MTG Salvation

So a local playgroup plays with the rule that you can always take a free mulligan to 7 by revealing a 0,1, or 7 land hand. Being a min-maxer, my immediate thought was that I could build to take advantage of this rule by running an insanely low curve deck with a 2CMC general and only like 20 lands. But then I thought... What if I took it to the ridiculous extreme?

I could build a deck with 98 lands and thus be guaranteed to have my one spell in my opening hand. OR I could build a deck with just two lands and be guaranteed to have both those lands in my starting hand.

What would be the most broken way to do this? I mean, I could run a Mikaeus, the Unhallowed deck with 98 lands and Triskelion, but I expect that this would not end up actually being very strong. Way too easy to disrupt. But maybe there is a combination of two particular lands (and a general) that would allow me to have a super strong and consistent opening every time?

What's the best you can come up with?

NOTE: I may actually build the deck (if it can be done at a reasonable cost), but don't worry, I don't intend to be a dick about it. I'll probably only play it once for laughs and then disassemble it.

This sort of hypothetical problem is actually quite similar to a different problem I spent a good deal of time mulling over. You can view the thread I made for it here. Funny enough, you were actually the first one to respond it. I didn't find the responses I got there to be too helpful, but they did help guide me to the (admittedly) limited understanding of the subject I have now.

What I learned from my musings (most of which are not evident in the aforementioned thread) is that the biggest advantage to running fewer resource generating cards is increasing threat density, but doing so comes at great cost. First, if you don't want your curve to end at one mana, you're going to need to find a way to generate the resources you need to cast your spells. Typically, lands in conjunction with other mana accelerants do this. Lands are great for generating resources because 1.) they don't cost mana, and 2.) they provide redundancy. While it's technically possible to make a "playable" deck without such redundancy, chances are it's going to suck because such a deck won't be able to find the tools it needs to generate its resources with any consistency. A pile of any 40 land cards is much, much better at creating a stable manabase than an automatic two land hand plus some other random spells. If it were possible to ensure you had certain key spells in hand rather than land cards, the situation might differ, but alas, that is not the case. Efforts to increase the consistency of land-lite builds are also mostly futile since a deck containing only lands as mana sources is likely to be the most consistent form of generating a stable manabase per cardslot used.

As I mentioned in my opening post of the thread I previously created, I also believe the key to making this sort of experiment work (if possible) lies within cards that produce more than one mana per card. Lands already operate at the rate of one mana per card, so forgoing lands in favor of a bunch of mana rocks or something of that nature doesn't make a whole lot of sense because, in such a case, you could basically just keep the same mana parity by playing lands instead of rocks. In other words, mana rocks or other kinds of mana generating spells aren't helpful for generating mana if they only produce one mana per card since you could effectively get the same rate out of playing a land card instead, and lands don't have a "cost" attached to them past only being able to play one of them per turn. To make mana rocks effective, they would either need to be played in tandem with lands, or produce more than one mana, and that's difficult to do because there aren't a heck of a lot of Magic cards that permanently generate more than one mana turn after turn that have low casting costs.

Here are a few cards I believe may be worth pontificating:

Sol Ring
Mana Crypt
Eladamri's Vineyard
Magus of the Vineyard
Shizuko, Caller of Autumn
Selvala, Explorer Returned
Serum Powder
Chrome Mox

Hey I want to help but I need help focusing my understanding of your issue. So you want to run 98 lands and 1 spell so that you're allowed to mull until this one spell is in you hand. You want this spell to be a mangler in conjunction with your commander?

Could you not run just one or zero lands and then some turn 1 combo? You'd get infinite mulligans until you find enough mana rocks and rituals and combo pieces.

Sort of a different approach, being able to mulligan until you get what you need just seems insanely strong.

Quote from diviable0 »

Could you not run just one or zero lands and then some turn 1 combo? You'd get infinite mulligans until you find enough mana rocks and rituals and combo pieces.

Sort of a different approach, being able to mulligan until you get what you need just seems insanely strong.

Seems like the best approach.

Isochron Scepter, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Dramatic Reversal, Force of Will, Sky Diamond and a blue card to pitch for force with Azami, Lady of Scrolls in the command zone and Blue Sun's Zenith in the deck wins the game turn one every game with FoW backup. It'd take forever to mulligan into though.

Assuming you deck must have keepable hands:

Marath, Will of the Wilds
Manabond
98 lands

Balustrade Spy / Goblin Charbelcher

Quote from diviable0 »

Could you not run just one or zero lands and then some turn 1 combo? You'd get infinite mulligans until you find enough mana rocks and rituals and combo pieces.

Sort of a different approach, being able to mulligan until you get what you need just seems insanely strong.

I thought of this as well, the issue being that I want to be able to actually do it once. I think I can probably get away with mulliganing 10 to 20 times if I'm fast and make it clear that there's a bit of a joke going on, but there is no way my opponents are going to sit through several hundred mulligans, no matter how well I sell the joke.

I actually worry that mulliganing into both of the only two lands in my deck may still be too much, since napkin math suggests it will take on average 25 mulligans. Maybe the 98 lands, one spell variation is more practicable?

My playgroupbis if you have 0 lands you may reveal your hand and take a free mulligan.

Of clurse of someone abused that rule we would not be so kind.

Why wimp out with 2 lands? Go for broke and play 0!

Quote from 256k »

I actually worry that mulliganing into both of the only two lands in my deck may still be too much, since napkin math suggests it will take on average 25 mulligans. Maybe the 98 lands, one spell variation is more practicable?

Mulliganing into a hand with both lands shouldn't be an issue. Just explain to your playgroup that you only have two lands in your deck and that it's impossible for you to get a keepable hand without both. Then go pull both of those lands out of your deck, add them to your hand, shuffle your deck, and draw 5 random cards.

I wonder whether Marath actually is the best Manabonds general or not. He takes advantage of the jump-start, but doesn't fully exploit it.
Omnath, Locus of Rage is a pretty serious contender, you have like 4 bouncelands that turns into a 5/5 every turn cycle. Burgeoning could possibly be better in this case. Titania, Protector of Argoth is another explosive general.
The Gitrog Monster, Thrasios, Triton Hero and Damia, Sage of Stone can all ramp you incredibly fast, but I'm not entirely sure into what. Without red you're more or less stuck with Dark Depths and Vestvale Abbey I believe.

This is my 4 land deck that can win games actually consistently. It wins via Balustrade Spy or Undercity Informer and puts your library into graveyard for a combo win. 90% of the deck is around getting those 4 lands and producing mana via other means, so you could make a deck that doesn't need any of those filler cards.

Quote from Underhill83 »

Hmm, I thought about something like Gaea's Cradle + Deserted Temple, but I guess there are to few 0-drop creatures to get this startet.

That's why you use free mana and broken mana rocks.