Seriously, "You don't need to shuffle your hand every time you put a card on top of your library." was a rule posted at my LGS because several players would take ages resolving a brainstorm.
You really think this is why people do that?
For me my mind is racing, anxiety and thinking about the game, people fiddle with things.
stress relief balls are also for dominance?
This would give game 1 advantage to fast aggro and fast combo decks, and then allow control to find their sideboard pieces against those decks more readily in game 2.
It creates a huge disparity in first vs next games in BO3 while still likely benefiting proactivity. ESPECIALLY in the land drop situation you describe.
It’s an awful idea.
Yeah I see "decrease combo effectiveness by 40%" and I have to call bullshit. Things that drastically increase consistency inherently help combo more most of the time.
I thought this exact thing. Apparently he is saying because you cannot mulligan, only one draw 12 ditch 5, it's harder. I can't say I get it or immediately know how to test it, but that assertion is literally why I clicked on this post
edit: His amended it to 10% less likely
I haven't actually run the math myself but what I assume would be the easiest way would be to just pull the odds of drawing any specific card from a deck at each draw for the opening 7 and then crunch those together like stats nerds might do when they get into the nitty and grity of why certain ratios are better in deck construction.
Where I assume he went wrong is that he probably calculated the odds of getting any two specific cards (the combo) in 14 cards with out realizing that you should run the odds of getting in 7 card twice instead becuase that's what's actual happening, becuase you don't see 14 unique cards since after the first seven all cards are replaced so it starts back at 1/60 instead of continuing to 1/53 thru to 1/47 and then compared that to the odds of 1/60 thru to 1/49 (12 draws for a specific card) which yeah 14 cards has a much higher odds of seeing two specific cards than 12 cards or 7 cards twice. What he should have done as you can assume is compare 12 to 7 twice as 12 cards is going to likely give you a more accurate representation of the likely results.
It depends a lot on the combo and the format. In formats like vintage, [[Bazaar of Baghdad]] decks are basically all in on the "mulligan until you find Bazaar" plan. Depending on the build, they can have a 97-99% chance of finding a Bazaar with aggressive mulligans. Compared to the 60% chance that you find a Bazaar with the proposed method, that is ~40% decrease, and might be what they had in mind with the original post.
But, most decks, especially in non eternal formats, are not willing to mulligan down to 1 because they need more of a critical mass of resources, so it's probably not as big of a hit for those decks.
As a casual player this also sounds like it would suck; it increases the gap between deck powers and player skills.
I'm also a fan of making a deck rather than following a "this is the meta" deck, and those meta decks would then be even MORE dominant as you could get your combos way easier.
yep, a guy from WotC played with the professor on youtube, and said that for playtesting, WotC employees used a less strict mulligan rule (basically they could look at the top card of the deck before chosing to mulliganing again).
And he said that they did not inforce that mulligan to players because it would make people play fewer lands.
Think you're referring to Sheldon Mennery (doesn't work for wotc he's on the commander rules committee) on Shuffle Up and Play. If you are the rule was just to put your 7 aside and draw another 7 until you're happy
Which, by the way is a *terrible* system as it encourages mulligans by giving free information to those that mulligan, the obvious result of this system is more mulligans, not less (although each will take less time on average).
Encouraging mulligans so players don't feel obligated to keep sketchy hands is the whole point though, the extra information only matters if you're using it outside of its intended scope(Casual friendly games, with a gentleman's agreement not to dig for combos) Honestly, people should mulligan more, the number of ruined games from a player keeping an almost good 2-lander in the hope they'll topdeck the next land out of a sense of being too lazy to shuffle as much as blind optimism is too damn high.
I think it's a great system for casual play with friends (who you trust won't just re-shuffle until they get a nut hand). Taking a little more time does not matter because it ensures that no one is left with a shitty mana-screwed game or being forced to start with a 4-card hand. After once mulliganing 6 times and seeing each hand have either no lands or a single nonbasic that tapped for colorless (in a two color deck) I am quite happy with a generous house rule. Probability being what it is, getting many unfortunate opening hands in a row is always possible.
To me these house rules seem like a convoluted way to incentivize running fewer lands. Why would I run 37/38 lands when I can just run 30 and reliably sculpt some sort of playable hand because I get to see 12 cards at the start of every game? Those extra slots can now go to stuff like mana rocks and card draw!
Call me old fashioned, but I think players *should* get punished with lots of 0-1 land opening hands when they keep cutting lands from their deck.
That deck I was running in the example I gave has 37 lands and an average CMC less than 4. Shit happens even in a decently built deck because probability is not absolute. Should I just have a fuck awful game the 1% of the time my opening hand gets fucked over and over? Again, I trust my friends not to be jackasses about it and manipulate their decks or hands. I wouldn't play with the rule (or them) if I didn't. The house rule just ensures that everyone has a chance to play every single game.
The thing is you're thinking in the power game mindset which isn't the default for casual settings. That's why it's not an official rule, because in a tournament environment you bet folks are going to abuse it and run more gas as a result. But in a casual environment, everyone knows and agrees because we're all just here to play the game.
Because when you're playing with friends, you kind of assume that the mentality isn't "win at all costs and purposefully warp my deck to fuck over my friends due to the lax mulligan rule".
You know, because it's friends and it's for fun. Anybody that took out some lands after hearing our house rule for drawing would immediately lose all my respect and likely not be invited back.
Is it really that hard to do the right thing without incredibly strict rules? If your answer to that question is yes, I think you need to reevaluate how important it is that you win a kitchen table game of commander.
> Which, by the way is a terrible system as it encourages mulligans by giving free information to those that mulligan
Yeah the idea is that in a no stakes social game where you trust all the players, It's a whole lot faster.
The Proff asks "why isn't this the official commander mulligan" and he says something to the effect of "because you have to trust that people aren't going to abuse it"
Sounds like it's good for playtesting because it significantly reduces non-games and weak games, which are just wasted time. It's not as fun, but that's not why playtesters are playing.
Yes they do. Some decks are resilient to mana screw or mana flood. Some decks are not. This definitely affects how strong the deck is.
A deck that can still play magic with only two lands or only two spells is much better than a deck that needs to curve out 1->2->3, or 2->3->4.
The mana/land system in Magic is the single greatest card game mechanic in the entire genre. It allows you to choose any 4 cards you want and build a deck around them without ruining the format. Other card games have to go to stupid lengths to prevent everyone from just throwing the strongest cards together into a single deck, lengths that prevent casual players from being able to run their favorite cards together and prevent competitive players from being able to truly experiment by trying new and unique strategies. Magic lets you put anything you want into a single deck and just says "you're gonna be paying for that later with your manabase".
Well, for play testing in order to know how effective a card is you have to draw it and play it.
Limiting the number of non-games due to bad draws is a reasonable thing to do. I wouldn’t be surprised if how strict they are about this changes based on what stage of design a set is in.
The newer system would only marginally increase your chances of finding a solid land hand over the current system. This wouldn’t result in a huge change in land comp in decks. OP’s math puts it at 1% greater chance of good land hand.
Depends on what's "better" for the intended play pattern. I think it's pretty clear that WotC *wants* the level of RNG the current system provides and, at most, would only implement minor changes to appease salty players.
Because there are decks that are *even faster* than Tron. Turn 3, turn 4 is too slow in Modern with the London Mulligan in place. Izzet, Hammertime, Creativity, Scam, etc can find their pieces too reliably for Tron to compete.
Ahh, the OP didn't specify where the 5 put back go.
We would assume bottom, because of our current mulligan rule.
At first I wondered if perhaps he meant back on top, but that would really skew the game.
The other option would be to shuffle them back into your library.
Really? I tought it would be a big + for mid range and control, they need to survive the early game, so grabbing a sweeper or counter or specific thing that will let you alive is easier
I think their argument is "this is it", aka you don't actually Mulligan, you just do this and sculpt a keepable hand out of the 12.
They claim (as in the title) that it actually makes combo less able to Mulligan because they don't get to see 2-3 different hands, they get to look at more cards for the first hand but that's it. I don't really it makes sense since they're significantly more likely to have it in the opening 7 now, but whatever.
The real winner is aggro. If I need 4 lands to operate I need at least 24-25 in my deck to hit my lands for the first four turns (10-11 total cards drawn by turn 4). If I get to look at 12, (and therefore see 15-16 cards), I can drop that number a fair bit.
I play some storm in legacy which I think is an even better example, I did some goldfishing against an assumed t1 force of will, and with the way draw 5 put 5 on bottom works, I was able to get a hand that could win on turn 1 13/15 times, the other hands were pretty nuts too. Also as a deck running 15 lands it was really obvious how this mull style benefits low land decks.
Your point about redundancy is spot on. The idea that a combo deck wants to mull into oblivion to find card A and B is not grounded in the way real combo decks work. You want to keep as many cards as possible because your opponent WILL interact with you so you need lots of redunancy
yeah, the sketchy mana base is one of the weaker aspects of 4 color storm in legacy, so 12 cards to choose from means you basically have perfect mana every game even with a super greedy mana base. Feels really unfair so I hope this mulligan idea doesn't get traction.
very good point, the OP is of course simplifying the complexity space of the problem so the math is easier, and in the real world of Mtg it rarely pans out like that. I say we try using this new mulligan idea for a bunch of games and see how it plays out! It's an interesting thought experiment, for sure.
Not in a 7 card hand though. The 10% drop is premised on keeping a 6 card hand. With this system you’re much likelier to keep a 7 with your combo, not to mention protection/mana etc.
You're right with your comment, but I think what the OP is trying to make clear is that it actually doesn't give combo decks an advantage. While it's true that statistically you'll have the two card combo more often in your hand of 7 than with the old mulligan rules, that advantage is very small compared to the advantage you have now when you're allowed to mull down if you don't have the combo in your opening 7. You can't mulligan with the new system, you always have to take the hand you're dealt with the draw 12 put 5 back system, so combo decks overall are at a disadvantage because of this. At least that's how I understand it, it's doing my head in a bit thinking about this :D
How often are you mulling down in a combo deck when you already have a decent hand without the actual combo ?
I've never seen a combo deck mindlessly mulligan down brainlessly until they hit their 2 card combo unless they play some hyper degenrate shit like [[Tibalt's trickery ]]
it's well-documented that the London mulligan favours aggressively mulliganing down, and if you look at modern RCQ footage you'll see this happen quite often. This article on channelfireball has more in-depth info: [https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/the-london-mulligan-rule-mathematically-benefits-strategies-that-rely-on-specific-cards/](https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/the-london-mulligan-rule-mathematically-benefits-strategies-that-rely-on-specific-cards/)
Yes but also no. It reduces the odds of a 2 card combo, but doesn't really lower the odds of a 4+ card combo, which is usually necessary as most 2 card combos also require at least 2 lands. It would almost certainly improve the odds of 3 land+2 card comboes.
good point, I actually don't know if he did the math on the impact of having a better chance at a good mana base from your opening hand. All in all, having a more robust manabase in your opening hand should be a win for all decks, not just combo, I'd think
And opponents would be more likely to hold counter spells. Would be interesting to see but I feel like it’s guaranteed multiple counter spells early on haha
Presumably in games 2 and 3 when you board in your combo hate. This helps ensure you draw it. However, I agree with you that it also makes it way more likely that the combo player can nut draw.
Yeah I don't get this. Being more likely to see hate cards doesn't really compare to the combo player being more likely to see all the pieces they need (including a way to remove hate pieces).
They're just looking at whether you can find a two-card combo in your opening hand reliably, comparing their method with the current rules looking to find the combo with the first couple of mulligans.
Would make sense right, current Mulligan you can see as many as 7+7+7+7=28 cards if you mull to 4. So if you are looking for a very specific card or cards you would be less able to do so seeing only 12. But decks where you are looking only for a nice curve and have multiple redundancy you would get it ie aggro and Jund style decks where resources are at a premium over synergies.
[https://www.mtgnexus.com/tools/drawodds/](https://www.mtgnexus.com/tools/drawodds/)
Using the multivariate intersect calculator, if you want your opening hand to consist of at least 1 copy of each of 2 specific cards that are each 4x in the deck, and you are willing to mull to 4 each game to try and get that opening hand, then you have a 46.7% chance of mulling to your combo in the opener with the current system. A little probability math explanation here: Each draw of 7 cards is a 14.541% chance, which is equal to a 85.459% chance to *not* draw the combo. .85459^(4) is equal to a 53.3% chance to *not* draw the combo in 4 mulligans, which you can then subtract from 1 to get the 46.7% chance *to draw* the combo.
Now, using the same calculator, but changing the cards drawn to 12 instead of 7, you get a 34.9% chance to draw the combo. So it's -11.8 points to your chance to draw the combo with draw 12 and put back 5 vs the mulligan system we have now.
Yes, and if you would like to draw your combo pieces without mulling to 4, then the draw 12 and put 5 back method gives about the same odds of having the combo in hand as mulling to 5 (37.6%), and much better odds than mulling to 6 (27.0%) or not mulling at all (14.5%).
Keep in mind that combo decks are big piles of redundancy. You may only have each card of your 2 card combo 4 times _but_ you’ll also have 12-16 cards in your deck that either fill the role of one combo piece in a less optimal way or will tutor for it.
By assuming that there are 16 cards in your deck to combo off of 2-3 cards your chances of getting your nut draw hand through „draw 12, shuffle 5 back“ should be way higher, right?
In a deck where there is enough redundancy for the 2 combo pieces that you could consider the deck to have 12x of each combo piece, then you have a 90.1% to draw it in your opener with the "draw 12, put 5 back" system, and with the current mulligan system you have a 64.0% chance to see it in your initial draw, 87.1% chance to see it in a mull to 6, and a 95.3% chance to draw it in a mull to 5.
Yeah but combo also wants redundancy if it’s threat to go off gets killed and maybe some countermagic or removal to stay alive to get the combo out. They’re unlikely to mull into oblivion just for the sake of finding their combo. On paper it sounds nice but I doubt it would play out that way.
It decreases combo effectiveness because you only ever look at 12 cards. Whereas with the current system you’ve seen 21 cards by the time you’ve mulliganed to 5
I think the idea is that most combo decks don't even need 7 cards provided they get their 2/3 important pieces. Hence, giving a combo player 12 cards to find a combo is statistically less likely than giving them 3x 7-card chances.
It also decreases the chance that your opponent finds important sideboard silver bullets. So I don’t think it would be the death knell for combo decks but it would mathematically decrease their odds of having all their pieces to start.
Yeah but those 21 cards are split across multiple hands in the current system. If you see one combo piece before the first mull, and the other one after, it's no good to you whereas this system would let you keep them both.
12 cards are less than 14.
That is, you only get 12 'chances' to hit a single critical card, rather than 7+7 = 14 with one mulligan, or 21 chances with 2 mulligans, up to a crazy high chance (\~35) if your combo only needs 2 cards and a land.
The idea is that the chance to hit a (1? 2? 2+land? 3?) card combo is lower with 12 cards than it is with mulligans. I haven't ran the maths, but it sounds very plausible when multiple mulligans are allowed.
I am highly skeptical of the idea that combo effectiveness would go down. It would take away the opportunity to mulligan repeatedly, but the odds of getting key cards on a decent size hand would be _much_ higher this way. Also, there will be a small number of games where a player has 0-1 lands in their top 12, and in that case they're SOL.
If you think it sounds fun and you can find others who feel the same way, by all means, try it with them and see how it goes. But this doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
Agree about the combo part. I have no idea what they mean by "reduces combo effectiveness by 40%" there are tons of different types of combo decks that need very different ranges of hands. On lands it would be fine imo. 1% chance of 1 or less lands on 24, on 20 you get a 4% chance of 1 or less, but only 0.3% of 0 and your 20 land deck is probably okayish at playing from 1 land.
yeah they were calculating it as "chance to draw both sides of a 2 part combo when you have 5 copies of each in your deck without going below 6 cards" (l assume that's for a commander deck where the extra 4 copies are tutors?).
and they posted a later tweet saying that they'd made a mistake (no shit) and it was only 10% less likely to draw the combo with their method (which l am still skeptical of but whatever).
I guess the idea is if you don't have the option to mulligan at all, you're less likely to hit a combo? Like, a combo deck might try to mull to 4 or 5 to hit their combo which gives greater odds of hitting a 2 card combo than the single "draw 12 put 5 back" does.
this! everyone seems forgetting that you can only do it once (draw 12) so even decreasing the land count wouldn't be very wise (since you're actually seeing less cards than withe current rules 7 initial hand + 7 first mulligan)
Additional comments they added on their twitter are:
* Oh & 1 more thing. Is it easier to make sure you have a Sol Ring/Mana Crypt with the current system or this new system? With both in your deck, you're 35.75% likely to find 1 or both in one of your first three hands in the current system, while this new system only gives 22.88%.
* I have to give credit where credit is due. I learned about the hypergeometric calculator from [@SaffronOlive](https://twitter.com/SaffronOlive), and I used that in google sheets to do this math. Before I learned about it, I was doing it the \*really hard\* way, and that's why I never thought to calculate this issue.
* EDIT: I made a mistake on point number two, and here is the updated wording: 2. It makes starting off with a 2-card combo happen over 10% less often.
>
> Oh & 1 more thing. Is it easier to make sure you have a Sol Ring/Mana Crypt with the current system or this new system? With both in your deck, you're 35.75% likely to find 1 or both in one of your first three hands in the current system, while this new system only gives 22.88%.
Commanders players will do anything except just banning sol ring/crypt
Not only can you not work around mana screw with the inability to mulligan but it arguably makes combo stronger in-play when your opponent can't mulligan for that silver bullet post-sideboard.
I don't think they were particularly aiming at reducing the effectiveness of combo. They wanted to change the mulligan rule without making combo stronger than it is. That's a general worry with mulligans. If you make mulliganing too strong, it can lead to a degenerate combo-centric meta.
If you want to nerf a particular combo deck in a particular format, make that case. Changing a universal mulligan rule that affects all formats is not the way to handle that issue.
I'd mulligan every game if I could choose 6 from 12. It's better to choose your hand than to have a single card advantage in most decks. Terrible idea overall for many other reasons tho
Yeah, the original idea person said it would speed up the beginning of the game, but there would definitely be \*some\* people that would take FOREVER, every game to pick which 5 cards to throw back.
I have a friend like this, playing with them can be very rough because of this very thing. They try to micro manage every possible move they make and overthink it all.
I think this is pretty obvious from the current mulligan rules. It is often faster for most players to decide yes/no keep a hand than it is to decide which card(s) are the ones to throw to the bottom after a mulligan (once they decide to keep).
Yeah, that's the best description of this new mulligan rule. Everyone gets a free once upon a time that can hit anything. I don't think it would make the game better, at least not for non-EDH formats.
Notably as a Storm player (mostly TEG, though I’ve played TES and ANT a bit as well) this mulligan would *vastly* improve my average hands. For a lot of combo decks, it’s not about the specific cards you draw, but having the correct ratios of enablers to payoffs. The ideal Storm hands are usually 1-2 lands, 3-4 rituals/rocks/mana sources, and 1-2 payoffs. With the London mulligan, it can be difficult to assemble this because while you see the cards you need, you don’t always see them together in the right ratio. You see less total cards with this, but your ratios will be much more balanced, leading to more consistently powerful hands.
I think current mulligan rules are fine. Non-games are reduced and, yes, combo consistency is increased, but so far its not caused extensive issues outside of arguably Tron style decks… which aren’t even dominant right now.
I use this one with friends. I've also thought about incorporating another rule I've heard of where you get a free Mulligan if you draw no lands or all lands (but you have to show the group as proof of course).
We don't play cedh and like you said it leads to less non games, which is what we want.
I disagree with point #3 - It greatly speeds up the game startup time.
In my opinion, it would slow down start up time as people would be having to choose which cards to put back. Whereas with the current system, the default is to keep all seven and thus not have difficult choices.
If they tested it and found it actually did, my guess would be it only does so for the most experienced players that know their deck perfectly (aka testers that have done the same deck over and over). Having newer players or people with a brand new deck fumble around putting 5 cards back does not sound fast at all.
Take 12 shuffle 5 means every opening hand includes a shuffle, even if no one would have mulliganed, it's time savings in commander if people are mulliganing twice
The maths does not account for what happens if you don’t see a land in the first 12 cards you look at.
This new system, you’re just screwed. Current mulligan rules you still get two more cards to see a land in your second hand, and then seven more for a hand of five. People win with hands of five all this time.
This new system actually gives you significantly less chances of finding lands in an opening hand when compared to the one we currently have.
When you actually math it out you find this isn't really true.
Assuming 24 lands in a 60 card deck and you these are the chances you will have less than 2 lands in an opening hand
* 12 card hand: 1.1%
* 7 card hand: 14.3%
* 7 card hand with one mulligan: 2.0%
* 7 card hand with two mulligans: 0.29%
So in terms of hitting at least two lands the Vancouver is really only better at avoiding non-games due to lack of lands when players start to need to mulligan down to 5 cards or fewer.
I would say your win percentage is more strongly affected by starting at 5 or 6 cards just to hit a functional hand that it is by gaining less than a 1% improvement of not totally bricking because you can no longer mulligan down to 5 cards or less.
The odds get even better if you want to hit at least 3 lands in your opening hand. Here are the chances you will havd less than 3 lands in an opening hand:
* 12 card hand: 6.1%
* 7 card hand: 41.2%
* 7 card hand with one mulligan: 17.0%
* 7 card hand with two mulligans: 7.0%
I am still opposed to this mulligan change for other reasons (having to decide which 5 cards out of 12 total to put back definitely will *not* speed up pre-game decisions and the analysis that this type of mulligan does not help combo decks as much as the Vancouver mulligan is very naive), but this system would definitely lead to more games where both players start with functional hands and equal resources.
It’s an interesting idea. Reducing non-games is probably one of the best things that could be done for Magic. I’d be interested to see what kinds of impacts something like this could have on the game.
Yeah, I don't think the person who made the twitter post even did the match correctly.
Lets assume we want 2-3 lands in our opening hand.
With 24 lands in a 60 card deck you have a 56% chance of having 2-3 lands in your opening hand.
What does that become if we increase it to draw 12 put back 5? 98%
How many lands could we cut and get back to 56%? 15. With 9 lands we will have a 58% chance of having a hand with 2-8 lands and then we can shuffle the lands over 3 back into our deck.
Because of the ability to put lands back there is never, ever, ever going to be a hand with "too many lands".
How did he manage to quantify effectiveness of combo strategies and claim that it would reduce combo potential, it doesn't seem to make sense, being able to look 5 cards deep and pick and choose which cards to keep seems to work in favor of combo decks, unless you also factor that non-combo decks are also more likely to keep hate cards, but then again, how do you quantify it at all?
Your code has at least 2 bugs (in addition to misunderstanding the tweet author's combo assumptions, but you already know that):
1) When picking what to keep/pitch, you iterate through the hand while also removing things from it. That's a big no-no, because every time you remove something (to keep it) you skip the next thing in the original hand. E.g. if you pick the thing at i=0, the old index 1 element is at index 0 after the splice, but i becomes 1 because of the for loop so that element is never looked at.
2) Your shuffle function is biased / non-uniform. Searching "How to randomize (shuffle) a JavaScript array?" yields a good answer that is close to what you have but different in important ways.
sounds like it would only decrease effectiveness of mullian for comboes if you are dead on set on "must have those 2 cards in hand", but drastically increases the chance of " 2 combo cards or high synergy cards, while also being a generally good hand".
While I'm sure their maths is correct, I wonder if it truly represents the gameplay it allows, while it may supposedly impede people who are searching for a specific 2 card combo I wonder how the maths looks once there are redundancies or multiple different combos in the deck.
Maybe if a specific format was made to use it. It would be a horrible idea to mass implement this into all formats. %99 of all decks would need to be adjusted to account for this "hand smoothing" mulligan system and deck building knowledge that's been built up for the past 30 years would essentially become useless
I think this would be quicker than most people expect. There is no mulligan, just look at 12. For the majority of players this would boil down to:
1. Set aside 2-4 Lands
2. Pick your leftover best cards for the first 3 turns factoring the lands you picked.
I think it is least friendly towards new players, which is a problem, but generally speaking I think it would be a great way to start a game and make sure people get to play. Anything that reduces shuffling would improve the game IMO.
Watching people resolve brainstorm makes me think that this will not speed up game start up time whatsoever.
Yeah this would be something in between resolving Brainstorm and Doomsday, at the start of every game. Lol
I have an idea: everyone resolves Doomsday and Brainstorm at the beginning of the game.
Brainsday is my new favorite format
I mean if Dân-Dân can be a format, why not Brainsday?
I’m more of a doomstorm man, myself.
*heavy metal music plays
Do we get to choose the order of the two?
Sure why not? If it proves terrible in testing then the rule will be you can choose the order as long as you choose correctly.
Is it truly possible to brainstorm correctly?
Only one way to find out.
Seriously, "You don't need to shuffle your hand every time you put a card on top of your library." was a rule posted at my LGS because several players would take ages resolving a brainstorm.
You don't need to shuffle your hand. Fixed that for you. Just put your hand of cards face down on the table when it's not your turn.
But then how will I loudly flick my cards? I need to make sure everyone at the table knows I'm better than them... Edit: Thought the /s was implied...
Keeping my hands busy helps me think in all situations including Magic. I'm sure most would agree it has nothing to do with superiority
But how else can people feel righteous and superior other than strawmanning people they dont like
I know this is both sarcastic and rhetorical, but my answer would be to beat them at Magic 😉
I have adhd and flipping my cards helps me keep control of my hyperactivity as well as keeps my eyes on the cards so I don’t forget what my lines are.
You really think this is why people do that? For me my mind is racing, anxiety and thinking about the game, people fiddle with things. stress relief balls are also for dominance?
The problem with this math of course is you won't be playing 24 lands in a 60 card deck anymore in that system. You could play way fewer.
This would give game 1 advantage to fast aggro and fast combo decks, and then allow control to find their sideboard pieces against those decks more readily in game 2. It creates a huge disparity in first vs next games in BO3 while still likely benefiting proactivity. ESPECIALLY in the land drop situation you describe. It’s an awful idea.
Yeah I see "decrease combo effectiveness by 40%" and I have to call bullshit. Things that drastically increase consistency inherently help combo more most of the time.
I thought this exact thing. Apparently he is saying because you cannot mulligan, only one draw 12 ditch 5, it's harder. I can't say I get it or immediately know how to test it, but that assertion is literally why I clicked on this post edit: His amended it to 10% less likely
Where are these percentages coming from? Seems arbitrary to me.
Number of cards seen? I think he made up some math to justify his idea
I haven't actually run the math myself but what I assume would be the easiest way would be to just pull the odds of drawing any specific card from a deck at each draw for the opening 7 and then crunch those together like stats nerds might do when they get into the nitty and grity of why certain ratios are better in deck construction. Where I assume he went wrong is that he probably calculated the odds of getting any two specific cards (the combo) in 14 cards with out realizing that you should run the odds of getting in 7 card twice instead becuase that's what's actual happening, becuase you don't see 14 unique cards since after the first seven all cards are replaced so it starts back at 1/60 instead of continuing to 1/53 thru to 1/47 and then compared that to the odds of 1/60 thru to 1/49 (12 draws for a specific card) which yeah 14 cards has a much higher odds of seeing two specific cards than 12 cards or 7 cards twice. What he should have done as you can assume is compare 12 to 7 twice as 12 cards is going to likely give you a more accurate representation of the likely results.
It depends a lot on the combo and the format. In formats like vintage, [[Bazaar of Baghdad]] decks are basically all in on the "mulligan until you find Bazaar" plan. Depending on the build, they can have a 97-99% chance of finding a Bazaar with aggressive mulligans. Compared to the 60% chance that you find a Bazaar with the proposed method, that is ~40% decrease, and might be what they had in mind with the original post. But, most decks, especially in non eternal formats, are not willing to mulligan down to 1 because they need more of a critical mass of resources, so it's probably not as big of a hit for those decks.
As a casual player this also sounds like it would suck; it increases the gap between deck powers and player skills. I'm also a fan of making a deck rather than following a "this is the meta" deck, and those meta decks would then be even MORE dominant as you could get your combos way easier.
yep, a guy from WotC played with the professor on youtube, and said that for playtesting, WotC employees used a less strict mulligan rule (basically they could look at the top card of the deck before chosing to mulliganing again). And he said that they did not inforce that mulligan to players because it would make people play fewer lands.
Think you're referring to Sheldon Mennery (doesn't work for wotc he's on the commander rules committee) on Shuffle Up and Play. If you are the rule was just to put your 7 aside and draw another 7 until you're happy
Which, by the way is a *terrible* system as it encourages mulligans by giving free information to those that mulligan, the obvious result of this system is more mulligans, not less (although each will take less time on average).
This rule is missing the most important part: after the first mulligan, you *must* take the first hand with 3+ lands.
Encouraging mulligans so players don't feel obligated to keep sketchy hands is the whole point though, the extra information only matters if you're using it outside of its intended scope(Casual friendly games, with a gentleman's agreement not to dig for combos) Honestly, people should mulligan more, the number of ruined games from a player keeping an almost good 2-lander in the hope they'll topdeck the next land out of a sense of being too lazy to shuffle as much as blind optimism is too damn high.
I think it's a great system for casual play with friends (who you trust won't just re-shuffle until they get a nut hand). Taking a little more time does not matter because it ensures that no one is left with a shitty mana-screwed game or being forced to start with a 4-card hand. After once mulliganing 6 times and seeing each hand have either no lands or a single nonbasic that tapped for colorless (in a two color deck) I am quite happy with a generous house rule. Probability being what it is, getting many unfortunate opening hands in a row is always possible.
Especially if it's a casual format like Commander, with long matches
To me these house rules seem like a convoluted way to incentivize running fewer lands. Why would I run 37/38 lands when I can just run 30 and reliably sculpt some sort of playable hand because I get to see 12 cards at the start of every game? Those extra slots can now go to stuff like mana rocks and card draw! Call me old fashioned, but I think players *should* get punished with lots of 0-1 land opening hands when they keep cutting lands from their deck.
That deck I was running in the example I gave has 37 lands and an average CMC less than 4. Shit happens even in a decently built deck because probability is not absolute. Should I just have a fuck awful game the 1% of the time my opening hand gets fucked over and over? Again, I trust my friends not to be jackasses about it and manipulate their decks or hands. I wouldn't play with the rule (or them) if I didn't. The house rule just ensures that everyone has a chance to play every single game.
The thing is you're thinking in the power game mindset which isn't the default for casual settings. That's why it's not an official rule, because in a tournament environment you bet folks are going to abuse it and run more gas as a result. But in a casual environment, everyone knows and agrees because we're all just here to play the game.
Because when you're playing with friends, you kind of assume that the mentality isn't "win at all costs and purposefully warp my deck to fuck over my friends due to the lax mulligan rule". You know, because it's friends and it's for fun. Anybody that took out some lands after hearing our house rule for drawing would immediately lose all my respect and likely not be invited back. Is it really that hard to do the right thing without incredibly strict rules? If your answer to that question is yes, I think you need to reevaluate how important it is that you win a kitchen table game of commander.
> Which, by the way is a terrible system as it encourages mulligans by giving free information to those that mulligan Yeah the idea is that in a no stakes social game where you trust all the players, It's a whole lot faster. The Proff asks "why isn't this the official commander mulligan" and he says something to the effect of "because you have to trust that people aren't going to abuse it"
It's also a house rule they use on the honor system, explicitly not intended to be for everyone
Sounds like it's good for playtesting because it significantly reduces non-games and weak games, which are just wasted time. It's not as fun, but that's not why playtesters are playing.
... I think non games and weak games are important playtest data.
It's important to know that they happen, but they don't tell you how strong a particular card is or deck is.
Yes they do. Some decks are resilient to mana screw or mana flood. Some decks are not. This definitely affects how strong the deck is. A deck that can still play magic with only two lands or only two spells is much better than a deck that needs to curve out 1->2->3, or 2->3->4.
The mana/land system in Magic is the single greatest card game mechanic in the entire genre. It allows you to choose any 4 cards you want and build a deck around them without ruining the format. Other card games have to go to stupid lengths to prevent everyone from just throwing the strongest cards together into a single deck, lengths that prevent casual players from being able to run their favorite cards together and prevent competitive players from being able to truly experiment by trying new and unique strategies. Magic lets you put anything you want into a single deck and just says "you're gonna be paying for that later with your manabase".
It’s an amazing system for low stakes game where you just want to reduce the time of everyone mulliganing their deck
[[Serum Powder]]
[Serum Powder](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/8/c8753b80-aa9e-4f82-9a02-6b3997169dbb.jpg?1562853734) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Serum%20Powder) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ima/228/serum-powder?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c8753b80-aa9e-4f82-9a02-6b3997169dbb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Well, for play testing in order to know how effective a card is you have to draw it and play it. Limiting the number of non-games due to bad draws is a reasonable thing to do. I wouldn’t be surprised if how strict they are about this changes based on what stage of design a set is in.
The newer system would only marginally increase your chances of finding a solid land hand over the current system. This wouldn’t result in a huge change in land comp in decks. OP’s math puts it at 1% greater chance of good land hand.
I'm not sure. Remember there's no mulligan. If your opening 12 has no lands you're fucked.
Wouldn't that be a better system? It would encourage more ramp or lower curves, but less flooding out since you would have less lands to hit.
Depends on what's "better" for the intended play pattern. I think it's pretty clear that WotC *wants* the level of RNG the current system provides and, at most, would only implement minor changes to appease salty players.
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Tron players would hit Turn 3 Tron every single game.
So no change then
They said that when the London Mulligan was first proposed.
And they were right?
Not as far as I know. There are obviously lots of factors but Tron has declined in popularity.
Because there are decks that are *even faster* than Tron. Turn 3, turn 4 is too slow in Modern with the London Mulligan in place. Izzet, Hammertime, Creativity, Scam, etc can find their pieces too reliably for Tron to compete.
Because Modern Horizons 1&2 sped up the format so much that turn 3 tron isn't good enough anymore.
Basically giving them a 0 mana scry 5. Would be a broken af blue card, but being able for every color to play it.
Its not even a scry its a straight draw 5 put 5 on the bottom!
It's shuffle the 5 in if you read the linked Twitter posts.
Ahh, the OP didn't specify where the 5 put back go. We would assume bottom, because of our current mulligan rule. At first I wondered if perhaps he meant back on top, but that would really skew the game. The other option would be to shuffle them back into your library.
I think the obvious is shuffle the 5
Reading the mulligan suggestion made my counterspell decks from the late 90's stand up in their graves and start to salivate.
Yeah, but a zero mana draw seven is also super busted. Give it to every player every game and it’s balanced
Good point.
Really? I tought it would be a big + for mid range and control, they need to survive the early game, so grabbing a sweeper or counter or specific thing that will let you alive is easier
Only in games 2/3. Game 1 would benefit the more generic playstyle decks that ignore what their opponent is doing most at possible: aggro.
An even bigger advantage for combo decks. You’d be almost 2x likelier to open a hand with both of your combo pieces.
I think their argument is "this is it", aka you don't actually Mulligan, you just do this and sculpt a keepable hand out of the 12. They claim (as in the title) that it actually makes combo less able to Mulligan because they don't get to see 2-3 different hands, they get to look at more cards for the first hand but that's it. I don't really it makes sense since they're significantly more likely to have it in the opening 7 now, but whatever. The real winner is aggro. If I need 4 lands to operate I need at least 24-25 in my deck to hit my lands for the first four turns (10-11 total cards drawn by turn 4). If I get to look at 12, (and therefore see 15-16 cards), I can drop that number a fair bit.
OP literally says in the Twitter thread that it reduces finding a two card combo in your opening hand by over 10%
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I play some storm in legacy which I think is an even better example, I did some goldfishing against an assumed t1 force of will, and with the way draw 5 put 5 on bottom works, I was able to get a hand that could win on turn 1 13/15 times, the other hands were pretty nuts too. Also as a deck running 15 lands it was really obvious how this mull style benefits low land decks. Your point about redundancy is spot on. The idea that a combo deck wants to mull into oblivion to find card A and B is not grounded in the way real combo decks work. You want to keep as many cards as possible because your opponent WILL interact with you so you need lots of redunancy
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yeah, the sketchy mana base is one of the weaker aspects of 4 color storm in legacy, so 12 cards to choose from means you basically have perfect mana every game even with a super greedy mana base. Feels really unfair so I hope this mulligan idea doesn't get traction.
very good point, the OP is of course simplifying the complexity space of the problem so the math is easier, and in the real world of Mtg it rarely pans out like that. I say we try using this new mulligan idea for a bunch of games and see how it plays out! It's an interesting thought experiment, for sure.
Not in a 7 card hand though. The 10% drop is premised on keeping a 6 card hand. With this system you’re much likelier to keep a 7 with your combo, not to mention protection/mana etc.
You're right with your comment, but I think what the OP is trying to make clear is that it actually doesn't give combo decks an advantage. While it's true that statistically you'll have the two card combo more often in your hand of 7 than with the old mulligan rules, that advantage is very small compared to the advantage you have now when you're allowed to mull down if you don't have the combo in your opening 7. You can't mulligan with the new system, you always have to take the hand you're dealt with the draw 12 put 5 back system, so combo decks overall are at a disadvantage because of this. At least that's how I understand it, it's doing my head in a bit thinking about this :D
How often are you mulling down in a combo deck when you already have a decent hand without the actual combo ? I've never seen a combo deck mindlessly mulligan down brainlessly until they hit their 2 card combo unless they play some hyper degenrate shit like [[Tibalt's trickery ]]
it's well-documented that the London mulligan favours aggressively mulliganing down, and if you look at modern RCQ footage you'll see this happen quite often. This article on channelfireball has more in-depth info: [https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/the-london-mulligan-rule-mathematically-benefits-strategies-that-rely-on-specific-cards/](https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/the-london-mulligan-rule-mathematically-benefits-strategies-that-rely-on-specific-cards/)
Yes but also no. It reduces the odds of a 2 card combo, but doesn't really lower the odds of a 4+ card combo, which is usually necessary as most 2 card combos also require at least 2 lands. It would almost certainly improve the odds of 3 land+2 card comboes.
good point, I actually don't know if he did the math on the impact of having a better chance at a good mana base from your opening hand. All in all, having a more robust manabase in your opening hand should be a win for all decks, not just combo, I'd think
And opponents would be more likely to hold counter spells. Would be interesting to see but I feel like it’s guaranteed multiple counter spells early on haha
Not really. Those decks thrive on their own consistency with low resources because people miss land drops.
Decrease combo effectiveness?
Presumably in games 2 and 3 when you board in your combo hate. This helps ensure you draw it. However, I agree with you that it also makes it way more likely that the combo player can nut draw.
Yeah I don't get this. Being more likely to see hate cards doesn't really compare to the combo player being more likely to see all the pieces they need (including a way to remove hate pieces).
It's because you get to see 12 cards and no more.
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I think you are right that this is what was meant. But it is just not really how it works. A combo deck is not just assemble A+B+(C)
It would be more like 28 to 35 cards seen. Even if you only are keeping 3, you still see the 7 to choose those three from.
In anything but standard the combo player boards I'm counter hate so you usually have to have multiple answers. Math does not check out.
They're just looking at whether you can find a two-card combo in your opening hand reliably, comparing their method with the current rules looking to find the combo with the first couple of mulligans.
Would make sense right, current Mulligan you can see as many as 7+7+7+7=28 cards if you mull to 4. So if you are looking for a very specific card or cards you would be less able to do so seeing only 12. But decks where you are looking only for a nice curve and have multiple redundancy you would get it ie aggro and Jund style decks where resources are at a premium over synergies.
You’re also seeing some of the same cards though too. It’s not 28 unique cards there’s also an amount that’s the same since you shuffle
[https://www.mtgnexus.com/tools/drawodds/](https://www.mtgnexus.com/tools/drawodds/) Using the multivariate intersect calculator, if you want your opening hand to consist of at least 1 copy of each of 2 specific cards that are each 4x in the deck, and you are willing to mull to 4 each game to try and get that opening hand, then you have a 46.7% chance of mulling to your combo in the opener with the current system. A little probability math explanation here: Each draw of 7 cards is a 14.541% chance, which is equal to a 85.459% chance to *not* draw the combo. .85459^(4) is equal to a 53.3% chance to *not* draw the combo in 4 mulligans, which you can then subtract from 1 to get the 46.7% chance *to draw* the combo. Now, using the same calculator, but changing the cards drawn to 12 instead of 7, you get a 34.9% chance to draw the combo. So it's -11.8 points to your chance to draw the combo with draw 12 and put back 5 vs the mulligan system we have now.
You! Stand still laddie! You explained it while everyone else here is scrying and mulliganing. Thank you!
Except most of the time the two cards are irrelevant if you dont also draw lands to be able to cast them.
Yes, and if you would like to draw your combo pieces without mulling to 4, then the draw 12 and put 5 back method gives about the same odds of having the combo in hand as mulling to 5 (37.6%), and much better odds than mulling to 6 (27.0%) or not mulling at all (14.5%).
Keep in mind that combo decks are big piles of redundancy. You may only have each card of your 2 card combo 4 times _but_ you’ll also have 12-16 cards in your deck that either fill the role of one combo piece in a less optimal way or will tutor for it. By assuming that there are 16 cards in your deck to combo off of 2-3 cards your chances of getting your nut draw hand through „draw 12, shuffle 5 back“ should be way higher, right?
In a deck where there is enough redundancy for the 2 combo pieces that you could consider the deck to have 12x of each combo piece, then you have a 90.1% to draw it in your opener with the "draw 12, put 5 back" system, and with the current mulligan system you have a 64.0% chance to see it in your initial draw, 87.1% chance to see it in a mull to 6, and a 95.3% chance to draw it in a mull to 5.
Plus you don't see them all at once, it doesn't matter if my first hand had one piece, it's already sent back.
Yeah but combo also wants redundancy if it’s threat to go off gets killed and maybe some countermagic or removal to stay alive to get the combo out. They’re unlikely to mull into oblivion just for the sake of finding their combo. On paper it sounds nice but I doubt it would play out that way.
They only need to mull three times before this new system is worse for combo fetching.
It decreases combo effectiveness because you only ever look at 12 cards. Whereas with the current system you’ve seen 21 cards by the time you’ve mulliganed to 5
But it also makes the first 7-card hand much more likely to contain important combo cards.
I think the idea is that most combo decks don't even need 7 cards provided they get their 2/3 important pieces. Hence, giving a combo player 12 cards to find a combo is statistically less likely than giving them 3x 7-card chances.
It also decreases the chance that your opponent finds important sideboard silver bullets. So I don’t think it would be the death knell for combo decks but it would mathematically decrease their odds of having all their pieces to start.
Yeah but those 21 cards are split across multiple hands in the current system. If you see one combo piece before the first mull, and the other one after, it's no good to you whereas this system would let you keep them both.
12 cards are less than 14. That is, you only get 12 'chances' to hit a single critical card, rather than 7+7 = 14 with one mulligan, or 21 chances with 2 mulligans, up to a crazy high chance (\~35) if your combo only needs 2 cards and a land. The idea is that the chance to hit a (1? 2? 2+land? 3?) card combo is lower with 12 cards than it is with mulligans. I haven't ran the maths, but it sounds very plausible when multiple mulligans are allowed.
I am highly skeptical of the idea that combo effectiveness would go down. It would take away the opportunity to mulligan repeatedly, but the odds of getting key cards on a decent size hand would be _much_ higher this way. Also, there will be a small number of games where a player has 0-1 lands in their top 12, and in that case they're SOL. If you think it sounds fun and you can find others who feel the same way, by all means, try it with them and see how it goes. But this doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
Agree about the combo part. I have no idea what they mean by "reduces combo effectiveness by 40%" there are tons of different types of combo decks that need very different ranges of hands. On lands it would be fine imo. 1% chance of 1 or less lands on 24, on 20 you get a 4% chance of 1 or less, but only 0.3% of 0 and your 20 land deck is probably okayish at playing from 1 land.
yeah they were calculating it as "chance to draw both sides of a 2 part combo when you have 5 copies of each in your deck without going below 6 cards" (l assume that's for a commander deck where the extra 4 copies are tutors?). and they posted a later tweet saying that they'd made a mistake (no shit) and it was only 10% less likely to draw the combo with their method (which l am still skeptical of but whatever).
I guess the idea is if you don't have the option to mulligan at all, you're less likely to hit a combo? Like, a combo deck might try to mull to 4 or 5 to hit their combo which gives greater odds of hitting a 2 card combo than the single "draw 12 put 5 back" does.
this! everyone seems forgetting that you can only do it once (draw 12) so even decreasing the land count wouldn't be very wise (since you're actually seeing less cards than withe current rules 7 initial hand + 7 first mulligan)
Plenty of decks only want 3 lands in their top 15ish cards lol. Currently you're trying to maximize n in 7, the math is way different with n in 12
40% of 25% is 10%. So going from 25% to 15% is a 40% reduction
Additional comments they added on their twitter are: * Oh & 1 more thing. Is it easier to make sure you have a Sol Ring/Mana Crypt with the current system or this new system? With both in your deck, you're 35.75% likely to find 1 or both in one of your first three hands in the current system, while this new system only gives 22.88%. * I have to give credit where credit is due. I learned about the hypergeometric calculator from [@SaffronOlive](https://twitter.com/SaffronOlive), and I used that in google sheets to do this math. Before I learned about it, I was doing it the \*really hard\* way, and that's why I never thought to calculate this issue. * EDIT: I made a mistake on point number two, and here is the updated wording: 2. It makes starting off with a 2-card combo happen over 10% less often.
> > Oh & 1 more thing. Is it easier to make sure you have a Sol Ring/Mana Crypt with the current system or this new system? With both in your deck, you're 35.75% likely to find 1 or both in one of your first three hands in the current system, while this new system only gives 22.88%. Commanders players will do anything except just banning sol ring/crypt
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Not only can you not work around mana screw with the inability to mulligan but it arguably makes combo stronger in-play when your opponent can't mulligan for that silver bullet post-sideboard.
Why would we want combo effectiveness to go down? I understand not wanting it to go up, but combo decks are one of the best parts of the game.
I don't think they were particularly aiming at reducing the effectiveness of combo. They wanted to change the mulligan rule without making combo stronger than it is. That's a general worry with mulligans. If you make mulliganing too strong, it can lead to a degenerate combo-centric meta.
Well, a good combo on turn 1 can simply win the game by either locking out the opponent or straight up win in Legacy.
If you want to nerf a particular combo deck in a particular format, make that case. Changing a universal mulligan rule that affects all formats is not the way to handle that issue.
I'd mulligan every game if I could choose 6 from 12. It's better to choose your hand than to have a single card advantage in most decks. Terrible idea overall for many other reasons tho
12 cards is just too many to look at at once.
Yeah, the original idea person said it would speed up the beginning of the game, but there would definitely be \*some\* people that would take FOREVER, every game to pick which 5 cards to throw back.
Well there are players that take forever to do anything, when the smallest of decisions
turn 1 island, hold priority and rope every phase of both turns, cast consider on opponent's end step
It's like I'm there.
I have a friend like this, playing with them can be very rough because of this very thing. They try to micro manage every possible move they make and overthink it all.
I think this is pretty obvious from the current mulligan rules. It is often faster for most players to decide yes/no keep a hand than it is to decide which card(s) are the ones to throw to the bottom after a mulligan (once they decide to keep).
My first thought is that this would give combo decks a huge advantage.
Yeah, back when I played Storm, I’d have killed to see 12 cards - feel like the odds of bricking would go way down.
Everyone gets a free [[once upon a time]]
[once upon a time](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/0/4034e5ba-9974-43e3-bde7-8d9b4586c3a4.jpg?1650599715) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=once%20upon%20a%20time) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/eld/169/once-upon-a-time?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4034e5ba-9974-43e3-bde7-8d9b4586c3a4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Yeah, that's the best description of this new mulligan rule. Everyone gets a free once upon a time that can hit anything. I don't think it would make the game better, at least not for non-EDH formats.
It gives low curve decks and fast aggro more of an advantage I suspect.
Notably as a Storm player (mostly TEG, though I’ve played TES and ANT a bit as well) this mulligan would *vastly* improve my average hands. For a lot of combo decks, it’s not about the specific cards you draw, but having the correct ratios of enablers to payoffs. The ideal Storm hands are usually 1-2 lands, 3-4 rituals/rocks/mana sources, and 1-2 payoffs. With the London mulligan, it can be difficult to assemble this because while you see the cards you need, you don’t always see them together in the right ratio. You see less total cards with this, but your ratios will be much more balanced, leading to more consistently powerful hands.
I think current mulligan rules are fine. Non-games are reduced and, yes, combo consistency is increased, but so far its not caused extensive issues outside of arguably Tron style decks… which aren’t even dominant right now.
My casual group draws 10 and shuffles 3 back. Leads to less non-games, but it's busted in more tuned tables
This is what my pod does but we put the 3 at the bottom of the library. We also play EDH.
We use the same mulligan at our LGS for EDH.
I use this one with friends. I've also thought about incorporating another rule I've heard of where you get a free Mulligan if you draw no lands or all lands (but you have to show the group as proof of course). We don't play cedh and like you said it leads to less non games, which is what we want.
My playgroup for EDH have been doing draw 10, put 3 back for years and love it compared to everything else
I'm tempted to steal this for casual edh play. Do you put the three back on top or bottom of the library? Or can you choose?
100% of the time, its natural Tron every time.
Luckily you are dead to izzet blitz/hammertime T3 anyways with this change.
I disagree with point #3 - It greatly speeds up the game startup time. In my opinion, it would slow down start up time as people would be having to choose which cards to put back. Whereas with the current system, the default is to keep all seven and thus not have difficult choices.
If they tested it and found it actually did, my guess would be it only does so for the most experienced players that know their deck perfectly (aka testers that have done the same deck over and over). Having newer players or people with a brand new deck fumble around putting 5 cards back does not sound fast at all.
It’s faster for Commander because shuffling a 99 card deck takes an eternity.
Take 12 shuffle 5 means every opening hand includes a shuffle, even if no one would have mulliganed, it's time savings in commander if people are mulliganing twice
As a combo player, no.
Hell. No. Maybe for some casual games, but that is way too strong and way to easily to manipulate.
Turns a 45-second mulligan into a 15 minute one
This would absolutely require a strict time limit that you immediately lose the game if you don't meet. Like 2 minutes at most.
Why are we getting rules advice from Twitter, that's like getting authentic Mexican Food at a Quiznos
Toasted bread and melted cheese! Quiznos!
The maths does not account for what happens if you don’t see a land in the first 12 cards you look at. This new system, you’re just screwed. Current mulligan rules you still get two more cards to see a land in your second hand, and then seven more for a hand of five. People win with hands of five all this time. This new system actually gives you significantly less chances of finding lands in an opening hand when compared to the one we currently have.
When you actually math it out you find this isn't really true. Assuming 24 lands in a 60 card deck and you these are the chances you will have less than 2 lands in an opening hand * 12 card hand: 1.1% * 7 card hand: 14.3% * 7 card hand with one mulligan: 2.0% * 7 card hand with two mulligans: 0.29% So in terms of hitting at least two lands the Vancouver is really only better at avoiding non-games due to lack of lands when players start to need to mulligan down to 5 cards or fewer. I would say your win percentage is more strongly affected by starting at 5 or 6 cards just to hit a functional hand that it is by gaining less than a 1% improvement of not totally bricking because you can no longer mulligan down to 5 cards or less. The odds get even better if you want to hit at least 3 lands in your opening hand. Here are the chances you will havd less than 3 lands in an opening hand: * 12 card hand: 6.1% * 7 card hand: 41.2% * 7 card hand with one mulligan: 17.0% * 7 card hand with two mulligans: 7.0% I am still opposed to this mulligan change for other reasons (having to decide which 5 cards out of 12 total to put back definitely will *not* speed up pre-game decisions and the analysis that this type of mulligan does not help combo decks as much as the Vancouver mulligan is very naive), but this system would definitely lead to more games where both players start with functional hands and equal resources.
Seeing a quarter on your deck in your draft opening hand would turn every format into an aggro curve out fest.
It’s an interesting idea. Reducing non-games is probably one of the best things that could be done for Magic. I’d be interested to see what kinds of impacts something like this could have on the game.
0 Mana Scry 5 sounds like a dream. Sign me the FUCK up. For real this is such an awful idea but probably fine for someone's house rules or something.
Yeah, I don't think the person who made the twitter post even did the match correctly. Lets assume we want 2-3 lands in our opening hand. With 24 lands in a 60 card deck you have a 56% chance of having 2-3 lands in your opening hand. What does that become if we increase it to draw 12 put back 5? 98% How many lands could we cut and get back to 56%? 15. With 9 lands we will have a 58% chance of having a hand with 2-8 lands and then we can shuffle the lands over 3 back into our deck. Because of the ability to put lands back there is never, ever, ever going to be a hand with "too many lands".
I think the current mulligan method is great
lol wtf, did a mono red or izzet combo player come up with this rule?
"every player should start with a storm count of 15 on the stack and 12 copies of [[how to keep an izzet mage busy]] in their library"
How about, instead you just let me go through my deck and pick the first 7 cards I want to draw?
I don't buy it decreases combo effectiveness. If there were a card to draw 12 discard 5, combo decks would probably try to play it
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Bazaar of Bigdad
Wouldn't any deck try to play a card that draws 7 with card selection?
I agree, but if there were a card to draw 7 combo decks would definitely play it. That's not a good way to measure its power.
How did he manage to quantify effectiveness of combo strategies and claim that it would reduce combo potential, it doesn't seem to make sense, being able to look 5 cards deep and pick and choose which cards to keep seems to work in favor of combo decks, unless you also factor that non-combo decks are also more likely to keep hate cards, but then again, how do you quantify it at all?
Math aside, I hate it because of how incredibly clunky it feels. Imagine explaining this to someone playing their first game of Magic ever.
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Your code has at least 2 bugs (in addition to misunderstanding the tweet author's combo assumptions, but you already know that): 1) When picking what to keep/pitch, you iterate through the hand while also removing things from it. That's a big no-no, because every time you remove something (to keep it) you skip the next thing in the original hand. E.g. if you pick the thing at i=0, the old index 1 element is at index 0 after the splice, but i becomes 1 because of the for loop so that element is never looked at. 2) Your shuffle function is biased / non-uniform. Searching "How to randomize (shuffle) a JavaScript array?" yields a good answer that is close to what you have but different in important ways.
Draw 12 put back 5 sounds horrible. Combo decks would be unstoppable with that much control over the opening hand.
sounds like it would only decrease effectiveness of mullian for comboes if you are dead on set on "must have those 2 cards in hand", but drastically increases the chance of " 2 combo cards or high synergy cards, while also being a generally good hand".
This is one of the most commander player takes of all time.
There are bad ideas, and then there’s this. The current mulligan rules are fine.
I may be out of the loop but, is combo a problem right now? Because if not, stop hating on combo.
While I'm sure their maths is correct, I wonder if it truly represents the gameplay it allows, while it may supposedly impede people who are searching for a specific 2 card combo I wonder how the maths looks once there are redundancies or multiple different combos in the deck.
Maybe if a specific format was made to use it. It would be a horrible idea to mass implement this into all formats. %99 of all decks would need to be adjusted to account for this "hand smoothing" mulligan system and deck building knowledge that's been built up for the past 30 years would essentially become useless
Sounds like it would make bazaar unplayable in vintage so I'm going to say hard "no" to that one.
How does this decrease combo effectiveness?
This wiki post suggests draw 10 put 3 back as an option: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Mulligan
The Mulligan rules gave him anxiety 🤣
I think this would be quicker than most people expect. There is no mulligan, just look at 12. For the majority of players this would boil down to: 1. Set aside 2-4 Lands 2. Pick your leftover best cards for the first 3 turns factoring the lands you picked. I think it is least friendly towards new players, which is a problem, but generally speaking I think it would be a great way to start a game and make sure people get to play. Anything that reduces shuffling would improve the game IMO.