Being reminded of partial paris mulligans was one part "that scene in ratatouille where the critic remembers his childhood" and one part "vietnam war flashback"
@@LibertyMonk The London mulligan is imo where mulligans should be at, the Paris mulligan was way too strong. It was so easy to get away with playing mid-20's land counts and just mulligan aggressively for enough land to play all the gas you filled your deck with.
I'd argue the issue is the free mull in commander. Because the London mulligan has been amazing for constructed 60 card and limited formats. It drastically reduces the chances of non-games due to flood or screw. We all get to play more magic.
If you're not playing a "sanctioned" game, it's a pretty common rule 0 to just set your mulligan'd hand aside, then draw another hand until you find one you'll keep. Then shuffle all those rejected hands back in once you do, along with the appropriate number of cards from the kept hand.
@@LibertyMonk I've seen a guy do this in my pod and I wondered if I should call it out as kinda dodgy. I guess I don't care THAT much, but if it means you're getting better chances to find your broken shit if you mulligan your first crappy hand... then it's a bit suspect
@@technoturnovers7072 Wrong, when you milligan you put the card back in the deck, then shuffle, then take a new hand of 7 and if you decide to keep then you put the cards on the bottom of the library
F.I.R.E-era standard may have been a mess, but it taught me the value of aggressive mulligans. When your deck is 8 design mistakes, 28 generically decent cards, and 24 lands then you have to mulligan a lot to not get caught without your broken cards.
My Grenzo, dungeon warden deck plays 28 lands and mulls super aggressively, since it actually wants to put creatures on the bottom. I played a game today where my mull to 4 was by far the best of all my hands, and I won the game with it lol.
I have a super cheap $15 slicer deck that mulligans super aggressively because my winning chances are way higher if I can get slicer down turn 2. The deck consistently finds a hand that can do that in the first couple hands but I have had to mull to 4 before. It makes my mulligan decisions super easy. In my 7-card hands the decision is "can this win by turn 4?". Everything after that is just "can this play a turn 2 slicer?" If yes keep. If no mull.
@@benturtl9076 turn 2 slicer is easy even on a budget. He only costs 3 mana. Rituals will get you there. My deck runs sandstone needle, dwarven ruins, goldhound, sol ring, strike it rich, skirk prospector, rite of flame, infernal plunge, and simian spirit guide. The rest of my decks is buffs for slicer and a bunch of 0 and 1 drop creatures that I will happily pitch into an infernal plunge. They also provide most of the interaction with shit cards like lightning-core excavator and hall monitor. I particularly like flayer husk and impulsive pilferer. Husk is a 1 mana living weapon that gives me a body for infernal plunge and a buff to give to slicer afterwards. Pilferer just gives me an extra mana to use if I have a buff in hand to give slicer immediately on his arrival. I meant turn 5 total but slicer's 4th turn on the battlefield. My mistake, I didn't clarify. However, a true turn 4 win is possible if extremely unlikely and in my testing there was even a line for a turn 3 win in magical Christmas land. You win turn 4 by getting him out turn 1 which is way harder. I have a couple lines in my deck that can do that. Simian spirit guide *with* desperate ritual or rite of flame is one. The other is a 0 mana creature with infernal plunge. My deck runs 3 0-drops just because they're kinda expensive but they are in there so it is doable. To win turn 3 you need to get a turn 1 slicer *with* enough mana left over for either mirran banesplitter or dueling rapier. Any extra buff played on your second turn will give you enough heat to get a turn 3 win no matter how people attack each other.
I've always wanted to take advantage of that with Grenzo, but my groups love unlimited free mulligans and it feels wrong to take advantage when they're already scared just at the fact that I pulled out Grenzo
I hold fondly a memory of mulling down to a 2 card hand (2 lands) and top decking into the exactly right card for the first 6 turns of a the game in the old RTR/Theros standard, just barely losing to my opponents top deck master of waves.
Adequately entertaining anecdote about mulligans: a little while back, I was teaching my girlfriend how to play magic after I’d just picked up the “Deep clue sea” precon. We shuffled up, I explained the basics of a good hand to her (pretty poorly, might I add) and then looked at my own cards. A single land, but also a sol ring, two signets and a talisman (probably a result of incredibly poor shuffling). I decided to be greedy and was stuck on two lands for 8 turns while still managing to build up a board state. Great precon 10/10. Moral of the story: greed pays of and is fun remember to sin everyone!
I think the biggest cost to a mulligan for me is having to pick up my commander deck and shuffle it before I draw the next 7, especially when everyone else is keeping and I’m holding up the game. I can’t help but include this effort into my mulligan decisions 😅
One kinda Timmy solution of wanting to draw less lands and more gas is running high land counts but with 10+ mdfc/cycling lands. In a 2 color deck I like to run all available colored cycling lands (6/7 depending on if they have a cycling dual) Since they generally etb tapped you're generally playing behind curve more than you want to but I don't generally mind. Later in the game the bad cycling costs don't matter that much since you probably got more mana than you can spend anyways
In a medium power meta or play group, this is a viable solution for sure. With strong enough answers, it doesn't matter if you're a bit behind, you'll still do things
I swear by cycling and guild gates. Also a big fan of gem of becoming for fixing early and thinning later. Since it can search for nonbasic swamps mountains and islands and isn't tied to color, I run it in all my grixis and paired (rakdos, dimir, izzet) decks, which already are a little difficult to color fix.
Necromancy! I actually swear by this method to get above 40 lands but instead of cycling lands (which is actually a great idea), I run functional lands that give me outlets for mana. My favorites are the recursion suits of Volrath's, Acadamy Ruins and Hall of Heliod.
My playgroup implemented a new house rule that works well for us. We start by drawing 12 instead of 7 and put the 5 extra cards on the bottom of our library, no mulligans allowed
Helpful as always. It's nice having a channel that explains a lot about deckbuilding and playing commander in a practical way, without assuming that the audience is completely new to card games. This is probably something better asked on your patreon, but I would love a video where you go through how you would build a control, midrange, and aggro leaning deck and what choices are made depending on the speed of a commander game. I often find that the grindiness and inconsistency (at least compared to other formats) make it difficult for me to find a rate that my decks want to play at or set goals for specific rounds, and some general deckbuilding guidance would be really appreciated!
@@brennantmi5063ngl efficient card draw is probably the most important thing for building consistently powerful decks :). Everything else comes down to what decks you're playing with or against.
The land counts commander players seem to advocate for in a 99-card deck (36ish out of 99) translate over to like 22 lands in a 60-card deck, which seems to ride right on the line of "sometimes works okay with the greed, sometimes gets utterly screwed"; I've found more consistency in my 60-card decks by going up to 24-26. I feel like there's a lesson to be learned from Limited here; in Limited, cutting down from 17 lands to 16 is sometimes reasonable, but one needs to consider if their 24th-best spell is actually worth more than the loss of the land. The cut from 16 to 15 is even harder; what's your 25th-best spell look like? While individual card quality is a lot higher in Commander, I think a similar logic applies. If your 99 is like 36 lands, 8 pieces of ramp/rocks, 10 card advantage pieces, 10 pieces of interaction, and about 35 creatures/spells that really work with your commander and theme... is the 36th-best creature for your theme worth adding a higher chance of mana screw by cutting the land to include it? What about the 37th-best creature or 38th? I'm fiddling with a Rona Herald of Invasion deck, and despite her being a 2-mana commander I'm still thinking of running about 40 lands + some MDFCs because even in the cases of dire mana flood I can loot away surplus land and activate her transform ability if I have lots of mana, but a 2-land starter hand that doesn't draw into its third will set me further from using any of my payoffs.
I don't. His weird cadence and breathy exhalations at the end of all of his words, along with the way he ends the word "deck", are unsettling to listen to, and are indicative of extremely poor vocal and breath control. It often sounds like his nose is permanently stuffed up, and he is desperately trying to speak through his nose. It's just off-putting.
@@fraterseeker the only weird thing here is your unnecessary, exaggerating way of judging and insulting people by their way to talk / their physique. Feeling sorry for you that your life must be this shitty. Grow up.
Thank you so much this is so useful omg. I’ve been playing for years and doing grew learning so much but never viewed the mulligan as a resource like this ❤🎉
I’m trying to teach my mom how to play magic, and the next thing I was gonna teach her is mulliganing, and what a good hand looks like. The fact that you made this video means that there is gonna be a video for the lesson now lmao Great vid!
I wish I had this video when I was first learning how to play Commander and Standard back in 2021. I remember going from not caring about the mulligan, seeing it as just another random 7 cards or worse (less!) in my practice on Arena. Then realizing my friends that always beat me were doing it SOMETIMES but very thoughtfully. Finally, learning more and more about strategy to understand that decks tend to perform differently and want different things early in a match versus later in the game. All together, it culminated in slowly figuring out some (hopefully most) of what is being said here! Thank you so much :)
To play test my edh decks, I cycle through the entire deck 9 cards at a time to represent the first few draws. I then categorize it as a high, medium, or low open. By going through the entire deck multiple times this way, I get a feel for what to tweak and what to expect on an average draw.
In my play groups and LGS we keep it pretty casual, we do Sheldon Menery's "geese" mulligan (RIP) But it has to to be in good faith that the players aren't just sculpting their hands for an advantage
Land counts and likelyhood of drawing land vs non-land cards is something that I find particularly interesting. I'm currently building a Borborygmos Enraged deck which puts a fun twist on it. Most decks want to draw as few lands as possible while hitting their land drop every turn. Borborygmos is the exact opposite. The fewer non-land cards you can get away with playing, the better. It will definitely be an interesting experience optimizing this compared to other decks!
I love something like this. I've grown a lot more confident recently in my deck building and mulligan strategies. My most recent commander deck helped me learn that the hard way. The commander is Grist, The Grave Tide, and the deck is all about self milling as much as possible using Grist's upscale, then ulting him to drain the table. As a result, it runs only 24 lands, no ramp and about 54 creatures, most if not all being insects. As a result, an aggressive mulligan is required to obtain a minimum of 3 mana through whatever means, because 3 mana is all I EVER need to cast my commander and get the ball rolling. There are few cards I ever want to cast above 3 mana, so I can afford to mulligan to 3 or less if I can fix my topdecks with scroll rack or filter for lands with Sylvan Library. This very much has helped me make good choices with other decks and formats too. It's all subjective and practice! :D
Ah this is so in depth! I wish I had this when I started playing. Also going to share it with my LGS because everyone has their own opinion on how to mulligan 😂
A rule 0 that my group has is that we can mulligan 7 until another player says stop, then we're allowed 1 more if it's genuinely unplayable (e.g. 0 lands). That way it's more likely that everyone will have a good time with their first few turns, but doesn't let someone take the piss and spend 15 minutes finding their "perfect opener"
I agree that Mulligans are an underutilized resource, but with how long shuffling 99 cards takes, I kinda wish it wasn't. Depending on the playgroup, it almost feels like part of the social contract to try and minimise the time spent mulliganning and keep whatever something playable, even when somewhat suboptimal, just to get into a game.
Great video! I like how you back up your reasoning with numbers. Makes a lot of sense. I started mtg when mulliganning wasnt thought of as good (0/7) now with edh it's a strategy.
So the brother of a friend who I play with came by our lgs and introduced us to a type of mulligan that was honestly hilarious to play. Each player draws their 7 cards and then you go in turn order and ask each player if they wish to mulligan. If they dont, nothing happens but if they do, all players set aside their hand and draw 7 new cards. Repeat this until all players are happy with their hand. The beauty in this is that only the player who opted to mulligan will have to pay for it with putting one card on the bottom so it becomes this mini mindgame trying not to be the one that mulligans. It also provides a unique dynamic where you cant reliably hold great hands and you must make do with ok hands. A few games of this will quickly show how good your decks "average" hand is. Try it sometime!
Great analysis of mulligans. It's an important skill to learn as it is a unique resource at your disposal that is part of the game, but easy to forget, because you never see it while you're actually playing, only during set up. Before the London Mulligan was instituted, I came up with my own personal mulligan in my circle for casual commander. We still use it to this day, as long as we're playing a casual deck without two card instant win combos. What we do is draw 3 hands of 7 side by side. Set them down in independent piles and look at each. Pick one that works and shuffle the others in. Often times we look at the first 7 before drawing the other two just in case it's worth keeping. I instituted this rule to save time, because the time it takes players to shuffle a 100 card deck adequately weigh the pros and cons of a hand and debate the validity of their mulligan is just too painfully long, especially when multiple shuffles are required. If you built your deck with even remotely close to enough lands, you are very likely to have a keepable hand in these 3. In some ways, this is like having one extra free mulligan. However without the shuffling, it's possible you have a hand that's all lands and one that's everything you want. In that way, it's not the same as just getting a free Mulligan where you shuffle and can still see the card you wanted to keep but had to shuffle in, because you had no lands. Understanding the gives and takes of this, I still think it's more than fair and it saves a lot of time. It tends to keep the games more interesting and focused on the game itself. But this is only a casual rule and falls apart when people start bringing Thoracle into the mix.
This was a really cool video! I also came to a lot of similar conclusions about manabases and using Mulligans, althought mine was more heuristics based and feelings. You will feel very sad by pulling out cool cards you want to play but increasing your ability to play a good game from 70->80% will lead to you having more fun when you get to play the game instead of getting mana screwed and regretting it for 2 hours
Great video, and thanks for mentioning your Goreclaw deck. I had just thrown one together and comparing yours to mine turned me on to some cards I overlooked like Doomskar Warrior and helped give me confidence to include cards I thought were good like Vorapede that I didn't see elsewhere.
There are a number of cards like Vorapede that I'd probably cut if I was building a version with a higher budget, but a well-statted vigilance beater that survives a boardwipe is a damn fine creature for 50 cents or so.
@@salubrioussnail fair point, my list is mostly chaf and unused cards I had lying around plus a few pet cards like Pelakka Wurm and Engulfing Slagwurm. If you don't mind me asking, I noticed a few staples absent in your deck such as Beast Whisperer, cultivate, etc. Did you exclude them for budget or other reasons? IE better/alternative draw or ramp options already present or better suited to the deck.
@@MCC17011 beast whisperer is outside the budget for the deck, and neither beast whisperer nor cultivate serve the deck’s goal: Goreclaw on turn 3, start slamming beefy boys on turn 4. I could see a slower version of the deck wanting slower tools, though there are a half dozen 3 mana ramp spells I’d prefer to cultivate in a mono green deck with a 4 cost commander
@@salubrioussnail Thank you, and fair points. Even though I'm not constrained by budget I ended up cutting Beast Whisperer as it felt like skipping a turn for an unusable body and drip of card draw. Goldfishing feels great but we'll see how it goes at the LGS later this week. I'd be interested in hearing what other ramp options you'd consider(I'm trying Nissa's Pilgrimage out). Btw love your videos, they've all been quite insightful and you've converted me to including 3-4 extra lands in most of my decks.
There's a Gerry Thomson quote I paraphrase about how every single decklist he sees is easily improved by adding another land. Nobody ever really accounts for manascrew.
I've heard a great piece of advice, which is "Imagine you only get to play with those starting cards, if you can do something with these, you should probably keep". However as i play more and more, it gets more complicated. I have a Sodar Jabari of Zhalfir deck and mulliganing is one of it's strengths thanks to commander's eminence, which lets me loot when i attack with a knight l. That lets me mulligan very aggressively, because i know that as long as i have a knight to play(one is in the command zone), i can see a ton of card.
It's interesting how so much commander theory always comes back to lands, it's forced me to genuinely start thinking way too hard about my land base choices.
9:01 is something I wish you'd gone into a little more, knowing your opponents/matchups. Back when Eldrazi Ramp was in standard, I was on the draw in game 3 against Valakut. My 7 and 6 card hands had lands and spells, but they were too slow for the matchup. I knew from my testing that 5 card hands could be better than that. Then, sure enough, I drew up a 5 card hand that ended up going turn 3 Primeval Titan, turn 4 Primeval Titan, turn 5 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre.
This video was very thought provoking. One of my favorite decks is a zabaz the glimmerwasp boros modular deck. This is making me think to start mulling more aggressively with that deck since usually all my turn ones are the same since zabaz costs 1 colorless. Might as well look for more interaction and combo pieces
i play casual EDH at my LGS. and my play group started doing what we call the Renee-lligan. named after our friend renee. with the renee-lligan, you draw 10 cards with your opening hand, and put 3 cards back into the deck and shuffle. its pretty much our favorite way to mulligan, and we typically do not use this mulligan maliciously. the consensus is that with the 10 card hand it ensures that we get 2-3 lands in our opening hand, 2-3 one to three mana value spells and 1-2 four to five mana value spells in your opening hand. of course this mulligan can be used irresponsibly, but when everyone is on the same page and powerlevel, there arent really issues with it. we usually allow one more renee-lligan if there are less than 2 lands in the opening hand but if you choose to do it again, no matter what hand you draw afterward, you have to keep it. anytime someone has done the renee-lligan we have never had anyone locked out of the game or screwed out of lands. drawing ten cards in the opening hands seems nuts, especially if youre thinking "oh well sapphire i would just use this mulligan to just dig for the best tutors and mana rocks, this is stupid and no one should mulligan like this." and yeah there are assholes out there that would do that, but my city has started to adopt this mulligan. out of the 8 LGS in my city, 3 of them i am aware of use the renee-lligan at the moment. you just have to keep in mind that not everyone is an asshole. give it a try if you dont believe me
I've been in playgroups that do this and honestly my problem with it is it kind of just overcompensates for bad deck building. Like your goal should be improving and these kinds of rules just encourage the total opposite. Like why bother identifying and fixing a deck building problem when you can just make up a rule that hides all your problems? In the long run I think rules like this hurt players. There's a reason we draw 7 and have 1 free mulligan and if your deck regularly can't perform under this circumstance you probably have a core flaw in deck construction that you should work out so you improve and learn as a player. Like you get to look at 14 cards and then another 7 for the cost of going down 1. Thats 21 cards you get to see for almost free, if that ain't working for you, there's a problem somewhere
@@jamescobblepot4744 i mean bad deckbuilding is relative. a precon can be too powerful for one playgroup, and a $200 upgrade precon can be too weak for another. like i said in the comment, its usefulness depends on the player and the powerlevel of the pod. i still use this mulligan just to dig for 3 lands and thats it. also commander is a kitchen table format. play however you want to. if your pod wants to pretend Mana Flare, Rites of Flourishing or Howling Mine is always in play, then go for it. its a non sanctioned format created by fans, for fans.
"Well, a lot of decks will have a particular thing they're looking to find- for example, a piece of ramp is a frequent want for decks with a specific curve in mind. He COOKED 💀
I play Sythis, Harvests Hand as my commander, so I draw a TON of cards. So I'm almost always able to draw at least one mana to stay on curve. So everything in this video is super relatable. I only run 32 lands cause I only need 2-3 to start popping off. And even if I have to mulligan a bunch, I'll just draw all the cards I need back.
Great vid, made me think of the concept of “commander curve” that I consider when building. By that I mean “when during the course of the game do I ideally cast my commander, and therefore what should my mana acceleration look like?” A lot of commanders want to be played ASAP but not all. For the ASAP commanders, their mana cost dictates what kinds of ramp I find ideal. For example, in my Queen Marchesa deck, I want her out ASAP so a 2mv rock is exceptionally good. Dropping her on turn 3 is an extra card over the course of the game, so I run 10 2mv rocks + Sol. But in a deck like Gavi, Nest Warden, who is 5mv, a 2mv rock and a 3mv rock both get her out a turn earlier, and are essentially equivalent for that purpose, so that deck runs more 3mv rocks, while Queen runs none. I think this is one of the great bummers of EDHREC and Command Zone downplaying 3+mv rocks because it’s not universal how much acceleration you actually get from them, it really differs from commander to commander and strat to strat.
I play pretty casually and I've hit a point where as long as I have 2 or 3 land and 1 creature I can play with that amount of mana I call it good. It's a really, really good way to find out what your deck is bad at when you play with highly suboptimal hands. In other words: I boldly expect my decks to deliver greatness and, if they don't, I've learned why.
In my groups we play with a Partial London mulligan... so the one, where in the first one you are able to put a way any amount of your choosing draw the same amount new and then shuffle afterwords it is just the London Mulligan. It helps to negate non games for most players...
I've been thinking a lot about mulligans recently, so this video was a fantastic watch. Sounds obvious, but my recent epiphany has been to be more critical with what my deck's actual gameplan is, and choosing mulligans focused on that. In my dredge/mill insect deck, hands with "decent enough cards plus Kodama's Reach" tend to fall flat if I don't quickly draw into a mill-enabler, compared to hands that have some built-in mill outlet. I've kept too many "fine" hands instead of great hands for *this* deck because of that initial "mulligans are the emergency button" mindset you alluded to.
One deck that isn’t super competitive but which has been a great learning experience in aggressive mulligans is Sram, Senior Edificer voltron. I don’t run as low as 28 lands, but when 40+% of my deck turns into cantrip permanents with a two-mana spell I have perpetual access to, I can mulligan pretty liberally without having to worry about mana shortage.
our house rule is you can mulligan if you have no lands else you play. it makes for more conservative decks built with plenty of lands and often around a couple of strategies that over 5 hands gets quite interesting tactically. We also run that that the first 2 games have no value and are to practice, then an optional 5 card changes before game 3 and score of games 3-5.
hi snail, love the content. The math you present is not exact because drawing cards is done without replacement (ie. the order that you draw lands and no lands affects the probability for the next card) and ignoring the mulligans is not really useful. Since the direct calculations are annoying, what I would recommend instead if you know a little programming, is to instead simulate 10,000+ hands drawn one at a time without replacement with the conditionals that you keep the hand with 3-5 lands and mulligan (re-draw) hands that don't have the correct number of lands. Similarly I have a deck that really wants 5 lands by turn 5 so for example I can simulate 12 card hards as well out of the keepable hands. I hope I'm not understating the importance of not skipping the mulligan math. For example the conditional probability of getting to 5 lands on turn 5 with a 1-land start is horrid compared to a 3-land start Overall the goal is if you are able to accurately estimate the number of lands you will draw, you get to set the hard floor for a land count in your deck and you never have to worry about whether you have some wiggle room to cut a land ever again.
You're right, this was an oversight on my part. This effect seems to produce an error of between .005 and .02, with the error being on the higher end for hands with 0-1/6-7 lands where the impact of the deck containing fewer lands/nonlands is more greatly felt. I'll look into how to correct for this going forward.
@@salubrioussnail Well if you're going to be running any stats analysis on the distribution then you will be propagating those errors if the calcs are off. ah and while we're at it I'm not sure if the calculators on your website actually work as intended. For example if I enter I am running 1 copy of a card I want to draw, and I input that I want it by turn 99, it returns a probability lower than 1. Just an fyi if anyone is relying on these.
I think this video has reinforced my idea of running my Octavia deck with 30 lands only and trying to play even less. I've got around 20 pieces of filtering at 1 or 2 cmc. They filter lands by putting the "desirables" cards in the graveyard. This is exactly what Octavia want : you fill your GY with spells and keep the land in your hand. When Octavia's on the battlefield, you keep the playables and bin the lands.
I have a 30 land deck but it also is mostly 1 and 2 drops with the most expensive cards coming in at 4. Mulligans are easy. I want two land in my opening hand and one of them needs to produce white. That's it. There is a high density of cards that do what I want so I will naturally draw into them. The deck doesn't do everything with two lands, but it does function fairly well.
A great idea a friend of mine found, is to take a first hand of 10 and putting 3 at the bottom, the likelyhood of getting somthing unplayable with 10 cards is really low and that removes the 5th hand drawn making the start of the game shorter and more enjoyable.
I think the biggest part when you talk about their confidence in mulliganing, is not the confidence in mulliganing but their confidence in shuffling often for me after a couple of games all my lands end up bunched together and seeing a decent couple of xards and three lands ill keep not because i shouldnt mulligan (i should and i would on cockatrice) but vecause im scared of not getting any lands vecause ive got the feeling that theyre all at the bottom together
I find that in standard, running a 69-70 card deck with 24 lands seems to be the sweet spot for getting the deck strategy out on the board. It's a bit slow against aggro, but if you can slow your opponent's tempo, it works exceedingly well.
My favourite mulligan is stil Lab Maniacs' one where he mulled to 3 cards, but managed to find a hand that BTFO'd another of them going all in on Oracle Consultation.
The best strategy I've employed for myself when deciding whether to mulligan is: "How far can I get and how much can I do if I never get another draw phase?" If the answer is something like... I only have one land or I don't have ramp or card draw, I seriously lean towards mulligan.
I think a deck with green can get away with having fewer lands. Ramp spells, mana dorks and fast mana help you greatly. The mulligan also helps a lot, by the reasons stated on the video. You have to be willing to make some sacrifices and sometimes things will go south, but if you get things going it's always so beautiful.
@@maxbodifee3263 I can only give my case as an example. I run a Xenagos with 25 lands and plenty of fast mana, fetchs and ramp to compensate. I generally need to have 2 lands and a ramp (on an opening hand) to reach that 5 mana and thats it.
I'm a pretty new player, I play on tabletop sim with a basically random deck I pull from cardbuilder sites. The deck is 100% a mystical black box to me, and its quite fun that way most of the time. (I do this to throw different types of decks at my brother's new decks he's actually constructing. I don't care to learn deckbuilding but enjoy playing varied decks from game to game)
Great topic and explanation! I’ve had to think about mulligans in weird ways in my 4th Omnath landfall deck, versus my even CMC Muldrotha+Gyruda companion deck, vs my Henzie+Umori companion deck 😵💫
Great video I realize you aren’t talking about min maxing exactly but I want to mention in the comments here that taking a mull “every few games” is insane if you are trying to minmax. Using some back of the napkin math I estimate the % first sevens you ought to keep to be in the vicinity of 15%.. maybe 20% depending on the deck. 1) first mull is free = NO WAY we keep more than 50% 2) 3 opponents. No points for 2nd place. Keeping mid hands makes it more likely to be in a mid position in the game. Playing for 1st means looking for the high roll and being willing to gamble. 3) if you get a bad second seven you can try again and keep 6 4) there are a few cards that are dramatically better than the average card in your deck 5) you have a commander, changing a mull from 7 to 6 into more like a mull from 8 to 7. Keeping half of your first sevens would be preposterous if your goal were to win the max # of games possible. DONT KEEP AVERAGE 7’s!!
I think that the chance of drawing lands plays also a big role. With 40 lands in deck, there is a greater chance Ill get mana flooded, and in EDH its usually the case that you dont start with 7 cards + your commander, but 7 opening hand + commander + the 1st card you draw
I feel like mulliganing is the thing that most commander players need to work on because the number of times I hear opponents talk about keeping bad hands because they don’t want to shuffle is way too many
As for the 28 land deck. I have one deck that I run 28 lands in, my Urza LHA seck. Mono Blue, with AMPLE ramp. If I wait till T3 to cast Urza, I consider it casual and non-competitive. But that deck is specifically designed to function like that. Most other decks, even an Adrix and Nev deck will need 35 lands.
I don't believe it was mentioned here, but also keep in mind the multiple Mana Fixers that exist, chromatic lantern, prophetic prism, chromatic star, all of the different signets, etc. Having these mana-fixers available in a deck can make individual hands far more playable than they would be otherwise.
the amount of times I've kept a 2 land hand and gotten completely mana screwed is far too high for me to ever keep a hand that doesn't have access to 3+ mana
In regards to running 40 rather than 30 lands, because it increases the probability of a keepable opening hand, I would counter it also increases the probability of drawing a land on turns after you no longer need more lands for your deck to function. So to state that you need or will use more draw/filtering to find lands early game if you run 30 lands, then you'd also need more draw/filtering late game if you run 40 lands to filter away the extra topdecked lands. Personally I run 31-ish lands in almost all my decks, and 14-ish mana acceleration pieces. I would much rather have a 2-land opener with mana acceleration than a 3-land opener. However, I do play with a fairly high power (but not cEDH) playgroup.
On Arena, I have 2 Historical decks designed around mulligans. I only use 1 for the most part however because apparently to some players using Scute Swarm Mutation is a crime punishable by the death of me and my family. The other I have a general rule with the deck. If I dont open 1 of my search cards, I mulligan up to 3 times to try and get 1. I can do 4, but that means I will have a dead turn if I draw too many lands. Idealy, I try to get a search card and 3 land as that has the highest chance of a turn 4 Eldrazi as well as starting off the combo of the deck, which is to board sweep often with cards that bring back my creatures as well as cards that gain advantage when they enter or leave play. It took a lot of testing and fiddling around to get the deck just right to not only have every creature it may need, but to be able to safely mulligan frivolously to get a good hand. For the longest time, it was my favorite deck. But then I learned how to clone planeswalkers, then I learned to duplicate them, then I learned how to duplicate them and my opponents deck while cloning literally everything
WOW WTF Chartooth Cougar is wild! I was trying to build a firebreathing deck for a bit due to Kargan Dragonlord getting way too much hate than it deserves.
I think I have still Parised more than London, even though I started in 2014 Fall and left summer 2017, came back summer 2021, and then left the standard scene probably some time in 2022? I was hitting hard in 2014+ Run.
we need to go back to the old way of mulligan before the paris mulligan where you only were allowed to mulligan if you got no land or all land hands, the Paris and London mulligans leads to combo decks running rampant
Updated calculator page: www.salubrioussnail.com/calculators
Being reminded of partial paris mulligans was one part "that scene in ratatouille where the critic remembers his childhood" and one part "vietnam war flashback"
It's probably the best part of the video for anyone clinging to the nostalgic "mulligans are a risk" school of thought. London is so *so* powerful.
@@LibertyMonk The London mulligan is imo where mulligans should be at, the Paris mulligan was way too strong. It was so easy to get away with playing mid-20's land counts and just mulligan aggressively for enough land to play all the gas you filled your deck with.
I'd argue the issue is the free mull in commander. Because the London mulligan has been amazing for constructed 60 card and limited formats. It drastically reduces the chances of non-games due to flood or screw. We all get to play more magic.
My teenage playgroup somehow thought it was called partial pairs, so we could only switch out exactly 2 cards at a time
@@mimpbusinessthe only reason I mulliganed like this was because I could only afford to play mono red at the time.
Why don't I mulligan enough? Because I just can't be bothered to shuffle again.
My friend is like this and I just shuffle for her haha
If you're not playing a "sanctioned" game, it's a pretty common rule 0 to just set your mulligan'd hand aside, then draw another hand until you find one you'll keep. Then shuffle all those rejected hands back in once you do, along with the appropriate number of cards from the kept hand.
@@LibertyMonk I personally don't like this because I want a chance to draw some of the cards I am putting away.
@@LibertyMonkNot a proper randomization - nearly cheating/cheating depending who you ask.
@@LibertyMonk I've seen a guy do this in my pod and I wondered if I should call it out as kinda dodgy. I guess I don't care THAT much, but if it means you're getting better chances to find your broken shit if you mulligan your first crappy hand... then it's a bit suspect
Snail be cute, snail be smart.
Snail teach you how to not fumble the start.
amazing
EDH: if your hands are big, mulligan more. If your hands are small, its not worth shuffling a 100 card sleeved deck.
@@technoturnovers7072 Wrong, when you milligan you put the card back in the deck, then shuffle, then take a new hand of 7 and if you decide to keep then you put the cards on the bottom of the library
@@googloocraft12 looks like someone has freakish hands hmm
Commander is the format of paying 2 for your third land drop
2 lands and a dream baby
F.I.R.E-era standard may have been a mess, but it taught me the value of aggressive mulligans. When your deck is 8 design mistakes, 28 generically decent cards, and 24 lands then you have to mulligan a lot to not get caught without your broken cards.
This is why you run 16 design mistakes to mitigate design mistake screw.
@@mawillix2018is that why they extended standard to 3 years, so we can be guaranteed at least 4 design mistakes in any color pair?
If only stuff like aerherworks marvel was merely a mistake.
@@murpl1462What's the other Kaladesh card that people complain about?
@mawillix2018 people also hated the Felidar Guardian/Saheeli combo that dominated Standard for awhile
My Grenzo, dungeon warden deck plays 28 lands and mulls super aggressively, since it actually wants to put creatures on the bottom. I played a game today where my mull to 4 was by far the best of all my hands, and I won the game with it lol.
I've been looking at Grenzo to build him, and that is incredibly smart!
I have a super cheap $15 slicer deck that mulligans super aggressively because my winning chances are way higher if I can get slicer down turn 2. The deck consistently finds a hand that can do that in the first couple hands but I have had to mull to 4 before. It makes my mulligan decisions super easy. In my 7-card hands the decision is "can this win by turn 4?". Everything after that is just "can this play a turn 2 slicer?" If yes keep. If no mull.
@@andrewb378 how tf do you get him out on turn 2? And how tf do you win on turn 4?
@@benturtl9076 turn 2 slicer is easy even on a budget. He only costs 3 mana. Rituals will get you there. My deck runs sandstone needle, dwarven ruins, goldhound, sol ring, strike it rich, skirk prospector, rite of flame, infernal plunge, and simian spirit guide. The rest of my decks is buffs for slicer and a bunch of 0 and 1 drop creatures that I will happily pitch into an infernal plunge. They also provide most of the interaction with shit cards like lightning-core excavator and hall monitor. I particularly like flayer husk and impulsive pilferer. Husk is a 1 mana living weapon that gives me a body for infernal plunge and a buff to give to slicer afterwards. Pilferer just gives me an extra mana to use if I have a buff in hand to give slicer immediately on his arrival.
I meant turn 5 total but slicer's 4th turn on the battlefield. My mistake, I didn't clarify. However, a true turn 4 win is possible if extremely unlikely and in my testing there was even a line for a turn 3 win in magical Christmas land.
You win turn 4 by getting him out turn 1 which is way harder. I have a couple lines in my deck that can do that. Simian spirit guide *with* desperate ritual or rite of flame is one. The other is a 0 mana creature with infernal plunge. My deck runs 3 0-drops just because they're kinda expensive but they are in there so it is doable. To win turn 3 you need to get a turn 1 slicer *with* enough mana left over for either mirran banesplitter or dueling rapier. Any extra buff played on your second turn will give you enough heat to get a turn 3 win no matter how people attack each other.
I've always wanted to take advantage of that with Grenzo, but my groups love unlimited free mulligans and it feels wrong to take advantage when they're already scared just at the fact that I pulled out Grenzo
I hold fondly a memory of mulling down to a 2 card hand (2 lands) and top decking into the exactly right card for the first 6 turns of a the game in the old RTR/Theros standard, just barely losing to my opponents top deck master of waves.
Here is someone that understands the heart of the cards
Adequately entertaining anecdote about mulligans: a little while back, I was teaching my girlfriend how to play magic after I’d just picked up the “Deep clue sea” precon. We shuffled up, I explained the basics of a good hand to her (pretty poorly, might I add) and then looked at my own cards. A single land, but also a sol ring, two signets and a talisman (probably a result of incredibly poor shuffling). I decided to be greedy and was stuck on two lands for 8 turns while still managing to build up a board state. Great precon 10/10. Moral of the story: greed pays of and is fun remember to sin everyone!
I think the biggest cost to a mulligan for me is having to pick up my commander deck and shuffle it before I draw the next 7, especially when everyone else is keeping and I’m holding up the game. I can’t help but include this effort into my mulligan decisions 😅
With 3 layers of sleeves no less.
One kinda Timmy solution of wanting to draw less lands and more gas is running high land counts but with 10+ mdfc/cycling lands. In a 2 color deck I like to run all available colored cycling lands (6/7 depending on if they have a cycling dual)
Since they generally etb tapped you're generally playing behind curve more than you want to but I don't generally mind. Later in the game the bad cycling costs don't matter that much since you probably got more mana than you can spend anyways
In a medium power meta or play group, this is a viable solution for sure. With strong enough answers, it doesn't matter if you're a bit behind, you'll still do things
I swear by cycling and guild gates. Also a big fan of gem of becoming for fixing early and thinning later. Since it can search for nonbasic swamps mountains and islands and isn't tied to color, I run it in all my grixis and paired (rakdos, dimir, izzet) decks, which already are a little difficult to color fix.
Necromancy! I actually swear by this method to get above 40 lands but instead of cycling lands (which is actually a great idea), I run functional lands that give me outlets for mana. My favorites are the recursion suits of Volrath's, Acadamy Ruins and Hall of Heliod.
My playgroup implemented a new house rule that works well for us. We start by drawing 12 instead of 7 and put the 5 extra cards on the bottom of our library, no mulligans allowed
Hows that? Is it working for u guys?
We do the same thing but draw 10
Are you guys the prodigy group?
Helpful as always. It's nice having a channel that explains a lot about deckbuilding and playing commander in a practical way, without assuming that the audience is completely new to card games.
This is probably something better asked on your patreon, but I would love a video where you go through how you would build a control, midrange, and aggro leaning deck and what choices are made depending on the speed of a commander game. I often find that the grindiness and inconsistency (at least compared to other formats) make it difficult for me to find a rate that my decks want to play at or set goals for specific rounds, and some general deckbuilding guidance would be really appreciated!
How many colors, how much money; how powerful?
“Can I mulligan my commander for another in my deck?”
Yes, but only if your commander is Edgar markov because I cannot with that nonsense today.
Yes, but remember you draw 1 fewer commander each time
@@sethb3090
Aw man, now I’ll only have 6.
This is the best MTG channel I've ever found, thanks.
your videos are so good. i have played magic for a decade and your putting into words what my intuition has been doing for me :D thank you
Is it just me or does getting better at commander almost always involve "Play More Lands"
Step one is play more lands. Step two is play more draw to draw said lands.
@@brennantmi5063ngl efficient card draw is probably the most important thing for building consistently powerful decks :). Everything else comes down to what decks you're playing with or against.
These days nearly every card wins the game or accrues absurd value. Being able to cast these spells is really the only thing you need to worry about.
Better commander deckbuilding is about removing all the fun cards
The land counts commander players seem to advocate for in a 99-card deck (36ish out of 99) translate over to like 22 lands in a 60-card deck, which seems to ride right on the line of "sometimes works okay with the greed, sometimes gets utterly screwed"; I've found more consistency in my 60-card decks by going up to 24-26.
I feel like there's a lesson to be learned from Limited here; in Limited, cutting down from 17 lands to 16 is sometimes reasonable, but one needs to consider if their 24th-best spell is actually worth more than the loss of the land. The cut from 16 to 15 is even harder; what's your 25th-best spell look like? While individual card quality is a lot higher in Commander, I think a similar logic applies. If your 99 is like 36 lands, 8 pieces of ramp/rocks, 10 card advantage pieces, 10 pieces of interaction, and about 35 creatures/spells that really work with your commander and theme... is the 36th-best creature for your theme worth adding a higher chance of mana screw by cutting the land to include it? What about the 37th-best creature or 38th?
I'm fiddling with a Rona Herald of Invasion deck, and despite her being a 2-mana commander I'm still thinking of running about 40 lands + some MDFCs because even in the cases of dire mana flood I can loot away surplus land and activate her transform ability if I have lots of mana, but a 2-land starter hand that doesn't draw into its third will set me further from using any of my payoffs.
I love you snail
I don't. His weird cadence and breathy exhalations at the end of all of his words, along with the way he ends the word "deck", are unsettling to listen to, and are indicative of extremely poor vocal and breath control. It often sounds like his nose is permanently stuffed up, and he is desperately trying to speak through his nose. It's just off-putting.
@@fraterseeker dude what. Who asked?? None of those are real things that matter
@@fraterseeker the only weird thing here is your unnecessary, exaggerating way of judging and insulting people by their way to talk / their physique. Feeling sorry for you that your life must be this shitty. Grow up.
@@fraterseekerwhere’s yo 20k subs lol
@@kurtlee12 What does that have to do with anything? Your shaming tactics will not work on me, pleb.
Thank you so much this is so useful omg. I’ve been playing for years and doing grew learning so much but never viewed the mulligan as a resource like this ❤🎉
I’m trying to teach my mom how to play magic, and the next thing I was gonna teach her is mulliganing, and what a good hand looks like. The fact that you made this video means that there is gonna be a video for the lesson now lmao
Great vid!
It's kind of amazing that the london mulligan has existed for five years now and yet so many commander players don't know it yet
There's also the multiplayer variant (one free) and the more casual types.
I wish I had this video when I was first learning how to play Commander and Standard back in 2021. I remember going from not caring about the mulligan, seeing it as just another random 7 cards or worse (less!) in my practice on Arena. Then realizing my friends that always beat me were doing it SOMETIMES but very thoughtfully. Finally, learning more and more about strategy to understand that decks tend to perform differently and want different things early in a match versus later in the game. All together, it culminated in slowly figuring out some (hopefully most) of what is being said here! Thank you so much :)
1:26 Best girl jumpscare.
As an actuary who spends too much time playing magic when I should be studying for exams, it's nice to see both things get merged. Great video
Easily the best channel for educational MTG content.
To play test my edh decks, I cycle through the entire deck 9 cards at a time to represent the first few draws. I then categorize it as a high, medium, or low open. By going through the entire deck multiple times this way, I get a feel for what to tweak and what to expect on an average draw.
wooo more calculations i will misuse(i will make low land decks and justify it with 60% chance to draw a playable hand after 3 mulligans)
As long as you know you're misusing it, that sounds fun. You'll probably then start with a 2 land hand and never draw another land the entire game.
That is not a good percentage though, it means you're going to spend almost half your games wishing you had cards that worked
"my hand is trash" vro you built the deck
In my play groups and LGS we keep it pretty casual, we do Sheldon Menery's "geese" mulligan (RIP)
But it has to to be in good faith that the players aren't just sculpting their hands for an advantage
Looping this video until I can convince myself to goldfish mindfully
This was really solid. I appreciate you backing up your thoughts with statistics. Awesome video.
this is beautiful, love this type of analysis!
Land counts and likelyhood of drawing land vs non-land cards is something that I find particularly interesting. I'm currently building a Borborygmos Enraged deck which puts a fun twist on it. Most decks want to draw as few lands as possible while hitting their land drop every turn. Borborygmos is the exact opposite. The fewer non-land cards you can get away with playing, the better. It will definitely be an interesting experience optimizing this compared to other decks!
I love something like this. I've grown a lot more confident recently in my deck building and mulligan strategies. My most recent commander deck helped me learn that the hard way.
The commander is Grist, The Grave Tide, and the deck is all about self milling as much as possible using Grist's upscale, then ulting him to drain the table. As a result, it runs only 24 lands, no ramp and about 54 creatures, most if not all being insects.
As a result, an aggressive mulligan is required to obtain a minimum of 3 mana through whatever means, because 3 mana is all I EVER need to cast my commander and get the ball rolling. There are few cards I ever want to cast above 3 mana, so I can afford to mulligan to 3 or less if I can fix my topdecks with scroll rack or filter for lands with Sylvan Library.
This very much has helped me make good choices with other decks and formats too. It's all subjective and practice! :D
Ah this is so in depth! I wish I had this when I started playing. Also going to share it with my LGS because everyone has their own opinion on how to mulligan 😂
Awesome video!! I usually disregard mulligans, but this vid is gonna make me take them more seriously
A rule 0 that my group has is that we can mulligan 7 until another player says stop, then we're allowed 1 more if it's genuinely unplayable (e.g. 0 lands). That way it's more likely that everyone will have a good time with their first few turns, but doesn't let someone take the piss and spend 15 minutes finding their "perfect opener"
Cheating a non-obvious, falsely innocuous perfect hand with card trick techniques keeps me from having to work on my mulligan skills tbh
"It's literally impossible for a hand to have access to no good cards" *looks at my 0 land, 3.5 average CMC hand*
Yeah, with cEDH, mulliganing properly is defimotely where i struggle most. Im new to it but boy do i feel like it's kicked my ass
One other thing to take into account when talking about cost/benefit analysis for mulligans is that in multiplayer formats Player 1 draws
I agree that Mulligans are an underutilized resource, but with how long shuffling 99 cards takes, I kinda wish it wasn't.
Depending on the playgroup, it almost feels like part of the social contract to try and minimise the time spent mulliganning and keep whatever something playable, even when somewhat suboptimal, just to get into a game.
Great video! I like how you back up your reasoning with numbers. Makes a lot of sense. I started mtg when mulliganning wasnt thought of as good (0/7) now with edh it's a strategy.
So the brother of a friend who I play with came by our lgs and introduced us to a type of mulligan that was honestly hilarious to play.
Each player draws their 7 cards and then you go in turn order and ask each player if they wish to mulligan. If they dont, nothing happens but if they do, all players set aside their hand and draw 7 new cards. Repeat this until all players are happy with their hand.
The beauty in this is that only the player who opted to mulligan will have to pay for it with putting one card on the bottom so it becomes this mini mindgame trying not to be the one that mulligans.
It also provides a unique dynamic where you cant reliably hold great hands and you must make do with ok hands. A few games of this will quickly show how good your decks "average" hand is.
Try it sometime!
My mulligan is determined if I really want to shuffle a 100 card deck again. The answer is always fuck no, we roll with what we got
Great analysis of mulligans. It's an important skill to learn as it is a unique resource at your disposal that is part of the game, but easy to forget, because you never see it while you're actually playing, only during set up. Before the London Mulligan was instituted, I came up with my own personal mulligan in my circle for casual commander. We still use it to this day, as long as we're playing a casual deck without two card instant win combos. What we do is draw 3 hands of 7 side by side. Set them down in independent piles and look at each. Pick one that works and shuffle the others in. Often times we look at the first 7 before drawing the other two just in case it's worth keeping. I instituted this rule to save time, because the time it takes players to shuffle a 100 card deck adequately weigh the pros and cons of a hand and debate the validity of their mulligan is just too painfully long, especially when multiple shuffles are required. If you built your deck with even remotely close to enough lands, you are very likely to have a keepable hand in these 3. In some ways, this is like having one extra free mulligan. However without the shuffling, it's possible you have a hand that's all lands and one that's everything you want. In that way, it's not the same as just getting a free Mulligan where you shuffle and can still see the card you wanted to keep but had to shuffle in, because you had no lands. Understanding the gives and takes of this, I still think it's more than fair and it saves a lot of time. It tends to keep the games more interesting and focused on the game itself. But this is only a casual rule and falls apart when people start bringing Thoracle into the mix.
This was a really cool video! I also came to a lot of similar conclusions about manabases and using Mulligans, althought mine was more heuristics based and feelings. You will feel very sad by pulling out cool cards you want to play but increasing your ability to play a good game from 70->80% will lead to you having more fun when you get to play the game instead of getting mana screwed and regretting it for 2 hours
Great video, and thanks for mentioning your Goreclaw deck. I had just thrown one together and comparing yours to mine turned me on to some cards I overlooked like Doomskar Warrior and helped give me confidence to include cards I thought were good like Vorapede that I didn't see elsewhere.
There are a number of cards like Vorapede that I'd probably cut if I was building a version with a higher budget, but a well-statted vigilance beater that survives a boardwipe is a damn fine creature for 50 cents or so.
@@salubrioussnail fair point, my list is mostly chaf and unused cards I had lying around plus a few pet cards like Pelakka Wurm and Engulfing Slagwurm.
If you don't mind me asking, I noticed a few staples absent in your deck such as Beast Whisperer, cultivate, etc. Did you exclude them for budget or other reasons? IE better/alternative draw or ramp options already present or better suited to the deck.
@@MCC17011 beast whisperer is outside the budget for the deck, and neither beast whisperer nor cultivate serve the deck’s goal: Goreclaw on turn 3, start slamming beefy boys on turn 4. I could see a slower version of the deck wanting slower tools, though there are a half dozen 3 mana ramp spells I’d prefer to cultivate in a mono green deck with a 4 cost commander
@@salubrioussnail Thank you, and fair points. Even though I'm not constrained by budget I ended up cutting Beast Whisperer as it felt like skipping a turn for an unusable body and drip of card draw. Goldfishing feels great but we'll see how it goes at the LGS later this week. I'd be interested in hearing what other ramp options you'd consider(I'm trying Nissa's Pilgrimage out).
Btw love your videos, they've all been quite insightful and you've converted me to including 3-4 extra lands in most of my decks.
There's a Gerry Thomson quote I paraphrase about how every single decklist he sees is easily improved by adding another land. Nobody ever really accounts for manascrew.
I've heard a great piece of advice, which is "Imagine you only get to play with those starting cards, if you can do something with these, you should probably keep". However as i play more and more, it gets more complicated. I have a Sodar Jabari of Zhalfir deck and mulliganing is one of it's strengths thanks to commander's eminence, which lets me loot when i attack with a knight l. That lets me mulligan very aggressively, because i know that as long as i have a knight to play(one is in the command zone), i can see a ton of card.
It's interesting how so much commander theory always comes back to lands, it's forced me to genuinely start thinking way too hard about my land base choices.
9:01 is something I wish you'd gone into a little more, knowing your opponents/matchups. Back when Eldrazi Ramp was in standard, I was on the draw in game 3 against Valakut. My 7 and 6 card hands had lands and spells, but they were too slow for the matchup. I knew from my testing that 5 card hands could be better than that. Then, sure enough, I drew up a 5 card hand that ended up going turn 3 Primeval Titan, turn 4 Primeval Titan, turn 5 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre.
This video was very thought provoking. One of my favorite decks is a zabaz the glimmerwasp boros modular deck. This is making me think to start mulling more aggressively with that deck since usually all my turn ones are the same since zabaz costs 1 colorless. Might as well look for more interaction and combo pieces
i play casual EDH at my LGS. and my play group started doing what we call the Renee-lligan. named after our friend renee.
with the renee-lligan, you draw 10 cards with your opening hand, and put 3 cards back into the deck and shuffle.
its pretty much our favorite way to mulligan, and we typically do not use this mulligan maliciously. the consensus is that with the 10 card hand it ensures that we get 2-3 lands in our opening hand, 2-3 one to three mana value spells and 1-2 four to five mana value spells in your opening hand.
of course this mulligan can be used irresponsibly, but when everyone is on the same page and powerlevel, there arent really issues with it. we usually allow one more renee-lligan if there are less than 2 lands in the opening hand but if you choose to do it again, no matter what hand you draw afterward, you have to keep it.
anytime someone has done the renee-lligan we have never had anyone locked out of the game or screwed out of lands.
drawing ten cards in the opening hands seems nuts, especially if youre thinking
"oh well sapphire i would just use this mulligan to just dig for the best tutors and mana rocks, this is stupid and no one should mulligan like this."
and yeah there are assholes out there that would do that, but my city has started to adopt this mulligan. out of the 8 LGS in my city, 3 of them i am aware of use the renee-lligan at the moment.
you just have to keep in mind that not everyone is an asshole. give it a try if you dont believe me
I've been in playgroups that do this and honestly my problem with it is it kind of just overcompensates for bad deck building. Like your goal should be improving and these kinds of rules just encourage the total opposite. Like why bother identifying and fixing a deck building problem when you can just make up a rule that hides all your problems? In the long run I think rules like this hurt players. There's a reason we draw 7 and have 1 free mulligan and if your deck regularly can't perform under this circumstance you probably have a core flaw in deck construction that you should work out so you improve and learn as a player.
Like you get to look at 14 cards and then another 7 for the cost of going down 1. Thats 21 cards you get to see for almost free, if that ain't working for you, there's a problem somewhere
@@jamescobblepot4744 i mean bad deckbuilding is relative. a precon can be too powerful for one playgroup, and a $200 upgrade precon can be too weak for another. like i said in the comment, its usefulness depends on the player and the powerlevel of the pod. i still use this mulligan just to dig for 3 lands and thats it.
also commander is a kitchen table format. play however you want to. if your pod wants to pretend Mana Flare, Rites of Flourishing or Howling Mine is always in play, then go for it. its a non sanctioned format created by fans, for fans.
"Well, a lot of decks will have a particular thing they're looking to find-
for example, a piece of ramp is a frequent want for decks with a specific curve in mind.
He COOKED 💀
I play Sythis, Harvests Hand as my commander, so I draw a TON of cards. So I'm almost always able to draw at least one mana to stay on curve. So everything in this video is super relatable. I only run 32 lands cause I only need 2-3 to start popping off. And even if I have to mulligan a bunch, I'll just draw all the cards I need back.
my edh mulligan strat is always keep 3+ lands cards and flip anything else
Great vid, made me think of the concept of “commander curve” that I consider when building. By that I mean “when during the course of the game do I ideally cast my commander, and therefore what should my mana acceleration look like?” A lot of commanders want to be played ASAP but not all. For the ASAP commanders, their mana cost dictates what kinds of ramp I find ideal. For example, in my Queen Marchesa deck, I want her out ASAP so a 2mv rock is exceptionally good. Dropping her on turn 3 is an extra card over the course of the game, so I run 10 2mv rocks + Sol. But in a deck like Gavi, Nest Warden, who is 5mv, a 2mv rock and a 3mv rock both get her out a turn earlier, and are essentially equivalent for that purpose, so that deck runs more 3mv rocks, while Queen runs none.
I think this is one of the great bummers of EDHREC and Command Zone downplaying 3+mv rocks because it’s not universal how much acceleration you actually get from them, it really differs from commander to commander and strat to strat.
I've won with zero lands before in CEDH commander. Mulligan until you find your artifacts and/or other forms of ramp. Play talismans in CEDH, trust.
You're amazing. I don't like edh but watch every one of your videos.
I play pretty casually and I've hit a point where as long as I have 2 or 3 land and 1 creature I can play with that amount of mana I call it good. It's a really, really good way to find out what your deck is bad at when you play with highly suboptimal hands. In other words: I boldly expect my decks to deliver greatness and, if they don't, I've learned why.
In my groups we play with a Partial London mulligan... so the one, where in the first one you are able to put a way any amount of your choosing draw the same amount new and then shuffle afterwords it is just the London Mulligan. It helps to negate non games for most players...
I've been thinking a lot about mulligans recently, so this video was a fantastic watch. Sounds obvious, but my recent epiphany has been to be more critical with what my deck's actual gameplan is, and choosing mulligans focused on that.
In my dredge/mill insect deck, hands with "decent enough cards plus Kodama's Reach" tend to fall flat if I don't quickly draw into a mill-enabler, compared to hands that have some built-in mill outlet. I've kept too many "fine" hands instead of great hands for *this* deck because of that initial "mulligans are the emergency button" mindset you alluded to.
One deck that isn’t super competitive but which has been a great learning experience in aggressive mulligans is Sram, Senior Edificer voltron. I don’t run as low as 28 lands, but when 40+% of my deck turns into cantrip permanents with a two-mana spell I have perpetual access to, I can mulligan pretty liberally without having to worry about mana shortage.
as soon as I saw the title/thumbnail I knew I had to watch it, I’m so bad at mulligans
our house rule is you can mulligan if you have no lands else you play. it makes for more conservative decks built with plenty of lands and often around a couple of strategies that over 5 hands gets quite interesting tactically. We also run that that the first 2 games have no value and are to practice, then an optional 5 card changes before game 3 and score of games 3-5.
hi snail, love the content. The math you present is not exact because drawing cards is done without replacement (ie. the order that you draw lands and no lands affects the probability for the next card) and ignoring the mulligans is not really useful. Since the direct calculations are annoying, what I would recommend instead if you know a little programming, is to instead simulate 10,000+ hands drawn one at a time without replacement with the conditionals that you keep the hand with 3-5 lands and mulligan (re-draw) hands that don't have the correct number of lands. Similarly I have a deck that really wants 5 lands by turn 5 so for example I can simulate 12 card hards as well out of the keepable hands.
I hope I'm not understating the importance of not skipping the mulligan math. For example the conditional probability of getting to 5 lands on turn 5 with a 1-land start is horrid compared to a 3-land start
Overall the goal is if you are able to accurately estimate the number of lands you will draw, you get to set the hard floor for a land count in your deck and you never have to worry about whether you have some wiggle room to cut a land ever again.
You're right, this was an oversight on my part. This effect seems to produce an error of between .005 and .02, with the error being on the higher end for hands with 0-1/6-7 lands where the impact of the deck containing fewer lands/nonlands is more greatly felt. I'll look into how to correct for this going forward.
@@salubrioussnail Well if you're going to be running any stats analysis on the distribution then you will be propagating those errors if the calcs are off.
ah and while we're at it I'm not sure if the calculators on your website actually work as intended. For example if I enter I am running 1 copy of a card I want to draw, and I input that I want it by turn 99, it returns a probability lower than 1. Just an fyi if anyone is relying on these.
I think this video has reinforced my idea of running my Octavia deck with 30 lands only and trying to play even less. I've got around 20 pieces of filtering at 1 or 2 cmc. They filter lands by putting the "desirables" cards in the graveyard. This is exactly what Octavia want : you fill your GY with spells and keep the land in your hand. When Octavia's on the battlefield, you keep the playables and bin the lands.
I never go with less than 36 lands in my deck. Usually 38 or 40. Having a higher chance of hitting land drops makes me happy
Top decking lands never gets old
I have a 30 land deck but it also is mostly 1 and 2 drops with the most expensive cards coming in at 4. Mulligans are easy. I want two land in my opening hand and one of them needs to produce white. That's it. There is a high density of cards that do what I want so I will naturally draw into them. The deck doesn't do everything with two lands, but it does function fairly well.
I remember the days of running Serum Powder in my dredge deck in order to use mulligans as even more of a resource.
A great idea a friend of mine found, is to take a first hand of 10 and putting 3 at the bottom, the likelyhood of getting somthing unplayable with 10 cards is really low and that removes the 5th hand drawn making the start of the game shorter and more enjoyable.
I think the biggest part when you talk about their confidence in mulliganing, is not the confidence in mulliganing but their confidence in shuffling often for me after a couple of games all my lands end up bunched together and seeing a decent couple of xards and three lands ill keep not because i shouldnt mulligan (i should and i would on cockatrice) but vecause im scared of not getting any lands vecause ive got the feeling that theyre all at the bottom together
I find that in standard, running a 69-70 card deck with 24 lands seems to be the sweet spot for getting the deck strategy out on the board.
It's a bit slow against aggro, but if you can slow your opponent's tempo, it works exceedingly well.
My favourite mulligan is stil Lab Maniacs' one where he mulled to 3 cards, but managed to find a hand that BTFO'd another of them going all in on Oracle Consultation.
The best strategy I've employed for myself when deciding whether to mulligan is: "How far can I get and how much can I do if I never get another draw phase?" If the answer is something like... I only have one land or I don't have ramp or card draw, I seriously lean towards mulligan.
I think a deck with green can get away with having fewer lands. Ramp spells, mana dorks and fast mana help you greatly.
The mulligan also helps a lot, by the reasons stated on the video. You have to be willing to make some sacrifices and sometimes things will go south, but if you get things going it's always so beautiful.
Yes but you still want to hit those land drops the first 4 turns at least
@@maxbodifee3263 I can only give my case as an example. I run a Xenagos with 25 lands and plenty of fast mana, fetchs and ramp to compensate. I generally need to have 2 lands and a ramp (on an opening hand) to reach that 5 mana and thats it.
One of my fave mtg channels atm
I'm a pretty new player, I play on tabletop sim with a basically random deck I pull from cardbuilder sites. The deck is 100% a mystical black box to me, and its quite fun that way most of the time.
(I do this to throw different types of decks at my brother's new decks he's actually constructing. I don't care to learn deckbuilding but enjoy playing varied decks from game to game)
Great topic and explanation! I’ve had to think about mulligans in weird ways in my 4th Omnath landfall deck, versus my even CMC Muldrotha+Gyruda companion deck, vs my Henzie+Umori companion deck 😵💫
Great video
I realize you aren’t talking about min maxing exactly but I want to mention in the comments here that taking a mull “every few games” is insane if you are trying to minmax. Using some back of the napkin math I estimate the % first sevens you ought to keep to be in the vicinity of 15%.. maybe 20% depending on the deck.
1) first mull is free = NO WAY we keep more than 50%
2) 3 opponents. No points for 2nd place. Keeping mid hands makes it more likely to be in a mid position in the game. Playing for 1st means looking for the high roll and being willing to gamble.
3) if you get a bad second seven you can try again and keep 6
4) there are a few cards that are dramatically better than the average card in your deck
5) you have a commander, changing a mull from 7 to 6 into more like a mull from 8 to 7.
Keeping half of your first sevens would be preposterous if your goal were to win the max # of games possible.
DONT KEEP AVERAGE 7’s!!
6:36 as someone who’s drawn 6 straight lands with only 2 lands in hand before that against a zuzu the punisher deck decrease your land count
I think that the chance of drawing lands plays also a big role. With 40 lands in deck, there is a greater chance Ill get mana flooded, and in EDH its usually the case that you dont start with 7 cards + your commander, but 7 opening hand + commander + the 1st card you draw
We do a casual draw ten, put 3 back and shuffle. Really saves time
I feel like mulliganing is the thing that most commander players need to work on because the number of times I hear opponents talk about keeping bad hands because they don’t want to shuffle is way too many
As for the 28 land deck. I have one deck that I run 28 lands in, my Urza LHA seck. Mono Blue, with AMPLE ramp. If I wait till T3 to cast Urza, I consider it casual and non-competitive. But that deck is specifically designed to function like that. Most other decks, even an Adrix and Nev deck will need 35 lands.
Was an infuriating 23 years arguing for London mulligans and being told they would break the game.
Really good video, I liked how you showed the math, very cool!
snail is the khan academy of the mtg community. thank you for teaching me how to git gud
I don't believe it was mentioned here, but also keep in mind the multiple Mana Fixers that exist, chromatic lantern, prophetic prism, chromatic star, all of the different signets, etc. Having these mana-fixers available in a deck can make individual hands far more playable than they would be otherwise.
the amount of times I've kept a 2 land hand and gotten completely mana screwed is far too high for me to ever keep a hand that doesn't have access to 3+ mana
28 lands sounds a lot of "I'll win by turn four or die drawing 6 lands in a row"
The changing of the mulligan rules was huge in 2019.
In regards to running 40 rather than 30 lands, because it increases the probability of a keepable opening hand, I would counter it also increases the probability of drawing a land on turns after you no longer need more lands for your deck to function. So to state that you need or will use more draw/filtering to find lands early game if you run 30 lands, then you'd also need more draw/filtering late game if you run 40 lands to filter away the extra topdecked lands.
Personally I run 31-ish lands in almost all my decks, and 14-ish mana acceleration pieces. I would much rather have a 2-land opener with mana acceleration than a 3-land opener. However, I do play with a fairly high power (but not cEDH) playgroup.
On Arena, I have 2 Historical decks designed around mulligans. I only use 1 for the most part however because apparently to some players using Scute Swarm Mutation is a crime punishable by the death of me and my family. The other I have a general rule with the deck. If I dont open 1 of my search cards, I mulligan up to 3 times to try and get 1. I can do 4, but that means I will have a dead turn if I draw too many lands. Idealy, I try to get a search card and 3 land as that has the highest chance of a turn 4 Eldrazi as well as starting off the combo of the deck, which is to board sweep often with cards that bring back my creatures as well as cards that gain advantage when they enter or leave play. It took a lot of testing and fiddling around to get the deck just right to not only have every creature it may need, but to be able to safely mulligan frivolously to get a good hand. For the longest time, it was my favorite deck. But then I learned how to clone planeswalkers, then I learned to duplicate them, then I learned how to duplicate them and my opponents deck while cloning literally everything
WOW WTF Chartooth Cougar is wild!
I was trying to build a firebreathing deck for a bit due to Kargan Dragonlord getting way too much hate than it deserves.
I think I have still Parised more than London, even though I started in 2014 Fall and left summer 2017, came back summer 2021, and then left the standard scene probably some time in 2022? I was hitting hard in 2014+ Run.
As a Storm player it’s built into my brain that a good 5 or 4 card hand will beat out that mid 7 card hand every time
we need to go back to the old way of mulligan before the paris mulligan where you only were allowed to mulligan if you got no land or all land hands, the Paris and London mulligans leads to combo decks running rampant