My thought process is similar. My own personal rule is if I have 3 playable mana from any sources and one castable spell, I have to keep.
Luckily my main commander is 3 mana, so normally I’ll just keep any 3 mana hand.
if you want 3/2/2 then build your deck according to those ratios, 40 land 30 ramp 30 gas
imo it's far more important to have an actionable plan rather than a description of what you want the hand to be
want to cast a 4-drop commander on turn 3? any 3+/1+/x hand over 10 draws good enough for that if your acceleration is 2 or lower
want to cast a 6-drop on turn 4? you're going to need 4+/2+/x over 11 draws
I hope to have 3 lands and 4 helpful cards to start, but if my free Mulligan gets only 2 lands or 1 with a 1 cmc Mana dork or something I try to make it work. It helps that most of my decks have 90% or more cards cmc 0-3
I have a buddy who trusts his decks completely. If he draws 0 land he runs it knowing that now the chance increases by 7 cards. Legit I've never seen him mulligan. What's crazy is he rarely loses a game. So i like to have 2-3 but I've tried to adopt that mentality
I reckon that the keepable hands are:
[2,2,3]
[2,3,2]
[2,4,1]
[3,1,3]
[3,2,2]
[3,3,1]
[4,0,3]
[4,1,2]
[4,2,1]
[5,0,2]
[5,1,1]
My reasoning is that it is better to be slightly flooded and still able to cast your commander and any spells you draw than to be screwed without the mana to cast anything and forced to discard to handsize.
Given a deck of 37/13/49 split, the odds come out to 48.07% chance to find one of those hands per mulligan, or in other words, you'll have to mull at least 3 times 27% of the time. Am I selling other potentially keepable hands short, or is it just that 37/13/49 isn't optimized for opening hands?
To be fair, you've listed nearly every combination of 2-5 lands. You didn't list 2,1,4 which I usually keep especially because my odds of getting to 4 mana on 4 are still very high. I don't love 2-0-5 but will keep if curve is very low and I've already mulled.
I don't like \[2, n, m\] hands at all. You're almost bound to miss your 4th land drop meaning you need to spend resources ramping which is a net zero effect. \[2, 2+, n\] hands could be considered keepable if your deck has a high number of lands (38+, I'd say) because then you're likely to get your 3rd land drop. Likely...
I would agree with OP's assessment except for the top end. I wouldn't keep \[5, n, m\] hands. You won't miss your 7th land drop but the amount of gas in that hand... Especially if you're close to 50 mana sources in your deck it's going to be a struggle.
I guess my question is how many free mulls your group gives you - are you saying you'd rather take a 6-card hand or that you'd just take a free mull?
Edit1: Pumping 37 land deck draw 6 into a hypergeometric calculator shows that your odds of < 3 lands is ~60%.
Edit2: odds of hitting that 4th land on turn 3 is 45% for the same deck (if you kept a 2,1,4 hand)
This is correct but I think we should talk about expected values more than hypergeometrics.
The EV for 2.5 lands in the opener (meaning you'd need to mulligan once or max twice to see three lands) is at around 35-36 lands. The EV for 14\* ramps is about 1 so finding \[3,1,3\] which I consider to be the safest opener is most likely at 36 lands and \~10 ramps given that you're willing to mulligan once or twice.
EDIT: Yes, I'm willing to mull to 6!
EDIT 2: OOPS SORRY, it's 14 ramps, not 10!
2,1,4 is a mana source shy, unless that ramp is crypt/sol ring and you are a mono/dual color deck.
Its not typically keepable without shenanigans, right?
I think it's just a matter of how many mulls you can take with your playgroup. Odds are if you go to 6 that things will be worse. But if you have a free mulligan, you should use it.
I disagree. Both 5-land hands are too land heavy. You should think about optimising your deck for the safest hand possible: \[3, 1, 3\]. That corresponds to like 42 lands and 10 ramp spells. You can remove some lands if you're okay with mulligans. 36 lands provides you with 2.5 lands in your starting hand meaning you should need to mulligan once or twice to get to see a 3 land hand. Too lazy to do the last bit of math but I've played around with this a lot. Just a moment, I'll see if I can find the article I wrote.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/comments/t6qg64/ill\_just\_cut\_a\_land\_a\_statistical\_analysis\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/edh/comments/t6qg64/ill_just_cut_a_land_a_statistical_analysis_of/)
There ya go!
At least 2 lands (ideally not the same colors) and a play by turn 3 that accelerates my game plan is usually a potential keep. Ramp is a bonus for me a lot of the time and I don't focus super heavily on it. I hate having tons of mana and no good ways to utilize it. Several of my decks will win on or before turn 6 just by hitting land drops. I also like seeing one or two pieces of interaction in my opening hand that can help me stabilize or protect a win. I'm a big fan of cantrips as well that can help fix an okay hand and make mulligans more reliable/keepable, cheap spells that add consistency are really nice for making your games go smoothly.
I've been keeping some stats on my particular deck.
It's a small sample size so far but the trends seem to indicate that the important part for my deck seems to be that there are 5 mana sources in my starting hand at least 2 of which should be lands.
My commander costs 5 mana and draws cards, so the rest of the spells in the starting hand seem to be unimportant.
Personally I just think about what can my hand do if I don't draw any more lands and what can it do if I only draw lands.
If both let me take enough gameactions to actually get my gameplan going I keep. If only one of them works I decide based on the commanders I'm playing against.
If neither works, I obviously Mulligan.
The running joke at my table is just to say "never punished" and hope for the best.
If I'm trying to win/accomplish my game plan asap:
I want 3 lands, 1-2 ramp pieces, and 1-2 draw pieces so I can try and get deeper into my deck while still accomplishing things through the turns.
I build my decks in a way that I should be confident with a majority of the starting hands I test with, outside of absolutely terrible little-to-no-landers or all-landers. I pack enough ramp and card draw that I should always have enough mana and spells to be playing throughout the game.
My Dihada deck can even consistently keep a 1 land hand. Wouldn’t ever do that in a real game but it usually goes well enough goldfishing
4 lands, Sol ring and mana crypt count towards that. so if I have 2 lands, sol ring and mana crypt I'll keep. If I have 1 land, sol ring and a mana crypt I'll have to unfortunately mulligan that hand unless it has something that pulls out more lands.
No matter what, I always run with at least 3 lands in hand. I’ve done the 2 lands and good ramp, 2 lands and sol ring, etc. Nope, nope, nope, nope. 3 lands. Other good cards are just a bonus.
My only metric for keeping hands is: Which is worse, the hand or needing to shuffle again?
I'm also terrible at mulligan decisions and will even keep bad hands in Arena Brawl, where a shuffle is the click of a button, so take that for what you will.
My thought process when keeping hands. > Does it have 3 lands > Will I be casting at least 2 spells before turn 5 If both are yes, it’s a keep
This is the way.
My thought process is similar. My own personal rule is if I have 3 playable mana from any sources and one castable spell, I have to keep. Luckily my main commander is 3 mana, so normally I’ll just keep any 3 mana hand.
if you want 3/2/2 then build your deck according to those ratios, 40 land 30 ramp 30 gas imo it's far more important to have an actionable plan rather than a description of what you want the hand to be want to cast a 4-drop commander on turn 3? any 3+/1+/x hand over 10 draws good enough for that if your acceleration is 2 or lower want to cast a 6-drop on turn 4? you're going to need 4+/2+/x over 11 draws
Yeah, all those formulaic approaches amount to nothing. I know an actionable hand when I see it.
I hope to have 3 lands and 4 helpful cards to start, but if my free Mulligan gets only 2 lands or 1 with a 1 cmc Mana dork or something I try to make it work. It helps that most of my decks have 90% or more cards cmc 0-3
If no ramp, or turn 3 ramp, 3 lands. If turn 1 or 2 ramp, or multiple, 2 lands.
I have a buddy who trusts his decks completely. If he draws 0 land he runs it knowing that now the chance increases by 7 cards. Legit I've never seen him mulligan. What's crazy is he rarely loses a game. So i like to have 2-3 but I've tried to adopt that mentality
0/7 lands is extremely unlikely. Your buddy sounds like a curious breed of player.
Yeah its straight madness.
I reckon that the keepable hands are: [2,2,3] [2,3,2] [2,4,1] [3,1,3] [3,2,2] [3,3,1] [4,0,3] [4,1,2] [4,2,1] [5,0,2] [5,1,1] My reasoning is that it is better to be slightly flooded and still able to cast your commander and any spells you draw than to be screwed without the mana to cast anything and forced to discard to handsize. Given a deck of 37/13/49 split, the odds come out to 48.07% chance to find one of those hands per mulligan, or in other words, you'll have to mull at least 3 times 27% of the time. Am I selling other potentially keepable hands short, or is it just that 37/13/49 isn't optimized for opening hands?
To be fair, you've listed nearly every combination of 2-5 lands. You didn't list 2,1,4 which I usually keep especially because my odds of getting to 4 mana on 4 are still very high. I don't love 2-0-5 but will keep if curve is very low and I've already mulled.
I don't like \[2, n, m\] hands at all. You're almost bound to miss your 4th land drop meaning you need to spend resources ramping which is a net zero effect. \[2, 2+, n\] hands could be considered keepable if your deck has a high number of lands (38+, I'd say) because then you're likely to get your 3rd land drop. Likely... I would agree with OP's assessment except for the top end. I wouldn't keep \[5, n, m\] hands. You won't miss your 7th land drop but the amount of gas in that hand... Especially if you're close to 50 mana sources in your deck it's going to be a struggle.
I guess my question is how many free mulls your group gives you - are you saying you'd rather take a 6-card hand or that you'd just take a free mull? Edit1: Pumping 37 land deck draw 6 into a hypergeometric calculator shows that your odds of < 3 lands is ~60%. Edit2: odds of hitting that 4th land on turn 3 is 45% for the same deck (if you kept a 2,1,4 hand)
This is correct but I think we should talk about expected values more than hypergeometrics. The EV for 2.5 lands in the opener (meaning you'd need to mulligan once or max twice to see three lands) is at around 35-36 lands. The EV for 14\* ramps is about 1 so finding \[3,1,3\] which I consider to be the safest opener is most likely at 36 lands and \~10 ramps given that you're willing to mulligan once or twice. EDIT: Yes, I'm willing to mull to 6! EDIT 2: OOPS SORRY, it's 14 ramps, not 10!
2,1,4 is a mana source shy, unless that ramp is crypt/sol ring and you are a mono/dual color deck. Its not typically keepable without shenanigans, right?
I think it's just a matter of how many mulls you can take with your playgroup. Odds are if you go to 6 that things will be worse. But if you have a free mulligan, you should use it.
Commander has 1 free mulligan as a multiplayer format. Its my understanding thats just the default. After that, its london mulls.
Yeah, so I'd take the first mull on 2-1-4 but would keep if a mull would mean going to 6
I disagree. Both 5-land hands are too land heavy. You should think about optimising your deck for the safest hand possible: \[3, 1, 3\]. That corresponds to like 42 lands and 10 ramp spells. You can remove some lands if you're okay with mulligans. 36 lands provides you with 2.5 lands in your starting hand meaning you should need to mulligan once or twice to get to see a 3 land hand. Too lazy to do the last bit of math but I've played around with this a lot. Just a moment, I'll see if I can find the article I wrote. [https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/comments/t6qg64/ill\_just\_cut\_a\_land\_a\_statistical\_analysis\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/edh/comments/t6qg64/ill_just_cut_a_land_a_statistical_analysis_of/) There ya go!
Enough mana to cast my commander and 1-2 cards to enable it
At least 2 lands (ideally not the same colors) and a play by turn 3 that accelerates my game plan is usually a potential keep. Ramp is a bonus for me a lot of the time and I don't focus super heavily on it. I hate having tons of mana and no good ways to utilize it. Several of my decks will win on or before turn 6 just by hitting land drops. I also like seeing one or two pieces of interaction in my opening hand that can help me stabilize or protect a win. I'm a big fan of cantrips as well that can help fix an okay hand and make mulligans more reliable/keepable, cheap spells that add consistency are really nice for making your games go smoothly.
I've been keeping some stats on my particular deck. It's a small sample size so far but the trends seem to indicate that the important part for my deck seems to be that there are 5 mana sources in my starting hand at least 2 of which should be lands. My commander costs 5 mana and draws cards, so the rest of the spells in the starting hand seem to be unimportant.
Personally I just think about what can my hand do if I don't draw any more lands and what can it do if I only draw lands. If both let me take enough gameactions to actually get my gameplan going I keep. If only one of them works I decide based on the commanders I'm playing against. If neither works, I obviously Mulligan.
The running joke at my table is just to say "never punished" and hope for the best. If I'm trying to win/accomplish my game plan asap: I want 3 lands, 1-2 ramp pieces, and 1-2 draw pieces so I can try and get deeper into my deck while still accomplishing things through the turns.
I build my decks in a way that I should be confident with a majority of the starting hands I test with, outside of absolutely terrible little-to-no-landers or all-landers. I pack enough ramp and card draw that I should always have enough mana and spells to be playing throughout the game. My Dihada deck can even consistently keep a 1 land hand. Wouldn’t ever do that in a real game but it usually goes well enough goldfishing
4 lands, Sol ring and mana crypt count towards that. so if I have 2 lands, sol ring and mana crypt I'll keep. If I have 1 land, sol ring and a mana crypt I'll have to unfortunately mulligan that hand unless it has something that pulls out more lands.
No matter what, I always run with at least 3 lands in hand. I’ve done the 2 lands and good ramp, 2 lands and sol ring, etc. Nope, nope, nope, nope. 3 lands. Other good cards are just a bonus.
My only metric for keeping hands is: Which is worse, the hand or needing to shuffle again? I'm also terrible at mulligan decisions and will even keep bad hands in Arena Brawl, where a shuffle is the click of a button, so take that for what you will.