Modern is an interesting beast. It tests certain skills more than others.
I'd say I have a good grasp of the decks played in modern. I know more or less what cards they run and in what amounts, and a rough idea of their sideboard tech.
Mulligans however, augh.
I routinely, almost reliably punt games (and therefore matches) away because of bad keeps.
I'd like some advice on how to stay sharp with mulligans, because no matter how proficient and practiced I get in Modern, I seem to end up keeping far too many one-landers than I would say is reasonable, yet I don't seem to be able to help myself.
Modern decks tend (on average) to run a lower land count to formats like standard, and generally run spells of a similarly lower average cmc. Does this forgive the one land keep, however?
(it could also be my shuffling; I have found recently that some aspect of my shuffling technique tends to just clump everything together somehow and I end up with maybe 40% of opening hands containing no land at all).
I don't think there's an easy fix for this. I'm going to have a look at more comprehensive shuffling techniques but in the meantime does anyone have any advice for mulliganing in modern?
It depends a lot on the deck you're running. I saw you post on the Gx Tron Thread before, so as the experienced Tron Player I am (playing the deck for 4 years with GP Day 2 and so on) there is this "rule":
-You need something to cast each turn. Playing a Land and pass is the worst you can do (besides playing Draw-Go Control, which is a questionable Archetype due to the lack of proactiveness)
-If your first Spells draw additional cards, 2 Lands are enough
-If you can search for a Land (aka Ancient Stirrings) with the cards in your starting hand, it's playable with one Land (containing a green source, preferably an Chromatic Egg)
-Too many Lands lead to a dead lategame, so less than 2 spells that draw a card / find a threat or can win the game if left unchecked, are dangerous, too.
So mulliganing "correctly" is the spot that requires the most experience, in my opinion.
Mull vs. keep decisions are heavily dependent on deck composition and knowledge of the pairing, so it's hard to make general rules. Some decks can get away with rare one-land keeps. The decks I play can't. In general I think players are overly reluctant to mull.
I really have no idea what to advise except to say that I agree that mulligan decisions are a surprisingly difficult, extremely important, and mostly under appreciated aspect of play. I tend to stick to one deck at a time and build up what I can only describe as a "feel" for what kinds of two-land hands will and which won't work out. In my last match on Friday I had to mull to 4 on the play. I managed to win, though, after finally finding a hand that was actually playable--and then getting quite lucky.
Maybe the best idea would be to run some simple hypergeometric probability tests to calculate the odds of drawing out of a one-land keep under different scenarios, and then commit the results to memory. Ex: odds of drawing land #2 by T2 while on the draw/play; odds of drawing a land or a Serum Visions on T1 while on the draw; odds of drawing a land or Ancient Stirrings on T1 after keeping six; odds of drawing specifically a dual land by T2, etc. The parameters would obviously vary quite a bit between decks.
Last I would advise never to look at the top card(s) of your library after making a mull decision. The information tells you nothing real and only tends to lead to self-doubt.
Like others have said, it's obviously pretty matchup dependent. But you don't keep 1 land hands unless you have certain plays against a deck or if your potential 2 drop is something like Stony Silence that can nearly just win the game, a game that otherwise would be super tough.
In some decks, you can keep a 1 land hand easily. Bogles comes to mind. Burn. Coco when you have multiple mana dorks and a land opens up your hand completely. But 1 land keeps are not even automatic for these decks. In some scenarios, like not having a 1 drop for Bogles or Burn vs. some matchups, it may be a mulligan. It just really depends. When I play vs. matchups where I have no chance of winning, like Ad Nauseam quite often, I tend to have more loose keeps or deep mulligans trying to find interaction. Just remember, a minor speed bump for your opponent that slows you down too is not usually going to be as effective as just having your nut draw or close to it.
I have been having hands with no sideboard cards in games 2 and 3 quite often recently. It doesn't matter if I side in 4 cards or 11, it seems to happen the same way. Or, I'll have the SB card, but a 0 land hand or a completely non-functional hand. This affects my thinking and I tend to be very results oriented. This is bad. When I played more often and was a pretty solid player, I would not fall into these traps. Even if the same thing happened literally 100 times in a row! You have to start being more math based if you truly want to be successful in this game, which includes an outrageous number of reps vs. certain decks. That tends to get players away from the results oriented thinking, which I personally can't do right now because I don't play much recently.
I think if I could say just one sentence, it's to have a plan. If you're playing against a CoCo, deck plan for them to mana dork, then 2 drop or 3 drop (considering the implications of specific ones), and then what Collected Company can potentially hit. If you're against Death's Shadow, consider Thoughtseize into Thought Scour and Tasigur, then a Death's Shadow. How does your hand stack up against that? And did your opponent mulligan too? Often you can read how strong an opponent's hand is by looking at them. I often have a nut hand and go deep into the tank whether to keep or mull. But I also do snap keeps sometimes when I have a good hand or a shaky one. But the effect only goes so far, so don't rely completely on this.
Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Mulligans are 100% deck specific. There is NO general rule.
My best advice is to know your deck. Decks that you build, you know exactly what you want, and how risky you can be, because you designed it.
Another thing to consider would be doing some math. Pull up a Hyper-Geometric Calculator and run some numbers to see how risky it is to keep 1/2/3 land hands, and the %chance youll draw another with the remaining cards in your library (53 on turn 1, 52 on turn 2, etc).
Lastly, sit down and goldfish 100 hands. Keep them all and play a singleplayer game of magic. See what works, and take note of it.
I find the hardest call is when you have a hand that's playable but sub-optimal. Do you risk going for a strong hand when you might end up with a worse hand? And mulliganing below 6 is even riskier.
I think the key piece of information is knowing how good or bad the matchup is for your deck. If it's a really bad matchup, then you have no choice but to mulligan aggressively. If it's a strong matchup, then keep the playable hand.
Another consideration is how much card draw filtering you have available. Decks with cantrips and scry effects have a much greater chance of finding answers whereas a deck that just topdecks is more reliant on mulligans to get relevant hate.
When it comes to mulligans it's very deck dependant, but there is a general philosophy I always ask myself in any format "What is easier to ask of my deck?"
It's just a basic principle I use to calculate risks, and it's helped me many a time.
Against death and taxes
I'm playing Vizier coco, and I'm on the play.
- Keep a hand of one land, noble hierarch, 2x devoted druid, coco, Vizier, chord.
Seems ok, right? Turn 1 hierarch. All I need is a land/hierarch survive and I'm able to put multiple mana producing guys on the field, with the combo in-hand if I can dodge early removal.
I also figure that D&T plays path as its main removal spell, so I was relatively safe in terms of my noble hierarch. They play a grindy game and this hand has pieces to get me there.
What actually happened was that he dismembered my hierarch (a spicy one-of from his sideboard) and I never saw another land. He spent the remainder of the game apologising as he chipped in with a few medium creatures.
Those are the kinds of keeps I'm making all the time. Not ideal, suboptimal, but probably too good to pass for a random 6. Maybe. This is the problem, I'm relying on luck to 'get there' and these kinds of decisions seem to result in getting punished more often than they pay off.
What's brought this to the forefront of my mind is that I see successful pro players making these kinds of risky keeps and they get rewarded for them. I watch streams, tournament coverage and all kinds of reports on the decks I'm playing and it looks like having any kind of deep run in a tournament requires making these keeps and hoping for the best, getting rewarded for doing so. I'm not having that sort of success unfortunately so my tournament performance is more like 3-1 than 4-0 if you get my meaning.
As much as I'd like to attribute this sort of thing to luck (and that's certainly part of it!) I reckon there's another skill-based aspect which I'm missing. The example above is a one-off but it's representative of my wider experience. I'm using my knowledge of deck composition to evaluate their chosen removal suite, their approximate clock, types of disruption and my own game plan. But, I'm finding that these keeps don't play out for me. I'm left feeling a bit disillusioned about the whole thing because when I make the choice to keep, it feels like I've considered as many factors as possible and made a balanced positive decision for my best shot at winning. But I just get slammed by flooding or not drawing a land. It happens enough that it prompted me to make a comment, so this isn't a one-in-a-blue-moon thing that's made me salty one time, I'm genuinely wondering what's up. Variance? Bad shuffling?
(I'm genuinely of the opinion that my shuffling sucks. I can "randomise" a pile of cards insofar as neither player has knowledge of the order, but I find with an extremely high degree of regularity that whatever I'm doing does not break apart clumps of lands/spells between games adequately enough. I get mana screwed a *lot*. I basically mash-shuffle ten or twelve times, sometimes more, varying the 'weave' a little as I go to increase randomness. Apparently I'm doing it wrong though haha.) to give an indication of this, I'm running a deck with 21 lands and at my recent fnm, I drew a total of 6 no-land hands across three rounds and had to Mulligan to five in every match at least once. Thankfully, I'm still able to cobble together wins through dumb luck and sheer determination, but something is going on.
What's brought this to the forefront of my mind is that I see successful pro players making these kinds of risky keeps and they get rewarded for them. I watch streams, tournament coverage and all kinds of reports on the decks I'm playing and it looks like having any kind of deep run in a tournament requires making these keeps and hoping for the best, getting rewarded for doing so. I'm not having that sort of success unfortunately so my tournament performance is more like 3-1 than 4-0 if you get my meaning.
Keep in mind as well that for every player you see that gets lucky making a questionable keep work, there are 2 others who it doesn't work for and they lost and that is why you don't see them.
What's brought this to the forefront of my mind is that I see successful pro players making these kinds of risky keeps and they get rewarded for them. I watch streams, tournament coverage and all kinds of reports on the decks I'm playing and it looks like having any kind of deep run in a tournament requires making these keeps and hoping for the best, getting rewarded for doing so. I'm not having that sort of success unfortunately so my tournament performance is more like 3-1 than 4-0 if you get my meaning.
Keep in mind as well that for every player you see that gets lucky making a questionable keep work, there are 2 others who it doesn't work for and they lost and that is why you don't see them.
of course, understandable.
doesn't explain why people are able to consistently make these risky all-in style keeps and yet also consistently do very well in large tournament settings.
there's more going on of course, but focusing on this detail, I see the more prominent players in the magic pro circuit doing this sort of thing all the time and it seems to be part of their way to win - high risk high reward? who knows.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
Against death and taxes
I'm playing Vizier coco, and I'm on the play.
- Keep a hand of one land, noble hierarch, 2x devoted druid, coco, Vizier, chord.
Seems ok, right? Turn 1 hierarch. All I need is a land/hierarch survive and I'm able to put multiple mana producing guys on the field, with the combo in-hand if I can dodge early removal.
I also figure that D&T plays path as its main removal spell, so I was relatively safe in terms of my noble hierarch. They play a grindy game and this hand has pieces to get me there.
What actually happened was that he dismembered my hierarch (a spicy one-of from his sideboard) and I never saw another land. He spent the remainder of the game apologising as he chipped in with a few medium creatures.
Those are the kinds of keeps I'm making all the time. Not ideal, suboptimal, but probably too good to pass for a random 6. Maybe. This is the problem, I'm relying on luck to 'get there' and these kinds of decisions seem to result in getting punished more often than they pay off.
What's brought this to the forefront of my mind is that I see successful pro players making these kinds of risky keeps and they get rewarded for them. I watch streams, tournament coverage and all kinds of reports on the decks I'm playing and it looks like having any kind of deep run in a tournament requires making these keeps and hoping for the best, getting rewarded for doing so. I'm not having that sort of success unfortunately so my tournament performance is more like 3-1 than 4-0 if you get my meaning.
As much as I'd like to attribute this sort of thing to luck (and that's certainly part of it!) I reckon there's another skill-based aspect which I'm missing. The example above is a one-off but it's representative of my wider experience. I'm using my knowledge of deck composition to evaluate their chosen removal suite, their approximate clock, types of disruption and my own game plan. But, I'm finding that these keeps don't play out for me. I'm left feeling a bit disillusioned about the whole thing because when I make the choice to keep, it feels like I've considered as many factors as possible and made a balanced positive decision for my best shot at winning. But I just get slammed by flooding or not drawing a land. It happens enough that it prompted me to make a comment, so this isn't a one-in-a-blue-moon thing that's made me salty one time, I'm genuinely wondering what's up. Variance? Bad shuffling?
(I'm genuinely of the opinion that my shuffling sucks. I can "randomise" a pile of cards insofar as neither player has knowledge of the order, but I find with an extremely high degree of regularity that whatever I'm doing does not break apart clumps of lands/spells between games adequately enough. I get mana screwed a *lot*. I basically mash-shuffle ten or twelve times, sometimes more, varying the 'weave' a little as I go to increase randomness. Apparently I'm doing it wrong though haha.) to give an indication of this, I'm running a deck with 21 lands and at my recent fnm, I drew a total of 6 no-land hands across three rounds and had to Mulligan to five in every match at least once. Thankfully, I'm still able to cobble together wins through dumb luck and sheer determination, but something is going on.
In that particular example, I think that hand is just on this side of a keep. The number of mono-white D&T players running Dismember (or Gutshot) is extremely low. Even when your opponent does, you're roughly 38% to hit a land (assuming 21 land) on each of your draws and mono-white D&T is durdly enough to win with the combo even after missing a couple land drops. You'll hit at least one land in your next three draws in 3/4 games, although the flip side is that in the 1/4 you don't you'll almost assuredly lose.
You're probably right on your shuffling technique. The odds of drawing a 0 land opener in a 21 land deck is around 4%. Doing it 6 times in 9 games is very unlikely by chance. When in doubt, play around with a hypergeometric calculator to see how likely certain cards are to show up and try to imagine whether that's a 7 (or 10 or 15) that wins versus a given opponent.
If in doubt, when they present their deck to cut, shuffle it. Also, count the cards.
Unsure what you mean or are implying. Care to elaborate?
I'm pretty sure he's saying to be wary of your opponents. Shuffling their deck prevents some solid percentage of the shuffling cheats we've all seen on camera. Also have an idea of how a double sleeved 60 card Modern deck feels like and an single sleeved 60 card Modern deck feels like.
I played at the Regionals where Alex Bertoncini won. You best believe that if I played him, I'd be a bit careful.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Against death and taxes
I'm playing Vizier coco, and I'm on the play.
- Keep a hand of one land, noble hierarch, 2x devoted druid, coco, Vizier, chord.
Seems ok, right? Turn 1 hierarch. All I need is a land/hierarch survive and I'm able to put multiple mana producing guys on the field, with the combo in-hand if I can dodge early removal.
I also figure that D&T plays path as its main removal spell, so I was relatively safe in terms of my noble hierarch. They play a grindy game and this hand has pieces to get me there.
What actually happened was that he dismembered my hierarch (a spicy one-of from his sideboard) and I never saw another land. He spent the remainder of the game apologising as he chipped in with a few medium creatures.
In this one particular case, this was probably the right keep. You got punished by a 1-of SB card. Don't let variance deter you from making the right decisions, because you WILL lose even when making the right decision a certain amount of time.
Typically I'd shy away from 1 land plus 1 CMC=1 mana dork for this exact reason - if it dies before you untap you get mana screwed. But against D+T your line of thinking was correct. Their removal of choice is Path, which still gets you there.
What's brought this to the forefront of my mind is that I see successful pro players making these kinds of risky keeps and they get rewarded for them. I watch streams, tournament coverage and all kinds of reports on the decks I'm playing and it looks like having any kind of deep run in a tournament requires making these keeps and hoping for the best, getting rewarded for doing so. I'm not having that sort of success unfortunately so my tournament performance is more like 3-1 than 4-0 if you get my meaning.
Keep in mind as well that for every player you see that gets lucky making a questionable keep work, there are 2 others who it doesn't work for and they lost and that is why you don't see them.
of course, understandable.
doesn't explain why people are able to consistently make these risky all-in style keeps and yet also consistently do very well in large tournament settings.
there's more going on of course, but focusing on this detail, I see the more prominent players in the magic pro circuit doing this sort of thing all the time and it seems to be part of their way to win - high risk high reward? who knows.
The reason you see it working for some but not others is because those people understand their deck's construction and their own playstyle. Some people are much more comfortable playing the "control" role with their burn deck, for example. When you know the math in your deck's construction and you make decisions based on how you like playing, mulligans become much easier.
Against death and taxes
I'm playing Vizier coco, and I'm on the play.
- Keep a hand of one land, noble hierarch, 2x devoted druid, coco, Vizier, chord.
Seems ok, right? Turn 1 hierarch. All I need is a land/hierarch survive and I'm able to put multiple mana producing guys on the field, with the combo in-hand if I can dodge early removal.
I also figure that D&T plays path as its main removal spell, so I was relatively safe in terms of my noble hierarch. They play a grindy game and this hand has pieces to get me there.
What actually happened was that he dismembered my hierarch (a spicy one-of from his sideboard) and I never saw another land. He spent the remainder of the game apologising as he chipped in with a few medium creatures.
I would definitely have kept that hand. Your opponent lucked out.
Against death and taxes
I'm playing Vizier coco, and I'm on the play.
- Keep a hand of one land, noble hierarch, 2x devoted druid, coco, Vizier, chord.
Seems ok, right? Turn 1 hierarch. All I need is a land/hierarch survive and I'm able to put multiple mana producing guys on the field, with the combo in-hand if I can dodge early removal.
I also figure that D&T plays path as its main removal spell, so I was relatively safe in terms of my noble hierarch. They play a grindy game and this hand has pieces to get me there.
What actually happened was that he dismembered my hierarch (a spicy one-of from his sideboard) and I never saw another land. He spent the remainder of the game apologising as he chipped in with a few medium creatures.
I would definitely have kept that hand. Your opponent lucked out.
I 3rd this if it wasn't clear from above. I think most people here agree with that keep.
There's really 2 ways to look at it. Vizier Coco has a good matchup against D and T, so you can trust that your deck will give you a better hand. But honestly your hand already has everything (mostly, barring specific cards coming up) it needs to destroy D and T. From the standpoint of you keeping, it may seem a tiny bit risky, but it is WAAAAY more risky mulliganing that hand and hoping to have a better 6 vs. D and T.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Yes keeping that was the correct play.
But I'm fairly sure the pros you speak about know their decks and the probability of drawing certain things. This helps with keeping the risky keep. If I'm on Tron and have a green source and a strings in hand on the play and a map I'm keeping that. That's much different than being in esper control and having a black white source with a path, seize, serum visions. That 1 lander is a certain throw back.
I think the #1 thing to work on regarding mulligans, and the discussion about that keep is centered on this, is to not let variance influence your mulligan behavior. Like everywhere else variance rears its ugly head the first step here is recognizing it. So definitely have these "was this right?" discussions. But just because you got punished that one time, even if that was on camera in game 5 of the PT Finals, don't let it change your behavior. Make the same sort of decision with the same sort of consideration of factors.
If you can rule out variance and find that you're regularly getting punished for risky keeps, dial back the risk a bit.
I'd say I have a good grasp of the decks played in modern. I know more or less what cards they run and in what amounts, and a rough idea of their sideboard tech.
Mulligans however, augh.
I routinely, almost reliably punt games (and therefore matches) away because of bad keeps.
I'd like some advice on how to stay sharp with mulligans, because no matter how proficient and practiced I get in Modern, I seem to end up keeping far too many one-landers than I would say is reasonable, yet I don't seem to be able to help myself.
Modern decks tend (on average) to run a lower land count to formats like standard, and generally run spells of a similarly lower average cmc. Does this forgive the one land keep, however?
(it could also be my shuffling; I have found recently that some aspect of my shuffling technique tends to just clump everything together somehow and I end up with maybe 40% of opening hands containing no land at all).
I don't think there's an easy fix for this. I'm going to have a look at more comprehensive shuffling techniques but in the meantime does anyone have any advice for mulliganing in modern?
The solution is simple. Stop keeping 1 land hands.
Modern - Burn
EDH - Neheb the Eternal
-You need something to cast each turn. Playing a Land and pass is the worst you can do (besides playing Draw-Go Control, which is a questionable Archetype due to the lack of proactiveness)
-If your first Spells draw additional cards, 2 Lands are enough
-If you can search for a Land (aka Ancient Stirrings) with the cards in your starting hand, it's playable with one Land (containing a green source, preferably an Chromatic Egg)
-Too many Lands lead to a dead lategame, so less than 2 spells that draw a card / find a threat or can win the game if left unchecked, are dangerous, too.
So mulliganing "correctly" is the spot that requires the most experience, in my opinion.
Greetings
I really have no idea what to advise except to say that I agree that mulligan decisions are a surprisingly difficult, extremely important, and mostly under appreciated aspect of play. I tend to stick to one deck at a time and build up what I can only describe as a "feel" for what kinds of two-land hands will and which won't work out. In my last match on Friday I had to mull to 4 on the play. I managed to win, though, after finally finding a hand that was actually playable--and then getting quite lucky.
Maybe the best idea would be to run some simple hypergeometric probability tests to calculate the odds of drawing out of a one-land keep under different scenarios, and then commit the results to memory. Ex: odds of drawing land #2 by T2 while on the draw/play; odds of drawing a land or a Serum Visions on T1 while on the draw; odds of drawing a land or Ancient Stirrings on T1 after keeping six; odds of drawing specifically a dual land by T2, etc. The parameters would obviously vary quite a bit between decks.
Last I would advise never to look at the top card(s) of your library after making a mull decision. The information tells you nothing real and only tends to lead to self-doubt.
Like others have said, it's obviously pretty matchup dependent. But you don't keep 1 land hands unless you have certain plays against a deck or if your potential 2 drop is something like Stony Silence that can nearly just win the game, a game that otherwise would be super tough.
In some decks, you can keep a 1 land hand easily. Bogles comes to mind. Burn. Coco when you have multiple mana dorks and a land opens up your hand completely. But 1 land keeps are not even automatic for these decks. In some scenarios, like not having a 1 drop for Bogles or Burn vs. some matchups, it may be a mulligan. It just really depends. When I play vs. matchups where I have no chance of winning, like Ad Nauseam quite often, I tend to have more loose keeps or deep mulligans trying to find interaction. Just remember, a minor speed bump for your opponent that slows you down too is not usually going to be as effective as just having your nut draw or close to it.
I have been having hands with no sideboard cards in games 2 and 3 quite often recently. It doesn't matter if I side in 4 cards or 11, it seems to happen the same way. Or, I'll have the SB card, but a 0 land hand or a completely non-functional hand. This affects my thinking and I tend to be very results oriented. This is bad. When I played more often and was a pretty solid player, I would not fall into these traps. Even if the same thing happened literally 100 times in a row! You have to start being more math based if you truly want to be successful in this game, which includes an outrageous number of reps vs. certain decks. That tends to get players away from the results oriented thinking, which I personally can't do right now because I don't play much recently.
I think if I could say just one sentence, it's to have a plan. If you're playing against a CoCo, deck plan for them to mana dork, then 2 drop or 3 drop (considering the implications of specific ones), and then what Collected Company can potentially hit. If you're against Death's Shadow, consider Thoughtseize into Thought Scour and Tasigur, then a Death's Shadow. How does your hand stack up against that? And did your opponent mulligan too? Often you can read how strong an opponent's hand is by looking at them. I often have a nut hand and go deep into the tank whether to keep or mull. But I also do snap keeps sometimes when I have a good hand or a shaky one. But the effect only goes so far, so don't rely completely on this.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)My best advice is to know your deck. Decks that you build, you know exactly what you want, and how risky you can be, because you designed it.
Another thing to consider would be doing some math. Pull up a Hyper-Geometric Calculator and run some numbers to see how risky it is to keep 1/2/3 land hands, and the %chance youll draw another with the remaining cards in your library (53 on turn 1, 52 on turn 2, etc).
Lastly, sit down and goldfish 100 hands. Keep them all and play a singleplayer game of magic. See what works, and take note of it.
I think the key piece of information is knowing how good or bad the matchup is for your deck. If it's a really bad matchup, then you have no choice but to mulligan aggressively. If it's a strong matchup, then keep the playable hand.
Another consideration is how much card draw filtering you have available. Decks with cantrips and scry effects have a much greater chance of finding answers whereas a deck that just topdecks is more reliant on mulligans to get relevant hate.
It's just a basic principle I use to calculate risks, and it's helped me many a time.
Against death and taxes
I'm playing Vizier coco, and I'm on the play.
- Keep a hand of one land, noble hierarch, 2x devoted druid, coco, Vizier, chord.
Seems ok, right? Turn 1 hierarch. All I need is a land/hierarch survive and I'm able to put multiple mana producing guys on the field, with the combo in-hand if I can dodge early removal.
I also figure that D&T plays path as its main removal spell, so I was relatively safe in terms of my noble hierarch. They play a grindy game and this hand has pieces to get me there.
What actually happened was that he dismembered my hierarch (a spicy one-of from his sideboard) and I never saw another land. He spent the remainder of the game apologising as he chipped in with a few medium creatures.
Those are the kinds of keeps I'm making all the time. Not ideal, suboptimal, but probably too good to pass for a random 6. Maybe. This is the problem, I'm relying on luck to 'get there' and these kinds of decisions seem to result in getting punished more often than they pay off.
What's brought this to the forefront of my mind is that I see successful pro players making these kinds of risky keeps and they get rewarded for them. I watch streams, tournament coverage and all kinds of reports on the decks I'm playing and it looks like having any kind of deep run in a tournament requires making these keeps and hoping for the best, getting rewarded for doing so. I'm not having that sort of success unfortunately so my tournament performance is more like 3-1 than 4-0 if you get my meaning.
As much as I'd like to attribute this sort of thing to luck (and that's certainly part of it!) I reckon there's another skill-based aspect which I'm missing. The example above is a one-off but it's representative of my wider experience. I'm using my knowledge of deck composition to evaluate their chosen removal suite, their approximate clock, types of disruption and my own game plan. But, I'm finding that these keeps don't play out for me. I'm left feeling a bit disillusioned about the whole thing because when I make the choice to keep, it feels like I've considered as many factors as possible and made a balanced positive decision for my best shot at winning. But I just get slammed by flooding or not drawing a land. It happens enough that it prompted me to make a comment, so this isn't a one-in-a-blue-moon thing that's made me salty one time, I'm genuinely wondering what's up. Variance? Bad shuffling?
(I'm genuinely of the opinion that my shuffling sucks. I can "randomise" a pile of cards insofar as neither player has knowledge of the order, but I find with an extremely high degree of regularity that whatever I'm doing does not break apart clumps of lands/spells between games adequately enough. I get mana screwed a *lot*. I basically mash-shuffle ten or twelve times, sometimes more, varying the 'weave' a little as I go to increase randomness. Apparently I'm doing it wrong though haha.) to give an indication of this, I'm running a deck with 21 lands and at my recent fnm, I drew a total of 6 no-land hands across three rounds and had to Mulligan to five in every match at least once. Thankfully, I'm still able to cobble together wins through dumb luck and sheer determination, but something is going on.
Keep in mind as well that for every player you see that gets lucky making a questionable keep work, there are 2 others who it doesn't work for and they lost and that is why you don't see them.
BWTokens
GCollected Stompany
BWGUSeance Insanity
URUR Bloo
of course, understandable.
doesn't explain why people are able to consistently make these risky all-in style keeps and yet also consistently do very well in large tournament settings.
there's more going on of course, but focusing on this detail, I see the more prominent players in the magic pro circuit doing this sort of thing all the time and it seems to be part of their way to win - high risk high reward? who knows.
In that particular example, I think that hand is just on this side of a keep. The number of mono-white D&T players running Dismember (or Gutshot) is extremely low. Even when your opponent does, you're roughly 38% to hit a land (assuming 21 land) on each of your draws and mono-white D&T is durdly enough to win with the combo even after missing a couple land drops. You'll hit at least one land in your next three draws in 3/4 games, although the flip side is that in the 1/4 you don't you'll almost assuredly lose.
You're probably right on your shuffling technique. The odds of drawing a 0 land opener in a 21 land deck is around 4%. Doing it 6 times in 9 games is very unlikely by chance. When in doubt, play around with a hypergeometric calculator to see how likely certain cards are to show up and try to imagine whether that's a 7 (or 10 or 15) that wins versus a given opponent.
Unsure what you mean or are implying. Care to elaborate?
I'm pretty sure he's saying to be wary of your opponents. Shuffling their deck prevents some solid percentage of the shuffling cheats we've all seen on camera. Also have an idea of how a double sleeved 60 card Modern deck feels like and an single sleeved 60 card Modern deck feels like.
I played at the Regionals where Alex Bertoncini won. You best believe that if I played him, I'd be a bit careful.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Typically I'd shy away from 1 land plus 1 CMC=1 mana dork for this exact reason - if it dies before you untap you get mana screwed. But against D+T your line of thinking was correct. Their removal of choice is Path, which still gets you there.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
I 3rd this if it wasn't clear from above. I think most people here agree with that keep.
There's really 2 ways to look at it. Vizier Coco has a good matchup against D and T, so you can trust that your deck will give you a better hand. But honestly your hand already has everything (mostly, barring specific cards coming up) it needs to destroy D and T. From the standpoint of you keeping, it may seem a tiny bit risky, but it is WAAAAY more risky mulliganing that hand and hoping to have a better 6 vs. D and T.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)But I'm fairly sure the pros you speak about know their decks and the probability of drawing certain things. This helps with keeping the risky keep. If I'm on Tron and have a green source and a strings in hand on the play and a map I'm keeping that. That's much different than being in esper control and having a black white source with a path, seize, serum visions. That 1 lander is a certain throw back.
If you can rule out variance and find that you're regularly getting punished for risky keeps, dial back the risk a bit.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
Landcronomicon