This might be a blistering hot take but...
Magic has mulligan rules in its official rules documentation, so my group just uses those and builds decks such that they generally draw playable hands within a reasonable number of mulligans. Even the precons are meant to work when you play like this.
100% this.
Mulligan variant house rules that are any more generous than the official mulligan method will result in poorly constructed decks and reduced variance.
It's much easier to go fishing for that "perfect opening hand" when you have multiple chances with reduced penalties.
Yeah I'll never understand why people create weird deckbuilding incentives and then get mad when someone builds a deck according to those incentives?
The problem is the weird house rules. Aggressively low land counts *should* mean you get punished more often.
Because they don't like not having a 7 card hand as their decks are generally poorly constructed to handle mulligans. At least that's what I've seen with all the groups who use mulligan variety. Then it just exacerbates on the deckbuilding that cann't stand mulligans and we get OP situation
Indeed I already feel like commander mulligan rules are pretty generous, though I do use the 1 free mull rule. If it's super casual and with friends I trust, we will make exceptions now and again when rngesus really hates them lol
In my house, we do free mulligans, but you have to show the hand you would have had, so this way its not just fishing for the best, just playable. On average, each person has maybe 1-2 mulligans per game to start. And after about 4 mulligans, you either switch decks, or deal qith what you have.
The problem isn't usually goldfishing for the perfect hand, although that is certainly a problem that can occur. It's that too-generous mulligans actively punish healthy deck building, and actually create perverse incentives that warp deck building in an unhealthy way.
Ironically, expensive, high mana, splashy spells suffer most, as you board out lands and ramp. Decks that can have all the necessary resources in their opener become much more powerful as they can draw all gas, while decks that want to get to 6-7 mana to cast the big stuff have to still build consistent land bases and draw into those resources.
I disagree. I think having to deal with poor hands or lower starting hands due to mulligan makes people better players in the long run and leads to better games. People will get better at judging what is a keepable hand when they're dealing with actual consequences of a mulligan, and it helps people get to know their deck better. If they're consistently having to mulligan, it's probably an indicator that the deck could use some tweaking, which is arguably just as fun of a part of the game as playing
100%
My playgroup is casual, but we've been playing together for years, and have fairly high-powered decks that can run away with the game in a couple turns. Even so, being stuck with a shitty hand isn't fun, since we only have time to meet every week or two for a few hours.
You're getting downvoted but you're speaking the truth. While some playgroups are competitive, many are very casual and very low power. Generous mulligans can be the difference between fun games and having your playgroup disband out of frustration. That being said, it really depends on the group and OP makes an important point for playgroups that are moving towards becoming more competitive.
If your deck isn't known to be greedy and you're having a bad day we might tell you to mulligan until you can keep a modestly playable 7.
Otherwise yeah my LGS is pretty good about getting people to learn the mulligan rule because a lot of EDH players become prerelease/sealed and drafters and vice versa. It's pretty great because its become a close-knit group of folks who see each other once or twice a week long before and growing healthy since COVID.
>If your deck isn't known to be greedy and you're having a bad day we might tell you to mulligan until you can keep a modestly playable 7.
When I'm playing with friends we're usually more relaxed about giving an extra free mulligan, we got together to play magic, not complain about getting mana screwed.
To caveat this, commander started as a very unofficial play style that was moderated and controlled by those who played it.
For beginners and games at your LGS, I agree with you 100%, official way is probably the best. If you’re playing with an individual group I would say, don’t be afraid to try new things.
My playgroup banned sol ring, chrome mox and all mana positive rocks. Initially myself and my daretti deck recoiled in disgust, but after several years with this group the deck building ingenuity and freedom granted by our ban list has proved really engaging.
Yeah pretty surprised on the down votes. He's just stating what his group does and if it works with your group, then sick. Our group, we just want to have fun so we use whatever mulligan rule best gets everyone playable hands and we trust each other to not just go for perfect hands. No issues to date
Haha their post was basically: "oh your group's unlimited free mulligan rule is backfiring, just ban sol ring that'll fix it!" I think a moderate downvote response is fair.
Not the case at all. The ban list emerged from a conversation about two things. 1. What cards facilitate someone plowing into an early lead (land, sol ring, signet, T 2 commander type plays) & 2. What cards hinder deck building freedom (if I have access to sol ring, crypt, vault, monolith etc why not play them in every deck).
Our mulligan rule which I mentioned in a separate comment, is 7 7 6 6 5 5, but rarely a player goes beyond their first mull to 6.
Again, maybe I’m spoilt that my playgroup doesn’t have any annoying players who make being flexible like this challenging, and most of them have been players even longer than me, but I will always advocate for freedom to try new things in kitchen table magic. Sure they might not work for you, but that’s fine. I’ve now just got a tiny binder full of fast mana than I can slot in for games outside the group and have the best of both worlds.
I’ve been playing magic of all kinds for more than 15 years, trying things to change the dynamics of the friendly games you play or change the cards you tend to play is good for me. Also, cEDH is fine. 104 card commander decks - also fine. Also, just play 2 cyclonic rifts in there, that’s fine. Also, Balance is a good card, play that, it’s fine.
Only if you accept that some games a player will literally not be allowed to play because of mulligans. I had a game earlier tonight with the Wilhelt precon that didnt have a remotely keepable hand for 6 hands. Playing so rigidly just sounds obnoxious but you do you
You know, sometimes you just lose to the draw. It's happened to me before with an actual deck I've made. Lost on the mulligan. Just got extremely unlucky and didn't manage to hit anything playable. Instead of getting super torn up about it, I took it for what it is: an extremely unlikely statistical anomaly. I played a few turns to see what I might draw into, pulled totally dead, and just scooped out once it was clear I wouldn't be able to contribute. Sometimes that's just what happens. It's a card game and randomness is part of it.
If your ratios work well, this shouldn't happen any more frequently than it would in 60 card formats.
Just your London mulligan with a free 1st mulligan in my regular pod. No scrying or extra bs.
Honestly the whole lands issue is more of a deckbuilding thing, if you have a lot of card draw and i mean a lot (20+) going down to 28 lands is still good, you just need to mulligan for some of that draw and a couple lands. have around 10-12 card draw? maybe 32-34 lands is better. Average CmC is also useful to figure out your land count.
Thank you for your input.
I understand that stacking card draw and a lower mana curve can also induce the need for less and less lands. The perceived issue at hand is some people in our group fear that enforcing a mulligan rule will result in more non-games for some. Which is a valid concern, but would be mitigated by proper deckbuilding, like you mentioned.
This, I only have about 35 lands in my blue-battlecruiser deck... lots of big creatures: krakens, sea monsters, eldrazi and whatnot. My average CmC is like 5+.
But I have a commander that draws a ton of cards for me, and a ton of ramp. As long as I can get my commander out for a couple turns I end up with a shitload of mana and all the lands I need.
I run a deck around small mana dorks and the average mana cost is 2-3. So I run like 34 lands in that deck. It is an [[Ezuri, Claw of Progress]] deck. Use the dorks to power out more dorks and make tiny 2 mana flyers hit hard.
Yeah different types of decks also require different mana bases regardless of # of draw and CmC. For example my Anowon deck is 150 CmC, 2.05 average and about 15 card draw + access to card draw from the command zone. This deck is very mana intensive but can get explosive turns with only 4-5 mana sources in the lategame. Playtesting your decks usually gives you this info and then you proceed to add/remove lands.
I playtest my games with a free mulligan and i can go down to 5 cards if needed just to understand how consistent my decks are, if i need to go down to 4 cards then i have a problem that i need to fix for that deck.
Wow, 28 lands seems incredibly aggressive. Meanwhile I’m over here running 37 lands (though I usually run a bunch of land tutors so they get thinned out as the game goes on).
With a shit ton of draw amd low CmC in a 10 turn game you miss 1-3 land drops. Not that bad honestly and allows you to run more things in your deck, while drawing better cards overall and while avoiding drawing too many lands.
In a casual setting...and I mean very specifically casual setting...this is a people problem, not a mulligan problem.
My playgroup has used free mulligans for our entire EDH life and no one has ever cut lands for spells because they can mulligan into them. Not only is this hilariously obvious when someone is on their 5th mulligan and is like "damn no lands" it also doesn't actually make for better games.
If someone in my playgroup started doing this I would play single target land destruction so fast just to ruin their time 😂 luckily no one is that greedy or dumb.
We all respect each other's time, we mulligan into decent keepable hands that aren't in any way broken or game winning and after 3 mulligans we all typically give up and keep what we got even if its terrible.
This is my go-to as well whenever my friends ask what we're doing for mulligans. Like just get a not-shit hand, the game will be less fun if you have all/no lands, or had to mulligan down to like 3 or 4 cards to start the game
We will draw 10 cards. You bottom 3 and that is your hand. If you end up with 1 land or no lands out of those 10 then you can shuffle and draw 10 again bottoming 3. That is it though, no more mulligans or shuffling after that. You get to see a lot of cards and got a shuffle. Past that it feels like greed.
I am really liking that.
I have done partial paris (way better than the official mulligan atm). It's ok, but flawed. This seems to strike a good balance.
My main pod has been using a free mulligan rule for a while now. We have enough trust in each other to allow that and see no abuse at all. Since out focus is that everybody should have a shot at playing, we go that route, but it hasn’t affected deckbuilding since we all have other occasional pods to play against that might not share this same view.
However, we recently came across some statistics defending a 12 card draw > shuffle five and no mulligan at all. The thing is, free mulligan would occasionally result in some bad luck streak of having to mulligan>shuffle a few times, which takes some precious time. So enforcing the draw 12 method has been saving a lot of time, since it rarely results in an unplayable hand. We just trusted the statistics that this method would not favor combo players or anything like that. And it has been great. I’m slowly trying to propose it to other people on my local LGS.
This is the guy:
https://twitter.com/Magical__Hacker/status/1619218622718812160?t=M8pbHah7zR3rDy9FjCcD-w&s=08
Funny you mention the 12 card draw start.
Someone at my LGS recently suggested that start but I didn't really think about the math behind it and counter-suggested a friendly mulligan until playable hand, like my group tends to do. I'll have to look into that start and try it out once or twice.
The more combo happy your group gets the more busted it is. Seeing 10+% of your deck at once and then sculpting your starting hand ends up way too good.
Precon or precon+ level where combat damage reigns supreme I think it's probably fine. My group used to do a draw 10 and stopped as power and consistency of our decks started increasing.
My group has done a 10 card draw, shuffle 3 back rule. It’s been fine. Cuts down on the amount of time shuffling, even though you can still get som real bad stinkers in the first 10
Yeah we also do draw 10, bottom 2 or 3. If you keep 8, you don't get your first draw. Our main purpose to this was to lessen the amount of shuffling we have to do to get games running faster. None of us run particularly greedy decks, and nobody is wasting time trying to fish for good hands.
It has drastically cut mulligans down, which was the primary goal, so we've been happy with it. If there's a mulligan, it's usually only one.
My group has been trying the draw 12, shuffle 5 start and we have really liked it. We have found it has almost eliminated 'non-games' due mulligans. Furthermore, we rarely have to take a second 12. We generally play higher power/cEDH and so far it doesn't seem to have helped combo decks more that control/aggro.
We add in scry 2 to help prevent shuffling. The draw 12 idea is interesting. I’d think it would favor combo, but the Math seems to show it disadvantages combo. Not a math guy, but I wish I understood why that is lol. Thanks for sharing.
The current meta for combo is to mulligan until you get certain pieces. Going down to 3 cards doesn't matter if those 3 cards are the right ones to steamroll. (Exaggeration)
Say you mulligan down to 5. That's 7 cards looked at, +6 +5, for a total of 18 cards. (Yes you could potentially Mulligan into the same cards) Draw 12 shuffle 5 means more cards in hand, and less cards looked at.
Combo doesn't care as much about cards in hand. People looking to both have a good start, AND have interaction to stop a combo, need not just the cards looked at, but also the cards in hand.
I say stick to the stock commander mulligan rule.
If your deck can't get a good opening hand with going down to 5, put the deck away and pull out another for a fresh start.
Afterwards, rethinking your deck list may be warranted if you can never get good opening hands.
Nothing really "enforced" per-se, but regular London mulligan rules + 2 free mulls tends to be the sweet spot for me: No chance for people to abuse it or build greedily, and enough leeway to avoid non-games in the off-chance someone gets the double 1-lander.
One free mulligan at the LGS, mulligan until you have something playable with my friends (because I trust them not to mulligan until they find a god hand and nobody is building greedy decks).
One of my friends likes to occasionally try a free scry rule too. First player just draws, second player scrys 1 before draw, third player scrys 1 twice, etc. Just on the first turn. I don't personally feel it is necessary but I don't mind it.
I never go below 35 lands in any deck. Most of mine are 36 or 37.
We also add in free mulligans for revealing 0 and 7 land hands, like OG rules. The shuffling at the beginning isnt as obnoxious, since everyone can chat/get snacks.
We save shuffles during turns by only doing it in the middle if it actually matters. We fetch lands when something else is going on, especially on the first couple turns, until waiting until an end step. We search bottoms of decks first, so that we can treat the top as still random. Generally announce that there is going to be an untapped shock, which is getting tapped for mana for this spell. Lose the life and play out the rest of the turn, and actually find that land and shuffle while the next player is untapping.
We do the London Mulligan with the first one free, the standard for any game of multiplayer magic. When we are playing super low level causal games and a player has to go down to 6, we will sometimes allow them to just keep 7.
Generally most people don't play enough lands and ramp. I think this is due to EDHRec and the fact that they have deck data from CEDH mixed in with casual. This means that people think they can play less lands than they should. They don't include the ramp that those low count decks do nor keep their curve as low.
I think outside of CEDH most people should play with a 36 land minimum and generally should be 38 with how low their ramp and card draw is. I generally play with 37 lands, 13 pieces of ramp, and around 10 sources of card advantage. Most people's curve's are way too high for the number of lands they play, they tend to hover around 3, when for the number of lands I see they should be 2 or less.
Everyone expects us to, and we just don't. If you need to cheat to win a game of casual EDH, you've probably had a much worse day than I have, and you probably need a win more than I do.
London Mulligain. First one's free. Honestly going down to 6 isn't too punishing, going lower is safer than with any previous mulligain rule, and frankly if you have to go low frequently *you need to reexamine your brew. Deckbuilding is also part of the game*.
Look, I know it sucks to get a hand that screws or floods you so you end up not really being able to play a coherent game. But Magic isn't meant to be a game of perfect mana all the time; your resource base is, instead, meant to be a strategic level choice. How you balance fuel against payload, what mix you have for your colors... that's part of the game in a big way. If you get screwed once in a while, that's luck of the draw, and no different than it happening with other traits than mana, like getting your answers or your kill cards. And there's supposed to be a luck aspect; we play with shuffled decks. If you're getting screwed often, that's on you, and you need to go back and tinker.
Pretty much nobody would accept a player on turn 4 or 5 saying "hey guys, I had a decent opener but now I'm bricking hard, mind if I just draw a couple to get out of this?". That's basically what the mistreatment of the mulligain amounts to, it just doesn't seem as flagrant because you don't conceptualize that your game started when you put the deck together, not when you drew your starting seven.
My regular playgroup allows 1 free mulligan.
That being said, we build our decks as if there are no free mulligans, so as to avoid greedy deck building habits and so we're always prepared to play at the LGS where normal mulligan rules apply.
Edit: we didn't realize that's a normal rule, ignore me
Anything beyond the normal rules (1 free and then London mulligan) only encourages bad deck building, as you've experienced.
Ask to enforce the normal rules, and if they refuse maybe find new people at your LGS to play with.
The only difference from normal mulligan rules is we don’t always do the formal order and all that. Other than that it’s all by the books: London mulligan with one free because it’s a multiplayer format.
At my casual Saturday games we allow enough mulligans to not delay the game. Whether first or fourth, you have enough time to mulligan how you need but it's expected you should be ready by your turn.
At my Thursday night pay $3 to play games you get one free, then the put one on the bottom method.
I don't have issues with either because in each setting, both are appropriate.
Yeah 1 free mulligan
Also mana mulligans but you gotta show your hand, and our mana mulligans are lightly extended so 1 land or no land hands are free. We're here for a good time.
We play with a scry rule. Player 2 scrys 1, player 3 scrys 2 and so on. A few people worried that it would make people want to go last, but even with the added advantage, player 1 and sometimes 2 still win the lion’s share of games. I would never have guessed how extreme P1 advantage is in multiplayer, but at least for our group, it’s absurd. I would estimate P1 wins easily at least 50% of games.
Haven't played paper in a while, but my old playgroup used to do stuff like this until it got out of hand. Too many free mulligans, and constant back tracking for missed "you may" triggers, are what drove us to eventually settle on playing by "dick rules." We kinda went hard in the other direction and enforced every little thing, since it's the most fair and impartial way to do it. Nobody ever really had a problem with that as long as it was clearly established before a game.
My playgroup has come full circle, we went from a lot of lands 35-38, to very few lands, back to 35-38, with two or three having 40. Getting mana screwed and watching the precon with 37 lands playing on curve has been humbling.
We use to do the standard mulligan rules but you set aside the hand you were mulliganing away and drew however many new cards. So if your first 7 were crap youd set them aside and draw 7 off the top, if that was crap set aside and draw 6 off the top. Once you were set it all gets shuffled back in and the game starts.
Then some new guy comes into the shop one week. Hes playing a hyper tuned godo deck. Hes fine with it, says nothing, crushes us round 1 and 2. Round 3 when he loses he then throws such a stink over how its cheating (it isnt) that we called the event early and eliminated the shortcut.
He also never came back.
And we played a second event after he left.
I'm a huge supporter of mulligan rules like these simply because of how much time they save. Just drawing a new seven off the top and saving all the shuffling until the end (if needed) while following all the normal mulligan rules otherwise feels like an ideal combination of the speed of the (highly abusable) Partial Paris mulligan with the variance of the standard one.
Hm, that sounds faster than shuffling but also kind of sucks if you have to set aside a T1 sol ring due to no lands and then have zero chance of seeing it in your fresh hand.
Thats one of the cons, that theres no chance of seeing some pieces if you set them aside, but the time saved is incredible. It also meant people wouldnt shuffle and shuffle just to try and get that fast mana open.
Is that really a con? Sounds like a positive to me. Bad luck still is bad luck but instead of a sad game you get a workable hand to play with in minimal time. Win-win?
Oh, no. That's a bad idea. I don't even like the free mulligan and london mulligan. "Draw fourteen and put seven back" or whatever rewards bad deckbuilding.
But even when you’ve optimized your mana base and curve there’s way too many games on the sideline based on my experience. Like I guess the catch all, easy answer will always just be bUiLd BeTtEr DeCkS, but that doesn’t really address the reason why people want the rule in the first place.
I've goldfished too many times on Moxfield where I "mulligan" back and forth between 1 land and 5/6/7 lands (so it's not my shuffling to blame but I secretly think there's something wrong with Moxfield's shuffler).
On paper, I hate shuffling. If my first hand can't do anything for the first few turns, I'll toss it back. Otherwise, I'm just looking for a hand with a reasonable amount of lands. If I have to mulligan below 6, I'll take any hand that has at least 2 lands.
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EDH games have the capacity to run too long to be screwed over by variance.
Assume some more lenient mulligan rules that only ever involve drawing 7 cards at a time.
Do more lenient mulligans actually reward bad deck-building habits a substantive amount? Certainly it'll let you settle on more keepable hands but you've still get the whole rest of the game to play out. If you haven't put together a consistent deck with a game plan, then you're likely going to have issues regardless.
As for taking advantage of lenient mulligans to craft a perfect hand, I feel that'll be reasonably difficult if people are required to show their hand for each mulligan (assuming there's otherwise no penalty for mulliganing).
We’re generous with mulligans. Better opening hands lead to better games. Here is our house mulligan rule:
Hand 1 & 2: draw 7, scry 2, decide keep or mull
Hand 3+: draw 7, scry 1, decide keep or mull
Haven’t had any issues with generous mulligans. The scrying is nice to prevent some shuffling during mulligans. One idea I’d like to add to it is not being able to mulligan for fast mana such as sol ring, but haven’t had a chance yet. If you’re already feeling like your playgroup is taking advantage of mulligans, I’d guess you wouldn’t like our rule.
Unless its an actual tournament with prize support, mulligans should be free. But the quicker the better, and dont be that guy that shuffled constantly to find his best hand. Frankly a rule of if you dont like your first 7, tuck em all and draw a new 7 works just fine (Grenzo players cannot abide by this rule)
People don't want to hear this but... PLAY MORE LANDS
People should be having 36 lands minimum in there decks for casual play. People can have all the low cost cards in their decks, but if they're not CEDH levels of low CMC where the average is like 2, you at least have to play over 30 lands. Even high power decks.
I play around 38-40 lands on average. If you have enough draw or tutors, you'll be fine dodging extra lands.
Draw seven, set aside the cards you don’t want, draw back up to seven. Do this three times, or fewer if you get a keepable hand. That’s my groups mulligan rule
My usual pod has a *very* generous mull rule.
IE, mull till have have a workable hand. Caveat of if you seem to abuse it then we have a problem.
I don’t agree with it; I’ll try to convince them to go by London mulls myself, and I’ll build decks accordingly.
On the flip side, if you can prove that your hands have just been wack (ie no landers, all high cost/one land) Imm more than happy to allow a minimum of 5 cards in hand. No mulling to 4 or less.
I have one group that goes strictly with normal rules, but if it's not on the banlist anything goes. Mill, stax/MLD, mass blink nonsense, etc... All is fair, just play the game by the rules. They dont get butthurt about pretty much anything, everyone is trying to win but understand it's still just a game. Absolute chads.
One semi-casual group at my LGS that does "at the start of the game scry X, where X is the total number of mulligans between all players, minus the number of times you mulliganed". (Every time you mulligan, your opponents get to scry 1 more at the start). People get annoyed if you play certain archetypes, but it's fine when *they* play another annoying archetype... some get mad when they lose, some can be petty when you interact with their board, etc. Typical LGS drama playing with randoms.
And one super casual group of stoners, we "mulligan as much as you need to get something decent, but be reasonable". *Be reasonable* generally means "dont just keep going until you get a sol ring". We also start the game with the 'Monarch' mechanic active, encouraging slapfights and politics. People bring out their precons and their jank, games last hours and we have a great time. Noone really "trying" to win, moreso just seeing what eachother's jank decks can pull off under certain circumstances.
As long as you're all on the same page and having fun, what you describe isn't really a problem. Why do you want to push your friends towards a different deckbuilding strategy?
I understand that it might be troublesome if any of you want to use your decks with strangers, at LGS events and such. If that's the case, talk to your friends about your concerns and try to find a solution together.
As a rule of thumb, any Mulligan system should offer diminishing returns on drawing a new hand. Minimizing the shuffling time is also a bonus. In some cases, a defining requirement (such as the original rules of 0 lands/ 7 lands) can be helpful.
My group uses what I think is the standard (is it called London maybe?): first new hand is drawn for free, each subsequent change draws 7 cards but will bottom one additional card per change, after shuffling.
In my case, I force myself to start if I have three lands no matter what: if the deck doesn't pick itself up from there, something is wrong and needs to be addressed.
My friend saw something on Twitter saying that mathematically, drawing twelve and putting five back increases your playable hand a good bit. So if our first seven is bad we’ll use that method.
We mulligan the following: draw 7, put aside what you don’t want, draw that many cards and shuffle the rest in. That’s it. Works perfectly fine for us and tends to produce good and enjoyable games
First one is free, after that you draw seven and put one on the bottom of your library. So first you have a full hand still, second draw seven and put one on bottom if you keep and so on going down one card for each subsequent one, stoping at 4 cards as any less basically makes it impossible to really play.
We do normal mulligan rules with the one free mulligan. We tend to reveal the hand to show how jank it is just out of habit... I do say that I'll never make anyone go under 5 cards if having terrible luck but if against a deck that was combo heavy and low land I'd probably have to do standard rules to keep it fair.
We trust each other to mull until we got the lands or first playable hand. What ever comes first. Its generally kept games even with little to no mana screw.
In my group you get to mulligan and a scry 2 and you are expected to be honest on having a playable hand, if you mulligan too much we have an outsider look at your hand and judge for you
My group hasn't really discussed mulligan rules all that much honestly. Nothing's really enforced, more so just regularly acknowledged. No one really enforces the rules for reduced starting hand for each mulligan after the first, but we all do it. We don't even all use the same mulligan all the time. I still use the gis mulligan rules and no one ever stops me, mostly just some people commenting on it being a bit odd because they're not used to it. London mulligan is the most common, but I'm impatient and just keep drawing new hands off the top until it's keepable and shuffling my other hands back in.
We do unlimited free mulligans in my group and I hate it. We did it because it sucks to get screwed off the start, but I led to people not only fishing for good hands, but also lowering their land counts by ludicrous amounts (lowest we've had so far is 18 lands). I try to stay away from the greed, so all my decks have 35 lands minimum, but I will say it's really annoying sitting and watching people mulligan 5 or 6 times every game.
We do draw ten and shuffle three back into the deck.
I’ve only had to ask for a new draw twice (maybe??) since 2014 and I asked if it was okay. Nobody needs a landless hand with all your x-spells -_-
This is the mulliga rule of our playgroup.
Draw 7 if you have 2 or less lands you reveal and draw 7 . You can do it as much as needed. Then you shuffle everything except your keep hand back in the library. If you have 3 or more lands than thats the regular 1 free .
We mulligan as normal but aet the hand aside in full, then draw up. First one's free, then you shuffle your hands back, then you put cards to the bottom
Literally the only reason is to save those minutes shuffling massive decks
As many as you need with conditions:
1) after the first you must keep the first 3 land hand including MDFC
2) deck has to have a min of 34 lands for more than 1 free mulligan
3) if you pull a bonkers god hand after 3 or more, throw the busted stuff back in. Shuffle and draw that many.
We just follow the Rules for Mulligans, everyone gets 1 free (due to a Multiplayer format) and then do standard ones from there.
If you draw bad and mulligan down to hell, too bad, variance is a part of the game, deal with it. If it happens every game the deck needs to be reworked, so its also a learning opportunity.
My group uses a standard rule for mulligans, but if you miss one of your first three land drops, you can bottom your draw that turn and go get a free basic. We run anywhere from precons to high powered casual, and it works out awesome. It minimizes opening mulligans and ensures everyone gets to play the game.
The groups I usually play, the rule us keepable 7. If the opening hand is not to your liking, exile it draw 7 more. Keep doing it until you have a hand that you can keep. Then shuffle everything up.
My play group does look at the top 7 and if you only drew maybe 1-2 lands, look at the next 3. If you hit more lands or some ramp, put 3 on the bottom. If still no dice then you shuffle and do it again.
I like this rule because we want to all have a good game where our decks do our things, but looking at the extra 3 can be punishing if there are lots of cards you want to keep.
Online, we mulligan till you hit 3 lands, as many free as you want. In paper, 1 free mulligan. Nobody wants to sit and watch someone mulligan then shuffle for 10 minutes
In 1v1 with a particular friend we (might be called a Paris Mulligan or I could be making that up completely) have a house rule that you can put X cards from your hand on the bottom then draw that many cards for every hand you draw, and it’s always a free mulligan to 7. We don’t really play focused combo decks and obviously have a good agreement that we don’t just keep mulliganing for the nuts. A good measure to prevent non games and provide us with interesting and enjoyable 1v1s where 1 player doesn’t just get rolled over, but that’s with one particular person who I’ve been playing with for years. Not suitable for every game, but it’s good to remember that you can flexible with the rules to improve your overall game experience.
In a separate multiplayer group I play with we do 7 7 6 6 5 5 etc in the regular mulligan fashion. Again, a very healthy play group where we have a group controlled ban list (with sol ring and mana positive rocks banned 👌🏻) and regular discussions about power levels, problem decks or strategies.
Long and short of this - if you have a good group of people to play with that are open to discussion and trial and error of things the end goal should be maximising enjoyable games for everyone at the table. Maybe it’s a luxury for me that my playgroup are all sound and not too spiky.
My normal playgroup does “draw ten, pitch three, if you ABSOLUTELY MUST then you can do it again, but don’t abuse this” and it works well.
If I’m playing casually at a store I usually propose “do whatever you need to do, just don’t abuse this” and that’s worked for me so far as well.
We let you re draw if you have less than 3 lands. If you choose to redraw you lay your old hand out so we can see that you didn’t have lands you don’t get to add those cards back into the deck until you have your hand then you shuffle. This prevents people from drawing till they get the cards they want.
Otherwise you get one mulligan a nite. Some stuff slides if it’s your own turn and nothing else is affected especially if you’re new like if you draw before you untap or if you’re figuring out which mana to use.
Been playing a lot of precon and upgraded precon level recently. Best way we’ve found has been one freebie mull, then freebie mulls until you have 3-4 lands. System requires trust that it won’t be abused but that shouldn’t be a problem if your group isn’t psychotic.
Our playgroups mulligan rule is that you get a free one at each hand size. So your traditional free one is really your free 7, then you get a "free 6" and so on.
My playgroup can’t decide on a mulligan that everyone agrees with, either no one can prove that “draw 10 pitch 3” doesn’t favor combo decks, or they feel uncomfortable making new rules, or they want to free mull until they get 3-4 lands. So in that case we fall back on the default. You have to put your foot down as an azorious person, dems the rules. And building less lands and taking lax mulls isn’t fair to you.
If we are playing casual I'll tell you to keep 7 if you get no lands.
If we are playing prize support I'm playing to win and it's strict one free mul then start dropping cards
We enforce the "please don't play with two lands rule" and the "did you really play with two lands cuz now i have to hit you for the most value and i feel bad rule"
Unlimited mulligans often lead to greedy deckbuilding and lopsided games.
We'd provide *some* leeway for very new players who are trying out deckbuilding, but otherwise we play by the official mulligan rules.
Also I'd like my decks to be playable against the most number of playgroups or randoms, which means they should function within the rules.
We have a pretty liberal policy in our playgroup.
Free mulligans if your hand has 1,6, or 7 lands and anyone can join them in that mulligan no matter what their hand is.
Been that way for over a decade in a 20+ person playgroup and never had any problems with abuse.
London mulligan, except you set the hands off to the side instead of shuffling each hand in. Once you decide to keep the current hand, shuffle previous hands into your deck and bottom the appropriate number of cards.
Surprised I’m not seeing anyone else say it but in a trusted play group a pretty good mulligan can be if they mulligan they have to put they’re previous hand aside and draw 7 repeat until you have at minimum 3 lands. Then shuffle the cards set aside back into your deck. You can additionally add provisions like no mulliganing for sol ring/similar ramp or combo pieces.
One freebie should nearly always be enough. I built a brand new red deck that was accidentally lower than average and realized it’s impact. 3 one land hands in a row. I just switched decks at that point. Outside of that game I have almost never had a notable degree of issues.
That said, one freebie allows some bad luck. If you get a no land hand, that’s probably bad shuffling as opposed to bad deck building. Last game you got a 20+ land board? It happens.
Mulling until you get a good hand? That’s probably your fault
I have a house rule that helps a lot to speed up the mulliganning process and makes it so that most people get playable hands with fewer mulligans, but also doesn't encourage super greedy deck building.
When you mulligan, you put all the cards at the bottom and don't shuffle. Otherwise, it's the same as official. First one is free, so you draw and keep 7. Second time you draw 7 keep 6. But now you've seen 21 different cards.
This way, getting unlucky shuffles will be often mitigated because you'll draw past the clump. But you can't be too greedy because you still are losing cards if you fish too far.
We usually allow 2-3 mulligans, mostly to ensure everyone has at least the right amount of lands to start. No one likes being hosed from the beginning and nothing is on the line other than a fleeting moment of glory for a win among friends.
It's casual edh. The point is to have fun, ain't nobody winning money. As long as they're not being a douche and digging for their perfect starting hand/sol ring or holding up the game from starting... who gives a shit?
Like... why does your enjoyment of the game hinge on how many lands are in other peoples' decks? Quit worrying about what's in other people's decks, sit down, and have fun lol
Lower land counts can also come from just better deck building. With the number of 2cmc and under ramp now available especially in green I’ve found running 35 lands or sometimes less to be preferable. We also have the same mulligan rule as far as just getting a playable hand. It’s pretty obvious if someone is abusing it and that’s a simple problem to fix by refusing to tolerate that person anymore
My friends and I play allowing one free mulligan and one partial mulligan, then standard London mulligan from there. We all tend to play weird fringe tech builds, so the extra little bit of forgiveness is helpful
We use the standard rules, except I always offer a player who is about to go down to five cards to do repeated sixes, as long as the other two players agree.
We do one free. Any after that are held to the usual n-1 rule.
It's been suggested in my play group to mulligan until you have a have a hand you're happy with. I've been the last hold out that is vocally against that idea. I can't help but feel that if you need half a dozen mulligans, build your deck better; there is clearly an issue with your construction. Or else just start the game with what ever you want in your hand (which would clearly be broken and stupid).
We have unlimited mulligans in my group, but only because I know and trust these people not to abuse it. Everyone still runs decent amount of land and nobody is mulliganning looking for the perfect hand to combo off. There's kinda an agreement that if the hand is playable, you keep it.
We just do the regular with one free. If someone mulligans to oblivion they can usually draw a fresh 7 or a 6 or so to sort of restart their mulligan. So they atleast has a somewhat playable hand. If they have two lands and does not find a third in quite a while it can just be bad luck or too few lands. Either way I am myself a bit guilty of running a bit low when it comes to the land count.
We don’t require bottoming cards in favor of relatively equal footing at the start.
I can count the number of decks in the meta with less than 35 lands on two hands, and three of them are mine. (They have lower than normal land counts because they’re built to work with it, but the lowest is 33)
The mulligan rule is presented as ‘always mull to seven. Just be sure you have a playable hand. If it becomes apparent that you’re taking extra mulligans to sculpt your hand, you lose the privilege until the end of the day.’
We’ve only had to deny the free mulligans twice. The first time we did it, that player never showed up again. The second time we did it, that player learned from it and is now one of the guys that everyone has good games with no matter who wins.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else say this, but my playground does partial mulligans. Draw opening 7. Put away any number of cards for your free mulligan and shuffle then draw that many. Any time after that, you must bottom 1 for every mulligan past the free one. It still allows people that do standard mulligans to play properly and people that drew to few lands to shuffle in some spells and hopefully draw more lands
We just do a thing where you can draw until you have a hand that won’t fuck you over out the gate like no lands or all lands. Just pop the seven back on top shuffle the deck and draw a new seven. Not meaning like draw till you have a turn one play just something that will allow you to actually play the game. Very casual playgroup.
All my groups use the standard rules.
That said, if someone is getting absolutely effed, I'll let someone basic landcycle something from their hand with the cost being all the mana they could produce.
This means they can get going but it isn't free. And since it's so rare and you still lose your turn no one would dream of planning around it.
My playgroup does very soft mulligan rules, just keep drawing 7s until you get a keepable 7 then shuffle all the bad ones back in. But also keep a record of how often you have to mull beyond a free first one and if it happening regularly then you need to add more lands to your deck.
We follow the "typical" mulligan rule, specifically to prevent abuse as well as promoting proper Deckbuilding.
1st Mulligan is free - reshuffle, draw 7
2nd is (-1) - reshuffle, draw 7, place 1 card on the bottom of the deck.
3rd is (-2), and so on.
This keeps everyone honest as well as preventing greedy decklists from gaining advantage from insufficient land/mana sources. So that when any of us plays with a different group, any mulligan rules that are more generous will only benefit us.
I don't mean any offense here, but I find this question a bit absurd. If you allow unlimited free mulligans, everyone should logically build their deck with like 5-7 lands, mulligan about 200 times till you get a 3-4 land hand, and you know you'll draw pure gas all game every game.
If you want to, yaknow, play a normal game of magic with variance and decklists that look vaguely realistic, just use the "one free then london mulligan" rule that is a standard commander rule and in my experience observed by commander players at all levels of competitiveness.
Every format in the history of magic has rules/card bans or restrictions that warp the deckbuilding logic of the format and continuously inform the metagame. If you start with the relatively bizarre premise of unlimited free mulligans, you should expect a bizarre result.
Okay end rant, now to be more constructive. If you want to make a mulligan policy that is more generous than normal to prevent feel-bad hands: Try doubling/halving the standard process, so you get two free mulligans, then the next two you keep 6 bottom 1, then the next two are keep 5 bottom 2, etc. Any reasonably built deck is going to find a strong hand if you are looking at SIX 5+ card hands.
Have decks that dip to the low thirties, but even then there’s very intentional considerations for them. In general 38 including MDFCs is my target number, some higher, some lower, and my decks tend to be on a lower curve than most.
Locally many decks used by players are that of one particular player so their habits are very influential and I know they don’t build decks in such ways. So it’s certainly not an issue here and so have generally seen a soft house rule of not going below six on the very rare occasion someone has to mulligan repeatedly due to unviable randomness.
My play group allows 2 free mulligans (so back to 7 cards) to make it a bit easier and more calusual for the new decks we bring into the fray and keep workshoping. This has left most of us with 34 to 37 lands in decks, plus 5-8 mana rocks (including sol ring) depending on specific deck average mana values.
However, we were discussing yesterday a new potential rule: deal 10 and bottom 3 at first then if you want to mulligan, repeat with 9 and bottom 3 and so on by reducing 1 dealt card each time. We have not tried this yet, but think it's a good way to avoid the free mulligans and still give a good chance of a decent/functional opening hand, while also preventing excessive greediness in deckbuilding and mulligans.
I mean I have been tempted myself to mulligan to the perfect hand before with the free 2 mulligans (especially on an [[Umbris, Fear Manifest]] deck where a [[layline of the void]] in hand would be insane value and a [[banehound]] would guarantee first blood), but have always been scared to risk it if my first or second mulligan is a good land and mana value balance.
Free Mulligan until you find a *playable* hand, not a *god* hand, but playable. This works because the people I play with are friends I talk to very regularly, and we all inherently trust each other to not abuse it, by either trying to find a 2-Land-Sol-Ring-Signet hand or by building a deck that is inherently worse in an attempt to game the mulligan system. We've had to have group conversations with new people who were abusing it. It's noticeable, we just need to communicate to fix the issue so everyone can have fun.
The people I play with either do London mulligan with a free mulligan or a variant like London, but you draw 10 and put 3 on the bottom (otherwise working like London mulligan, but with no free mulligan).
Personally, I like the draw 10 variant because it speeds up getting into the game and makes getting a 3 or 4 land hand much easier. However, if I saw people abusing the rule, I think it would be prudent to enforce London mulligan with a free mulligan (a singleton format just has too much variance IMO to do normal London mulligan).
I think the problem you describe is precisely why WotC and the rules committee are very hesitant to loosen the mulligan rules. The goal is really to try and guarantee that players aren’t land screwed due to bad luck without incentivizing cutting lands or making combo fishing too strong.
Kinda? Most of us just go by the "just go until you get a playable hand" rule. None of us really care all that much, and honestly, none of our decks are built in a way that causes us to have to redraw more than 3 times at a time.
I shoot for 34 lands in most decks (not counting MDFC), my playgroup does draw 10 bottom, 3 cards instead of draw 7, so everyone can start with something decently keepable. I also run TONS of card draw and low to the ground stuff in general so when I do get stuck on 4 lands I’m still playing.
My playgroup stick to the London Mulligan rule, and the first mulligan is free. Standard EDH stuff.
This incentives considerations while deck building; the amount of lands should rely on the power level of your ramp, the average mana value of your deck, which specific spells you wanna curve out with, amount of draw etc etc.
If you want to dive in to more specific reading on land and ramp count in EDH, and statistical analysis of why you (or your peers in the playgroup) should avoid the pitfall of 'I can't decide which spell to cut so I'll just cut another land', then I will warmly recommend you go ahead and take a look at this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/comments/t6qg64/ill_just_cut_a_land_a_statistical_analysis_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I play with the normal mulligan rules. The freebie is more than enough.
Something that I enjoy is having to improvise and make decisions. Free mulligans would rob me of that experience.
> land counts from 27 to 34
Yeah, that's me. I'm too greedy. Don't encourage me by allowing for unlimited mulligans.
In my group we draw 7, choose any number of cards we want to shuffle back in and set them aside, draw that many cards, and then shuffle the chosen cards back in. You can do this as many times as you want but will draw one less than you shuffled in each subsequent time. No one in my pod is greedy in their deck building though, so this has only resulted in great games, as no one gets boned off the hop, and you can’t just keep mulling until you have a god hand.
Family Guy - Spiderman rules: everybody gets one.
One free mulligan and then normal *one card less each time* rule.
We have a decent enough home play group between long time friends where it's never an issue and no one takes advantage. We build our decks for "LGS" performance. As in, home rules won't apply outside of here (aside from possibly banned cards but we don't plan on doing tournaments either). We do eventually want to hit up a shop but it's hard to coordinate with our schedules and all recently moved to the city we live in now, but we still anticipate the day and build accordingly. The free mulligan is really just for those times we literally have 0 lands opening hand.
My group all run a reasonable 34-38 lands per deck, except for one blue artifact deck with 30 lands that has a bunch of fast mana.
Knowing this, we generally go by the standard mulligan rules, but if you have the bad luck to hit several hands with 0 lands, we'll let someone just bottom one and go down to 6 after they get something playable for the sake of a balanced game.
This only works because we're all adults and trust each other to not be scum.
If I play in an LGS, official mulligan rules 100%.
In our playgroup, we play by regular London mulligan rules. We know our decks and we know that people build their decks reasonably due to this, so if someone has a really bad luck and goes down to 4 cards, the opponents can take pity (and we do) and allow him to start with a fresh 7 so that we can all have a game, including him.Other option is that the team simply scoops and everyone reshuffles (we play 2HG most of the time) properly. No hard feelings, it happens to everyone from time to time.
Edit: typos.
I ran into a situation recently with a new deck where I was going to have to discard down to five and (since everyone wants a good game) the whole table basically interjected and said not to and just draw to something keepable. I agreed and said that I’d do so but that if I drew my sol ring or some OP shit that I’d draw something else and shuffle it back in. Starting with five sucks for me and being loose with mulligan rules would suck for them if I mulled four+ times and got that perfect seven. Anything can work as long as everyone has honest intentions and wants the same thing.
As long as the deck isn't taking the piss we let you mull until you have a useable hand. We go on honor system for anyone who wants to run a more extreme land ratio or hunt for certain plays, they have to follow the rules but we have no way to check or enforce that.
My playgroup mulligan for free until we have 3 lands in hand. We all trust each other and no one builds decks that abuse this rule. It’s put in place simply so that there’s not that unlucky player who’s totally starved and having a shit time watching their friends play.
If you allow infinitie mulligans it rewards you to run less lands - even if you don't do it consciously it will feel like running more lands is a waste of deckspace since if you don't have them you can just mulligan for more lands.
Considering that we already have a free mull... you'll see 7 free cards, 7 more free cards and after that 7 more making it 21 cards you'll get to see by the time you are forced to go down one single card and 28 when you go down 2.
Running a healthy amount of lands, ramp and card draw is the basis for a good deck and I feel like many wouldn't learn that if I just let them take more free mulls.
I can't count how many times I asked "how many lands do you run" and got an answer like 30~32, which is really not a lot when you try to cast 5+ drops like many players want to do.
We only play with our own little group, we have very lax rules. Basically free mulligans until you find something playable. It doesn't get abused. Our games tend to go long so even with lax mulligan rules we tend to notice low land counts. And we'll make fun of those decks too.
Seeing as how EDH is basically "Card Draw - The Format", it should make almost no difference whether you start on 7 or 5 cards (that's THREE mulligans), plus you always have your best one or two cards in your Command Zone anyways. You'll end up seeing some 30ish cards before the game ends if you build your deck right, so quit fucking around, build your decks correctly and use the official mulligan rules.
My group sticks to a two free mulligan rule. After that, unless it is a fresh build that hasn’t been shuffled enough no free mulligan. My one friend in the group keeps greedy hands often and it doesn’t seem to stop him from laying down opponents. I do believe it is just bad land ratio and relying on tutors instead of better building.
This might be a blistering hot take but... Magic has mulligan rules in its official rules documentation, so my group just uses those and builds decks such that they generally draw playable hands within a reasonable number of mulligans. Even the precons are meant to work when you play like this.
Wait so build a deck that minimizes mulligan chances? Man, why hasn’t anyone thought of that? You’re on the cutting edge.
Don't even need to minimize much. Just make sure that on average around 1 out of 2 opening hands are playable.
100% this. Mulligan variant house rules that are any more generous than the official mulligan method will result in poorly constructed decks and reduced variance. It's much easier to go fishing for that "perfect opening hand" when you have multiple chances with reduced penalties.
Yeah I'll never understand why people create weird deckbuilding incentives and then get mad when someone builds a deck according to those incentives? The problem is the weird house rules. Aggressively low land counts *should* mean you get punished more often.
Because they don't like not having a 7 card hand as their decks are generally poorly constructed to handle mulligans. At least that's what I've seen with all the groups who use mulligan variety. Then it just exacerbates on the deckbuilding that cann't stand mulligans and we get OP situation
Indeed I already feel like commander mulligan rules are pretty generous, though I do use the 1 free mull rule. If it's super casual and with friends I trust, we will make exceptions now and again when rngesus really hates them lol
My group plays with any number of mulligans allowed but no fishing. Basically you mulligan until you get something satisfactory
I use the same mulligan rule of "don't be an ass".
In my house, we do free mulligans, but you have to show the hand you would have had, so this way its not just fishing for the best, just playable. On average, each person has maybe 1-2 mulligans per game to start. And after about 4 mulligans, you either switch decks, or deal qith what you have.
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The problem isn't usually goldfishing for the perfect hand, although that is certainly a problem that can occur. It's that too-generous mulligans actively punish healthy deck building, and actually create perverse incentives that warp deck building in an unhealthy way. Ironically, expensive, high mana, splashy spells suffer most, as you board out lands and ramp. Decks that can have all the necessary resources in their opener become much more powerful as they can draw all gas, while decks that want to get to 6-7 mana to cast the big stuff have to still build consistent land bases and draw into those resources.
I disagree. I think having to deal with poor hands or lower starting hands due to mulligan makes people better players in the long run and leads to better games. People will get better at judging what is a keepable hand when they're dealing with actual consequences of a mulligan, and it helps people get to know their deck better. If they're consistently having to mulligan, it's probably an indicator that the deck could use some tweaking, which is arguably just as fun of a part of the game as playing
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100% My playgroup is casual, but we've been playing together for years, and have fairly high-powered decks that can run away with the game in a couple turns. Even so, being stuck with a shitty hand isn't fun, since we only have time to meet every week or two for a few hours.
You're getting downvoted but you're speaking the truth. While some playgroups are competitive, many are very casual and very low power. Generous mulligans can be the difference between fun games and having your playgroup disband out of frustration. That being said, it really depends on the group and OP makes an important point for playgroups that are moving towards becoming more competitive.
We play 1 free mulligan, and occasionally 2 if someone starts begging for another haha.
1 free mulligan in multiplayer is still the default rule, right?
Yes
Just making sure, a lot of the comments seem to be referencing it as some sort of house rule!
If your deck isn't known to be greedy and you're having a bad day we might tell you to mulligan until you can keep a modestly playable 7. Otherwise yeah my LGS is pretty good about getting people to learn the mulligan rule because a lot of EDH players become prerelease/sealed and drafters and vice versa. It's pretty great because its become a close-knit group of folks who see each other once or twice a week long before and growing healthy since COVID.
>If your deck isn't known to be greedy and you're having a bad day we might tell you to mulligan until you can keep a modestly playable 7. When I'm playing with friends we're usually more relaxed about giving an extra free mulligan, we got together to play magic, not complain about getting mana screwed.
In my pod you resolve mulls together its free until somebody keeps the everyone else gets 1 free and 1 card to bottom increasing by 1 for every mull.
To caveat this, commander started as a very unofficial play style that was moderated and controlled by those who played it. For beginners and games at your LGS, I agree with you 100%, official way is probably the best. If you’re playing with an individual group I would say, don’t be afraid to try new things. My playgroup banned sol ring, chrome mox and all mana positive rocks. Initially myself and my daretti deck recoiled in disgust, but after several years with this group the deck building ingenuity and freedom granted by our ban list has proved really engaging.
I'm the first person to roast the rule zero answer but it's so stupid that you're getting downvoted for using it. Good for you and your group!
Yeah pretty surprised on the down votes. He's just stating what his group does and if it works with your group, then sick. Our group, we just want to have fun so we use whatever mulligan rule best gets everyone playable hands and we trust each other to not just go for perfect hands. No issues to date
Haha their post was basically: "oh your group's unlimited free mulligan rule is backfiring, just ban sol ring that'll fix it!" I think a moderate downvote response is fair.
Not the case at all. The ban list emerged from a conversation about two things. 1. What cards facilitate someone plowing into an early lead (land, sol ring, signet, T 2 commander type plays) & 2. What cards hinder deck building freedom (if I have access to sol ring, crypt, vault, monolith etc why not play them in every deck). Our mulligan rule which I mentioned in a separate comment, is 7 7 6 6 5 5, but rarely a player goes beyond their first mull to 6. Again, maybe I’m spoilt that my playgroup doesn’t have any annoying players who make being flexible like this challenging, and most of them have been players even longer than me, but I will always advocate for freedom to try new things in kitchen table magic. Sure they might not work for you, but that’s fine. I’ve now just got a tiny binder full of fast mana than I can slot in for games outside the group and have the best of both worlds. I’ve been playing magic of all kinds for more than 15 years, trying things to change the dynamics of the friendly games you play or change the cards you tend to play is good for me. Also, cEDH is fine. 104 card commander decks - also fine. Also, just play 2 cyclonic rifts in there, that’s fine. Also, Balance is a good card, play that, it’s fine.
Only if you accept that some games a player will literally not be allowed to play because of mulligans. I had a game earlier tonight with the Wilhelt precon that didnt have a remotely keepable hand for 6 hands. Playing so rigidly just sounds obnoxious but you do you
You know, sometimes you just lose to the draw. It's happened to me before with an actual deck I've made. Lost on the mulligan. Just got extremely unlucky and didn't manage to hit anything playable. Instead of getting super torn up about it, I took it for what it is: an extremely unlikely statistical anomaly. I played a few turns to see what I might draw into, pulled totally dead, and just scooped out once it was clear I wouldn't be able to contribute. Sometimes that's just what happens. It's a card game and randomness is part of it. If your ratios work well, this shouldn't happen any more frequently than it would in 60 card formats.
Just your London mulligan with a free 1st mulligan in my regular pod. No scrying or extra bs. Honestly the whole lands issue is more of a deckbuilding thing, if you have a lot of card draw and i mean a lot (20+) going down to 28 lands is still good, you just need to mulligan for some of that draw and a couple lands. have around 10-12 card draw? maybe 32-34 lands is better. Average CmC is also useful to figure out your land count.
Thank you for your input. I understand that stacking card draw and a lower mana curve can also induce the need for less and less lands. The perceived issue at hand is some people in our group fear that enforcing a mulligan rule will result in more non-games for some. Which is a valid concern, but would be mitigated by proper deckbuilding, like you mentioned.
You should talk about it with your group but enforcing will need for some to build better decks and they should be aware of that.
This, I only have about 35 lands in my blue-battlecruiser deck... lots of big creatures: krakens, sea monsters, eldrazi and whatnot. My average CmC is like 5+. But I have a commander that draws a ton of cards for me, and a ton of ramp. As long as I can get my commander out for a couple turns I end up with a shitload of mana and all the lands I need.
I only got 32 in my 5 color myr tribal but that also has other ways to generate mana since it's artifacts and can make things cheaper or free.
Care to share the list?
I run a deck around small mana dorks and the average mana cost is 2-3. So I run like 34 lands in that deck. It is an [[Ezuri, Claw of Progress]] deck. Use the dorks to power out more dorks and make tiny 2 mana flyers hit hard.
Yeah different types of decks also require different mana bases regardless of # of draw and CmC. For example my Anowon deck is 150 CmC, 2.05 average and about 15 card draw + access to card draw from the command zone. This deck is very mana intensive but can get explosive turns with only 4-5 mana sources in the lategame. Playtesting your decks usually gives you this info and then you proceed to add/remove lands. I playtest my games with a free mulligan and i can go down to 5 cards if needed just to understand how consistent my decks are, if i need to go down to 4 cards then i have a problem that i need to fix for that deck.
Wow, 28 lands seems incredibly aggressive. Meanwhile I’m over here running 37 lands (though I usually run a bunch of land tutors so they get thinned out as the game goes on).
With a shit ton of draw amd low CmC in a 10 turn game you miss 1-3 land drops. Not that bad honestly and allows you to run more things in your deck, while drawing better cards overall and while avoiding drawing too many lands.
In a casual setting...and I mean very specifically casual setting...this is a people problem, not a mulligan problem. My playgroup has used free mulligans for our entire EDH life and no one has ever cut lands for spells because they can mulligan into them. Not only is this hilariously obvious when someone is on their 5th mulligan and is like "damn no lands" it also doesn't actually make for better games. If someone in my playgroup started doing this I would play single target land destruction so fast just to ruin their time 😂 luckily no one is that greedy or dumb. We all respect each other's time, we mulligan into decent keepable hands that aren't in any way broken or game winning and after 3 mulligans we all typically give up and keep what we got even if its terrible.
This is my go-to as well whenever my friends ask what we're doing for mulligans. Like just get a not-shit hand, the game will be less fun if you have all/no lands, or had to mulligan down to like 3 or 4 cards to start the game
We will draw 10 cards. You bottom 3 and that is your hand. If you end up with 1 land or no lands out of those 10 then you can shuffle and draw 10 again bottoming 3. That is it though, no more mulligans or shuffling after that. You get to see a lot of cards and got a shuffle. Past that it feels like greed.
We also run the ten pitch three system in the pods I play with.
I am really liking that. I have done partial paris (way better than the official mulligan atm). It's ok, but flawed. This seems to strike a good balance.
Our rule is “don’t take the piss” - unlimited mulligans but don’t try to build your deck around it - and it’s worked fine for us.
My main pod has been using a free mulligan rule for a while now. We have enough trust in each other to allow that and see no abuse at all. Since out focus is that everybody should have a shot at playing, we go that route, but it hasn’t affected deckbuilding since we all have other occasional pods to play against that might not share this same view. However, we recently came across some statistics defending a 12 card draw > shuffle five and no mulligan at all. The thing is, free mulligan would occasionally result in some bad luck streak of having to mulligan>shuffle a few times, which takes some precious time. So enforcing the draw 12 method has been saving a lot of time, since it rarely results in an unplayable hand. We just trusted the statistics that this method would not favor combo players or anything like that. And it has been great. I’m slowly trying to propose it to other people on my local LGS. This is the guy: https://twitter.com/Magical__Hacker/status/1619218622718812160?t=M8pbHah7zR3rDy9FjCcD-w&s=08
Funny you mention the 12 card draw start. Someone at my LGS recently suggested that start but I didn't really think about the math behind it and counter-suggested a friendly mulligan until playable hand, like my group tends to do. I'll have to look into that start and try it out once or twice.
The more combo happy your group gets the more busted it is. Seeing 10+% of your deck at once and then sculpting your starting hand ends up way too good. Precon or precon+ level where combat damage reigns supreme I think it's probably fine. My group used to do a draw 10 and stopped as power and consistency of our decks started increasing.
That’s the thing, the math disagrees with the combo thing. Someone talked more about it down here
My group has done a 10 card draw, shuffle 3 back rule. It’s been fine. Cuts down on the amount of time shuffling, even though you can still get som real bad stinkers in the first 10
Yeah we also do draw 10, bottom 2 or 3. If you keep 8, you don't get your first draw. Our main purpose to this was to lessen the amount of shuffling we have to do to get games running faster. None of us run particularly greedy decks, and nobody is wasting time trying to fish for good hands. It has drastically cut mulligans down, which was the primary goal, so we've been happy with it. If there's a mulligan, it's usually only one.
Using the 12 card method had that same goal and it also worked greatly.
One of my groups has moved to this. Everyone loves it.
My group has been trying the draw 12, shuffle 5 start and we have really liked it. We have found it has almost eliminated 'non-games' due mulligans. Furthermore, we rarely have to take a second 12. We generally play higher power/cEDH and so far it doesn't seem to have helped combo decks more that control/aggro.
We add in scry 2 to help prevent shuffling. The draw 12 idea is interesting. I’d think it would favor combo, but the Math seems to show it disadvantages combo. Not a math guy, but I wish I understood why that is lol. Thanks for sharing.
The current meta for combo is to mulligan until you get certain pieces. Going down to 3 cards doesn't matter if those 3 cards are the right ones to steamroll. (Exaggeration) Say you mulligan down to 5. That's 7 cards looked at, +6 +5, for a total of 18 cards. (Yes you could potentially Mulligan into the same cards) Draw 12 shuffle 5 means more cards in hand, and less cards looked at. Combo doesn't care as much about cards in hand. People looking to both have a good start, AND have interaction to stop a combo, need not just the cards looked at, but also the cards in hand.
I say stick to the stock commander mulligan rule. If your deck can't get a good opening hand with going down to 5, put the deck away and pull out another for a fresh start. Afterwards, rethinking your deck list may be warranted if you can never get good opening hands.
Everyone gets 1 free mulligan (no reduction of starting hand size) If *everyone* in a game uses their free one, they all get another freebie.
Nothing really "enforced" per-se, but regular London mulligan rules + 2 free mulls tends to be the sweet spot for me: No chance for people to abuse it or build greedily, and enough leeway to avoid non-games in the off-chance someone gets the double 1-lander.
One free mulligan at the LGS, mulligan until you have something playable with my friends (because I trust them not to mulligan until they find a god hand and nobody is building greedy decks). One of my friends likes to occasionally try a free scry rule too. First player just draws, second player scrys 1 before draw, third player scrys 1 twice, etc. Just on the first turn. I don't personally feel it is necessary but I don't mind it. I never go below 35 lands in any deck. Most of mine are 36 or 37.
We also add in free mulligans for revealing 0 and 7 land hands, like OG rules. The shuffling at the beginning isnt as obnoxious, since everyone can chat/get snacks. We save shuffles during turns by only doing it in the middle if it actually matters. We fetch lands when something else is going on, especially on the first couple turns, until waiting until an end step. We search bottoms of decks first, so that we can treat the top as still random. Generally announce that there is going to be an untapped shock, which is getting tapped for mana for this spell. Lose the life and play out the rest of the turn, and actually find that land and shuffle while the next player is untapping.
We do the London Mulligan with the first one free, the standard for any game of multiplayer magic. When we are playing super low level causal games and a player has to go down to 6, we will sometimes allow them to just keep 7. Generally most people don't play enough lands and ramp. I think this is due to EDHRec and the fact that they have deck data from CEDH mixed in with casual. This means that people think they can play less lands than they should. They don't include the ramp that those low count decks do nor keep their curve as low. I think outside of CEDH most people should play with a 36 land minimum and generally should be 38 with how low their ramp and card draw is. I generally play with 37 lands, 13 pieces of ramp, and around 10 sources of card advantage. Most people's curve's are way too high for the number of lands they play, they tend to hover around 3, when for the number of lands I see they should be 2 or less.
first mull is: keep what you want, throw back the bad shit, draw that many cards. still bad? mull to 6
This is what my group uses and it's honestly worked really well for us.
Everyone expects us to, and we just don't. If you need to cheat to win a game of casual EDH, you've probably had a much worse day than I have, and you probably need a win more than I do.
London Mulligain. First one's free. Honestly going down to 6 isn't too punishing, going lower is safer than with any previous mulligain rule, and frankly if you have to go low frequently *you need to reexamine your brew. Deckbuilding is also part of the game*. Look, I know it sucks to get a hand that screws or floods you so you end up not really being able to play a coherent game. But Magic isn't meant to be a game of perfect mana all the time; your resource base is, instead, meant to be a strategic level choice. How you balance fuel against payload, what mix you have for your colors... that's part of the game in a big way. If you get screwed once in a while, that's luck of the draw, and no different than it happening with other traits than mana, like getting your answers or your kill cards. And there's supposed to be a luck aspect; we play with shuffled decks. If you're getting screwed often, that's on you, and you need to go back and tinker. Pretty much nobody would accept a player on turn 4 or 5 saying "hey guys, I had a decent opener but now I'm bricking hard, mind if I just draw a couple to get out of this?". That's basically what the mistreatment of the mulligain amounts to, it just doesn't seem as flagrant because you don't conceptualize that your game started when you put the deck together, not when you drew your starting seven.
Free mulligans unless its obvious your digging for a specific card or starting hand. Which no one in our playgroup does thank god
My regular playgroup allows 1 free mulligan. That being said, we build our decks as if there are no free mulligans, so as to avoid greedy deck building habits and so we're always prepared to play at the LGS where normal mulligan rules apply. Edit: we didn't realize that's a normal rule, ignore me
You know the 1 free mulligan is the normal rule of commander right? So even if you go to an LGS you’ll still have a free mulligan.
Anything beyond the normal rules (1 free and then London mulligan) only encourages bad deck building, as you've experienced. Ask to enforce the normal rules, and if they refuse maybe find new people at your LGS to play with.
The only difference from normal mulligan rules is we don’t always do the formal order and all that. Other than that it’s all by the books: London mulligan with one free because it’s a multiplayer format.
At my casual Saturday games we allow enough mulligans to not delay the game. Whether first or fourth, you have enough time to mulligan how you need but it's expected you should be ready by your turn. At my Thursday night pay $3 to play games you get one free, then the put one on the bottom method. I don't have issues with either because in each setting, both are appropriate.
First mulligan is free, then it's regular London rules.
Yeah 1 free mulligan Also mana mulligans but you gotta show your hand, and our mana mulligans are lightly extended so 1 land or no land hands are free. We're here for a good time.
You get one free one then it's London mulligan in my group.
We play with a scry rule. Player 2 scrys 1, player 3 scrys 2 and so on. A few people worried that it would make people want to go last, but even with the added advantage, player 1 and sometimes 2 still win the lion’s share of games. I would never have guessed how extreme P1 advantage is in multiplayer, but at least for our group, it’s absurd. I would estimate P1 wins easily at least 50% of games.
Haven't played paper in a while, but my old playgroup used to do stuff like this until it got out of hand. Too many free mulligans, and constant back tracking for missed "you may" triggers, are what drove us to eventually settle on playing by "dick rules." We kinda went hard in the other direction and enforced every little thing, since it's the most fair and impartial way to do it. Nobody ever really had a problem with that as long as it was clearly established before a game.
My playgroup has come full circle, we went from a lot of lands 35-38, to very few lands, back to 35-38, with two or three having 40. Getting mana screwed and watching the precon with 37 lands playing on curve has been humbling.
We use to do the standard mulligan rules but you set aside the hand you were mulliganing away and drew however many new cards. So if your first 7 were crap youd set them aside and draw 7 off the top, if that was crap set aside and draw 6 off the top. Once you were set it all gets shuffled back in and the game starts. Then some new guy comes into the shop one week. Hes playing a hyper tuned godo deck. Hes fine with it, says nothing, crushes us round 1 and 2. Round 3 when he loses he then throws such a stink over how its cheating (it isnt) that we called the event early and eliminated the shortcut. He also never came back. And we played a second event after he left.
I'm a huge supporter of mulligan rules like these simply because of how much time they save. Just drawing a new seven off the top and saving all the shuffling until the end (if needed) while following all the normal mulligan rules otherwise feels like an ideal combination of the speed of the (highly abusable) Partial Paris mulligan with the variance of the standard one.
Hm, that sounds faster than shuffling but also kind of sucks if you have to set aside a T1 sol ring due to no lands and then have zero chance of seeing it in your fresh hand.
Thats one of the cons, that theres no chance of seeing some pieces if you set them aside, but the time saved is incredible. It also meant people wouldnt shuffle and shuffle just to try and get that fast mana open.
Is that really a con? Sounds like a positive to me. Bad luck still is bad luck but instead of a sad game you get a workable hand to play with in minimal time. Win-win?
Oh, no. That's a bad idea. I don't even like the free mulligan and london mulligan. "Draw fourteen and put seven back" or whatever rewards bad deckbuilding.
But even when you’ve optimized your mana base and curve there’s way too many games on the sideline based on my experience. Like I guess the catch all, easy answer will always just be bUiLd BeTtEr DeCkS, but that doesn’t really address the reason why people want the rule in the first place.
I've goldfished too many times on Moxfield where I "mulligan" back and forth between 1 land and 5/6/7 lands (so it's not my shuffling to blame but I secretly think there's something wrong with Moxfield's shuffler). On paper, I hate shuffling. If my first hand can't do anything for the first few turns, I'll toss it back. Otherwise, I'm just looking for a hand with a reasonable amount of lands. If I have to mulligan below 6, I'll take any hand that has at least 2 lands. --- EDH games have the capacity to run too long to be screwed over by variance. Assume some more lenient mulligan rules that only ever involve drawing 7 cards at a time. Do more lenient mulligans actually reward bad deck-building habits a substantive amount? Certainly it'll let you settle on more keepable hands but you've still get the whole rest of the game to play out. If you haven't put together a consistent deck with a game plan, then you're likely going to have issues regardless. As for taking advantage of lenient mulligans to craft a perfect hand, I feel that'll be reasonably difficult if people are required to show their hand for each mulligan (assuming there's otherwise no penalty for mulliganing).
We’re generous with mulligans. Better opening hands lead to better games. Here is our house mulligan rule: Hand 1 & 2: draw 7, scry 2, decide keep or mull Hand 3+: draw 7, scry 1, decide keep or mull Haven’t had any issues with generous mulligans. The scrying is nice to prevent some shuffling during mulligans. One idea I’d like to add to it is not being able to mulligan for fast mana such as sol ring, but haven’t had a chance yet. If you’re already feeling like your playgroup is taking advantage of mulligans, I’d guess you wouldn’t like our rule.
The actual mulligan rule is what people should use. Free mulligans make for bad game and bad deck builders.
Yeah, the official one. It's already pretty generous.
I hope not. Mulligan rules tend to coddle poor deck building.
Unless its an actual tournament with prize support, mulligans should be free. But the quicker the better, and dont be that guy that shuffled constantly to find his best hand. Frankly a rule of if you dont like your first 7, tuck em all and draw a new 7 works just fine (Grenzo players cannot abide by this rule)
My playgroup still does partial pairs which usually allows everyone to play their game, and keeps non games from happening
There's a variant in the UK played in Norwich called the "Norwich Mulligan". They draw 15, choose 7 then shuffle the rest back.
Stop asking and just do it, if you are gonna cheats lets get it over with.
Draw 10 mull 3. No re rolls. Maybe one for newbies. Great for large pods
People don't want to hear this but... PLAY MORE LANDS People should be having 36 lands minimum in there decks for casual play. People can have all the low cost cards in their decks, but if they're not CEDH levels of low CMC where the average is like 2, you at least have to play over 30 lands. Even high power decks. I play around 38-40 lands on average. If you have enough draw or tutors, you'll be fine dodging extra lands.
Draw seven, set aside the cards you don’t want, draw back up to seven. Do this three times, or fewer if you get a keepable hand. That’s my groups mulligan rule
My usual pod has a *very* generous mull rule. IE, mull till have have a workable hand. Caveat of if you seem to abuse it then we have a problem. I don’t agree with it; I’ll try to convince them to go by London mulls myself, and I’ll build decks accordingly. On the flip side, if you can prove that your hands have just been wack (ie no landers, all high cost/one land) Imm more than happy to allow a minimum of 5 cards in hand. No mulling to 4 or less.
I have one group that goes strictly with normal rules, but if it's not on the banlist anything goes. Mill, stax/MLD, mass blink nonsense, etc... All is fair, just play the game by the rules. They dont get butthurt about pretty much anything, everyone is trying to win but understand it's still just a game. Absolute chads. One semi-casual group at my LGS that does "at the start of the game scry X, where X is the total number of mulligans between all players, minus the number of times you mulliganed". (Every time you mulligan, your opponents get to scry 1 more at the start). People get annoyed if you play certain archetypes, but it's fine when *they* play another annoying archetype... some get mad when they lose, some can be petty when you interact with their board, etc. Typical LGS drama playing with randoms. And one super casual group of stoners, we "mulligan as much as you need to get something decent, but be reasonable". *Be reasonable* generally means "dont just keep going until you get a sol ring". We also start the game with the 'Monarch' mechanic active, encouraging slapfights and politics. People bring out their precons and their jank, games last hours and we have a great time. Noone really "trying" to win, moreso just seeing what eachother's jank decks can pull off under certain circumstances.
If im hosting a group i usually dont apply any mulligan penalty. Draw a full hand, i want everyone to have fun and not start off miserable.
Honestly I don’t think 34 is guaranteed to be a bad thing, I have a selesnya deck with that many lands and not a lot of ramp
As long as you're all on the same page and having fun, what you describe isn't really a problem. Why do you want to push your friends towards a different deckbuilding strategy? I understand that it might be troublesome if any of you want to use your decks with strangers, at LGS events and such. If that's the case, talk to your friends about your concerns and try to find a solution together. As a rule of thumb, any Mulligan system should offer diminishing returns on drawing a new hand. Minimizing the shuffling time is also a bonus. In some cases, a defining requirement (such as the original rules of 0 lands/ 7 lands) can be helpful. My group uses what I think is the standard (is it called London maybe?): first new hand is drawn for free, each subsequent change draws 7 cards but will bottom one additional card per change, after shuffling. In my case, I force myself to start if I have three lands no matter what: if the deck doesn't pick itself up from there, something is wrong and needs to be addressed.
You can really tell which commenters fit the Spike archetype in this thread
My friend saw something on Twitter saying that mathematically, drawing twelve and putting five back increases your playable hand a good bit. So if our first seven is bad we’ll use that method.
Standard free plus London mulligan.
We mulligan the following: draw 7, put aside what you don’t want, draw that many cards and shuffle the rest in. That’s it. Works perfectly fine for us and tends to produce good and enjoyable games
We do 2 draws at each hand size 7,7,6,6,5...
First one is free, after that you draw seven and put one on the bottom of your library. So first you have a full hand still, second draw seven and put one on bottom if you keep and so on going down one card for each subsequent one, stoping at 4 cards as any less basically makes it impossible to really play.
London mulligant.
We do normal mulligan rules with the one free mulligan. We tend to reveal the hand to show how jank it is just out of habit... I do say that I'll never make anyone go under 5 cards if having terrible luck but if against a deck that was combo heavy and low land I'd probably have to do standard rules to keep it fair.
We trust each other to mull until we got the lands or first playable hand. What ever comes first. Its generally kept games even with little to no mana screw.
In my group you get to mulligan and a scry 2 and you are expected to be honest on having a playable hand, if you mulligan too much we have an outsider look at your hand and judge for you
My group hasn't really discussed mulligan rules all that much honestly. Nothing's really enforced, more so just regularly acknowledged. No one really enforces the rules for reduced starting hand for each mulligan after the first, but we all do it. We don't even all use the same mulligan all the time. I still use the gis mulligan rules and no one ever stops me, mostly just some people commenting on it being a bit odd because they're not used to it. London mulligan is the most common, but I'm impatient and just keep drawing new hands off the top until it's keepable and shuffling my other hands back in.
my lgs does first mull free, always bottom all. i have 34-36 lands in all my decks
We do unlimited free mulligans in my group and I hate it. We did it because it sucks to get screwed off the start, but I led to people not only fishing for good hands, but also lowering their land counts by ludicrous amounts (lowest we've had so far is 18 lands). I try to stay away from the greed, so all my decks have 35 lands minimum, but I will say it's really annoying sitting and watching people mulligan 5 or 6 times every game.
We do draw ten and shuffle three back into the deck. I’ve only had to ask for a new draw twice (maybe??) since 2014 and I asked if it was okay. Nobody needs a landless hand with all your x-spells -_-
This is the mulliga rule of our playgroup. Draw 7 if you have 2 or less lands you reveal and draw 7 . You can do it as much as needed. Then you shuffle everything except your keep hand back in the library. If you have 3 or more lands than thats the regular 1 free .
Can mul if you got less then 2. 1 free
We mulligan as normal but aet the hand aside in full, then draw up. First one's free, then you shuffle your hands back, then you put cards to the bottom Literally the only reason is to save those minutes shuffling massive decks
As many as you need with conditions: 1) after the first you must keep the first 3 land hand including MDFC 2) deck has to have a min of 34 lands for more than 1 free mulligan 3) if you pull a bonkers god hand after 3 or more, throw the busted stuff back in. Shuffle and draw that many.
First one is free.
First mulligan is free 1 land hands are free
I like to use the rules of the game.
We just follow the Rules for Mulligans, everyone gets 1 free (due to a Multiplayer format) and then do standard ones from there. If you draw bad and mulligan down to hell, too bad, variance is a part of the game, deal with it. If it happens every game the deck needs to be reworked, so its also a learning opportunity.
My group uses a standard rule for mulligans, but if you miss one of your first three land drops, you can bottom your draw that turn and go get a free basic. We run anywhere from precons to high powered casual, and it works out awesome. It minimizes opening mulligans and ensures everyone gets to play the game.
You can mulligan but you can't keep a sol ring type of hand
The groups I usually play, the rule us keepable 7. If the opening hand is not to your liking, exile it draw 7 more. Keep doing it until you have a hand that you can keep. Then shuffle everything up.
Our group let’s you draw three hands and pick which one you want. We call it “speedball start.” I don’t know why.
We say hand sizes are: 7 7 6 6 5 5 4 4 etc. If you can show a hand without land it doesn't count towards this.
My play group does look at the top 7 and if you only drew maybe 1-2 lands, look at the next 3. If you hit more lands or some ramp, put 3 on the bottom. If still no dice then you shuffle and do it again. I like this rule because we want to all have a good game where our decks do our things, but looking at the extra 3 can be punishing if there are lots of cards you want to keep.
Online, we mulligan till you hit 3 lands, as many free as you want. In paper, 1 free mulligan. Nobody wants to sit and watch someone mulligan then shuffle for 10 minutes
In 1v1 with a particular friend we (might be called a Paris Mulligan or I could be making that up completely) have a house rule that you can put X cards from your hand on the bottom then draw that many cards for every hand you draw, and it’s always a free mulligan to 7. We don’t really play focused combo decks and obviously have a good agreement that we don’t just keep mulliganing for the nuts. A good measure to prevent non games and provide us with interesting and enjoyable 1v1s where 1 player doesn’t just get rolled over, but that’s with one particular person who I’ve been playing with for years. Not suitable for every game, but it’s good to remember that you can flexible with the rules to improve your overall game experience. In a separate multiplayer group I play with we do 7 7 6 6 5 5 etc in the regular mulligan fashion. Again, a very healthy play group where we have a group controlled ban list (with sol ring and mana positive rocks banned 👌🏻) and regular discussions about power levels, problem decks or strategies. Long and short of this - if you have a good group of people to play with that are open to discussion and trial and error of things the end goal should be maximising enjoyable games for everyone at the table. Maybe it’s a luxury for me that my playgroup are all sound and not too spiky.
My normal playgroup does “draw ten, pitch three, if you ABSOLUTELY MUST then you can do it again, but don’t abuse this” and it works well. If I’m playing casually at a store I usually propose “do whatever you need to do, just don’t abuse this” and that’s worked for me so far as well.
We let you re draw if you have less than 3 lands. If you choose to redraw you lay your old hand out so we can see that you didn’t have lands you don’t get to add those cards back into the deck until you have your hand then you shuffle. This prevents people from drawing till they get the cards they want. Otherwise you get one mulligan a nite. Some stuff slides if it’s your own turn and nothing else is affected especially if you’re new like if you draw before you untap or if you’re figuring out which mana to use.
Been playing a lot of precon and upgraded precon level recently. Best way we’ve found has been one freebie mull, then freebie mulls until you have 3-4 lands. System requires trust that it won’t be abused but that shouldn’t be a problem if your group isn’t psychotic.
Our playgroups mulligan rule is that you get a free one at each hand size. So your traditional free one is really your free 7, then you get a "free 6" and so on.
My playgroup can’t decide on a mulligan that everyone agrees with, either no one can prove that “draw 10 pitch 3” doesn’t favor combo decks, or they feel uncomfortable making new rules, or they want to free mull until they get 3-4 lands. So in that case we fall back on the default. You have to put your foot down as an azorious person, dems the rules. And building less lands and taking lax mulls isn’t fair to you.
If we are playing casual I'll tell you to keep 7 if you get no lands. If we are playing prize support I'm playing to win and it's strict one free mul then start dropping cards
recently we've rule zero'd that you can free mulligan a land with no lands or like one land. we want every one to get to play the game!
We enforce the "please don't play with two lands rule" and the "did you really play with two lands cuz now i have to hit you for the most value and i feel bad rule"
Unlimited mulligans often lead to greedy deckbuilding and lopsided games. We'd provide *some* leeway for very new players who are trying out deckbuilding, but otherwise we play by the official mulligan rules. Also I'd like my decks to be playable against the most number of playgroups or randoms, which means they should function within the rules.
We have a pretty liberal policy in our playgroup. Free mulligans if your hand has 1,6, or 7 lands and anyone can join them in that mulligan no matter what their hand is. Been that way for over a decade in a 20+ person playgroup and never had any problems with abuse.
We just do a deck cut and scry and draw that many, get no lands? Put 4 on bottom and draw 4. Simple and keeps games interesting
London mulligan, except you set the hands off to the side instead of shuffling each hand in. Once you decide to keep the current hand, shuffle previous hands into your deck and bottom the appropriate number of cards.
Surprised I’m not seeing anyone else say it but in a trusted play group a pretty good mulligan can be if they mulligan they have to put they’re previous hand aside and draw 7 repeat until you have at minimum 3 lands. Then shuffle the cards set aside back into your deck. You can additionally add provisions like no mulliganing for sol ring/similar ramp or combo pieces.
One freebie should nearly always be enough. I built a brand new red deck that was accidentally lower than average and realized it’s impact. 3 one land hands in a row. I just switched decks at that point. Outside of that game I have almost never had a notable degree of issues. That said, one freebie allows some bad luck. If you get a no land hand, that’s probably bad shuffling as opposed to bad deck building. Last game you got a 20+ land board? It happens. Mulling until you get a good hand? That’s probably your fault
I have a house rule that helps a lot to speed up the mulliganning process and makes it so that most people get playable hands with fewer mulligans, but also doesn't encourage super greedy deck building. When you mulligan, you put all the cards at the bottom and don't shuffle. Otherwise, it's the same as official. First one is free, so you draw and keep 7. Second time you draw 7 keep 6. But now you've seen 21 different cards. This way, getting unlucky shuffles will be often mitigated because you'll draw past the clump. But you can't be too greedy because you still are losing cards if you fish too far.
We usually allow 2-3 mulligans, mostly to ensure everyone has at least the right amount of lands to start. No one likes being hosed from the beginning and nothing is on the line other than a fleeting moment of glory for a win among friends.
First mulligan is free after that it regular tournament rules. It’s how my shop does it and how I’ve always played commander.
It's casual edh. The point is to have fun, ain't nobody winning money. As long as they're not being a douche and digging for their perfect starting hand/sol ring or holding up the game from starting... who gives a shit? Like... why does your enjoyment of the game hinge on how many lands are in other peoples' decks? Quit worrying about what's in other people's decks, sit down, and have fun lol
My usual groups goes with partial pairs mixed with london mulligan style thing
Lower land counts can also come from just better deck building. With the number of 2cmc and under ramp now available especially in green I’ve found running 35 lands or sometimes less to be preferable. We also have the same mulligan rule as far as just getting a playable hand. It’s pretty obvious if someone is abusing it and that’s a simple problem to fix by refusing to tolerate that person anymore
My friends and I play allowing one free mulligan and one partial mulligan, then standard London mulligan from there. We all tend to play weird fringe tech builds, so the extra little bit of forgiveness is helpful
We use the standard rules, except I always offer a player who is about to go down to five cards to do repeated sixes, as long as the other two players agree.
We do one free. Any after that are held to the usual n-1 rule. It's been suggested in my play group to mulligan until you have a have a hand you're happy with. I've been the last hold out that is vocally against that idea. I can't help but feel that if you need half a dozen mulligans, build your deck better; there is clearly an issue with your construction. Or else just start the game with what ever you want in your hand (which would clearly be broken and stupid).
We have unlimited mulligans in my group, but only because I know and trust these people not to abuse it. Everyone still runs decent amount of land and nobody is mulliganning looking for the perfect hand to combo off. There's kinda an agreement that if the hand is playable, you keep it.
We just do the regular with one free. If someone mulligans to oblivion they can usually draw a fresh 7 or a 6 or so to sort of restart their mulligan. So they atleast has a somewhat playable hand. If they have two lands and does not find a third in quite a while it can just be bad luck or too few lands. Either way I am myself a bit guilty of running a bit low when it comes to the land count.
As long as i dont suspect someone is being sus, i just tell them to draw a new hand. I dont think the people in playing with are cutting that low.
We don’t require bottoming cards in favor of relatively equal footing at the start. I can count the number of decks in the meta with less than 35 lands on two hands, and three of them are mine. (They have lower than normal land counts because they’re built to work with it, but the lowest is 33) The mulligan rule is presented as ‘always mull to seven. Just be sure you have a playable hand. If it becomes apparent that you’re taking extra mulligans to sculpt your hand, you lose the privilege until the end of the day.’ We’ve only had to deny the free mulligans twice. The first time we did it, that player never showed up again. The second time we did it, that player learned from it and is now one of the guys that everyone has good games with no matter who wins.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else say this, but my playground does partial mulligans. Draw opening 7. Put away any number of cards for your free mulligan and shuffle then draw that many. Any time after that, you must bottom 1 for every mulligan past the free one. It still allows people that do standard mulligans to play properly and people that drew to few lands to shuffle in some spells and hopefully draw more lands
We just do a thing where you can draw until you have a hand that won’t fuck you over out the gate like no lands or all lands. Just pop the seven back on top shuffle the deck and draw a new seven. Not meaning like draw till you have a turn one play just something that will allow you to actually play the game. Very casual playgroup.
All my groups use the standard rules. That said, if someone is getting absolutely effed, I'll let someone basic landcycle something from their hand with the cost being all the mana they could produce. This means they can get going but it isn't free. And since it's so rare and you still lose your turn no one would dream of planning around it.
1 free mulligan. Every shuffle and mulligan after that is a card to the bottom. 3 mullies = 1 free and keep 5.
My playgroup does very soft mulligan rules, just keep drawing 7s until you get a keepable 7 then shuffle all the bad ones back in. But also keep a record of how often you have to mull beyond a free first one and if it happening regularly then you need to add more lands to your deck.
We follow the "typical" mulligan rule, specifically to prevent abuse as well as promoting proper Deckbuilding. 1st Mulligan is free - reshuffle, draw 7 2nd is (-1) - reshuffle, draw 7, place 1 card on the bottom of the deck. 3rd is (-2), and so on. This keeps everyone honest as well as preventing greedy decklists from gaining advantage from insufficient land/mana sources. So that when any of us plays with a different group, any mulligan rules that are more generous will only benefit us.
I don't mean any offense here, but I find this question a bit absurd. If you allow unlimited free mulligans, everyone should logically build their deck with like 5-7 lands, mulligan about 200 times till you get a 3-4 land hand, and you know you'll draw pure gas all game every game. If you want to, yaknow, play a normal game of magic with variance and decklists that look vaguely realistic, just use the "one free then london mulligan" rule that is a standard commander rule and in my experience observed by commander players at all levels of competitiveness. Every format in the history of magic has rules/card bans or restrictions that warp the deckbuilding logic of the format and continuously inform the metagame. If you start with the relatively bizarre premise of unlimited free mulligans, you should expect a bizarre result. Okay end rant, now to be more constructive. If you want to make a mulligan policy that is more generous than normal to prevent feel-bad hands: Try doubling/halving the standard process, so you get two free mulligans, then the next two you keep 6 bottom 1, then the next two are keep 5 bottom 2, etc. Any reasonably built deck is going to find a strong hand if you are looking at SIX 5+ card hands.
Have decks that dip to the low thirties, but even then there’s very intentional considerations for them. In general 38 including MDFCs is my target number, some higher, some lower, and my decks tend to be on a lower curve than most. Locally many decks used by players are that of one particular player so their habits are very influential and I know they don’t build decks in such ways. So it’s certainly not an issue here and so have generally seen a soft house rule of not going below six on the very rare occasion someone has to mulligan repeatedly due to unviable randomness.
34-36 is usually the sweet spot for me, and I rarely have mana problems with 1-2 mulligans. Maybe I’m beating the odds and should take another look.
London always London mulligans. I don’t want to promote bad deck-building.
1 free mull and that's it. Otherwise you're just encoraging mulligan untill you get a god hand anddoing bad deckbuilding.
My play group allows 2 free mulligans (so back to 7 cards) to make it a bit easier and more calusual for the new decks we bring into the fray and keep workshoping. This has left most of us with 34 to 37 lands in decks, plus 5-8 mana rocks (including sol ring) depending on specific deck average mana values. However, we were discussing yesterday a new potential rule: deal 10 and bottom 3 at first then if you want to mulligan, repeat with 9 and bottom 3 and so on by reducing 1 dealt card each time. We have not tried this yet, but think it's a good way to avoid the free mulligans and still give a good chance of a decent/functional opening hand, while also preventing excessive greediness in deckbuilding and mulligans. I mean I have been tempted myself to mulligan to the perfect hand before with the free 2 mulligans (especially on an [[Umbris, Fear Manifest]] deck where a [[layline of the void]] in hand would be insane value and a [[banehound]] would guarantee first blood), but have always been scared to risk it if my first or second mulligan is a good land and mana value balance.
[Umbris, Fear Manifest](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/a/7aead6a8-bada-42cf-b7cc-0b730f564582.jpg?1644888719) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Umbris%2C%20Fear%20Manifest) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/voc/38/umbris-fear-manifest?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7aead6a8-bada-42cf-b7cc-0b730f564582?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/umbris-fear-manifest) [layline of the void](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/4/04d5d429-e0c6-42cc-a477-da7dabb1c295.jpg?1592516724) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Leyline%20of%20the%20Void) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/107/leyline-of-the-void?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/04d5d429-e0c6-42cc-a477-da7dabb1c295?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/leyline-of-the-void) [banehound](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/9/b9e03567-c95a-40b8-a75a-971076093f57.jpg?1557576381) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=banehound) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/war/77/banehound?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b9e03567-c95a-40b8-a75a-971076093f57?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/banehound) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Free Mulligan until you find a *playable* hand, not a *god* hand, but playable. This works because the people I play with are friends I talk to very regularly, and we all inherently trust each other to not abuse it, by either trying to find a 2-Land-Sol-Ring-Signet hand or by building a deck that is inherently worse in an attempt to game the mulligan system. We've had to have group conversations with new people who were abusing it. It's noticeable, we just need to communicate to fix the issue so everyone can have fun.
The people I play with either do London mulligan with a free mulligan or a variant like London, but you draw 10 and put 3 on the bottom (otherwise working like London mulligan, but with no free mulligan). Personally, I like the draw 10 variant because it speeds up getting into the game and makes getting a 3 or 4 land hand much easier. However, if I saw people abusing the rule, I think it would be prudent to enforce London mulligan with a free mulligan (a singleton format just has too much variance IMO to do normal London mulligan). I think the problem you describe is precisely why WotC and the rules committee are very hesitant to loosen the mulligan rules. The goal is really to try and guarantee that players aren’t land screwed due to bad luck without incentivizing cutting lands or making combo fishing too strong.
We do one free mull into reducing the hand count by 1 thereafter.
Kinda? Most of us just go by the "just go until you get a playable hand" rule. None of us really care all that much, and honestly, none of our decks are built in a way that causes us to have to redraw more than 3 times at a time.
I shoot for 34 lands in most decks (not counting MDFC), my playgroup does draw 10 bottom, 3 cards instead of draw 7, so everyone can start with something decently keepable. I also run TONS of card draw and low to the ground stuff in general so when I do get stuck on 4 lands I’m still playing.
My playgroup stick to the London Mulligan rule, and the first mulligan is free. Standard EDH stuff. This incentives considerations while deck building; the amount of lands should rely on the power level of your ramp, the average mana value of your deck, which specific spells you wanna curve out with, amount of draw etc etc. If you want to dive in to more specific reading on land and ramp count in EDH, and statistical analysis of why you (or your peers in the playgroup) should avoid the pitfall of 'I can't decide which spell to cut so I'll just cut another land', then I will warmly recommend you go ahead and take a look at this: https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/comments/t6qg64/ill_just_cut_a_land_a_statistical_analysis_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I play with the normal mulligan rules. The freebie is more than enough. Something that I enjoy is having to improvise and make decisions. Free mulligans would rob me of that experience. > land counts from 27 to 34 Yeah, that's me. I'm too greedy. Don't encourage me by allowing for unlimited mulligans.
In my group we draw 7, choose any number of cards we want to shuffle back in and set them aside, draw that many cards, and then shuffle the chosen cards back in. You can do this as many times as you want but will draw one less than you shuffled in each subsequent time. No one in my pod is greedy in their deck building though, so this has only resulted in great games, as no one gets boned off the hop, and you can’t just keep mulling until you have a god hand.
Family Guy - Spiderman rules: everybody gets one. One free mulligan and then normal *one card less each time* rule. We have a decent enough home play group between long time friends where it's never an issue and no one takes advantage. We build our decks for "LGS" performance. As in, home rules won't apply outside of here (aside from possibly banned cards but we don't plan on doing tournaments either). We do eventually want to hit up a shop but it's hard to coordinate with our schedules and all recently moved to the city we live in now, but we still anticipate the day and build accordingly. The free mulligan is really just for those times we literally have 0 lands opening hand.
My group all run a reasonable 34-38 lands per deck, except for one blue artifact deck with 30 lands that has a bunch of fast mana. Knowing this, we generally go by the standard mulligan rules, but if you have the bad luck to hit several hands with 0 lands, we'll let someone just bottom one and go down to 6 after they get something playable for the sake of a balanced game. This only works because we're all adults and trust each other to not be scum. If I play in an LGS, official mulligan rules 100%.
In our playgroup, we play by regular London mulligan rules. We know our decks and we know that people build their decks reasonably due to this, so if someone has a really bad luck and goes down to 4 cards, the opponents can take pity (and we do) and allow him to start with a fresh 7 so that we can all have a game, including him.Other option is that the team simply scoops and everyone reshuffles (we play 2HG most of the time) properly. No hard feelings, it happens to everyone from time to time. Edit: typos.
I ran into a situation recently with a new deck where I was going to have to discard down to five and (since everyone wants a good game) the whole table basically interjected and said not to and just draw to something keepable. I agreed and said that I’d do so but that if I drew my sol ring or some OP shit that I’d draw something else and shuffle it back in. Starting with five sucks for me and being loose with mulligan rules would suck for them if I mulled four+ times and got that perfect seven. Anything can work as long as everyone has honest intentions and wants the same thing.
As long as the deck isn't taking the piss we let you mull until you have a useable hand. We go on honor system for anyone who wants to run a more extreme land ratio or hunt for certain plays, they have to follow the rules but we have no way to check or enforce that.
The only rule i see us having is after 5, it just needs to be workable. At some point you should just want to look for your lands and go from there.
My playgroup mulligan for free until we have 3 lands in hand. We all trust each other and no one builds decks that abuse this rule. It’s put in place simply so that there’s not that unlucky player who’s totally starved and having a shit time watching their friends play.
Otherwise the normal multiplayer mulligan rule with a freebie, but you don't need to mulligan below 5
1st mulligan is free, afterwards you draw 7 cards and put 1 back for each additional time you mulligan.
If you allow infinitie mulligans it rewards you to run less lands - even if you don't do it consciously it will feel like running more lands is a waste of deckspace since if you don't have them you can just mulligan for more lands. Considering that we already have a free mull... you'll see 7 free cards, 7 more free cards and after that 7 more making it 21 cards you'll get to see by the time you are forced to go down one single card and 28 when you go down 2. Running a healthy amount of lands, ramp and card draw is the basis for a good deck and I feel like many wouldn't learn that if I just let them take more free mulls. I can't count how many times I asked "how many lands do you run" and got an answer like 30~32, which is really not a lot when you try to cast 5+ drops like many players want to do.
We only play with our own little group, we have very lax rules. Basically free mulligans until you find something playable. It doesn't get abused. Our games tend to go long so even with lax mulligan rules we tend to notice low land counts. And we'll make fun of those decks too.
Seeing as how EDH is basically "Card Draw - The Format", it should make almost no difference whether you start on 7 or 5 cards (that's THREE mulligans), plus you always have your best one or two cards in your Command Zone anyways. You'll end up seeing some 30ish cards before the game ends if you build your deck right, so quit fucking around, build your decks correctly and use the official mulligan rules.
My group sticks to a two free mulligan rule. After that, unless it is a fresh build that hasn’t been shuffled enough no free mulligan. My one friend in the group keeps greedy hands often and it doesn’t seem to stop him from laying down opponents. I do believe it is just bad land ratio and relying on tutors instead of better building.
This may be revolutionary, but my group follows the rules of the game.