a group hug deck? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!