We do 7-7-6-5 instead of 7-6-5 in our group, and it's pretty good. It does encourage aggressive mulling to find that Pack Rat, though. 7-6-6-5 or 7-6-5-5 might be better.
None of us play in tournaments, so our goal is fun. Custom mull rules let us have more fun.
Guys this hand is a super snap mull on the draw. Assume your playing 16 lands and 40 cards. Now assume your playing agro based on the cards in the hand. Your 5th land is likely going to likely be of little importance, your 6th land is really a dead draw, considering your about 1/3 to draw a land each turn this is very bad and your likely to draw 2-3 dead lands during the game. Your double 2 drop means 1 of those guys is likely going to function as a bad/mediocre 3 drop. You don't have actual removal. You don't have enough ways to get past blockers, you don't have a way to win a race vs another agro deck. This hand can't really win on the draw vs. any decent hand.
On the play i would likely mull this game 1. Against slow decks in game 2-3 i might keep.
@the OP's topic. Any Mull system has flaws. So, why change one "broken" system for another that just as broken?
"I have no idea what it's like not to be a straight white male, and the experiences of others are irrelevant." -Conservative Motto
Calling someone a Commie is flaming and must be stopped, but turning the word Conservative into a loaded pejorative and using it over and over again is perfectly acceptable.
True, there are the downsides of finding some creative way to deal with the mulligan rule in limited, but then you have what happened to me last night:
Game 1:
opening seven contained 2 land, but a bunch of off color cards at 4, 5 and 6 mana. It is keepable in a sense, but, clearly a 6 card hand would be better.
6-card hand had one land. A two drop and a three drop also in hand, but, again, no guarentee that i hit that mana in my first two draw steps.
5-card hand again had 1 land but more expensive things.
4-card hand had 1 land, but i couldn't go any longer.
Game played out and I, on three turns, had to discard b/c my hand was 8 cards and I hadn't drawn land.
Game 2:
7-card hand had 1 land. Here we go again...
6-card hand had 0 land.
5-card hand had 1 land...forget this, we're playing.
Don't hit land till turn 4 on the play. Game's already over.
This was the finals and I didn't get to play. I looked at the library after the first mull in game one and i wasn't getting the correct color of land I needed for several turns. It would have been rough even with the 7.
I had 17 land, so, nothing outlandish and several 2/3 drops in the deck. I just didn't get to play. I was very, very upset with my luck, but...those are the 'rules'.
There should be something that can be done to help fix this as its no fun for me or my opponent.
In summation.....Star Trek wins a prolonged naval battle against superior, yet less technologically advanced, numbers, with Picard leading the assault, while Kirk takes your soul by laying out Solo and probably his manservant Chewy as well, before impregnating and ditching your Princess.
A neat but complicated method is drawing 9 cards and putting 2 back and shuffling your deck. If this doesn't fix then you can mull to 6-5-4 etc...
That is an interesting idea. What if you always drew 7 and then put back 1 for each mulligan. You still end up down cards, but it reduces variance. Basically, it's like trading "discard a card" for "draw a card and discard 2." Still bad, but less bad. Disadvantage maintained, variance reduced. That's what we're looking for, yes?
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Some facts of magic:
-Terror is an emotion which, when experienced, results in death.
-The pox was a disease notorious for having killed one-third, rounded up, of Europe’s population. Smallpox, on the other hand, killed only a single person.
-A person riding a horse cannot be stopped by foot soldiers, large animals, walls, archers, or even catapults.
That is an interesting idea. What if you always drew 7 and then put back 1 for each mulligan. You still end up down cards, but it reduces variance. Basically, it's like trading "discard a card" for "draw a card and discard 2." Still bad, but less bad. Disadvantage maintained, variance reduced. That's what we're looking for, yes?
The way things are right now are fine. There's no reason to change how mulligans are. You get screwed sometimes, and you win because your opponent gets screwed sometimes. No matter how you change the rules, unless you let people mull 7 an unlimited amount of times, there will always be games where you just don't draw good starting hands.
Magic has luck but you sure can't win a tournament without some level of skill. Live with the mulligan rules and accept the bad beats. Just last night I mulled to five twice in a draft FNM match and still won, and I didn't have any sick bombs just a solid deck and good play to back it up.
The way things are right now are fine. There's no reason to change how mulligans are. You get screwed sometimes, and you win because your opponent gets screwed sometimes. No matter how you change the rules, unless you let people mull 7 an unlimited amount of times, there will always be games where you just don't draw good starting hands.
Just because there is no 100% perfect way to eliminate bad opening hands doesn't mean that there aren't better ways than the current way or that employing mulligan rules that lead to fewer pointless games isn't a worthwhile goal.
I can see now why my earlier proposal of unlimited 0 and 7 land free mulligans was a bad idea; but I do like the 7-6-6-5-5-done idea.
Just last night I mulled to five twice in a draft FNM match and still won, and I didn't have any sick bombs just a solid deck and good play to back it up.
I suspect just about everyone, myself included, has pulled off a win from a 5 card mulligan (I once won from a 3 card mulligan, I am absolutely not kidding, it happened maybe 2 years ago, I think in an M11 draft); but this doesn't change the fact that most people have lost far, far more often after mulliganing to 5 than have won from that position. It also doesn't change the fact that losing to successive bad opening hands mulled to a bad 5 or 4 cards diminishes the enjoyability of the game tremendously and that anything that can be done to reduce this is would make the game more enjoyable most of the time for most people.
Of course there will be, but the point isn't to reduce the number of games people don't win (which is obviously impossible). The point is to reduce the number of games people can't do anything in. More forgiving mulligan rules would allow that.
I think the 7-6-6-5-5-etc. system is a lot better than the current system without introducing any real abusability or strategy issues, and it's easy to remember. All you're really doing is reducing the odds of people getting completely free wins.
Wit's End is the PERFECT answer to your opponent's Monomania however.
Just hold on to your Wit's End when they Monomania, so you can Wit's End them on your next turn!!!
I think this is fairly reminiscent of the "Jace Battles" we have seen in past standards.. My guess is we will soon witness the great Monomania-Wit's End battles.
I think the 7-6-6-5-5-etc. system is a lot better than the current system without introducing any real abusability or strategy issues, and it's easy to remember. All you're really doing is reducing the odds of people getting completely free wins.
I'm pretty sure that system rewards players with bad deckbuilding skills. It's buy one get 1 free mulligans. If the system rewards bad play it isn't good for the game IMO. Even if it makes every 20th game slightly more interactive.
"I have no idea what it's like not to be a straight white male, and the experiences of others are irrelevant." -Conservative Motto
Calling someone a Commie is flaming and must be stopped, but turning the word Conservative into a loaded pejorative and using it over and over again is perfectly acceptable.
True, there are the downsides of finding some creative way to deal with the mulligan rule in limited, but then you have what happened to me last night:
Game 1:
opening seven contained 2 land, but a bunch of off color cards at 4, 5 and 6 mana. It is keepable in a sense, but, clearly a 6 card hand would be better.
6-card hand had one land. A two drop and a three drop also in hand, but, again, no guarentee that i hit that mana in my first two draw steps.
Sucks that you didn't get a good draw but if your looking for guarantees then games like chess are what your looking for.
The whole point of having games with random chance in them is so that there are no guarantees.
I'm pretty sure that system rewards players with bad deckbuilding skills. It's buy one get 1 free mulligans. If the system rewards bad play it isn't good for the game IMO. Even if it makes every 20th game slightly more interactive.
You're exaggerating the negative and diminishing the positive. The reward that people with bad deckbuilding skills get is very minor; those people will more likely get more playable opening hands, but if their deck building skills are so bad, then better players should still win, right?
And, in my experience it's way, way, WAY more than 1 out of 20 games that is a boring disaster because of a bad 7 cards mulliganed to a bad 6 cards mulliganed to a mediocre 5 cards that, even with the help of a decent draw, never can make any progress against an opponent with two extra cards in their opening hand. In my experience a full 25% of games fall into this category when you take both players into consideration. Reducing that by half makes one out of 8 games more fun. That's significant.
It seems like there are really two issues people are arguing here:
1) Do the current mulligan rules create too much variance? I.e. do they result in too many non-interactive games?
2) If the answer to 1 is yes, how do we change the rule to reduce variance without favoring a particular style of deck?
I'm pretty sure both of these can be answered with some probability calculations and a few assumptions about what a "non-interactive" game is. In limited, it probably means someone didn't draw 3 lands or didn't draw 3 spells within the first 4 or 5 turns... and their opponent did.
Some facts of magic:
-Terror is an emotion which, when experienced, results in death.
-The pox was a disease notorious for having killed one-third, rounded up, of Europe’s population. Smallpox, on the other hand, killed only a single person.
-A person riding a horse cannot be stopped by foot soldiers, large animals, walls, archers, or even catapults.
I think a cool way would be to do what we do for Agricola (if you don't know this board game, look it up, it's part of the reason I came back to Magic.)
At the beginning of the game each player draws 10 cards, then shuffle 3 back into the deck. It should help all decks out. I might try it out in my next play testing.
1) At any time you can "mulligan" to the same number of cards you just drew, but then you lose your right to mulligan further -- I'd call it the Dead Man's Mulligan. So if you send back your 7, you can draw 7 again but you're stuck with it. Same idea if you mulligan to 6, then you can take another 6 but you're locked in.
I always find 6-card hands the toughest to evaluate, because mulligan to 5 while your opponent keeps 7, especially on the play, is usually an auto-loss in a competitive tournament. I'd much rather take the Dead Man's Mulligan to 6 again.
Losing the right to mulligan further is important because that's your penalty for getting an extra card. You can build your deck recklessly and plan to mulligan a lot but sometimes you'll get stuck with a 7-land Dead Man's Hand as a penalty for your greed.
2) You can reveal an all-land or no-land hand at any number and get a free mulligan back to that number.
I think these two options would alleviate the most frustrating of mulligan situations without radically changing how decks are constructed or the game is played. R&D probably realizes it too but they don't want to add more shuffling to paper games -- no one enjoys that.
The way things are right now are fine. There's no reason to change how mulligans are. You get screwed sometimes, and you win because your opponent gets screwed sometimes. No matter how you change the rules, unless you let people mull 7 an unlimited amount of times, there will always be games where you just don't draw good starting hands.
Okay, but the same argument could be advanced in favor of not allowing mulligans at all. Yeah, people would get screwed sometimes, but that's just bad beats, right? But that's not how the game works; clearly it's recognized that there needs to be some mechanism for reducing the number of games that are decided by screw. And it's just as clearly recognized that there needs to be a balance struck between excessive variance on one hand, and repetitive/abuseable/shufflerific mechanisms on the other. The key point is that there's nothing about the Paris rule that magically places it at the perfect point on that continuum, or that makes it any less arbitrary or more preferable than some other system--except for the fact that the Paris rule is "the way things are right now" and was the system most of us learned the game with. So the implicit status quo bias tends to make us automatically see the existing rule as optimal without actually assessing whether a more (or less!) generous system would represent a better balance.
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None of us play in tournaments, so our goal is fun. Custom mull rules let us have more fun.
Guys this hand is a super snap mull on the draw. Assume your playing 16 lands and 40 cards. Now assume your playing agro based on the cards in the hand. Your 5th land is likely going to likely be of little importance, your 6th land is really a dead draw, considering your about 1/3 to draw a land each turn this is very bad and your likely to draw 2-3 dead lands during the game. Your double 2 drop means 1 of those guys is likely going to function as a bad/mediocre 3 drop. You don't have actual removal. You don't have enough ways to get past blockers, you don't have a way to win a race vs another agro deck. This hand can't really win on the draw vs. any decent hand.
On the play i would likely mull this game 1. Against slow decks in game 2-3 i might keep.
@the OP's topic. Any Mull system has flaws. So, why change one "broken" system for another that just as broken?
Flame infraction. - Blinking Spirit
Calling someone a Commie is flaming and must be stopped, but turning the word Conservative into a loaded pejorative and using it over and over again is perfectly acceptable.
Game 1:
opening seven contained 2 land, but a bunch of off color cards at 4, 5 and 6 mana. It is keepable in a sense, but, clearly a 6 card hand would be better.
6-card hand had one land. A two drop and a three drop also in hand, but, again, no guarentee that i hit that mana in my first two draw steps.
5-card hand again had 1 land but more expensive things.
4-card hand had 1 land, but i couldn't go any longer.
Game played out and I, on three turns, had to discard b/c my hand was 8 cards and I hadn't drawn land.
Game 2:
7-card hand had 1 land. Here we go again...
6-card hand had 0 land.
5-card hand had 1 land...forget this, we're playing.
Don't hit land till turn 4 on the play. Game's already over.
This was the finals and I didn't get to play. I looked at the library after the first mull in game one and i wasn't getting the correct color of land I needed for several turns. It would have been rough even with the 7.
I had 17 land, so, nothing outlandish and several 2/3 drops in the deck. I just didn't get to play. I was very, very upset with my luck, but...those are the 'rules'.
There should be something that can be done to help fix this as its no fun for me or my opponent.
That is an interesting idea. What if you always drew 7 and then put back 1 for each mulligan. You still end up down cards, but it reduces variance. Basically, it's like trading "discard a card" for "draw a card and discard 2." Still bad, but less bad. Disadvantage maintained, variance reduced. That's what we're looking for, yes?
-Terror is an emotion which, when experienced, results in death.
-The pox was a disease notorious for having killed one-third, rounded up, of Europe’s population. Smallpox, on the other hand, killed only a single person.
-A person riding a horse cannot be stopped by foot soldiers, large animals, walls, archers, or even catapults.
More facts of magic
I agree it's a very interesting idea.
I also really like the 7-6-6 idea.
Just because there is no 100% perfect way to eliminate bad opening hands doesn't mean that there aren't better ways than the current way or that employing mulligan rules that lead to fewer pointless games isn't a worthwhile goal.
I can see now why my earlier proposal of unlimited 0 and 7 land free mulligans was a bad idea; but I do like the 7-6-6-5-5-done idea.
I suspect just about everyone, myself included, has pulled off a win from a 5 card mulligan (I once won from a 3 card mulligan, I am absolutely not kidding, it happened maybe 2 years ago, I think in an M11 draft); but this doesn't change the fact that most people have lost far, far more often after mulliganing to 5 than have won from that position. It also doesn't change the fact that losing to successive bad opening hands mulled to a bad 5 or 4 cards diminishes the enjoyability of the game tremendously and that anything that can be done to reduce this is would make the game more enjoyable most of the time for most people.
I think the 7-6-6-5-5-etc. system is a lot better than the current system without introducing any real abusability or strategy issues, and it's easy to remember. All you're really doing is reducing the odds of people getting completely free wins.
I'm pretty sure that system rewards players with bad deckbuilding skills. It's buy one get 1 free mulligans. If the system rewards bad play it isn't good for the game IMO. Even if it makes every 20th game slightly more interactive.
Flame infraction. - Blinking Spirit
Calling someone a Commie is flaming and must be stopped, but turning the word Conservative into a loaded pejorative and using it over and over again is perfectly acceptable.
Heck, I'd be in love if it were 7-6-6-5-4-3-2-1.
Sucks that you didn't get a good draw but if your looking for guarantees then games like chess are what your looking for.
The whole point of having games with random chance in them is so that there are no guarantees.
Currently working on making the best Time Warp deck in here: Taking Turns
You're exaggerating the negative and diminishing the positive. The reward that people with bad deckbuilding skills get is very minor; those people will more likely get more playable opening hands, but if their deck building skills are so bad, then better players should still win, right?
And, in my experience it's way, way, WAY more than 1 out of 20 games that is a boring disaster because of a bad 7 cards mulliganed to a bad 6 cards mulliganed to a mediocre 5 cards that, even with the help of a decent draw, never can make any progress against an opponent with two extra cards in their opening hand. In my experience a full 25% of games fall into this category when you take both players into consideration. Reducing that by half makes one out of 8 games more fun. That's significant.
1) Do the current mulligan rules create too much variance? I.e. do they result in too many non-interactive games?
2) If the answer to 1 is yes, how do we change the rule to reduce variance without favoring a particular style of deck?
I'm pretty sure both of these can be answered with some probability calculations and a few assumptions about what a "non-interactive" game is. In limited, it probably means someone didn't draw 3 lands or didn't draw 3 spells within the first 4 or 5 turns... and their opponent did.
-Terror is an emotion which, when experienced, results in death.
-The pox was a disease notorious for having killed one-third, rounded up, of Europe’s population. Smallpox, on the other hand, killed only a single person.
-A person riding a horse cannot be stopped by foot soldiers, large animals, walls, archers, or even catapults.
More facts of magic
At the beginning of the game each player draws 10 cards, then shuffle 3 back into the deck. It should help all decks out. I might try it out in my next play testing.
1) At any time you can "mulligan" to the same number of cards you just drew, but then you lose your right to mulligan further -- I'd call it the Dead Man's Mulligan. So if you send back your 7, you can draw 7 again but you're stuck with it. Same idea if you mulligan to 6, then you can take another 6 but you're locked in.
I always find 6-card hands the toughest to evaluate, because mulligan to 5 while your opponent keeps 7, especially on the play, is usually an auto-loss in a competitive tournament. I'd much rather take the Dead Man's Mulligan to 6 again.
Losing the right to mulligan further is important because that's your penalty for getting an extra card. You can build your deck recklessly and plan to mulligan a lot but sometimes you'll get stuck with a 7-land Dead Man's Hand as a penalty for your greed.
2) You can reveal an all-land or no-land hand at any number and get a free mulligan back to that number.
I think these two options would alleviate the most frustrating of mulligan situations without radically changing how decks are constructed or the game is played. R&D probably realizes it too but they don't want to add more shuffling to paper games -- no one enjoys that.
Okay, but the same argument could be advanced in favor of not allowing mulligans at all. Yeah, people would get screwed sometimes, but that's just bad beats, right? But that's not how the game works; clearly it's recognized that there needs to be some mechanism for reducing the number of games that are decided by screw. And it's just as clearly recognized that there needs to be a balance struck between excessive variance on one hand, and repetitive/abuseable/shufflerific mechanisms on the other. The key point is that there's nothing about the Paris rule that magically places it at the perfect point on that continuum, or that makes it any less arbitrary or more preferable than some other system--except for the fact that the Paris rule is "the way things are right now" and was the system most of us learned the game with. So the implicit status quo bias tends to make us automatically see the existing rule as optimal without actually assessing whether a more (or less!) generous system would represent a better balance.