my opponent won on luck. These occurrences are part of having a highly diverse game.
Yes, there are times in magic that you lose and can't do anything about it, and times when you lose purely to luck, and times when you lose to both.
But while that might on some theoretical level be the same as losing to mana screw it doesn't FEEL the same. When you lose to your opponent comboing out or having all the perfect hosers for you, you walk away thinking "wow, that guy had all the answers" or "that guy got the draws he needed" or "well, that was some comically bad metagaming on my part" or something. When you get badly mana screwed you walk away thinking "well, this game has a massive gaping design flaw". At least, I do. And it's easy to propose rules to "fix" mana screw, which is why there are so many threads like this. Has anyone ever proposed a rule to "fix" losing to a better draw?
Also, it's worth noting that WotC has been moving away from cards that just utterly shut down a single strategy. They don't print Cop:Red, or Choke, or Worship. And when they do print really savage hosers, it's usually of strategies that they already feel are unfair, such as graveyard-based strategies or heavy countermagic.
Of course I haven't tried every possible solution! What I'm trying to express is that if you don't complitely take randomness out of a game, then at a moment or another it will influence the game. Every way of mitigating mana screw that has been proposed in this thread still involves some randomness, so its still not a solution. We already have mulligan to mitigate mana screw/flood, I don't think we need more and more rules to mitigate it if its going to exist anyway.
So we agree that mulligans exist and make mana screw/flood somewhat less of a problem? But they certainly don't fix it entirely, they just reduce it. So why would it be unreasonable to add another rule to reduce it further? If a rule reduced instances of extreme flood/screw by 80% with no drawbacks it would be awesome, even though it didn't FIX the problem 100%.
I don't mind games in which I really need to get to 5 mana but miss for a few turns in a row. I mean, they're frustrating some times, but I generally agree with the argument that that level of variance is necessary. I do mind games where I keep 2 lands and never play a spell.
Learning how to properly build/play a deck so that mana screw/flood doesn't happen is part of what makes the game fun, in my opinion.
I can assure people that with proper deckbuilding, proper shuffling and the right mulligan decisions, mana screw is not really a problem, it's just something that happens really seldom.
Just to emphasize, this has been discussed multiple times already. You cannot build a deck to prevent mana screw/flood. When you correct for one you increase the odds of the other happening.
Mana screw happens to pros in Grand Prix and Pro Tours, if they find it a problem (and have blamed losses on it) then it likely is something that can cause you and I to lose as well (which I would call a problem).
The goal isn't to change the core of magic. All of the variance that makes magic great should be left alone. The goal is to tweak the extreme variance that no one enjoys.
I'm not sure how people are even arguing against that.
I get that it can be hard to come up with a rule to please everyone, but surely there is a rule that is gentle enough that it will be more beneficial than seeing a mana screw/flood one of every ten games.
Also, if the previous suggested rule was too strong because of the lands you pull in legacy you could instead use this:
Exile 2 non-lands from hand: Reveal the top 5 cards of your library. Put a basic land card from the revealed cards in your hand and shuffle the rest into your library.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but you can see how in this thread alone the suggested rule has changed to become less and less deleterious while still helping solve the original problem of mana screw. Surely together WotC could come up with an even better more elegant rule -- or if not, just use this rule.
Just watched the tcgplayer tournament in Ohio. So many games where someone is stuck on 3 lands or something and just loses. Games would have been more enjoyable for everyone if they could have done "Exile 2 non-lands from hand: Reveal the top 5 cards of your library. Put a basic land card from the revealed cards in your hand and shuffle the rest into your library."
Well, if the mana screw/flood was not part of the game and everybody had an easy access to the resources they need, why would we even have the mana system? What will be the purpose of resource management (having the correct amount of lands and colors, mulliganing properly, having ways to use extra mana or to draw cards to get your land drops, etc.) if resources are readily available and there is no penalty for errors?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Currently Building:
WUBGR - Enchantment Realms - WUBGR
An all-enchantment EDH deck: 0 creatures, 0 artifacts, 0 instants and sorceries.
Well, if the mana screw/flood was not part of the game and everybody had an easy access to the resources they need,
No one is suggesting both. We are suggesting to help remove mana screw/flood we are NOT suggesting that everybody have easy access to the resources they need
This rule: "Exile 2 non-lands from hand: Reveal the top 5 cards of your library. Put a basic land card from the revealed cards in your hand and shuffle the rest into your library." does NOT mean you can forgo good land numbers and mana fixing.
Again, just fix the extremes, not the rest of the game.
No one is suggesting both. We are suggesting to help remove mana screw/flood we are NOT suggesting that everybody have easy access to the resources they need.
But the mana flood/screw are, often, a result of resource mismanagement in one or more of these aspects:
not having the correct amount or ratio of lands and/or colors
mulliganing improperly
not having ways to use extra mana
not having enough card draw to get your land drops
too heavy or too light curve
Certainly, luck plays an important part. However, more often than not the issue can be located within the deck. It is more useful to learn from your mistakes and correct them rather than changing the game so that your mistakes are excused.
As a side note, building the mana base of a deck is my favorite part of deck building. Spending a lot of time on whether the 26th land should be a swamp or an island can have an eye-opening effect on how the deck functions.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Currently Building:
WUBGR - Enchantment Realms - WUBGR
An all-enchantment EDH deck: 0 creatures, 0 artifacts, 0 instants and sorceries.
No one is suggesting both. We are suggesting to help remove mana screw/flood we are NOT suggesting that everybody have easy access to the resources they need
This rule: "Exile 2 non-lands from hand: Reveal the top 5 cards of your library. Put a basic land card from the revealed cards in your hand and shuffle the rest into your library." does NOT mean you can forgo good land numbers and mana fixing.
Again, just fix the extremes, not the rest of the game.
Why the "reveal" step? I don't understand the point of that. Giving away information on your deck structure is a weird penalty to make people pay for this. I suggest "Search" instead.
No one is suggesting both. We are suggesting to help remove mana screw/flood we are NOT suggesting that everybody have easy access to the resources they need
This rule: "Exile 2 non-lands from hand: Reveal the top 5 cards of your library. Put a basic land card from the revealed cards in your hand and shuffle the rest into your library." does NOT mean you can forgo good land numbers and mana fixing.
Again, just fix the extremes, not the rest of the game.
This is essentially just taking a mulligan later in the game when you have more information, and can guarantee you keep your good cards.
But the mana flood/screw are, often, a result of resource mismanagement in one or more of these aspects:
not having the correct amount or ratio of lands and/or colors
mulliganing improperly
not having ways to use extra mana
not having enough card draw to get your land drops
too heavy or too light curve
Certainly, luck plays an important part. However, more often than not the issue can be located within the deck. It is more useful to learn from your mistakes and correct them rather than changing the game so that your mistakes are excused.
As a side note, building the mana base of a deck is my favorite part of deck building. Spending a lot of time on whether the 26th land should be a swamp or an island can have an eye-opening effect on how the deck functions.
I agree that luck is important and that often it can be an issue with your deck. However, for the purposes of this discussion I am assuming most players here know how to build appropriately and that the decks are made well. With that in mind there is still a significant liklihood for mana screw/flood.
As to your side note I totally agree with you. I find 'fixing' the mana situation of the deck very fun. However, I do not like when I build a great deck and happen to only draw 1 land during my first 8 turns (or when my opponent does the same for that matter) -- I wish there was a way to fix those extreme situations.
Why the "reveal" step? I don't understand the point of that. Giving away information on your deck structure is a weird penalty to make people pay for this. I suggest "Search" instead.
Great suggestion. =) I think you're right that search is more appropriate.
How would this be?
Exile 2 non-lands from hand: Search the top 5 cards of your library for a basic land. Reveal that card and put it into your hand and shuffle the rest into your library.
This is essentially just taking a mulligan later in the game when you have more information, and can guarantee you keep your good cards.
Yes. It's a later mulligan with a few exceptions. 1) You can't search for non-basic-lands with it (so it doesn't help you find good cards). 2) It is more effective at helping with mana screw. 3) The cards don't go back into your library. 4) You get to choose the most useless/dead cards to do it with.
Perhaps the rule is too beneficial still? You could do something a little more strict like but not drawing the land right away:
Exile 2 non-lands from hand: Search the top 5 cards of your library, reveal a basic land and put it on top of your library. Put the rest of the cards on the bottom of your library.
Here is a quote from the Gran Prix Santiago (just finished) in the finals:
Sadly, that utter thrashing display was all the eager crowd would get. They cheered so much after the first game, and some even cheered after Soler took a mulligan and when to six cards. But nobody cheered the mulligans after that. Yes, that's right—with an "s".
Soler maintained as jovially as he could after keeping a four-card hand. He shrugged; there were worse four cards to keep. But if Navas had anything close to the aggression he maintained in the first game, and had maintained throughout the rest of the weekend, it would be lights out right quick for the Argentine.
Navas did have something close to the same aggression; in fact, he had the same aggression. Turn one Rakdos Cackler, turn two Spike Jester, and he was barely able to get to turn three. After Soler missed his second land drop for the second turn in a row, he knew there was no way he would stop the black-red onslaught. He congratulated Luis Navas and picked up his cards.
Gran Prix. Championship game. Multiple mulligans deciding who wins. The audience stopped cheering, I would have too. Who wants a championship to be decided by someone getting land screwed and being forced to mulligan down to 4?
Remember: I'm not saying give everyone an ideal hand and remove all variability from magic. I'm just saying let's fix these extreme events that no one enjoys and that causes audiences to 'stop cheering'. I think everyone (except possibly Navas because he won) would have rather seen Soler keep his hand of 7, then use one of the rules suggested here. Soler still would have been hurting, but at least he could of put up a fight. Right now if you get land screwed it's like you're not even in the game.
Here is a quote from the Gran Prix Santiago (just finished) in the finals:
Gran Prix. Championship game. Multiple mulligans deciding who wins. The audience stopped cheering, I would have too. Who wants a championship to be decided by someone getting land screwed and being forced to mulligan down to 4?
Remember: I'm not saying give everyone an ideal hand and remove all variability from magic. I'm just saying let's fix these extreme events that no one enjoys and that causes audiences to 'stop cheering'. I think everyone (except possibly Navas because he won) would have rather seen Soler keep his hand of 7, then use one of the rules suggested here. Soler still would have been hurting, but at least he could of put up a fight. Right now if you get land screwed it's like you're not even in the game.
Here is what you should do. Find a friend and make 2 decks that are roughly equal against each other. Give your friend a decent opening hand with a random library and give yourself an opening 7 card hand with only 2 lands 5 random other non-lands and a random library.... play 20 games where you mulligan and 20 games where you use your rule. See if there is a statistical difference between the two.
Here is what you should do. Find a friend and make 2 decks that are roughly equal against each other. Give your friend a decent opening hand with a random library and give yourself an opening 7 card hand with only 2 lands 5 random other non-lands and a random library.... play 20 games where you mulligan and 20 games where you use your rule. See if there is a statistical difference between the two.
I think your point is that there would be a very small statistical difference. I agree. The point is that any rule we make we want to have very little effect on the game.
I want to change magic as little as possible. I just want to fix that mana screw that happens so seldomly.
I think your point is that there would be a very small statistical difference. I agree. The point is that any rule we make we want to have very little effect on the game.
I want to change magic as little as possible. I just want to fix that mana screw that happens so seldomly.
That is why I am saying, you should set yourself up with Mana Screw hands and see if your rule makes a difference. I believe that your rule will not have a significant change on the outcome in the cases you designed it for. If the rule wouldnt have a significant difference on the outcomes of mana screw games then what is the point of having it?
That is why I am saying, you should set yourself up with Mana Screw hands and see if your rule makes a difference. I believe that your rule will not have a significant change on the outcome in the cases you designed it for. If the rule wouldnt have a significant difference on the outcomes of mana screw games then what is the point of having it?
Possible and really hard to test because you'd need such a high degree of freedom (n-value) to get a reasonably accurate result.
I like this rule better anyway: Exile 2 cards from hand: Scry 2 <-- at sorcery speed, once per turn.
Now I have played with this rule with my play group and it is quite enjoyable. We still mulligan like normal, but you can keep many more hands (far less mulliganning to 4).
The advantages we have found are:
1) Much less likely to get land screwed/flooded
2) Late game top draws are less luck based
3) More choice throughout the game (i.e. more skilled base)
4) You can run more 'counter-deck' cards like doom blade or white knight because if they aren't useful you can get scry 1 out of them at least.
We're still testing it but so far we enjoy the ability to come out of really bad draws a lot more. Not only that but even if someone really needs a creature kill and uses this ability and then finds a creature kill he still has to 1) wait until next turn to use it 2) it is a 3 for 1 in your favor.
However, we're thinking of increasing it to: Exile 2 cards: Scry 3
This is because sometimes you scry 2 and don't see a land when you really need one.
I think magic is more enjoyable because of this rule. Most games people don't use it at all, because dropping 2 cards is a harsh penalty. That being said it has been very useful in certain games, especially during mana screw, and especially getting rid of 'dead' cards.
You guys don't need to PLAY the games. Just use a computer.
Here, I simulated the difference between mulligans and the "exile 2 get a land" rule. These are the results over 10,000 simulated games.
Here's just the first 4 turns, and showing +/- THREE standard deviations, which encompasses 99% of all games. So this covers rare mana screw instances:
Decision rules used in the model for Mulligans:
1) If <2 or >4 land out of 7, mulligan
2) If <2 or >3 land out of 6, mulligan again
3) If <2 or >3 land out of 5, mulligan again
4) If <2 land out of 4, mulligan again
5) Do not ever mulligan from 3.
Decision rules used in the model for Exile:
1) If fewer than 2 lands, do the exile rule
2) If still fewer than 2 lands, do the exile rule again.
In both cases, the number of spells you have received on average on any given turn is almost identical for both rules (within 0.1 spells of each other on every turn) Although the distribution is going to be better for mulligans, since it protects against mana flood as well.
Here it is just +/- 1 standard deviation (~67% of games, I.e. more typical situations without extreme mana screw):
Edit: I forgot to code in the part where you only search the top 5 cards. The model instead does "search your whole library for a basic land, then shuffle." Not gonna re-do it, and I suspect it would make very little difference. The mean for exile would go down a tiny bit (which is good! Makes game more similar to vanilla magic), and the variance would go up very slightly for exile, but would not approach that of mulligans still.
Frankly, I don't know why the rule shouldn't just be "search your whole library" anyway, if the goal is to truly avoid complete mana screw.
And of course, a graph of minimum guaranteed number of lands via both rules...:
Yes. It's a later mulligan with a few exceptions. 1) You can't search for non-basic-lands with it (so it doesn't help you find good cards). 2) It is more effective at helping with mana screw. 3) The cards don't go back into your library. 4) You get to choose the most useless/dead cards to do it with.
Perhaps the rule is too beneficial still? You could do something a little more strict like but not drawing the land right away:
Exile 2 non-lands from hand: Search the top 5 cards of your library, reveal a basic land and put it on top of your library. Put the rest of the cards on the bottom of your library.
Or you could even make it cost 3 non-lands?
I'm going to depart from what most are arguing and state that this rule is too weak. In our current heavily mono color focused format decks still don't run more than 15 or so basics, and some decks run MUCH less, with a few running none at all. Taking a best case scenario of 15 basics assuming you're on the draw and keep a 1 lander. If you miss your second land drop this mulligan rule only has an 84% chance of hitting a basic. It has a 16% chance of being the same as taking a double mulligan into no land. The chances of that with the current rule are considerably less. Even at 23 basics (since you had one) left in the deck you only run a 95% chance of hitting. Which is just about equal to a mulligan as it currently stands.
aren't useful you can get scry 1 out of them at least.
We're still testing it but so far we enjoy the ability to come out of really bad draws a lot more. Not only that but even if someone really needs a creature kill and uses this ability and then finds a creature kill he still has to 1) wait until next turn to use it 2) it is a 3 for 1 in your favor.
However, we're thinking of increasing it to: Exile 2 cards: Scry 3
This is because sometimes you scry 2 and don't see a land when you really need one.
An at least potential problem with this is the fact that scrying lets you know the top card of your library with certainty. For instance, in legacy you could have dark confidant in play, be at 1 life, and have basically zero risk of dying in your upkeep. Or you could rig erratic explosion or kaboom or cerebral eruption, etc.
I'm not sure your approach is the right one at all, but if you do want to do something basically similar to what you're proposing, I'd suggest instead: Exile 3 cards: look at the top 3 cards of your library, put 1 in your hand, exile the rest.
There's still the issue that this lets you get past cards that were put on your library by plow under and its ilk, which seems to in some way change the effect of that card, but that's not something that you can build a deck to abuse, whereas scrying-on-demand is.
Be a lemming hunter. Don't be a lemming. Really, all you had to do was explain to him the popularity metric, not give him the lemming hunter manifesto...
When people complain of mana issues when playing, I can only think of one reason beyond variance - shuffling technique. Some people, while shuffling in a way where they don't necessarily know where the cards end up, don't shuffle in a way that is really "random" in the mathematical sense. I've always shuffled in the same way (ever since I read an article on shuffling) as I've yet to find evidence that it isn't random. I have, however, hear "evidence" (not that I'm smart enough to have tested it myself) that pile shuffling and the like is not truly random, and "chaotic" at best.
So not to start an argument that I already know I can't follow through on, but I believe that the best thing you can do with regards to mana screw/flood is to make sure you're shuffling thoroughly and effectively, which we admittedly don't all do after mulliganing twice or tutoring. That's my only real thoughts on mana screw and flood.
Actually there should, and will always be games of magic that are completely determined by luck. Even professional poker is described as being 90% luck per hand, 50% luck per event... Poker is a much less complicated game. Everyone is playing the the same set of cards. Magic has millions of potential interactions between any 2 decks. Are you saying it should be impossible for Combo to go off before the opponent can react that game? Should burn not be allowed to go 20 to the dome without interacting with any other aspect of the game? Should we ban the ability to get a turn 1 Blood Moon in Legacy because that would decide the game against any decks that cant deal with it?
Losing because your opponent's decks has a good match up against you is different than loosing because your hand prevents you from making any plays.
Do you play Legacy? I havent in the last several years but I used to a lot... FOW was not just to stop big finishers. Sometimes you FOW a stifle that's targeting your fetchland... because you NEED that land. Either you will provide a new rule that is abusable... or it will not be used/will not matter. I prefer simplicity. Magic has enough rules as it is just to cover card interactions... we dont need more rules to try to give players a bit of an out to a 1 in 100 bad draw.
Force of will has other uses, but if it weren't for the fact that it straight up stops you from losing many games then it would be far less played.
Again, those games are really, really rare. Most horrible draws can be mitigated by proper deck construction and mulliganing. Yes, even after that you can still get some sucky hands, and there's nothing you can do about that that doesn't imply complitely taking out randomness from the game.
Each players starting out with 3 random lands in hand, boom you're wrong.
And how would you avoid that? Earlier you liked a post with this rule:
Exile 2 non-lands from hand: Reveal the top 5 cards of your library. Put a land card from the revealed cards in your hand and the rest onto the bottom of your library.
But what if they are no lands among the revealed lands? The game is still decided by luck! Again: if you want to avoid luck ever defining the results of a game, then the only thing you can do is take luck out of the game..
In a game where you start with two lands in your opening had you'd miss your third land drop less than .1% with the proposed rule. while under the current system you'll miss it about 20% of the time.
No it isn't. I was just pointing out how you love to talk about logic and then pretent to influence WotC through forum sigs, which isn't exactly logical you know.
A 40 dollar mythic rare would constitute a must have 4 of that goes in many decks.
Stats About Mythics
-Mythics are on average 40% rarer than pre-mythic rares
(old blocks about 200 rares, Mythic blocks 35+ mythics)
-They are printing more new cards a year not less
(about 665 now vs. 630 in most pre-mythic block)
-To drop the value of a rare by $1 a mythic must go up $2
-In a 3 year time span deck prices doubled. I am petitioning for the removal of mythic rarity. Sig this to join the cause.
If you take the data from Silvestri's recent article the average deck has a 48.664% win rate. 31.7% of the time there's a mulligan to 6, with the person at 6 having a 37.2% win rate. 4.5% of the time there's a mulligan to 5 with that person having a 23.9% win rate. 0.6% of the time there's a mulligan to 4 with a 12.2% win rate. 0.1% of the time there's a mulligan 3 with a 3.8% win rate. So from this you can basically say that with every mulligan you're down about 11% to win the game.
When people complain of mana issues when playing, I can only think of one reason beyond variance - shuffling technique. Some people, while shuffling in a way where they don't necessarily know where the cards end up, don't shuffle in a way that is really "random" in the mathematical sense. I've always shuffled in the same way (ever since I read an article on shuffling) as I've yet to find evidence that it isn't random. I have, however, hear "evidence" (not that I'm smart enough to have tested it myself) that pile shuffling and the like is not truly random, and "chaotic" at best.
Not to go too far into it, but in most forms of pile shuffling you're simply rearranging the cards into a preset pattern. It mixes them up but it's not random at all. You can take this to the extreme with something like a double nickel and have perfect mana. The reason a riffle is random is that a riffle or mash aren't perfect. The cards don't end up next to each other 1:1 from each pile (and if they do, you're not shuffling properly... look at your cards sometime during a shuffle).
For a simple example. Lets say you have a 10 card deck and you pile shuffle into two piles. When you're done your deck will either be in the pattern of cards:
1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 or 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9
Depending on which pile you pick up first. This is entirely predictable and not random at all as it follows a very clear pattern. If you instead riffle/mash shuffle it you'll start with two piles of cards 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. When you combine these the cards won't interleave perfectly if you're shuffling properly (there's a lot of shuffling tricks/cheats you can do with perfect interleaving... as that leads to a pattern rather than randomness) so your cards may end up in the order 1, 2, 6, 3, 7, 8, 4, 9, 10, 5 for example.
Basically, the difference is, with pile shuffling you're controlling the end result. You personally may not know the outcome of the final pattern (the difference between cheating and not cheating), but you are mixing the cards up into a predefined pattern which removes the random element from the game.
So not to start an argument that I already know I can't follow through on, but I believe that the best thing you can do with regards to mana screw/flood is to make sure you're shuffling thoroughly and effectively, which we admittedly don't all do after mulliganing twice or tutoring. That's my only real thoughts on mana screw and flood.
With proper shuffling you will screw/flood x% of the time. Where X is dependent on the number of lands you run. With fewer lands you'll screw more often and flood less while with more lands you'll screw less often and flood more. With improper shuffling you'll screw/flood at some rate other than x, usually screwing more and flooding less as you'll not be properly distributing lands throughout the deck, though with some peoples poor shuffling habits it can be the opposite.
Yes, there are times in magic that you lose and can't do anything about it, and times when you lose purely to luck, and times when you lose to both.
But while that might on some theoretical level be the same as losing to mana screw it doesn't FEEL the same. When you lose to your opponent comboing out or having all the perfect hosers for you, you walk away thinking "wow, that guy had all the answers" or "that guy got the draws he needed" or "well, that was some comically bad metagaming on my part" or something. When you get badly mana screwed you walk away thinking "well, this game has a massive gaping design flaw". At least, I do. And it's easy to propose rules to "fix" mana screw, which is why there are so many threads like this. Has anyone ever proposed a rule to "fix" losing to a better draw?
Also, it's worth noting that WotC has been moving away from cards that just utterly shut down a single strategy. They don't print Cop:Red, or Choke, or Worship. And when they do print really savage hosers, it's usually of strategies that they already feel are unfair, such as graveyard-based strategies or heavy countermagic.
So we agree that mulligans exist and make mana screw/flood somewhat less of a problem? But they certainly don't fix it entirely, they just reduce it. So why would it be unreasonable to add another rule to reduce it further? If a rule reduced instances of extreme flood/screw by 80% with no drawbacks it would be awesome, even though it didn't FIX the problem 100%.
I don't mind games in which I really need to get to 5 mana but miss for a few turns in a row. I mean, they're frustrating some times, but I generally agree with the argument that that level of variance is necessary. I do mind games where I keep 2 lands and never play a spell.
Just to emphasize, this has been discussed multiple times already. You cannot build a deck to prevent mana screw/flood. When you correct for one you increase the odds of the other happening.
Mana screw happens to pros in Grand Prix and Pro Tours, if they find it a problem (and have blamed losses on it) then it likely is something that can cause you and I to lose as well (which I would call a problem).
The goal isn't to change the core of magic. All of the variance that makes magic great should be left alone. The goal is to tweak the extreme variance that no one enjoys.
I'm not sure how people are even arguing against that.
I get that it can be hard to come up with a rule to please everyone, but surely there is a rule that is gentle enough that it will be more beneficial than seeing a mana screw/flood one of every ten games.
Exile 2 non-lands from hand: Reveal the top 5 cards of your library. Put a basic land card from the revealed cards in your hand and shuffle the rest into your library.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but you can see how in this thread alone the suggested rule has changed to become less and less deleterious while still helping solve the original problem of mana screw. Surely together WotC could come up with an even better more elegant rule -- or if not, just use this rule.
WUBGR - Enchantment Realms - WUBGR
An all-enchantment EDH deck: 0 creatures, 0 artifacts, 0 instants and sorceries.
GBUWR - The Necrotic Teenager and its 1,000,000 Combos - GBUWR
A deck built around Necrotic Ooze and its many friends.
No one is suggesting both. We are suggesting to help remove mana screw/flood we are NOT suggesting that everybody have easy access to the resources they need
This rule: "Exile 2 non-lands from hand: Reveal the top 5 cards of your library. Put a basic land card from the revealed cards in your hand and shuffle the rest into your library." does NOT mean you can forgo good land numbers and mana fixing.
Again, just fix the extremes, not the rest of the game.
But the mana flood/screw are, often, a result of resource mismanagement in one or more of these aspects:
Certainly, luck plays an important part. However, more often than not the issue can be located within the deck. It is more useful to learn from your mistakes and correct them rather than changing the game so that your mistakes are excused.
As a side note, building the mana base of a deck is my favorite part of deck building. Spending a lot of time on whether the 26th land should be a swamp or an island can have an eye-opening effect on how the deck functions.
WUBGR - Enchantment Realms - WUBGR
An all-enchantment EDH deck: 0 creatures, 0 artifacts, 0 instants and sorceries.
GBUWR - The Necrotic Teenager and its 1,000,000 Combos - GBUWR
A deck built around Necrotic Ooze and its many friends.
Why the "reveal" step? I don't understand the point of that. Giving away information on your deck structure is a weird penalty to make people pay for this. I suggest "Search" instead.
This is essentially just taking a mulligan later in the game when you have more information, and can guarantee you keep your good cards.
I agree that luck is important and that often it can be an issue with your deck. However, for the purposes of this discussion I am assuming most players here know how to build appropriately and that the decks are made well. With that in mind there is still a significant liklihood for mana screw/flood.
As to your side note I totally agree with you. I find 'fixing' the mana situation of the deck very fun. However, I do not like when I build a great deck and happen to only draw 1 land during my first 8 turns (or when my opponent does the same for that matter) -- I wish there was a way to fix those extreme situations.
Great suggestion. =) I think you're right that search is more appropriate.
How would this be?
Exile 2 non-lands from hand: Search the top 5 cards of your library for a basic land. Reveal that card and put it into your hand and shuffle the rest into your library.
Yes. It's a later mulligan with a few exceptions. 1) You can't search for non-basic-lands with it (so it doesn't help you find good cards). 2) It is more effective at helping with mana screw. 3) The cards don't go back into your library. 4) You get to choose the most useless/dead cards to do it with.
Perhaps the rule is too beneficial still? You could do something a little more strict like but not drawing the land right away:
Exile 2 non-lands from hand: Search the top 5 cards of your library, reveal a basic land and put it on top of your library. Put the rest of the cards on the bottom of your library.
Or you could even make it cost 3 non-lands?
Gran Prix. Championship game. Multiple mulligans deciding who wins. The audience stopped cheering, I would have too. Who wants a championship to be decided by someone getting land screwed and being forced to mulligan down to 4?
Remember: I'm not saying give everyone an ideal hand and remove all variability from magic. I'm just saying let's fix these extreme events that no one enjoys and that causes audiences to 'stop cheering'. I think everyone (except possibly Navas because he won) would have rather seen Soler keep his hand of 7, then use one of the rules suggested here. Soler still would have been hurting, but at least he could of put up a fight. Right now if you get land screwed it's like you're not even in the game.
Here is what you should do. Find a friend and make 2 decks that are roughly equal against each other. Give your friend a decent opening hand with a random library and give yourself an opening 7 card hand with only 2 lands 5 random other non-lands and a random library.... play 20 games where you mulligan and 20 games where you use your rule. See if there is a statistical difference between the two.
I think your point is that there would be a very small statistical difference. I agree. The point is that any rule we make we want to have very little effect on the game.
I want to change magic as little as possible. I just want to fix that mana screw that happens so seldomly.
That is why I am saying, you should set yourself up with Mana Screw hands and see if your rule makes a difference. I believe that your rule will not have a significant change on the outcome in the cases you designed it for. If the rule wouldnt have a significant difference on the outcomes of mana screw games then what is the point of having it?
Possible and really hard to test because you'd need such a high degree of freedom (n-value) to get a reasonably accurate result.
I like this rule better anyway:
Exile 2 cards from hand: Scry 2 <-- at sorcery speed, once per turn.
Now I have played with this rule with my play group and it is quite enjoyable. We still mulligan like normal, but you can keep many more hands (far less mulliganning to 4).
The advantages we have found are:
1) Much less likely to get land screwed/flooded
2) Late game top draws are less luck based
3) More choice throughout the game (i.e. more skilled base)
4) You can run more 'counter-deck' cards like doom blade or white knight because if they aren't useful you can get scry 1 out of them at least.
We're still testing it but so far we enjoy the ability to come out of really bad draws a lot more. Not only that but even if someone really needs a creature kill and uses this ability and then finds a creature kill he still has to 1) wait until next turn to use it 2) it is a 3 for 1 in your favor.
However, we're thinking of increasing it to:
Exile 2 cards: Scry 3
This is because sometimes you scry 2 and don't see a land when you really need one.
I think magic is more enjoyable because of this rule. Most games people don't use it at all, because dropping 2 cards is a harsh penalty. That being said it has been very useful in certain games, especially during mana screw, and especially getting rid of 'dead' cards.
Here, I simulated the difference between mulligans and the "exile 2 get a land" rule. These are the results over 10,000 simulated games.
Here's just the first 4 turns, and showing +/- THREE standard deviations, which encompasses 99% of all games. So this covers rare mana screw instances:
Decision rules used in the model for Mulligans:
1) If <2 or >4 land out of 7, mulligan
2) If <2 or >3 land out of 6, mulligan again
3) If <2 or >3 land out of 5, mulligan again
4) If <2 land out of 4, mulligan again
5) Do not ever mulligan from 3.
Decision rules used in the model for Exile:
1) If fewer than 2 lands, do the exile rule
2) If still fewer than 2 lands, do the exile rule again.
In both cases, the number of spells you have received on average on any given turn is almost identical for both rules (within 0.1 spells of each other on every turn) Although the distribution is going to be better for mulligans, since it protects against mana flood as well.
Here it is just +/- 1 standard deviation (~67% of games, I.e. more typical situations without extreme mana screw):
Edit: I forgot to code in the part where you only search the top 5 cards. The model instead does "search your whole library for a basic land, then shuffle." Not gonna re-do it, and I suspect it would make very little difference. The mean for exile would go down a tiny bit (which is good! Makes game more similar to vanilla magic), and the variance would go up very slightly for exile, but would not approach that of mulligans still.
Frankly, I don't know why the rule shouldn't just be "search your whole library" anyway, if the goal is to truly avoid complete mana screw.
And of course, a graph of minimum guaranteed number of lands via both rules...:
I'm going to depart from what most are arguing and state that this rule is too weak. In our current heavily mono color focused format decks still don't run more than 15 or so basics, and some decks run MUCH less, with a few running none at all. Taking a best case scenario of 15 basics assuming you're on the draw and keep a 1 lander. If you miss your second land drop this mulligan rule only has an 84% chance of hitting a basic. It has a 16% chance of being the same as taking a double mulligan into no land. The chances of that with the current rule are considerably less. Even at 23 basics (since you had one) left in the deck you only run a 95% chance of hitting. Which is just about equal to a mulligan as it currently stands.
An at least potential problem with this is the fact that scrying lets you know the top card of your library with certainty. For instance, in legacy you could have dark confidant in play, be at 1 life, and have basically zero risk of dying in your upkeep. Or you could rig erratic explosion or kaboom or cerebral eruption, etc.
I'm not sure your approach is the right one at all, but if you do want to do something basically similar to what you're proposing, I'd suggest instead: Exile 3 cards: look at the top 3 cards of your library, put 1 in your hand, exile the rest.
There's still the issue that this lets you get past cards that were put on your library by plow under and its ilk, which seems to in some way change the effect of that card, but that's not something that you can build a deck to abuse, whereas scrying-on-demand is.
Be a lemming hunter. Don't be a lemming.
Really, all you had to do was explain to him the popularity metric, not give him the lemming hunter manifesto...
Originally posted by MemoryLapse and DotMatrix
So not to start an argument that I already know I can't follow through on, but I believe that the best thing you can do with regards to mana screw/flood is to make sure you're shuffling thoroughly and effectively, which we admittedly don't all do after mulliganing twice or tutoring. That's my only real thoughts on mana screw and flood.
Losing because your opponent's decks has a good match up against you is different than loosing because your hand prevents you from making any plays.
Force of will has other uses, but if it weren't for the fact that it straight up stops you from losing many games then it would be far less played.
yeah you did.
It's rare that I go a whole fnm without at least one game decided by mana issues.
Each players starting out with 3 random lands in hand, boom you're wrong.
In a game where you start with two lands in your opening had you'd miss your third land drop less than .1% with the proposed rule. while under the current system you'll miss it about 20% of the time.
Which numbers where made up? Also note that color screw, taplands, where not considered in the calculations either.
The sig is aimed at the forum readers.
Stats About Mythics
-Mythics are on average 40% rarer than pre-mythic rares
(old blocks about 200 rares, Mythic blocks 35+ mythics)
-They are printing more new cards a year not less
(about 665 now vs. 630 in most pre-mythic block)
-To drop the value of a rare by $1 a mythic must go up $2
-In a 3 year time span deck prices doubled.
I am petitioning for the removal of mythic rarity. Sig this to join the cause.
Not to go too far into it, but in most forms of pile shuffling you're simply rearranging the cards into a preset pattern. It mixes them up but it's not random at all. You can take this to the extreme with something like a double nickel and have perfect mana. The reason a riffle is random is that a riffle or mash aren't perfect. The cards don't end up next to each other 1:1 from each pile (and if they do, you're not shuffling properly... look at your cards sometime during a shuffle).
For a simple example. Lets say you have a 10 card deck and you pile shuffle into two piles. When you're done your deck will either be in the pattern of cards:
1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 or 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9
Depending on which pile you pick up first. This is entirely predictable and not random at all as it follows a very clear pattern. If you instead riffle/mash shuffle it you'll start with two piles of cards 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. When you combine these the cards won't interleave perfectly if you're shuffling properly (there's a lot of shuffling tricks/cheats you can do with perfect interleaving... as that leads to a pattern rather than randomness) so your cards may end up in the order 1, 2, 6, 3, 7, 8, 4, 9, 10, 5 for example.
Basically, the difference is, with pile shuffling you're controlling the end result. You personally may not know the outcome of the final pattern (the difference between cheating and not cheating), but you are mixing the cards up into a predefined pattern which removes the random element from the game.
With proper shuffling you will screw/flood x% of the time. Where X is dependent on the number of lands you run. With fewer lands you'll screw more often and flood less while with more lands you'll screw less often and flood more. With improper shuffling you'll screw/flood at some rate other than x, usually screwing more and flooding less as you'll not be properly distributing lands throughout the deck, though with some peoples poor shuffling habits it can be the opposite.