London mulligan is amazingly powerful. I've had returning mtg players straight up call bs when I explain how they work now, it seems to good to be true. You have to be truely bad at this game to complain about the current state of mulligans...
@@85inexact Agreed. London mulligan definitely did help the Game 1's of combo decks but as he pointed out, lots of sideboard techs are easier to grab to counter those combos in later games. More and more those sideboard cards are needed in turn 1 or 2 to be effective even when not facing combos.
I think one of the biggest things you'll find between really high level great magic players, and the rest of us is that high level players almost always take advantage of a mulligan. Like, one of the most important lessons that you can learn in magic is to stop being afraid of Mulligans. It is so much better to have six or five cards that work, than seven cards that don't. A truly good player understands that while card advantage is extremely important, it's not the only thing you have to worry about, and it's better to have a starting hand that can actually get you to a place where you're going to be popping off, rather than keeping a crappy seven, and praying that you'll get better stuff in the long run. Honestly I think our current Mulligan is so good. Being able to continuously draw back up to seven, and just put away what you don't need? Fantastic, the fact that you literally get to pick and choose is crazy to me.
@cavejohnson4054 I wouldn't say that there's a set number or percentage. Because that really varies on your deck. For example, if you have a deck that requires a combo, you should take advantage of a Mulligan more often than something like a mid-range deck that is designed to basically just be you know a pile of value. So let's say you're playing something like hyper aggro red deck wins or something because that seems like it's going to start being pretty decent in this upcoming standard format. Those early turns are literally the most important turns for your deck, it is significantly more valuable to Mulligan down to a smaller hand that will let you go off early, then it is to hold more cards and have your turns set back. On the contrary, if you were playing something like a slower control deck, a slow hand isn't really a big deal for you in a lot of cases. Because more important are those later game turns. It's all about knowing your deck, knowing your opponent's deck, and trying to make an informed decision. And that's why really good players are less scared of mulligans.because it doesn't matter if you have a hundred cards in your hand, if they're all bad. I think the main thing to remember is just know your game plan, and know what you need to see And when you need to see it. If you are playing early game strong aggression, it is almost always going to be better to start off with a five card hand that works, then a seven card hand that you have to wait to go off until turn 3. And sometimes, because magic has a huge RNG element You're just going to get screwed and it feels bad. Sometimes you mulligan down to like four cards and it's still bad. And that sucks but once again then you have to think about deck building and go "how often is this happening to me? How can I help raise the consistency of my deck?"
yeah, and better mulligans inherently benefit combo decks because its easier to find the cards that you need. i like the london mulligan but making it even better would really cause some balancing issues
I have not heard a single person in real life complain about mulliganing, only online. I think that’s a sign that we don’t need to change it because online magic players would complain about anything
And they already have 3 hands drawn by the game engine. These casuals already get TWO FREE MULLIGANS and they cry about not being able to handle it. They need therapy not rules changes.
I think it's the classic dichotomy of luck you can influence vs luck you can't influence. RNG that happens without you having any influence (ie mulligans) tends to feel bad. Whereas rng that you have some agency over tend to feel better.
Point 1: My take is rng is fun in a casual setting. Mario party, any board game that takes less than an hour, etc. But once people invest time and money into a hobby, and mtg is an expensive hobby, you want less rng and more reward for the time and energy (and some people think money should be here but I disagree, but I think the amount someone spends does influence how much control they would want out of the experience) spent to hone the skills of the hobby. And games that are super rng aren't competitive games. Point 2: The issue with card games imo is that the new audience is the 5 minute game so you can play while you take a shit, and to have a 5 minute game, the whole game is basically determined in the first 3-4 turns. That's pure draw rng. There's not enough game to play to express skill. Card games should not be designed with a gameplay loop of 5-7 minutes in mind. But that's where we are at. People don't want to play a 15 minute game on their phone. They want an in and out dopamine hit. And that's what our paper game is reflecting/becoming.
I like how people with zero knowledge on probability, game theory and statistics think they can fix a game that professional game designers created and continuously developing for three decades.
I agree with you completely. The current mulligan rule works for casual aswell and no, I dont think it is sweary only allow one free mulligan at a casual lgs game. People like to build decks in a dumb way and then ask tables to play in a way that would benefit them. The current mulligan rule is good, how WotC can circumvent non games is to print cards that help you recover easier without going all the way to Uro
They have done a ton to smooth out draws already in recent years. MDFCs, land cyclers, and channel lands can all function as spells or lands depending on the situation.
Mtg has great mulligan rules I play another tcg, fire emblem cipher, and the mulligan rule there is you get 1, shuffle away your hand and draw a new hand, no putting cards to the bottom.
Nice. You actually started with No Land/All Land. Thats the first mulligan rule I read in the little bitty rule books that came with starter 'decks'. Oddly, Ante style rules might bridge a consistency gap. Shuffle up and Exile from the top of deck once a hand is selected. It would offest a form of variance reduction, but players would hate it because you are removing their toys. At the end of the day, players don't want variance at the macro level and opt to optimise fun out of the equation entirely if able.
There may be no elegant solution to this particular problem other than allowing players to start with one or two lands in hand, and deal with the fallout of decks that gain too much consistency through bans. IMO the feels-bad of a mulligan-related non-game has always been one of the worst aspects of Magic, and failing to address it for so long out of fear that a deck that should already likely be banned into oblivion becomes too consistent is not acceptable.
8:04 - A lot of content creators also seed hands, basically predetermining a good, but not insane opening hand they start with to make sure games go decently. It's part of why you shouldn't just copy/paste decklists from content creators because you may not see openings like that very often, they're often low on lands (see cEDH)
I learned Magic at kitchen table with the Vancouver mulligan rule and I was taught that you scry X where X is the number of times you shipped your hand (instead of scry 1). Better that what it actually was, but I still like the London mulligan better
An alternative to starting at 9 is for Hand 1 we draw 9 put 2 back. Hand 2 draw 9 put three back etc. Definitely increases consistency of combo decks greatly but also ensures even fewer non-games due to mana flood or mana drought. Be interesting to try it for a few months to see how I feel about it. Edit: just realized you said this in the video. commented before finishing.
Mulligan x times, keep 7 each time, skip x *-2 draws (but not the draw steps). *-2 for the initial and the one free Draw 9 bottom 2. 1st and 2nd free. After london mull.
Honestly, if a new player is mulliganing a lot it's probably a deck building issue. They should look at why it's happening and try to fix it in their deck. Make it a level up moment. I think the mulligan rule we have now is great.
There are so many different infinite combos in standard now, it's also a combo format. No if ands or buts, infinite combos are a part of magic in every form
To be honest I hate when people try to change mulligans since I feel like theres just such a risk to changing how mulligans work, and current mulligan system is already so decent. I think the only change I could think of that I would be super fine with is that everyone gets an extra mulligan at 5. But any changes would make me super unhappy, because I think lands and such like that especially with how many tools we have now (MDFCs, land cyclers, etc) lets the cost of playing extra "lands" so low and yet people still dont go back to the old ways of ~24+ lands. Sure magic is leaner than it used to be, but we are undeniably greedy in our manabases at like 18-21 lands with mdfcs/cyclers. And thats a deckbuilding choice that is severely effecting our mulligans. (I do think it would be really funny to add a rule that if you are on 2 and attempt to mulligan you can mulligan back to 7 and if you dont keep that then you go to 1. Since it would make a looot of players at like 5, just say ah fuck it unless its a perfect 5 ill just go to the emergency 7 and then get completely shafted half the time by the most disgustingly rancid 7. Itd be so tilt inducing)
I have one idea: You start with 4 cards in hand. If you choose to keep those 4 cards, you get to look at the top 3 cards of your library. You either take those top 3 cards or put all 3 of them at the bottom of your library and take the next top 3 cards of your library. If you choose to mulligan, you start with 1 less card after the mulligan and the rest stands the same.
Some things to consider as options: Bring back information being revealed if you mulligan in some way. Codify the gentlemen’s mulligan. If you and your opponent both choose to mul, nobody goes down a card. Exile or graveyard instead of bottom the cards. These may all be terrible but they’re just ideas. Also, what if deciding who goes first is no longer random. What if you clash to decide play order. There’s still randomness but it puts some of it into deck building.
Let me introduce you to the Colorado Mulligan. Draw three hands of seven cards, look at all three, pick your best hand, shuffle the other two back into the deck, and play. Everyone gets a good hand, every game is better, no one complains about their hand, and hopefully everyone gets to see what everyone else's deck does. We have been running this for years and it is both faster and more fun.
I mainly play Commander with friends. The problem with changing mulligans is that it reenforces bad deckbuilding habits. The more mulligans you have available, or even worse the start at 9 cards idea, the more likely you are to find your land. The more likely you find your land, the more likely you skew further and further towards that 1-land deck. I play more lands than my friends, they have the gas but semi-consistently, if not consistently, get screwed on mana in some way, and I tell them to add lands but they want to keep the "fun" cards in. Fun cards are only fun if you get to play them.
This is ridiculous. The current mulligans are SO GOOD already. Taking a good mulligan is a skill every player should learn. Other games don't even have mulligan rules.
I do respect the need for combo decks. but just want to point out that they do not exist in every format. they do not exist in limited. I'll also add that randomness is an innate( and probably necessary) part of the card game. non-games are just the price we pay for the fun/excitement that comes with randomness.
I like the difference between quality and quantity you use. I wouldn't describe most Tron decks as combo but they would stupidly benefit from a lot of the suggestions you went over.
I think the current mulligan is about as good as we can reasonably do without overcomplicating things. The only change I could think of that might be okay would be that once you go to 5 or lower, you draw one extra card when you finish resolving your mulligan. Even that has abuse potential/judge call nightmares written all over it, though.
When playing at home, my friends and i use what we call the hearthstone mulligan: discard any number of cards, draw that many new ones, shuffle the discards back in and play. One mulligan only, after that the 7 you get are the 7 you play. Its great for casual play, but none of us play fast combo at home. In a competitive setting i think the current rule is fine. Still get to look at a fresh 7 but theres a cost. I personally would like something slightly more permissive, but im not sure how much further you could go without combo decks running over everything.
The reason I support 1 Free Mulligan in Commander at all levels, even cEDH, is because with few exceptions (Rat Colony, Petitioners, Apostles, Seven Dwarves, etc) it's fully Singleton with a 99/98 card deck. It's not as CONSISTENT to get your combo/important pieces in the opening hand. Yes there are more tutors and some "effective duplicates" of various pieces but that's not NEARLY the same as having 4-of in 60 cards. Also, there is no sideboard in Commander (unless you rule 0 a wishboard in your group). Additionally, it allows the non-combo decks to not need to make 15% of their deck spot removal/counterspells just to make sure they have an answer for when the combo-commander hits the field and is kill/counter on site. If it's not in their first 7 they can try once more for free if they feel something at the table merits the urgency. They still need SOME good amount of spot interaction, just not so much they regularly don't get to play any of their actual gameplan.
Here’s what the rule should be. Have a 1 basic land sideboard. You could exile a card from your hand from the game, and replace it with the basic land. But the card is exiled it will not go back in your deck
If the issue is balancing lands, I'd rather take an approach like arena. Search your library for up to 3 basic lands, shuffle your library and draw the remainder to take you up to 7 (or 6 or w/e). The best mulligan is no mulligan.
If anything, the current mulligan rule requires you to be an S-tier player to use it properly. The harder part is asking about the mulligan: specifically when it should be used, when it shouldn't, and the hard division that seperates the two. Until people are willing to answer and discuss that question openly and honestly; the mulligan situation cannot be fixed.
Yes people need to get good at magic the gathering. Mulligans are a massive part of the game. Take the time to learn the game. Its really not hard to build a decent deck and to learn when to mulligan. But nah people just wanna make a pile of cards and then whine at everyone else to take it easy on them. Learn deckbuilding, it'll automatically teach you how to mulligan and play out good lines.
I propose a new mulligan-the land mulligan. A player may exile the cards from the top of his or her library until he or she reaches a basic land. Then a player may exile a card at random from his or her hand to put the basic land into his or her hand. Repeat this as many times as necessary. Shuffle the exiled cards back into the library. This doesn’t punish excessive mulligans.
What’s to stop me from running 3 lands and always mulliganing to get them? A lot of the problems on mtgo arise from the hand smoothing helping people run terribly designed and poorly balanced decks.
I think the people complaining about mulliganing need to take the time to practice their deck and learn how and when to mulligan, magic is a game of skill and chance and current mulligan rules are perfectly fine.
Not a lot could improve what we have... What if when you chose to mulligan, you could opt to let your opponent choose a card from your current hand to exile, instead of going down 1 card? In exchange for that one card, you essentially give them a free duress. Info on your deck, and the ability to rip one card from it. In this age of information is golden, thats a decent cost.
What if you start with your first 7 and you draw a separate additional 7 and then you get to pick which set of 7 you actually start with and then shuffle and proceed as normal?
The way my pod do it is by drawing ten and then putting back 3 (down to hand size). It's not the best way of doing things and i don't think the game rules should change to do it this way, but it works for us
I'm open to new ideas and I'd like to see what people suggest, but currently I think mulligans are extremely important in keeping people from being too greedy with deck building. Turn one discarding/hand disruption is particularly bad if you had to mulligan and perhaps cards that let you draw based on current hand size could help, but letting someone have a free mulligan in any format right now sounds insane. I'm at the point where I think CEDH should no longer have commanders free mulligan.
On your example of hand 3 i london mulligan you can just drop the land and a dark ritual since it's gonna be at the bottom of the deck and you're still gonna mill everything
My friend tried MTG where you can play any card in your hand as a land of one of the colors in its casting cost and it is great. More room for fun spells you can still play non basic and multi color lands. Games are smoother and you dont get mana screwed or flooded.
Sure, though there's a lot of strategies that get broken pretty easily if you allow that. Goblin Charbelcher for one gets a lot easier to win with if you don't need to play a bunch of mediocre MDFCs to avoid having any lands with it. It also hurts the balance of how playing multi color cards should make it harder to hit the correct colors. Right now, the less pips you have the easier it is to cast your spells, but under that system, the more colors a card is, the more colors it can produce.
I don think that the mulligan rule really needs to change, but if I did have to change something I would suggest maybe a hybrid system. I remember there being a point in time when “Partial Paris” was popular among Commander players. What if your first mulligan was Partial Paris then every remaining mulligan was the London?
Current magic players, apparently, have NO IDEA how much better they have it than 10+ years ago. These new mulligan rules aren't even remotely close to as punishing as a mulligan 10-15 years ago used to be. You want a mulligan? Just draw 6. Not draw 7 and pick 1 to get rid of, no no. That's too much choice. You don't like those 6? Draw 5. The fact that you can always sculpt 7 cards and pick your combos from there is disgusting
What about a poker mulligan. Draw your 7. You may place any number of them on the bottom in a random order, and draw that many new cards. No shuffle and draw new 7, no retries. Draw 7, bottom X, draw X, start game.
I've been playing modern and I've never felt better about mulligans in my entire 25 years of magic. I think mulligans would be worryingly good if sideboard cards were more like the silver bullet, absolute lockout pieces we used to see, since you can safely look for them so aggressively.
The problem with changing the mulligan is combo becomes way too strong. People hit the the peices they need to consistently, and they take over the meta completely. I would support a free mulligan or something a little bit more hospitable in limited. It would genuinely improve the one issue with the format, which is it being incredibly hard to come back from a 5 card or less hand. Additionally, it helps with the inconsistency of mana bases in many limited formats.
Something I read on reddit just a couple days ago is a thing that players at an LGS did called "mana drop" where they'd simply drop the lands from their starting hands into play like leylines and then draw that many cards to replace them. Might be worth looking into. EDIT: With that said, I don't think it would be a healthy method to solve the mulligan issue, at least not as-is. Burn and Fast Mana decks would get buried.
In a competitive scene dropping a single land, basic or not, will tell you're opponent what you're playing. There's no way I want to give that kind of information to anyone on a close list tournament. Staff is one thing, players is another.
So if you have 6 lands in your opening hand while your opponent has 2 you get to start up 4 lands while not going down any cards in hand to compensate? That doesn't seem at all balanced.
No thats insane. All fast red decks with low mana cost would vanish instantly to be replaced by midrange decks moving at the same speed. You are about to make 4 drops the new 1 drop and this will absolutely wreck the game. Stop trying to change shit ya dont understand. Get better at the actual game
@@seandun7083 its just more insane nonsense from people who dont know how to play the game. The best hand becomes 7 lands and you stop putting anything of lower cost than a 4 drop in your deck. Delusional suggestion
mulligans while keeping a high number of cards will only benefit combo decks. if there's no risk to not getting your turn 1 wins there's no reason to play any other decks
No. Mulligan will always feel bad. This is the best iteration. I've watched players lose out of a tournament because they had to mull to 4 in game three.Its a game of chance, a card game. You give more cards to hand, you essentially make combo better.
I hate mulliganing, but if we remove the punishing aspect, what would hold back degenerate combo decks from consistently finding their pieces by turn 0
Mulligans makes thoughtseize effects better than they should be Mulligans also turbo enable combo or linear decks like storm or Tron Mulligans allow xerox shell decks to keep 1 land 3 cantrips and a free counter pretty consistently Really the london mulligans makes the game easier for quite a few archetypes.
18:30 me, a combo player who uses almost every tutor in black and always tutors turn 1: 👁️👄👁️ in my defense, i only play that deck when i’m playing cEDH with the rest of my playgroup who wants to go at crackhead speed 🤣😂
dont like 7? draw 6. dont like that? draw 5. its simple and works. current standard is at pre modern horizons, modern power level, and are about to have green goblins getting tapped by sticky webs in standard. weve got bigger fish to fry.
I am so tired of hearing the “drawing the right amount of lands is a deck building skill issue get güd scrub.” Argument. Today I lost a game on turn 5 having never drawn a 3rd land. Surely I made a mistake and forgot to take something out last time I edited and didn’t put the lands back in? Nope. 48 lands. FORTY-EIGHT LANDS in a 100 card deck. And never drew a land in 5 turns.
I think we should be able to take 5 basic lands out of our deck at the start of each match and draw 1 card from our land deck as a replacement for our draw step.
No, absolutely a shit take. Non games are not fun in the slightest for the person playing and even the person winning. It’s a total waste of both peoples time.
No lands, free mull Its gonna cause problems tho. People will construct decks with like 5 lands and mull over and over. I say you get 1 free mull for a no lander at least.
If you mull to 5 and feel bad then you suck at deck building. I mull to five all the time and win in the same way as if I had kept a 7. I've won one game mulling to three in 2015 and have never been able to replicate it. I won a few games mulling to 4. 5 and upwards are business as usual. These people cry about everything.
honestly? im thinking that if you are having to mull that aggressively like on a constant basis then i believe that comes down to a deck building error of some sort... either you are playing too greedy of a mana base or you dont have a proper spread of lands in your deck... also these seem to be takes from commander players more then like actual competitive format players... because most competitive format players will be like that this mulligan feels a little overtuned in some cases and allows you to cheat on mana bases and ultimately make them greedy as all hell... and thats almost no matter what format you are playing... when you see a 5c 60 card constructed deck and it is only running like 20-22 lands in it that feels like it is greedy as all hell... and when in commander you can pretty comfortably play a 30-35 land mana base and almost never need to reach for basics (unless you have people blood mooning, magus of the mooning, etc.) like i feel like that because of the current mulligan you can easily cheat on these mana bases if you are keen in deck building and also in your mulligan decisions...
The thing is noone is looking at this objectively. Everyones opinions are skewed by their own personal agendas. This narrative that better mulligans benefit combo decks more is just stupid. Fair decks can mulligan for interaction or hate pieces as well. We need a Hearthstone mulligan. Draw 7, mull away X, draw X, shuffle mulled and go. People should start every game with 7 cards, period. Interaction spells become more powerful with each mulligan, it should not be like that. Creating card advantage should be due to deckbuilding, and skill, not due to luck. There is enough variance in mtg even without shitty mulligans.
I don't know that the hearthstone mulligan fixes the issue of not having a playable hand. You can miss lands two hands in a row, especially if you want to keep some of your first hand.
Back to how it was when? This isn't the first time it's been changed. Stone Tongue Basilisk is happy it's back to normal while Master of Arms is still sad that tapped blockers can deal damage.
As consistent as nongames are in yugioh, from what I've seen here on youtube, mulls ok yugioh would break it even more. Yes the bricks feel bad but your opponent would also be able to get what they need to stop you from stopping them at the same time. So that starter card and 2 hand traps..feel like that would be worse
@billlong4586 Oh, for sure. I would only say the 2nd player would be allowed to mulligan as going 1st is so powerful that going first alone could win you games. Tho it's so much of a balancing act in yugioh now that 1 card combos are the norm with about half of the 40 card deck being handtraps.
@fusionxtras yea like my tenpai *sign*. It's ok Ryzel and Maliss are coming in to take things beyond, which is insane and here i am with my hero pile that's been the same more or less since 2018, lmao
Keep current Mulligan rules but you are allowed to replace 1 card with a basic land once you keep the hand. So I guess most people would be happy after the first mulligan, you end up with 7 cards in the starting hand and even if you have 1 land you can fetch a basic land to replace one of your remaining cards (you shuffle it into library) and still place 1 card at the bottom of your library as we currently do. In short: Hand two (drop 1 or drop 2 and fetch a basic land)
Is anyone else getting Microsoft Word Paperclip Guy Vibes from ThatMillGuy? Just sitting in the corner of a doc giving us recommendations...
This is what I aspire to be
@ThatMillGuyShaf I love it! Great video. Mulligans are touchy and the only place to mess with it are at the kitchen table as you say.
I think we are in a good spot with the current mulligan rules
London mulligan is amazingly powerful. I've had returning mtg players straight up call bs when I explain how they work now, it seems to good to be true. You have to be truely bad at this game to complain about the current state of mulligans...
@@85inexact Agreed. London mulligan definitely did help the Game 1's of combo decks but as he pointed out, lots of sideboard techs are easier to grab to counter those combos in later games. More and more those sideboard cards are needed in turn 1 or 2 to be effective even when not facing combos.
As a combo player I would personally suck off the head judge every event to get a free mulligan.
Would be so broken.
wtf kci players didn't even get free mulligans and had to do it just to play, scammed??
It’s okay, KCI players got to watch their opponents grow old and die waiting for them to finish their combo in the hopes they brick it at some point.
I think one of the biggest things you'll find between really high level great magic players, and the rest of us is that high level players almost always take advantage of a mulligan.
Like, one of the most important lessons that you can learn in magic is to stop being afraid of Mulligans. It is so much better to have six or five cards that work, than seven cards that don't.
A truly good player understands that while card advantage is extremely important, it's not the only thing you have to worry about, and it's better to have a starting hand that can actually get you to a place where you're going to be popping off, rather than keeping a crappy seven, and praying that you'll get better stuff in the long run.
Honestly I think our current Mulligan is so good. Being able to continuously draw back up to seven, and just put away what you don't need? Fantastic, the fact that you literally get to pick and choose is crazy to me.
What percent of the time should you mulligan 50%?
@cavejohnson4054 I wouldn't say that there's a set number or percentage. Because that really varies on your deck. For example, if you have a deck that requires a combo, you should take advantage of a Mulligan more often than something like a mid-range deck that is designed to basically just be you know a pile of value.
So let's say you're playing something like hyper aggro red deck wins or something because that seems like it's going to start being pretty decent in this upcoming standard format. Those early turns are literally the most important turns for your deck, it is significantly more valuable to Mulligan down to a smaller hand that will let you go off early, then it is to hold more cards and have your turns set back. On the contrary, if you were playing something like a slower control deck, a slow hand isn't really a big deal for you in a lot of cases. Because more important are those later game turns. It's all about knowing your deck, knowing your opponent's deck, and trying to make an informed decision. And that's why really good players are less scared of mulligans.because it doesn't matter if you have a hundred cards in your hand, if they're all bad.
I think the main thing to remember is just know your game plan, and know what you need to see And when you need to see it. If you are playing early game strong aggression, it is almost always going to be better to start off with a five card hand that works, then a seven card hand that you have to wait to go off until turn 3.
And sometimes, because magic has a huge RNG element You're just going to get screwed and it feels bad. Sometimes you mulligan down to like four cards and it's still bad. And that sucks but once again then you have to think about deck building and go "how often is this happening to me? How can I help raise the consistency of my deck?"
yeah, and better mulligans inherently benefit combo decks because its easier to find the cards that you need. i like the london mulligan but making it even better would really cause some balancing issues
@@ComradeVenus yeah I see 0 reasons to change the mulligan especially in a way that makes it stronger lol
Just play opps all spells with no/mostly lands. Always have gas lol😅
People need to understand MtG is a game with downsides. And that’s part of the fun. Not everything has to be all upsides all of the time.
I have not heard a single person in real life complain about mulliganing, only online. I think that’s a sign that we don’t need to change it because online magic players would complain about anything
And they already have 3 hands drawn by the game engine. These casuals already get TWO FREE MULLIGANS and they cry about not being able to handle it. They need therapy not rules changes.
Variance is important in card games, I wish more people accepted it
Luck has left MTG and, I'd argue, games as a whole. Everyone wants to min-max through the nose and want nothing to do with Luck being factor.
I think it's the classic dichotomy of luck you can influence vs luck you can't influence. RNG that happens without you having any influence (ie mulligans) tends to feel bad. Whereas rng that you have some agency over tend to feel better.
good
Point 1: My take is rng is fun in a casual setting. Mario party, any board game that takes less than an hour, etc. But once people invest time and money into a hobby, and mtg is an expensive hobby, you want less rng and more reward for the time and energy (and some people think money should be here but I disagree, but I think the amount someone spends does influence how much control they would want out of the experience) spent to hone the skills of the hobby. And games that are super rng aren't competitive games.
Point 2: The issue with card games imo is that the new audience is the 5 minute game so you can play while you take a shit, and to have a 5 minute game, the whole game is basically determined in the first 3-4 turns. That's pure draw rng. There's not enough game to play to express skill. Card games should not be designed with a gameplay loop of 5-7 minutes in mind. But that's where we are at. People don't want to play a 15 minute game on their phone. They want an in and out dopamine hit. And that's what our paper game is reflecting/becoming.
Was that back before or after sligh red completely steamrolled all the shit decks back in the 90s?
@@matd2892 Come play yugioh, we have deep, interactive games with almost 0 draw RNG
I like how people with zero knowledge on probability, game theory and statistics think they can fix a game that professional game designers created and continuously developing for three decades.
I've always thought that you should get a free mulligan on the draw, since being on the play is such an advantage.
That could be way better than the extra card.
@@TheCubicalGuy yea thats not going to happen, that would be 2 broken
The mulligan rule is great now, combo decks are very strong but so are other decks so the formats are well balanced.
I agree with you completely. The current mulligan rule works for casual aswell and no, I dont think it is sweary only allow one free mulligan at a casual lgs game. People like to build decks in a dumb way and then ask tables to play in a way that would benefit them.
The current mulligan rule is good, how WotC can circumvent non games is to print cards that help you recover easier without going all the way to Uro
They have done a ton to smooth out draws already in recent years. MDFCs, land cyclers, and channel lands can all function as spells or lands depending on the situation.
I do actually think Standard would be way better if it had the Commander mulligan rule, at least in best of one.
everyone and their mom would play gruul leyline or some kind of early combo
@@nazareous7199 Good thing the leylines are banned in bo1
@@wedgearyxsaber theres more kind of magic than just arena best of 1… this video is more for competitive magic, or at least im assuming so
@@nazareous7199 good point. No clue why I assumed this discussion was on bo1.
Maybe because the original comment was talking best of one.
@@nazareous7199 Leyline of Resonance is banned…
Mtg has great mulligan rules
I play another tcg, fire emblem cipher, and the mulligan rule there is you get 1, shuffle away your hand and draw a new hand, no putting cards to the bottom.
Nice. You actually started with No Land/All Land. Thats the first mulligan rule I read in the little bitty rule books that came with starter 'decks'. Oddly, Ante style rules might bridge a consistency gap.
Shuffle up and Exile from the top of deck once a hand is selected. It would offest a form of variance reduction, but players would hate it because you are removing their toys. At the end of the day, players don't want variance at the macro level and opt to optimise fun out of the equation entirely if able.
There may be no elegant solution to this particular problem other than allowing players to start with one or two lands in hand, and deal with the fallout of decks that gain too much consistency through bans. IMO the feels-bad of a mulligan-related non-game has always been one of the worst aspects of Magic, and failing to address it for so long out of fear that a deck that should already likely be banned into oblivion becomes too consistent is not acceptable.
The london mulligan is the most powerful thing in magic
8:04 - A lot of content creators also seed hands, basically predetermining a good, but not insane opening hand they start with to make sure games go decently. It's part of why you shouldn't just copy/paste decklists from content creators because you may not see openings like that very often, they're often low on lands (see cEDH)
I learned Magic at kitchen table with the Vancouver mulligan rule and I was taught that you scry X where X is the number of times you shipped your hand (instead of scry 1). Better that what it actually was, but I still like the London mulligan better
An alternative to starting at 9 is for Hand 1 we draw 9 put 2 back. Hand 2 draw 9 put three back etc. Definitely increases consistency of combo decks greatly but also ensures even fewer non-games due to mana flood or mana drought. Be interesting to try it for a few months to see how I feel about it.
Edit: just realized you said this in the video. commented before finishing.
Mulligan x times, keep 7 each time, skip x *-2 draws (but not the draw steps).
*-2 for the initial and the one free
Draw 9 bottom 2. 1st and 2nd free. After london mull.
Honestly, if a new player is mulliganing a lot it's probably a deck building issue. They should look at why it's happening and try to fix it in their deck. Make it a level up moment. I think the mulligan rule we have now is great.
There are so many different infinite combos in standard now, it's also a combo format. No if ands or buts, infinite combos are a part of magic in every form
To be honest I hate when people try to change mulligans since I feel like theres just such a risk to changing how mulligans work, and current mulligan system is already so decent.
I think the only change I could think of that I would be super fine with is that everyone gets an extra mulligan at 5.
But any changes would make me super unhappy, because I think lands and such like that especially with how many tools we have now (MDFCs, land cyclers, etc) lets the cost of playing extra "lands" so low and yet people still dont go back to the old ways of ~24+ lands. Sure magic is leaner than it used to be, but we are undeniably greedy in our manabases at like 18-21 lands with mdfcs/cyclers. And thats a deckbuilding choice that is severely effecting our mulligans.
(I do think it would be really funny to add a rule that if you are on 2 and attempt to mulligan you can mulligan back to 7 and if you dont keep that then you go to 1. Since it would make a looot of players at like 5, just say ah fuck it unless its a perfect 5 ill just go to the emergency 7 and then get completely shafted half the time by the most disgustingly rancid 7. Itd be so tilt inducing)
I have one idea: You start with 4 cards in hand. If you choose to keep those 4 cards, you get to look at the top 3 cards of your library. You either take those top 3 cards or put all 3 of them at the bottom of your library and take the next top 3 cards of your library. If you choose to mulligan, you start with 1 less card after the mulligan and the rest stands the same.
Some things to consider as options:
Bring back information being revealed if you mulligan in some way.
Codify the gentlemen’s mulligan. If you and your opponent both choose to mul, nobody goes down a card.
Exile or graveyard instead of bottom the cards.
These may all be terrible but they’re just ideas.
Also, what if deciding who goes first is no longer random. What if you clash to decide play order. There’s still randomness but it puts some of it into deck building.
Let me introduce you to the Colorado Mulligan. Draw three hands of seven cards, look at all three, pick your best hand, shuffle the other two back into the deck, and play. Everyone gets a good hand, every game is better, no one complains about their hand, and hopefully everyone gets to see what everyone else's deck does. We have been running this for years and it is both faster and more fun.
I mainly play Commander with friends. The problem with changing mulligans is that it reenforces bad deckbuilding habits. The more mulligans you have available, or even worse the start at 9 cards idea, the more likely you are to find your land. The more likely you find your land, the more likely you skew further and further towards that 1-land deck. I play more lands than my friends, they have the gas but semi-consistently, if not consistently, get screwed on mana in some way, and I tell them to add lands but they want to keep the "fun" cards in. Fun cards are only fun if you get to play them.
This is ridiculous. The current mulligans are SO GOOD already. Taking a good mulligan is a skill every player should learn.
Other games don't even have mulligan rules.
I do respect the need for combo decks. but just want to point out that they do not exist in every format. they do not exist in limited.
I'll also add that randomness is an innate( and probably necessary) part of the card game. non-games are just the price we pay for the fun/excitement that comes with randomness.
There is a combo in the current limited format with Bloodthirsty Conqueror and Marauding Blightpriest. It depends on the format.
@@seandun7083 a combo exists right now, a combo deck does not.
I like the difference between quality and quantity you use. I wouldn't describe most Tron decks as combo but they would stupidly benefit from a lot of the suggestions you went over.
I think the current mulligan is about as good as we can reasonably do without overcomplicating things. The only change I could think of that might be okay would be that once you go to 5 or lower, you draw one extra card when you finish resolving your mulligan. Even that has abuse potential/judge call nightmares written all over it, though.
When playing at home, my friends and i use what we call the hearthstone mulligan: discard any number of cards, draw that many new ones, shuffle the discards back in and play. One mulligan only, after that the 7 you get are the 7 you play. Its great for casual play, but none of us play fast combo at home. In a competitive setting i think the current rule is fine. Still get to look at a fresh 7 but theres a cost. I personally would like something slightly more permissive, but im not sure how much further you could go without combo decks running over everything.
The reason I support 1 Free Mulligan in Commander at all levels, even cEDH, is because with few exceptions (Rat Colony, Petitioners, Apostles, Seven Dwarves, etc) it's fully Singleton with a 99/98 card deck. It's not as CONSISTENT to get your combo/important pieces in the opening hand. Yes there are more tutors and some "effective duplicates" of various pieces but that's not NEARLY the same as having 4-of in 60 cards.
Also, there is no sideboard in Commander (unless you rule 0 a wishboard in your group). Additionally, it allows the non-combo decks to not need to make 15% of their deck spot removal/counterspells just to make sure they have an answer for when the combo-commander hits the field and is kill/counter on site. If it's not in their first 7 they can try once more for free if they feel something at the table merits the urgency. They still need SOME good amount of spot interaction, just not so much they regularly don't get to play any of their actual gameplan.
Standard has combos, they are slower but it still.
Here’s what the rule should be. Have a 1 basic land sideboard. You could exile a card from your hand from the game, and replace it with the basic land. But the card is exiled it will not go back in your deck
If the issue is balancing lands, I'd rather take an approach like arena. Search your library for up to 3 basic lands, shuffle your library and draw the remainder to take you up to 7 (or 6 or w/e). The best mulligan is no mulligan.
The person going second should get one free mulligan. Would help slightly reduce the power of being on the play too.
If anything, the current mulligan rule requires you to be an S-tier player to use it properly.
The harder part is asking about the mulligan: specifically when it should be used, when it shouldn't, and the hard division that seperates the two.
Until people are willing to answer and discuss that question openly and honestly; the mulligan situation cannot be fixed.
Yes people need to get good at magic the gathering. Mulligans are a massive part of the game. Take the time to learn the game. Its really not hard to build a decent deck and to learn when to mulligan.
But nah people just wanna make a pile of cards and then whine at everyone else to take it easy on them.
Learn deckbuilding, it'll automatically teach you how to mulligan and play out good lines.
I propose a new mulligan-the land mulligan.
A player may exile the cards from the top of his or her library until he or she reaches a basic land. Then a player may exile a card at random from his or her hand to put the basic land into his or her hand. Repeat this as many times as necessary. Shuffle the exiled cards back into the library.
This doesn’t punish excessive mulligans.
What’s to stop me from running 3 lands and always mulliganing to get them? A lot of the problems on mtgo arise from the hand smoothing helping people run terribly designed and poorly balanced decks.
@@jakecarlson3709Shuffling away your combo, revealing your entire library, or single-target land destruction.
This is the best mulligan rule I ever heard of and I started in. 2020
I think the people complaining about mulliganing need to take the time to practice their deck and learn how and when to mulligan, magic is a game of skill and chance and current mulligan rules are perfectly fine.
Not a lot could improve what we have... What if when you chose to mulligan, you could opt to let your opponent choose a card from your current hand to exile, instead of going down 1 card? In exchange for that one card, you essentially give them a free duress. Info on your deck, and the ability to rip one card from it. In this age of information is golden, thats a decent cost.
What if you start with your first 7 and you draw a separate additional 7 and then you get to pick which set of 7 you actually start with and then shuffle and proceed as normal?
The way my pod do it is by drawing ten and then putting back 3 (down to hand size). It's not the best way of doing things and i don't think the game rules should change to do it this way, but it works for us
I'm open to new ideas and I'd like to see what people suggest, but currently I think mulligans are extremely important in keeping people from being too greedy with deck building. Turn one discarding/hand disruption is particularly bad if you had to mulligan and perhaps cards that let you draw based on current hand size could help, but letting someone have a free mulligan in any format right now sounds insane. I'm at the point where I think CEDH should no longer have commanders free mulligan.
On your example of hand 3 i london mulligan you can just drop the land and a dark ritual since it's gonna be at the bottom of the deck and you're still gonna mill everything
My friend tried MTG where you can play any card in your hand as a land of one of the colors in its casting cost and it is great. More room for fun spells you can still play non basic and multi color lands. Games are smoother and you dont get mana screwed or flooded.
soooo basically duel masters?
Sure, though there's a lot of strategies that get broken pretty easily if you allow that. Goblin Charbelcher for one gets a lot easier to win with if you don't need to play a bunch of mediocre MDFCs to avoid having any lands with it.
It also hurts the balance of how playing multi color cards should make it harder to hit the correct colors. Right now, the less pips you have the easier it is to cast your spells, but under that system, the more colors a card is, the more colors it can produce.
We REALLY need something to mitigate the advantage of going first..... not mulliganing... mulligans are fine.
Casual: London + no lands = repeat whichever the mulligan you’re on.
Comp: London #optimal
I don think that the mulligan rule really needs to change, but if I did have to change something I would suggest maybe a hybrid system. I remember there being a point in time when “Partial Paris” was popular among Commander players. What if your first mulligan was Partial Paris then every remaining mulligan was the London?
Current magic players, apparently, have NO IDEA how much better they have it than 10+ years ago.
These new mulligan rules aren't even remotely close to as punishing as a mulligan 10-15 years ago used to be.
You want a mulligan? Just draw 6. Not draw 7 and pick 1 to get rid of, no no. That's too much choice. You don't like those 6? Draw 5.
The fact that you can always sculpt 7 cards and pick your combos from there is disgusting
What about a poker mulligan. Draw your 7. You may place any number of them on the bottom in a random order, and draw that many new cards. No shuffle and draw new 7, no retries. Draw 7, bottom X, draw X, start game.
I've been playing modern and I've never felt better about mulligans in my entire 25 years of magic. I think mulligans would be worryingly good if sideboard cards were more like the silver bullet, absolute lockout pieces we used to see, since you can safely look for them so aggressively.
Why not just have a rotating mulligan depending on the round?
The problem with changing the mulligan is combo becomes way too strong. People hit the the peices they need to consistently, and they take over the meta completely.
I would support a free mulligan or something a little bit more hospitable in limited. It would genuinely improve the one issue with the format, which is it being incredibly hard to come back from a 5 card or less hand. Additionally, it helps with the inconsistency of mana bases in many limited formats.
Mulligan however many times you want but your opponent gets see your hand each time and +1 starting card.
Something I read on reddit just a couple days ago is a thing that players at an LGS did called "mana drop" where they'd simply drop the lands from their starting hands into play like leylines and then draw that many cards to replace them. Might be worth looking into.
EDIT: With that said, I don't think it would be a healthy method to solve the mulligan issue, at least not as-is. Burn and Fast Mana decks would get buried.
In a competitive scene dropping a single land, basic or not, will tell you're opponent what you're playing. There's no way I want to give that kind of information to anyone on a close list tournament. Staff is one thing, players is another.
@@canismajor1186 Fair. It's probably more of a casual format thing.
So if you have 6 lands in your opening hand while your opponent has 2 you get to start up 4 lands while not going down any cards in hand to compensate? That doesn't seem at all balanced.
No thats insane. All fast red decks with low mana cost would vanish instantly to be replaced by midrange decks moving at the same speed.
You are about to make 4 drops the new 1 drop and this will absolutely wreck the game. Stop trying to change shit ya dont understand. Get better at the actual game
@@seandun7083 its just more insane nonsense from people who dont know how to play the game.
The best hand becomes 7 lands and you stop putting anything of lower cost than a 4 drop in your deck. Delusional suggestion
what if we drew 9 but only kept 7, mulliganning still goes 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, but we see more cards to make more hands keepable
Then we lower land counts even more and make combo even better
mulligans while keeping a high number of cards will only benefit combo decks. if there's no risk to not getting your turn 1 wins there's no reason to play any other decks
No. Mulligan will always feel bad. This is the best iteration. I've watched players lose out of a tournament because they had to mull to 4 in game three.Its a game of chance, a card game. You give more cards to hand, you essentially make combo better.
When I first started we only had 2 ways to mulligan.
Zero lands
Zero spells.
God kids are spoiled now a days😂😂😂😂
people will complain about everything. i wouldnt be surprised if they start complaining that they have to shuffle :/
I hate mulliganing, but if we remove the punishing aspect, what would hold back degenerate combo decks from consistently finding their pieces by turn 0
Mulligans makes thoughtseize effects better than they should be
Mulligans also turbo enable combo or linear decks like storm or Tron
Mulligans allow xerox shell decks to keep 1 land 3 cantrips and a free counter pretty consistently
Really the london mulligans makes the game easier for quite a few archetypes.
I'm good either way but my friends and I always did one free mulligan to keep the games more balanced
18:30 me, a combo player who uses almost every tutor in black and always tutors turn 1: 👁️👄👁️
in my defense, i only play that deck when i’m playing cEDH with the rest of my playgroup who wants to go at crackhead speed 🤣😂
You can’t win them all. Some people love to min/max the fun right out of it.
Could go to 9 and put 2 back, and then 8 and 7 ECT.
dont like 7? draw 6. dont like that? draw 5. its simple and works. current standard is at pre modern horizons, modern power level, and are about to have green goblins getting tapped by sticky webs in standard. weve got bigger fish to fry.
I run an red blue hand depletion deck I love the ability to mull to 5 by turn 3 I have no cards in hand and a 7/7 flying dragon on the field
I am so tired of hearing the “drawing the right amount of lands is a deck building skill issue get güd scrub.” Argument.
Today I lost a game on turn 5 having never drawn a 3rd land.
Surely I made a mistake and forgot to take something out last time I edited and didn’t put the lands back in?
Nope. 48 lands.
FORTY-EIGHT LANDS in a 100 card deck. And never drew a land in 5 turns.
I think we should be able to take 5 basic lands out of our deck at the start of each match and draw 1 card from our land deck as a replacement for our draw step.
One free mulligan is my take. Keep it simple.
would you can muligan any number of times (with reveal) but your oponent may draw cards equal too the number of muligans you took be worth conisdering
combo is only bad when its overwhelming. but the same can be said about literally any archetype so thats basically a nothing statement
The current mulligan is too easy to mold hands. Nongames are part of the game. The old mulligan rule was the best. Draw one less, then scry 1.
No, absolutely a shit take. Non games are not fun in the slightest for the person playing and even the person winning. It’s a total waste of both peoples time.
Just let everyone construct their perfect hand
london mulligan is best mulligan
I think mulligans are too forgiving as it is
Base it on threat level and/or when the deck can realistically win.
We really need something more objective than that.
This mulligan is awesome
You know I have to say at least MTG has Mulligans Go look at Yu-Gi-Oh mulliganing is not allowed they just end the game and start a new match
No lands, free mull
Its gonna cause problems tho. People will construct decks with like 5 lands and mull over and over. I say you get 1 free mull for a no lander at least.
start with 20 cards. randomness is dumb
as a yugioh player, what is a mulligan
I never mulligan i always live or die by my first draw.
If you mull to 5 and feel bad then you suck at deck building. I mull to five all the time and win in the same way as if I had kept a 7. I've won one game mulling to three in 2015 and have never been able to replicate it. I won a few games mulling to 4. 5 and upwards are business as usual. These people cry about everything.
honestly? im thinking that if you are having to mull that aggressively like on a constant basis then i believe that comes down to a deck building error of some sort... either you are playing too greedy of a mana base or you dont have a proper spread of lands in your deck... also these seem to be takes from commander players more then like actual competitive format players... because most competitive format players will be like that this mulligan feels a little overtuned in some cases and allows you to cheat on mana bases and ultimately make them greedy as all hell... and thats almost no matter what format you are playing... when you see a 5c 60 card constructed deck and it is only running like 20-22 lands in it that feels like it is greedy as all hell... and when in commander you can pretty comfortably play a 30-35 land mana base and almost never need to reach for basics (unless you have people blood mooning, magus of the mooning, etc.) like i feel like that because of the current mulligan you can easily cheat on these mana bases if you are keen in deck building and also in your mulligan decisions...
The thing is noone is looking at this objectively. Everyones opinions are skewed by their own personal agendas. This narrative that better mulligans benefit combo decks more is just stupid. Fair decks can mulligan for interaction or hate pieces as well.
We need a Hearthstone mulligan. Draw 7, mull away X, draw X, shuffle mulled and go. People should start every game with 7 cards, period.
Interaction spells become more powerful with each mulligan, it should not be like that. Creating card advantage should be due to deckbuilding, and skill, not due to luck. There is enough variance in mtg even without shitty mulligans.
I don't know that the hearthstone mulligan fixes the issue of not having a playable hand. You can miss lands two hands in a row, especially if you want to keep some of your first hand.
Then you should order the cards in your deck dont even shuffle.
You lot are insane.
Two words: skill issue
No more changing rules ffs.
Put damage assignment back to how it was and dont any of you dare touch mulligans we finally got something good stop.
Back to how it was when? This isn't the first time it's been changed. Stone Tongue Basilisk is happy it's back to normal while Master of Arms is still sad that tapped blockers can deal damage.
They dont know what they are asking for lol
Man, I wish i could mulligan *cries in Yu-Gi-Oh*
As consistent as nongames are in yugioh, from what I've seen here on youtube, mulls ok yugioh would break it even more. Yes the bricks feel bad but your opponent would also be able to get what they need to stop you from stopping them at the same time. So that starter card and 2 hand traps..feel like that would be worse
@billlong4586 Oh, for sure. I would only say the 2nd player would be allowed to mulligan as going 1st is so powerful that going first alone could win you games. Tho it's so much of a balancing act in yugioh now that 1 card combos are the norm with about half of the 40 card deck being handtraps.
@@damon3095like tenpai dragon? 15 engine with handtraps and board breakers to fill the rest
@fusionxtras yea like my tenpai *sign*. It's ok Ryzel and Maliss are coming in to take things beyond, which is insane and here i am with my hero pile that's been the same more or less since 2018, lmao
@damon3095 here's hoping for new thundra support!
Keep current Mulligan rules but you are allowed to replace 1 card with a basic land once you keep the hand. So I guess most people would be happy after the first mulligan, you end up with 7 cards in the starting hand and even if you have 1 land you can fetch a basic land to replace one of your remaining cards (you shuffle it into library) and still place 1 card at the bottom of your library as we currently do. In short:
Hand two (drop 1 or drop 2 and fetch a basic land)
Makes colors too easy, since you can put in a source of whatever color you need. Makes playing multicolor decks too easy, especially in Limited.
I like this, I'm going to try it this weekend and see how it feels. Simple change. Might be nutty, but that's what playtesting is for.
Skill issue 🤷
Mulligans are fine. Find other content.
A lot of our tables just do free mulligans as long as it's not ridiculous
Mulligans feel the worst when you're down. 1 free mulligan if you lost the last game
Pfft, no...
Nice vid!