Should we propose ideas to reduce mouse clicks & drags?
We could have: An input to group all & ungroup all [F] An input to portrait/character click a group together [alt + click] the portraits you want to group/ungroup (This would only group/ungroup who was clicked on while alt was held down, so you can have 2 groups of 2 or 1 group of 3) (Alt is nice to use because it is currently there to show the worlds tooltips, so that won't create a conflict with grouping/ungrouping)
The chain/unchain animation could play out after the clicks, or pressing the F key.