The solution I've always used: reveal your hand to your opponent. If s/he agrees that yes, you're unfairly mana screwed given your deck's mana ratio, that mulligan is free.
Edit: I had a deck with a 3:1 ratio because it was made to run on two lands. I didn't always complain about one-land hands.
The solution I've always used: reveal your hand to your opponent. If s/he agrees that yes, you're unfairly mana screwed given your deck's mana ratio, that mulligan is free.
"What, you have 6 6cc cards and 1 land? Looks legit. Keep it."
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"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
However, let's say you kept a hand with 2 lands and 5 cards with 3 cmc. You're on the draw.
Do you think it is a good idea to play that hand? I wouldn't unless I knew that the rest of my deck cost less than those cards and the lands produced the mana to cast most of my deck. Two lands hands are almost never a keep in my book unless the deck specifically has a way to play with that many (like affinity), or the rest of the cards in your opening hand can be played with both those two lands.
It would be at this turn 3 that a player would likely exile 2 cards from hand to draw a card, and maybe even do it a couple times. He is completely out of the game if he doesn't hit another land. If he hits that land he goes from doing absolutely nothing to being in the game.
That is an example where using the rule "Exile 2 cards from hand at anytime to draw a card" would be useful.
Unless hitting that 3rd land makes that hand an auto win that's a horrible hand to keep. You do nothing for the first 2 turns and you dont even know if you get to do something turn 3? The correct answer for your scenario is mull to 6, not keep and hope you dont get mana screwed.
No, not really. If you're playing 1v1, this will happen to somebody about once every 25 games.
If you're playing 5 player multi, it will happen to somebody about once every 12 games.
The chance of drawing atleast 2 land in your opening 7 with 26 land is 89.6% so a 10.4% chance of not doing so.
On a mulligan to 6 you have an 82.9% chance so 17.1% of not.
On a mulligan to 5 you have a 72.8% chance so 27.2% of not.
Which leaves you with a 0.4837248% chance of it occurring or about 1/207 games. I call that pretty rare.
I'm not sure where you got your numbers from. I suspect you just multiplied the same fraction a bunch of times, which is not the right way to do it for binary odds: http://www.vassarstats.net/textbook/ch5apx.html
Anyway, mana screw less bad than that will obviously still ruin a game. You're almost guaranteed to lose if you only have 2 mana too, by like turn 6 or 7, unless you have the fastest more aggro-weenie deck around. Or if you still only have 1 land or 1 creature after mulliganing X many times.
Obviously in most cases you aren't drawing 22 cards with only having 1 land so you'll never get to that point. It doesn't change the fact though that mana screw is fairly rare. Using the above 1 in 207 game chance of it happening to you (or 2/207 including your opponent) is not a big deal. It gets to be a bigger deal in multiplayer formats, but those formats have their own mulligan rules. In 2HG for example you get a free mulligan, in EDH there's typically house rules, and so on.
Now let's say you started with 2 mana (many people would just take that hand without mulligan).
Chances of not yet having received any more lands after X many draws:
1st draw = 58.4%
2nd draw = 34.1%
3rd draw = 20.0%
4th draw = 11.6%
5th draw = 6.8%
6th draw = 4.0% <--(Probably dead by now)
7th draw = 2.3%
8th draw = 1.4%
These numbers are incorrect. We've established an opening draw of 7 having 2 land which means there's 24 land remaining out of 53 cards (29 non land).
The chance of not drawing a land on your first draw is 54.62%
The chance of not hitting a land on your next draw is now 24/52 which is 53.85% on that specific draw or 29.41% total from the first two draws.
This continues down to your 6th draw at which point you'll have had a 97.9% chance of drawing a land or a 2.1% chance of not doing so.
This is an example of why 2 mana draw spells are so good. Think Twice was the glue of control decks for the past two years for this very reason, and Prophetic Prism is very well positioned right now because of this (plus it makes a third color easy). If you're looking to hit a third land on turn 3 on the play when you keep a 2 land hand it's the difference between having a 70.5% and a 84.4% chance of hitting it. Throw in a scry land and your odds become even better.
Do you think it is a good idea to play that hand? I wouldn't unless I knew that the rest of my deck cost less than those cards and the lands produced the mana to cast most of my deck. Two lands hands are almost never a keep in my book unless the deck specifically has a way to play with that many (like affinity), or the rest of the cards in your opening hand can be played with both those two lands.
I keep 2 land hands all the time assuming there's a couple cards I can play. In general I mulligan pretty aggressively but 2 land isn't an auto mull for me, I would say I mulligan somewhere around 25% of 2 landers.
The chance of drawing atleast 2 land in your opening 7 with 26 land is 89.6% so a 10.4% chance of not doing so.
On a mulligan to 6 you have an 82.9% chance so 17.1% of not.
On a mulligan to 5 you have a 72.8% chance so 27.2% of not.
Which leaves you with a 0.4837248% chance of it occurring or about 1/207 games. I call that pretty rare.
You aren't taking into account mana flood (you would mulligan in both cases, so it's significantly more often than you suggest)
And you also aren't taking into account that if this happens to either player, it ruins the game for both of them by being no contest.
So yes, you're right about the 10.4%, but you need to add 3.6% of flood to that
And you're right about the 17.1%, but you need to add 6.9% of flood to that
And you're right about the 27.2%, but you need to add 13.1% of flood to that.
0.14 * 0.24 * 0.43 = 0.014 (1.4%)
And then it can happen to both players, so it's 2.8% of games compromised (I didn't just double it. The actual binomial probability just happens to be close enough that it rounds to that)
Which, is about 1 in 35 (was slightly off before, sorry) for 1v1 games. Still annoyingly high, and something you'll encounter fairly often if you play a lot of magic.
These numbers are incorrect. We've established an opening draw of 7 having 2 land which means there's 24 land remaining out of 53 cards (29 non land).
I did forget tot do the non-replacement of those numbers, okay.
So yes, it is 2.1%
However:
1) It's also a 1.1% chance of getting ALL lands in those 6 draws, which is almost as bad, unless your entire deck is all useful offensive 1 and 2 drops. If that's the only kind of deck that avoids mana issues, then it's a broken game, because that represents a small subset of deck strategies.
2) If this happens to EITHER player, it ruins the game.
3) From #1 and #2, the likelihood of a game being ruined this way (mana flood or screw in either of the two players) would be 6.3%
So we're looking overall at 2.8% of being screwed or flooded after 2 mulligans, and then a bit less than 6.3% being screwed from subsequent draws (less, because one of the combinations, the flood-on-opening-hand + screw after, isn't very bad at all).
So something like 7ish % of games ruined for significant mana issues at the end of the day. And when you include more variety of deck strategies that aren't highly engineered against mana issues (not everybody plays this game with super low drop aggro decks with unusually high amounts of land in them...), it's probably more like 10%
Switch to casual multiplayer and somebody is likely to be left out in the cold un-fun-ly about 20% of the time with 4-5 players.
I've always wondered why, if the mana system leads to so many games being decided by luck, pro players who make money off of being skillful at the game never complain about it.
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I'll hold myself to this. I'll get fancy dishes and everything.
I've always wondered why, if the mana system leads to so many games being decided by luck, pro players who make money off of being skillful at the game never complain about it.
why dont you try thinking it through and applying basic logic.
I've always wondered why, if the mana system leads to so many games being decided by luck, pro players who make money off of being skillful at the game never complain about it.
Game 1) I make $20.
Game 2) I lose $20.
Game 3) I make $20
Game 4) I make $20
Game 5) I make $20
Game 6) I make $20
Game 7) I make $20
Game 8) I lose $20
Game 9) I make $20
Game 10) I make $20
Oh hey look! Even if I'm the best player in the world, and 20% of games I get unavoidably mana screwed, I still make a profit.
Plus, unlike people here who may be considering unofficial game variants like the OP to play casually with their friends, pro players know they have to play by WOTC rules, and they know it is unlikely that the mana rules will change officially any time soon.
So, they don't bother complaining (waste of energy) and just write it off as a cost of doing business. Just like restaurants have to put up with health inspections and drunk people throwing up on their floor every once in awhile.
Business is totally different than fun, and is all about the bottom line. Even if 80% of games were mana-random-winner, you could still make a living if the rewards were high enough But it would be a terrible game funwise for the casuals.
"What, you have 6 6cc cards and 1 land? Looks legit. Keep it."
To be absolutely fair, if you have only one land and six cards that cost six mana, you deserve it. I don't even think that happens in EDH, where the six-mana slot is extremely competitive.
Anyway, I don't think I need to point out that poor deckbuilding shouldn't be rewarded. And players usually only wish to change the rules because they're losing.
(Notice how many players at my own LGS continue to think pile shuffling is in no way cheating.)
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
I keep 2 land hands all the time assuming there's a couple cards I can play.
Yea, that's exactly what I said, and it is also not the opening hand that the post I quoted indicated. Two land opening 7 is not a hard-mulligan, but two land opening 7 with nothing else you can play is almost certainly a hard-mulligan (baring unusual dynamics with the rest of your deck or strategy).
I've always wondered why, if the mana system leads to so many games being decided by luck, pro players who make money off of being skillful at the game never complain about it.
They can spread out the variance over a larger number of games and/or tournaments. Losing to a bad draw hurts a lot more the fewer games an individual plays because it's a much larger percentage of his total MtG experience.
I've always wondered why, if the mana system leads to so many games being decided by luck, pro players who make money off of being skillful at the game never complain about it.
Let's say, for fun, that 50% of games are decided entirely by mana screw/flood. That means even the best player in the world wins 25% by default and loses 25% by default. However, this still leads to a game where the very best players are going to end up with win percentages in the 50-75% range (50% for equally skilled opponents up to 75% for vastly inferior opponents). The system still works just fine for pros, even if bad performance spikes are more likely in small samples.
Does that sound like a fun game to you, though? 50% of games finished before they start? I wouldn't play it, but the pros still wouldn't likely complain about it.
In short, your logic is awful.
PS: Even if they did take issue with the frequency of mana floods/screws, do you really think they'd complain if it wasn't hurting their winnings? How often do people complain about systems that are making them money, even if they're broken?
Then mull to 4? When playing today I had an instance where I got stuck on 3 mana with a hand of 4 drops but I still won that game. Then there was another instance where I topdecked lands 4 turns in a row when my opponent and I were in topdeck mode and I lost. It happens. I wouldn't call either of those situations mana flood or mana screw though. When "screwed" I was still able to cast 1 and 2 drops, and they won me the game. When I flooded I just as easily could have drawn something like Thoughtseize or Cloudfin Raptor which was equally useless and overall having 9/19 cards be land isn't a flood.
It's almost never correct to mull to 4 if you're at 5 with a land. Your mull to 4 has a 50% chance of containing 0, 1 or 4 lands - all of which you're significantly worse off than with your mull to 5. You could also argue that any 3 lander will be worse than a 5 card hand with 1 land. You only have a 35% chance of actually improving your mull to 5 1 lander when you mull to 4.
Plus, no competent player has ever lost a competitive game to a mull to 4 (if you kept 7) without some absurd screw/flood or horrible misplays, so even if you mull to 4 and luck into a 2/2 split, you're almost certainly dead already anyway.
It's almost never correct to mull to 4 if you're at 5 with a land. Your mull to 4 has a 50% chance of containing 0, 1 or 4 lands - all of which you're significantly worse off than with your mull to 5. You could also argue that any 3 lander will be worse than a 5 card hand with 1 land. You only have a 35% chance of actually improving your mull to 5 1 lander when you mull to 4.
Plus, no competent player has ever lost a competitive game to a mull to 4 (if you kept 7) without some absurd screw/flood or horrible misplays, so even if you mull to 4 and luck into a 2/2 split, you're almost certainly dead already anyway.
Bull... I can think of plenty of reasonable 4 card hands. Especially given that the guy who kept 7 maybe have done so before knowing you mulled to 4. Or, that fact that a lot of people would keep a crappy 7 card hand if their opponent mulled to 4 thinking it'll be an easy game when they really should make sure they have early disruption.
2 Land, Thoughtsieze, Bob seems like a pretty good 4 card hand... or how about Land, Brainstorm, Goyf, Daze/Stifle/another 1 cost cantrip in Legacy?
I've always wondered why, if the mana system leads to so many games being decided by luck, pro players who make money off of being skillful at the game never complain about it.
Because they do.
Paolo Vittor Dama di Rosa wrote a column for ChannelFireball a while back answering reader emails. One was "What would you change about the game" and his answer was that he'd change the mulligan system FOR LIMITED because in limited a mulligan is so much more devastating than it is in constructed.
Aside from that, there's a big difference between "they don't whine about the mana system and make themselves look like big whiners" and "they would say that the mana system was absolutely perfect and should not be modified at all if asked".
Plus, no competent player has ever lost a competitive game to a mull to 4 (if you kept 7) without some absurd screw/flood or horrible misplays, so even if you mull to 4 and luck into a 2/2 split, you're almost certainly dead already anyway.
Pat Chapin disagrees. Unless you want to claim that not rolling a die with just the right amount of force to land on a certain face (when you don't even know in advance which outcomes are even desirable!) somehow counts as a "misplay" when it squanders .893 WP.
Bull... I can think of plenty of reasonable 4 card hands. Especially given that the guy who kept 7 maybe have done so before knowing you mulled to 4. Or, that fact that a lot of people would keep a crappy 7 card hand if their opponent mulled to 4 thinking it'll be an easy game when they really should make sure they have early disruption.
2 Land, Thoughtsieze, Bob seems like a pretty good 4 card hand... or how about Land, Brainstorm, Goyf, Daze/Stifle/another 1 cost cantrip in Legacy?
You should attempt to read posts before you comment on them. Notice how I said "almost never correct." If it's a 1 lander and four terrible cards for the matchup, four copies of the same combo piece or all four of your win conditions with no early/mid game, yes you should mull to 4.
Your example of potential good 4s are irrelevant. The odds of them, unless the 5 is utterly unplayable, are absurdly low. You're more likely to end up with a nearly automatic loss (0, 3 or 4 lands) than you are to end up with a good 4. Even if you end up with a good 4, you've probably still lost because you've given him a free turn 1 Ancestral Recall that he doesn't have to discard. Even land, land, TS, Bob is going to lose almost every time to a keepable 6 or 7 if the deck/player are evenly matched. Take your best deck, draw 4 a couple hundred times and let me know how many of those you like your odds of against a 6 or 7 hand keep from your opponent.
As I said, if you're mulling a 1 lander hand of 5, you're making a mistake in almost every situation. I never once said that a mull to 4 was completely impossible to win with, nor did I say you should never mull to 4. There just needs to be an absurdly good reason for it.
Pat Chapin disagrees. Unless you want to claim that not rolling a die with just the right amount of force to land on a certain face (when you don't even know in advance which outcomes are even desirable!) somehow counts as a "misplay" when it squanders .893 WP.
If you lost with 7 to a mull to 4, you're either a vastly inferior player, playing a significantly worse deck, got just as unlucky as he did or made horrible misplays.
You should attempt to read posts before you comment on them. Notice how I said "almost never correct." If it's a 1 lander and four terrible cards for the matchup, four copies of the same combo piece or all four of your win conditions with no early/mid game, yes you should mull to 4.
Your example of potential good 4s are irrelevant. The odds of them, unless the 5 is utterly unplayable, are absurdly low. You're more likely to end up with a nearly automatic loss (0, 3 or 4 lands) than you are to end up with a good 4. Even if you end up with a good 4, you've probably still lost because you've given him a free turn 1 Ancestral Recall that he doesn't have to discard. Even land, land, TS, Bob is going to lose almost every time to a keepable 6 or 7 if the deck/player are evenly matched. Take your best deck, draw 4 a couple hundred times and let me know how many of those you like your odds of against a 6 or 7 hand keep from your opponent.
As I said, if you're mulling a 1 lander hand of 5, you're making a mistake in almost every situation. I never once said that a mull to 4 was completely impossible to win with, nor did I say you should never mull to 4. There just needs to be an absurdly good reason for it.
Maybe you should use some skill of deduction to figure out that this was that part of your post I was referring to:
Plus, no competent player has ever lost a competitive game to a mull to 4 (if you kept 7) without some absurd screw/flood or horrible misplays, so even if you mull to 4 and luck into a 2/2 split, you're almost certainly dead already anyway.
Which sounds a lot like you did say you can't win with a mull to 4...
I never once said that a mull to 4 was completely impossible to win with, nor did I say you should never mull to 4. There just needs to be an absurdly good reason for it.
It is entirely possible to lose to a mull to 4. I have personally experienced it from both sides of the equation.
You aren't taking into account mana flood (you would mulligan in both cases, so it's significantly more often than you suggest)
Well, we have to define screw/flood. Different decks want different numbers of land based on this alone. My legacy Burn deck for example wants 18 because it's the sweet spot of minimizing both screw/flood (of course what qualifies as flood in legacy is different vs what qualifies as flood in standard).
Decks can play with flood easier than they can play with screw because when you flood you can generally cast anything you draw, if you draw something. When you screw you can't cast anything. I could post the chances of flood+screw at all the various land amounts here but really all we'll establish is that people mulligan in some percent of games, which we already knew.
And then it can happen to both players, so it's 2.8% of games compromised (I didn't just double it. The actual binomial probability just happens to be close enough that it rounds to that)
Because it happens to both players is why it doesn't make a difference in a competitive environment. It will help you just as often as it hinders you so in the end it events out. In more casual settings people are free to set their own rules.
Switch to casual multiplayer and somebody is likely to be left out in the cold un-fun-ly about 20% of the time with 4-5 players.
Mulligans get pretty bad as you scale up the number of players. I think the mulligan rule should be changed for multiplayer but I'm not really sure how to do that. I like the idea that when you mulligan you still draw 7 but your opponent instead has the option to draw a card. That rule works ok if you change the rule with maximum hand sizes, but ultimately has even more of a problem in multiplayer situations than the current rule so I don't think it's a viable solution. I will say however that I really like the free mulligan in 2hg. Going to 7 a second time makes a big difference but I don't think it's right for formats that see tournament play because it makes combo ridiculous.
Plus, no competent player has ever lost a competitive game to a mull to 4 (if you kept 7) without some absurd screw/flood or horrible misplays, so even if you mull to 4 and luck into a 2/2 split, you're almost certainly dead already anyway.
I've won games on a mulligan to 4 before. Just before rotation hit I was playing Junk Aristocrats and had to mulligan to 4. I still won that game. More recently I had to mulligan to 4 two weeks ago. I had a really good 4 but even a good 4 is fragile and a couple Doom Blades from my opponent put an end to that.
I can't find the video right now, I think it happened during PT Dark Ascension though (it was standard and the decks contained Consecrated Sphinx and Think Twice). I watched a match where Melissa DeTora mulliganed to four in a match deciding control mirror. And she won.
Victory from a mulligan to 4 does happen sometimes, after a mulligan to 4 you might only be 2% to win the game, but if you're keeping a bad 5 it's entirely possible you're less than 1% to win the match.
The only time I've ever seen someone win on a mull to 4 it was limited and the other guy drew about 10 more lands during the game so he would have won keeping any 5 anyway.
Then there's the whole crack fetch take 2 I'm conley woods thing. Those are the only two instances im aware of.
What a ridiculous hijack. Obviously, in any format, it is POSSIBLE to win with a 4 card hand, but VERY UNLIKELY. In some formats, and with some decks, it is more unlikely than others.
I have no idea what anyone thinks they are trying to prove about that...
Maybe you should use some skill of deduction to figure out that this was that part of your post I was referring to:
Which sounds a lot like you did say you can't win with a mull to 4...
It is entirely possible to lose to a mull to 4. I have personally experienced it from both sides of the equation.
I never said you couldn't, I said you couldn't win without your opponent being much worse, having a much worse deck, making horrible mistakes or being absurdly unlucky, too. If the two of you are evenly matched, no one messes up horribly, you draw similarly well and are playing similar quality decks, you won't win with a mull to 4 against a keep of 7. At least not anywhere near frequently enough to even be worth noting and certainly not frequently enough to even remotely consider when deciding whether to keep a 5 or mull to 4. Use your brain. If you can beat a 7 with a 4 when both are playing properly and everything else is even, you would literally never lose 7 versus 7 without an utterly insane bit of bad luck.
Telling me you saw a win with a mull to 4 or that you've won a couple of games after mulling to 4 does absolutely nothing to refute my statement. I don't know what they kept or drew, I don't know if you were both playing similar quality decks, I don't know if you are equally skilled.
Besides, none of this is even relevant. The entire point was that it's almost never correct to mull to 4 if you have a 1-land hand of 5 (again, assuming the 5 isn't an utterly useless mix of cards). The odds of you improving your hand are horrendous. Whether you can win or not after you stupidly mull to 4 is irrelevant.
Edit: I had a deck with a 3:1 ratio because it was made to run on two lands. I didn't always complain about one-land hands.
"What, you have 6 6cc cards and 1 land? Looks legit. Keep it."
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Reprint Opt for Modern!!
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Unless hitting that 3rd land makes that hand an auto win that's a horrible hand to keep. You do nothing for the first 2 turns and you dont even know if you get to do something turn 3? The correct answer for your scenario is mull to 6, not keep and hope you dont get mana screwed.
I wouldn't be caught dead with that kind of deck lest it be reanimation.
The chance of drawing atleast 2 land in your opening 7 with 26 land is 89.6% so a 10.4% chance of not doing so.
On a mulligan to 6 you have an 82.9% chance so 17.1% of not.
On a mulligan to 5 you have a 72.8% chance so 27.2% of not.
Which leaves you with a 0.4837248% chance of it occurring or about 1/207 games. I call that pretty rare.
I used a hypergeometric calculator actually. http://deckulator.appspot.com/
Obviously in most cases you aren't drawing 22 cards with only having 1 land so you'll never get to that point. It doesn't change the fact though that mana screw is fairly rare. Using the above 1 in 207 game chance of it happening to you (or 2/207 including your opponent) is not a big deal. It gets to be a bigger deal in multiplayer formats, but those formats have their own mulligan rules. In 2HG for example you get a free mulligan, in EDH there's typically house rules, and so on.
These numbers are incorrect. We've established an opening draw of 7 having 2 land which means there's 24 land remaining out of 53 cards (29 non land).
The chance of not drawing a land on your first draw is 54.62%
The chance of not hitting a land on your next draw is now 24/52 which is 53.85% on that specific draw or 29.41% total from the first two draws.
This continues down to your 6th draw at which point you'll have had a 97.9% chance of drawing a land or a 2.1% chance of not doing so.
This is an example of why 2 mana draw spells are so good. Think Twice was the glue of control decks for the past two years for this very reason, and Prophetic Prism is very well positioned right now because of this (plus it makes a third color easy). If you're looking to hit a third land on turn 3 on the play when you keep a 2 land hand it's the difference between having a 70.5% and a 84.4% chance of hitting it. Throw in a scry land and your odds become even better.
I keep 2 land hands all the time assuming there's a couple cards I can play. In general I mulligan pretty aggressively but 2 land isn't an auto mull for me, I would say I mulligan somewhere around 25% of 2 landers.
You aren't taking into account mana flood (you would mulligan in both cases, so it's significantly more often than you suggest)
And you also aren't taking into account that if this happens to either player, it ruins the game for both of them by being no contest.
So yes, you're right about the 10.4%, but you need to add 3.6% of flood to that
And you're right about the 17.1%, but you need to add 6.9% of flood to that
And you're right about the 27.2%, but you need to add 13.1% of flood to that.
0.14 * 0.24 * 0.43 = 0.014 (1.4%)
And then it can happen to both players, so it's 2.8% of games compromised (I didn't just double it. The actual binomial probability just happens to be close enough that it rounds to that)
Which, is about 1 in 35 (was slightly off before, sorry) for 1v1 games. Still annoyingly high, and something you'll encounter fairly often if you play a lot of magic.
I did forget tot do the non-replacement of those numbers, okay.
So yes, it is 2.1%
However:
1) It's also a 1.1% chance of getting ALL lands in those 6 draws, which is almost as bad, unless your entire deck is all useful offensive 1 and 2 drops. If that's the only kind of deck that avoids mana issues, then it's a broken game, because that represents a small subset of deck strategies.
2) If this happens to EITHER player, it ruins the game.
3) From #1 and #2, the likelihood of a game being ruined this way (mana flood or screw in either of the two players) would be 6.3%
So we're looking overall at 2.8% of being screwed or flooded after 2 mulligans, and then a bit less than 6.3% being screwed from subsequent draws (less, because one of the combinations, the flood-on-opening-hand + screw after, isn't very bad at all).
So something like 7ish % of games ruined for significant mana issues at the end of the day. And when you include more variety of deck strategies that aren't highly engineered against mana issues (not everybody plays this game with super low drop aggro decks with unusually high amounts of land in them...), it's probably more like 10%
Switch to casual multiplayer and somebody is likely to be left out in the cold un-fun-ly about 20% of the time with 4-5 players.
why dont you try thinking it through and applying basic logic.
Troll infraction issued. -Xen
Could it possibly be that the mana system is actually good for the game?
Could it possibly be that I was implying that to begin with?
Game 1) I make $20.
Game 2) I lose $20.
Game 3) I make $20
Game 4) I make $20
Game 5) I make $20
Game 6) I make $20
Game 7) I make $20
Game 8) I lose $20
Game 9) I make $20
Game 10) I make $20
Oh hey look! Even if I'm the best player in the world, and 20% of games I get unavoidably mana screwed, I still make a profit.
Plus, unlike people here who may be considering unofficial game variants like the OP to play casually with their friends, pro players know they have to play by WOTC rules, and they know it is unlikely that the mana rules will change officially any time soon.
So, they don't bother complaining (waste of energy) and just write it off as a cost of doing business. Just like restaurants have to put up with health inspections and drunk people throwing up on their floor every once in awhile.
Business is totally different than fun, and is all about the bottom line. Even if 80% of games were mana-random-winner, you could still make a living if the rewards were high enough But it would be a terrible game funwise for the casuals.
To be absolutely fair, if you have only one land and six cards that cost six mana, you deserve it. I don't even think that happens in EDH, where the six-mana slot is extremely competitive.
Anyway, I don't think I need to point out that poor deckbuilding shouldn't be rewarded. And players usually only wish to change the rules because they're losing.
(Notice how many players at my own LGS continue to think pile shuffling is in no way cheating.)
On phasing:
Reprint Opt for Modern!!
FREE DIG THOROUGH TIME!
PLAY MORE ROUGE DECKS!
They can spread out the variance over a larger number of games and/or tournaments. Losing to a bad draw hurts a lot more the fewer games an individual plays because it's a much larger percentage of his total MtG experience.
Let's say, for fun, that 50% of games are decided entirely by mana screw/flood. That means even the best player in the world wins 25% by default and loses 25% by default. However, this still leads to a game where the very best players are going to end up with win percentages in the 50-75% range (50% for equally skilled opponents up to 75% for vastly inferior opponents). The system still works just fine for pros, even if bad performance spikes are more likely in small samples.
Does that sound like a fun game to you, though? 50% of games finished before they start? I wouldn't play it, but the pros still wouldn't likely complain about it.
In short, your logic is awful.
PS: Even if they did take issue with the frequency of mana floods/screws, do you really think they'd complain if it wasn't hurting their winnings? How often do people complain about systems that are making them money, even if they're broken?
It's almost never correct to mull to 4 if you're at 5 with a land. Your mull to 4 has a 50% chance of containing 0, 1 or 4 lands - all of which you're significantly worse off than with your mull to 5. You could also argue that any 3 lander will be worse than a 5 card hand with 1 land. You only have a 35% chance of actually improving your mull to 5 1 lander when you mull to 4.
Plus, no competent player has ever lost a competitive game to a mull to 4 (if you kept 7) without some absurd screw/flood or horrible misplays, so even if you mull to 4 and luck into a 2/2 split, you're almost certainly dead already anyway.
Bull... I can think of plenty of reasonable 4 card hands. Especially given that the guy who kept 7 maybe have done so before knowing you mulled to 4. Or, that fact that a lot of people would keep a crappy 7 card hand if their opponent mulled to 4 thinking it'll be an easy game when they really should make sure they have early disruption.
2 Land, Thoughtsieze, Bob seems like a pretty good 4 card hand... or how about Land, Brainstorm, Goyf, Daze/Stifle/another 1 cost cantrip in Legacy?
Because they do.
Paolo Vittor Dama di Rosa wrote a column for ChannelFireball a while back answering reader emails. One was "What would you change about the game" and his answer was that he'd change the mulligan system FOR LIMITED because in limited a mulligan is so much more devastating than it is in constructed.
Aside from that, there's a big difference between "they don't whine about the mana system and make themselves look like big whiners" and "they would say that the mana system was absolutely perfect and should not be modified at all if asked".
Pat Chapin disagrees. Unless you want to claim that not rolling a die with just the right amount of force to land on a certain face (when you don't even know in advance which outcomes are even desirable!) somehow counts as a "misplay" when it squanders .893 WP.
You should attempt to read posts before you comment on them. Notice how I said "almost never correct." If it's a 1 lander and four terrible cards for the matchup, four copies of the same combo piece or all four of your win conditions with no early/mid game, yes you should mull to 4.
Your example of potential good 4s are irrelevant. The odds of them, unless the 5 is utterly unplayable, are absurdly low. You're more likely to end up with a nearly automatic loss (0, 3 or 4 lands) than you are to end up with a good 4. Even if you end up with a good 4, you've probably still lost because you've given him a free turn 1 Ancestral Recall that he doesn't have to discard. Even land, land, TS, Bob is going to lose almost every time to a keepable 6 or 7 if the deck/player are evenly matched. Take your best deck, draw 4 a couple hundred times and let me know how many of those you like your odds of against a 6 or 7 hand keep from your opponent.
As I said, if you're mulling a 1 lander hand of 5, you're making a mistake in almost every situation. I never once said that a mull to 4 was completely impossible to win with, nor did I say you should never mull to 4. There just needs to be an absurdly good reason for it.
If you lost with 7 to a mull to 4, you're either a vastly inferior player, playing a significantly worse deck, got just as unlucky as he did or made horrible misplays.
Maybe you should use some skill of deduction to figure out that this was that part of your post I was referring to:
Which sounds a lot like you did say you can't win with a mull to 4...
It is entirely possible to lose to a mull to 4. I have personally experienced it from both sides of the equation.
Well, we have to define screw/flood. Different decks want different numbers of land based on this alone. My legacy Burn deck for example wants 18 because it's the sweet spot of minimizing both screw/flood (of course what qualifies as flood in legacy is different vs what qualifies as flood in standard).
Decks can play with flood easier than they can play with screw because when you flood you can generally cast anything you draw, if you draw something. When you screw you can't cast anything. I could post the chances of flood+screw at all the various land amounts here but really all we'll establish is that people mulligan in some percent of games, which we already knew.
Because it happens to both players is why it doesn't make a difference in a competitive environment. It will help you just as often as it hinders you so in the end it events out. In more casual settings people are free to set their own rules.
Mulligans get pretty bad as you scale up the number of players. I think the mulligan rule should be changed for multiplayer but I'm not really sure how to do that. I like the idea that when you mulligan you still draw 7 but your opponent instead has the option to draw a card. That rule works ok if you change the rule with maximum hand sizes, but ultimately has even more of a problem in multiplayer situations than the current rule so I don't think it's a viable solution. I will say however that I really like the free mulligan in 2hg. Going to 7 a second time makes a big difference but I don't think it's right for formats that see tournament play because it makes combo ridiculous.
I've won games on a mulligan to 4 before. Just before rotation hit I was playing Junk Aristocrats and had to mulligan to 4. I still won that game. More recently I had to mulligan to 4 two weeks ago. I had a really good 4 but even a good 4 is fragile and a couple Doom Blades from my opponent put an end to that.
I can't find the video right now, I think it happened during PT Dark Ascension though (it was standard and the decks contained Consecrated Sphinx and Think Twice). I watched a match where Melissa DeTora mulliganed to four in a match deciding control mirror. And she won.
Victory from a mulligan to 4 does happen sometimes, after a mulligan to 4 you might only be 2% to win the game, but if you're keeping a bad 5 it's entirely possible you're less than 1% to win the match.
Then there's the whole crack fetch take 2 I'm conley woods thing. Those are the only two instances im aware of.
I have no idea what anyone thinks they are trying to prove about that...
I never said you couldn't, I said you couldn't win without your opponent being much worse, having a much worse deck, making horrible mistakes or being absurdly unlucky, too. If the two of you are evenly matched, no one messes up horribly, you draw similarly well and are playing similar quality decks, you won't win with a mull to 4 against a keep of 7. At least not anywhere near frequently enough to even be worth noting and certainly not frequently enough to even remotely consider when deciding whether to keep a 5 or mull to 4. Use your brain. If you can beat a 7 with a 4 when both are playing properly and everything else is even, you would literally never lose 7 versus 7 without an utterly insane bit of bad luck.
Telling me you saw a win with a mull to 4 or that you've won a couple of games after mulling to 4 does absolutely nothing to refute my statement. I don't know what they kept or drew, I don't know if you were both playing similar quality decks, I don't know if you are equally skilled.
Besides, none of this is even relevant. The entire point was that it's almost never correct to mull to 4 if you have a 1-land hand of 5 (again, assuming the 5 isn't an utterly useless mix of cards). The odds of you improving your hand are horrendous. Whether you can win or not after you stupidly mull to 4 is irrelevant.