I have played MtG since the 90's. I had a revival the last years with a bunch of other 30-somethings and we mostly draft and play casual. One thing that has been bugging me for a long time is the randomness of getting mana flood/short, which is much too often the deciding factor in matches or entire drafts. Even though it's the same for everybody, it just sucks the fun out of playing when your win or loss isn't decided by who built the best deck or made the best plays, but simply if you managed to get a decent hand without mulliganing yourself to oblivion. I'm sure I'm not the only one on these forums who feels like this.
I've tried coming up with some rule or format for our playgroup that could help the situation without completely warping deck building in the process. This is my latest idea and the most balanced I think I've come up with so far. Feedback is much appreciated and if you have better solutions to this problem, feel free to post them!
The Basic Land Mulligan
1) If your deck contains 30-45% land cards, rather than drawing your starting hand and taking mulligans in the normal fashion, you can take a basic land mulligan. This forfeits your right to take other mulligans.
2) To take a basic land mulligan, first search your library for up to seven basic land cards of any type, then shuffle your library.
3) If you searched your library for less than seven basic land cards, draw 7 cards minus the number of basic lands you searched for, from the top of your library. If you drew a land card, you may reveal it, put it at the bottom of your library and draw another card from the top of your library. You may repeat this process for any land card you draw.
4) When you no longer wish to scry away any lands you've drawn, combine any basic land cards you searched for and the cards you've drawn to form your starting hand of seven cards, then shuffle your library.
A few explanations: The reason for the land requirement (30-45%) is so that you can't just run 3 basic mountains in a burn deck, search all of them out and then just play burn for the rest of the game. The upper limit is to prevent combo decks to run 80% land to scry into the perfect starting hand in step 3. The interval covers most normal land totals in "fair" 60 card decks, draft decks and EDH decks, but not decks like 1-land combos or Life from the Loam decks (a fair compromise IMO).
The only guaranteed way to avoid mana shortage is to include basic lands in your starting hand, which more high powered multi-color decks might not always want. However, you could always grab just one basic and hope to draw 1-2 more interesting lands as normal, while being sure to avoid mana flood. I don't really see it as a downside that the system benefits budget-friendly multicolor decks the most though, as they tend to be the weakest decks in most formats.
Before testing this out, I'd be happy if someone would point out foreseeable problems with this system or if there is a better way to solve the issues of mana flood/short/mismatch without warping deck building too much.
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I think that is too complicated. I would go with something like:
If you have a hand you don't like and wish to mulligan, you can put a card of your choice from your hand in your library and search for a basic land and put it in your hand. Then shuffle your library. You can take no further mulligans.
That's more simple, but doesn't help with mana flood. I suppose you could fight mana flood with regular mulligans and then use your variant if you new hand contains too few land instead.
Another issue with your suggestion is that it let's you cherry pick spells to shuffle away and sculpt your starting hand so that it only contains low CMC spells. Swapping your least playable spell for a basic land might be too good, as compared to a normal mulligan. Don't you think?
Your limitation on not taking further mulligans after you have opted for a basic land somewhat prevents "burn type" abuse, but being able to always get an extra land with no downside should still heavily favor fewer lands in decks so I think it may warp deck building more than the land requirement.
To sum up, I like the simplicity of your suggestion but I think it may be too good and have too heavy an impact if you build your deck for it.
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I know you addressed the question of multicolor decks somewhat, but I think you're underestimating the effect that being able to guarantee a specific spread of basic lands in the opening hand would have. Sure there are some decks that wouldn't want all basics (e.g. a control build that would want to be able to cast either Cryptic Command or Supreme Verdict on 4 mana) but it would really enable decks that want to be fast with greedy mana. Imagine a Zoo style deck that wants to guarantee that it can curve, say, Loam Lion into Fleecemane Lion into Woolly Thoctar as often as possible. In a format like Modern, the shocks/fetches that would generally enable that will put you 4-5 life down by the time you've set up and you're vulnerable to nonbasic land hate. With the basic land mulligan you could do that curve in 100% of games where you have those spells with basically zero risk.
What you'd probably need is to do something like always search for 7 basics (meaning the deck must have at least that many), shuffle them, and choose the number you want randomly from that set, to keep the color-based variance intact. But that creates even more restrictions on the mechanic, meaning it would probably get used less.
Median hand magic: Draw 5 hands, 35 cards total. Show another person outside the game the five hands (casual format, right? Any bystander.) He selects the two hands he considers strongest. Put them into the deck. You pick two hands you don't like. You put them into the deck. You shuffle. No mulligans.
If we are talking about casual play...
if you don't like your hand, just look your opponent in the eye and say "I concede." Then proceed to shuffle and draw 7 more cards for the "next" game. if your opponent likes their hand they can keep it.
also, if both of you want to mulligan just redraw 7 cards each, its just casual after all.
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I've tried coming up with some rule or format for our playgroup that could help the situation without completely warping deck building in the process. This is my latest idea and the most balanced I think I've come up with so far. Feedback is much appreciated and if you have better solutions to this problem, feel free to post them!
The Basic Land Mulligan
1) If your deck contains 30-45% land cards, rather than drawing your starting hand and taking mulligans in the normal fashion, you can take a basic land mulligan. This forfeits your right to take other mulligans.
2) To take a basic land mulligan, first search your library for up to seven basic land cards of any type, then shuffle your library.
3) If you searched your library for less than seven basic land cards, draw 7 cards minus the number of basic lands you searched for, from the top of your library. If you drew a land card, you may reveal it, put it at the bottom of your library and draw another card from the top of your library. You may repeat this process for any land card you draw.
4) When you no longer wish to scry away any lands you've drawn, combine any basic land cards you searched for and the cards you've drawn to form your starting hand of seven cards, then shuffle your library.
A few explanations: The reason for the land requirement (30-45%) is so that you can't just run 3 basic mountains in a burn deck, search all of them out and then just play burn for the rest of the game. The upper limit is to prevent combo decks to run 80% land to scry into the perfect starting hand in step 3. The interval covers most normal land totals in "fair" 60 card decks, draft decks and EDH decks, but not decks like 1-land combos or Life from the Loam decks (a fair compromise IMO).
The only guaranteed way to avoid mana shortage is to include basic lands in your starting hand, which more high powered multi-color decks might not always want. However, you could always grab just one basic and hope to draw 1-2 more interesting lands as normal, while being sure to avoid mana flood. I don't really see it as a downside that the system benefits budget-friendly multicolor decks the most though, as they tend to be the weakest decks in most formats.
Before testing this out, I'd be happy if someone would point out foreseeable problems with this system or if there is a better way to solve the issues of mana flood/short/mismatch without warping deck building too much.
A series of seven articles using Magic to explore the very stuff of the Universe!
"At least for those who can play cards, their present incarnation is not quite wasted."
[Click here for the articles!]
If you have a hand you don't like and wish to mulligan, you can put a card of your choice from your hand in your library and search for a basic land and put it in your hand. Then shuffle your library. You can take no further mulligans.
Another issue with your suggestion is that it let's you cherry pick spells to shuffle away and sculpt your starting hand so that it only contains low CMC spells. Swapping your least playable spell for a basic land might be too good, as compared to a normal mulligan. Don't you think?
Your limitation on not taking further mulligans after you have opted for a basic land somewhat prevents "burn type" abuse, but being able to always get an extra land with no downside should still heavily favor fewer lands in decks so I think it may warp deck building more than the land requirement.
To sum up, I like the simplicity of your suggestion but I think it may be too good and have too heavy an impact if you build your deck for it.
A series of seven articles using Magic to explore the very stuff of the Universe!
"At least for those who can play cards, their present incarnation is not quite wasted."
[Click here for the articles!]
What you'd probably need is to do something like always search for 7 basics (meaning the deck must have at least that many), shuffle them, and choose the number you want randomly from that set, to keep the color-based variance intact. But that creates even more restrictions on the mechanic, meaning it would probably get used less.
if you don't like your hand, just look your opponent in the eye and say "I concede." Then proceed to shuffle and draw 7 more cards for the "next" game. if your opponent likes their hand they can keep it.
also, if both of you want to mulligan just redraw 7 cards each, its just casual after all.