This thread is for the discussion of my latest article, Off Topic: A Short Guide to Mulliganing. We would be grateful if you would let us know what you think, but please keep your comments on topic.
The article title was maybe a little misleading here? Possibly I missed the key ideas, but it seemed to me less of a guide to the vital but tricky art of mulligan decisions and more about advocating deck choices which seldom need to mulligan. (It may be good advice, but that's not the point! :p)
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I really agree with the final points about basing very close mulligan decisions based on tells your opponent gives you.
One example I remember: I was playing a 5cc Merfolk-style aggro deck with Force of Will back in Extended (in the days when it was Ice Age thru Mercadian Masques plus Revised duals). My opponent was playing a slower deck and Swords to Plowshares was their best card against me, and they knew it.
This hand would obliterate a hand without Swords to Plowshares, but would lose horribly to that card. My opponent grimaced when they looked at their seven, thought hard, then said 'keep' underconfidently (and I could tell they weren't bluffing). I knew the hand was a keeper, and confidentally put double Curiosity on my Elves, and drew so many cards I quickly had an unassailable lead.
Without that tell, I would have mulliganed that hand, and likely lost the game.
My opening hand has 3 of the right land: I should keep, right? Maybe. How fast is the format or the deck? Decks like Vial-Goblins, Red Deck Wins, and even Lightsaber-Naya are about speed. In those cases, a slow hand is a losing hand. Yeah, I know it sucks throwing back a three, land hand. When an archetype is defined by its speed, the tempo of the deck must be considered before saying keep.
Consider the implications of this. (The quote refers to the rock elf deck in the article, but the argument holds true for most legacy decks).
A seven card hand with 3 lands in it is better than a six card hand with 2 lands in it (both have 4 spells). The first hand guarantees making your third land drop, which even makes it "faster", if by speed you mean being able to empty your hand as quickly as possible.
A six card hand with only 1 land gets you one more spell, but you're very likely to miss your second or third land drop, which hardly equals greater speed. The conclusion is that decks such as this shouldn't mulligan a 3 land hand, at least not for the fact of it having 3 lands and to increase "speed".
If you do mulligan a 3 land hand with a deck like this, it's because of mana mismatch or poor spell selection (no one-drops etc).
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If you are properly randomizing your deck while you shuffle, then shuffling more is not going to make you mulligan less. If you are not properly randomizing your deck while you shuffle, then you are cheating.
If you are properly randomizing your deck while you shuffle, then shuffling more is not going to make you mulligan less. If you are not properly randomizing your deck while you shuffle, then you are cheating.
A completely randomized deck of 40 spells and 20 lands should produce 2.3 lands in a starting seven on average. Randomization revolves around a mean and standards of deviation. A deck that isn't completely randomized will have junks of land and spells. This produces weird draws outside the standards of deviation. Complete randomization statistically produces betters draws. Decks not shuffled properly will deviate more from the mean.
In essence, randomized decks produce better draws on average.
A deck that isn't completely randomized will have junks of land and spells.
Randomizing is to break up the clumps from the previous game (lands and graveyards for example), however, you break up these clumps, but because it's *random* you run the risk of creating new clumps.
However, not sure why, but some people believe that the more you randomize the closer you approach the perfect 2 spells 1 land pattern, which is a complete fallacy.
Decks not shuffled properly will deviate more from the mean.
Technically, insufficiently randomized decks carry a penalty
As judges we still have an issue with what exactly defines a 'legal' shuffle - you'll note the only recent changes to shuffling docs are that pile 'shuffling' is no longer considered shuffling at all (do it ONCE by all means, to count the cards in your deck and that of your opponent).
Generally we allow riffle shuffling 4 times or more, but statistically if you want to randomise completely, you should do it around 7 times. Sounds like a lot, but riffle shuffling (and the variants for the dexterity-challenged like myself) are super quick - to be honest you can probably manage those 7 times in the time it'd take to do a pile shuffle!
If a player does what you suggest (shuffle lots between rounds and then just does a quick shuffle at the start of the round) he's likely looking at a game loss penalty. Shuffling is not just about what *you* have done to your deck, but what your opponent has *seen* you do to your deck
I cannot agree with the "keep a bad hand to intimidate your opponent into mulliganing" argument. Regardless of if you manage to fool your opponent, you are left with a bad hand that you need to win with.
Also agree with the others: a properly randomization of the deck is not done to produce better draws, it is done because it is required.
In essence, randomized decks produce better draws on average.
Arguably, a non-randomized deck could provide better draws (stacked deck).
I cannot agree with the "keep a bad hand to intimidate your opponent into mulliganing" argument. Regardless of if you manage to fool your opponent, you are left with a bad hand that you need to win with.
Also agree with the others: a properly randomization of the deck is not done to produce better draws, it is done because it is required.
Arguably, a non-randomized deck could provide better draws (stacked deck).
He added the on average bit for a reason. The key is consistency.
He added the on average bit for a reason. The key is consistency.
The "on average" makes no sense in this context. Whether the draws will be better or worse on average if you perfectly randomize the deck depends entirely on how the deck is stacked before you start shuffling.
For example, if you stack the deck perfectly the average draw will be worse the more you shuffle the deck.
On the other hand, if you pile all the lands on top of the spells, the average draw will tend to get better the more you shuffle.
Also, you can gain a lot of information of your next draws if the deck is not properly shuffled. For example, if you draw your only copy of Yawgmoth's Will, you can assume that you will draw a Dark Ritual soon, because they were placed next to each other before you started your (limited) shuffling of the deck. Information like this can give a significant advantage.
I'm not advocating cheating like this, I'm just saying that the claim that "randomized decks produce better draws on average" isn't necessarily true.
A completely randomized deck of 40 spells and 20 lands should produce 2.3 lands in a starting seven on average. Randomization revolves around a mean and standards of deviation. A deck that isn't completely randomized will have junks of land and spells. This produces weird draws outside the standards of deviation. Complete randomization statistically produces betters draws. Decks not shuffled properly will deviate more from the mean.
In essence, randomized decks produce better draws on average.
For the record, there's no such thing as a "standard of deviation". The term you're meaning is "standard deviation". As you seem to know, the standard deviation is a standardized unit of measurement for describing how far a value deviates from the mean. The phrase "standard of deviation" would if anything refer to a set of regulations governing minimum quality of the execution of a process labeled "deviation".
Call me a Grammar Nazi, but I promise you that the kind of mindset that pays attention to that kind of detail will also improve your Magic game.
Also, I'm bored and feel like typing on my lunch break. So sue me.
The "on average" makes no sense in this context. Whether the draws will be better or worse on average if you perfectly randomize the deck depends entirely on how the deck is stacked before you start shuffling.
For example, if you stack the deck perfectly the average draw will be worse the more you shuffle the deck.
On the other hand, if you pile all the lands on top of the spells, the average draw will tend to get better the more you shuffle.
Also, you can gain a lot of information of your next draws if the deck is not properly shuffled. For example, if you draw your only copy of Yawgmoth's Will, you can assume that you will draw a Dark Ritual soon, because they were placed next to each other before you started your (limited) shuffling of the deck. Information like this can give a significant advantage.
I'm not advocating cheating like this, I'm just saying that the claim that "randomized decks produce better draws on average" isn't necessarily true.
Sorry, I'm afraid I don't follow you. He's stating that you will get more consistent ( read: better ) draws if you randomize a deck. You're stating that you'll get EVEN better draws if you stack ( don't randomize ) your deck. What exactly are you trying to prove by saying that stacked decks draw better than randomized ones?
To be on topic, I really think that intimacy with your deck comes from playtesting. A lot. And that is where randomized decks are very, very important.
Sorry, I'm afraid I don't follow you. He's stating that you will get more consistent ( read: better ) draws if you randomize a deck. You're stating that you'll get EVEN better draws if you stack ( don't randomize ) your deck. What exactly are you trying to prove by saying that stacked decks draw better than randomized ones?
I'll rephrase, and hopefully it will be more clear:
If you don't perfectly randomize your deck, it is more or less stacked. If you have information of how the deck was stacked before you started shuffling, you can assume that the card order is somewhat similar after shuffling (since the shuffling was limited). If the card order before shuffling was ideal, it is likely that the card order after shuffling will have similar qualities. In addition to this, you can do some qualified guesses on what cards you will draw next. Thus, you gain advantages by not perfectly randomizing your deck.
In fact, this reminds me of a friend of mine who after a finished game put his hand, graveyard and permanents in play on the bottom of his library. Then - he claimed - he could just start the next game by drawing from the top of his library, since those cards were randomized. What he didn't realize was that his deck practically was stacked; he knew what cards were at the bottom of his library, and therefore he indirectely had information of the cards on the top of his library.
Sorry for the long post. Hopefully I made myself more clear now.
A properly randomized deck doesn't go "spell spell land, spell spell land"... that's a stacked deck.
The math has been done exhaustively in other articles, but a randomized deck with 23 land will have something like 5-11 "clumps" in it, on average. (a clump being a string of 2+ land)
7 shuffles isn't enough to completely randomize a deck. I believe the minimum for 60 cards is 8. Again the math has been done exhaustively in other articles, but the *minimum* to have it possible for a deck ordered 1-2-3-4.. to, by riffle shuffling, end up 60-59-58-57... is 8 shuffles. But that's minimum.
If you want to be good about it, go for 9-12.
I think the tournament rules mandate 4 shuffles minimum, which is woefully insufficient, and why I always shuffle my opponent's decks at least 4-6 times. More if they're just bad at shuffling.
Then they have the gall to wonder why they're not getting perfectly 2 spells 1 land draws anymore... lol.
@ Jiggy. Not a problem. Proof that I shouldn't write a retort during the late hours of the night.
A quick blurb: I don't know where this cheating and stacking thing is coming from since I am whole-heartedly promoting shuffling followed by more shuffling. The more shuffling in my mind the better. Shuffling randomizes decks.
If people want to argue the point randomizing doesn't necessarily result in better draws, I can participate in that discussion.
Commenting on the article first, I think this article was somewhere between okay and good. In my experience in magic, I think that more games are lost due to bad mulligan decisions than anything else at middle level magic. That alone warrants an article like this. About the article itself, I thought the intro was a little long. It took a while before the useful information came along. It did a good job of going through the basic reasons to mulligan though. A lot of people ignore what they are playing against when considering mulligan decisions. That is probably the most important part of mulliganing. He probably counld have added a lot of details, but he would probably have to make it a 2 part article if he did that. One thing I think Meyou left out was when considering confidence: thinking time is an issue. Being able to say keep after looking at a hand for about two seconds is pretty intimidating and can force more aggresive mulliganing. Looking at it from the opposite direction, if your opponent is taking time to decide whether to keep or mulligan, it's probably a borderline hand and they are close to throwing it back.
Overall I thought this was a good read.
And about this shuffling argument. The claim under dispute is shuffling or randomization lessens the need to mulligan. As a generality it is true. Since blind shuffling is involved, no one can put things into any particular order, the only thing that can happen is that things fall out of order. Clumps are a specific order of cards actively ordered by a player. The randomization, by nature, destroys that order. Of course there are always exceptions, but those exceptions are rare enough to make a statement of generality. Shuffling reduces clumps. And for practical reasons that's all we care about. So yes shuffling reduces the need to mulligan.
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Shuffling reduces clumps. And for practical reasons that's all we care about. So yes shuffling reduces the need to mulligan.
Your definition of a 'clump' was an ordered group of cards known by the player. So shuffling does indeed break them up, but by your logic it has nothing to do with mulliganing :s
There's 2 issues here.
1 - The requirements to randomize (prevents cheating).
2 - The desire to spread out mana / spells in a favourable pattern (prevents mulliganing).
The need for (1) above is obvious from a tournament perspective.
Note however that the rules and the game actually don't care one bit about part (2), that's purely personal.
Starting from a known deck configuration (after a previous game for example) likely means your deck is stacked in an unfavourable manner, so yes, shuffling and lots will generally make the deck draw better. But if you start with a random deck and shuffle it, you still only end up with a random deck. Sounds obvious but there is a point where shuffling becomes unecessary - you can't have more random than random.
And finally, it doesn't matter how much you shuffle, a random deck will almost always have clumps of lands and spells. That's just how it goes. If it were otherwise, it wouldn't be random!
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Currently playing: Mono White Control.
This article had some useful information & touched on some interesting points, but I was pretty surprised at the horrible grammar throughout the entire text. Do these articles not go through a proofreading process by someone other than the author before posting? There weren't just one or two mistakes, either. Bad, lazy grammar was used at least several times in each paragraph, often making portions of the article nearly unintelligible. No one's perfect (I certainly am not), but there is no way that this article was given even the most perfunctory of proofreads. For a website with so many readers & members as Sally, I'd expect a bit more professionalism.
/grammar rant :-D
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This article really helped me, I'm a very new player and I often find myself basing my mulligan decision off of one card that I like in my hand even though it contains very little mana and hoping to simply draw land the next several turns and regretting the decision immediately after I say 'keep'.
This article had some useful information & touched on some interesting points, but I was pretty surprised at the horrible grammar throughout the entire text. Do these articles not go through a proofreading process by someone other than the author before posting? There weren't just one or two mistakes, either. Bad, lazy grammar was used at least several times in each paragraph, often making portions of the article nearly unintelligible. No one's perfect (I certainly am not), but there is no way that this article was given even the most perfunctory of proofreads. For a website with so many readers & members as Sally, I'd expect a bit more professionalism.
/grammar rant :-D
The mtgsalvation articles are written by unpaid writers and editors. We do it for the love of the game. This also includes moderators and other staff. If anyone feels they can have a positive impact, please feel free to offer your services. We do the best with what we have and who we have at our disposal. People who are willing to give up time for their expertise and insight are always welcome.
As for the grammar, feel free to point out certain examples. I used to hate writing and I am now making up for lost time. As such, I do pay attention to valid points made. It helps. It is much better when I get explanations to reasons behind them.
As such, I am glad you at least found some of it interesting regardless of the bad grammar.
It was a good article, and I apologize for my rant above. I'm just a bit of a grammar nazi. I understand that the writers & editors are unpaid contributors, I just thought that the articles would go through a proofreading process before being posted. This does not change the fact that it was a good, helpful article, however. Thanks for all that you do.
I'd actually be totally willing to assist in proofreading MTGSalvation's articles, if they'd have me :). I'm nowhere near perfect, as I said, but I'd at least be able to clean up the more obvious mistakes & change the wording around for the parts of the article that don't flow properly. It wouldn't be too much of a time commitment (and besides, it would look great on my resume :p). If this is something that MTGS would be interested in, by all means, contact me.
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(I'm on on this site much anymore. If you want to get in touch it's probably best to email me: dom@heffalumps.org)
Forum Awards: Best Writer 2005, Best Limited Strategist 2005-2012
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<Limited Clan>
One example I remember: I was playing a 5cc Merfolk-style aggro deck with Force of Will back in Extended (in the days when it was Ice Age thru Mercadian Masques plus Revised duals). My opponent was playing a slower deck and Swords to Plowshares was their best card against me, and they knew it.
I looked down at a hand of Skyshroud Elves, double Curiosity, some random 3-drop (maybe Megatherium) and three land (two Tropical Islands and a Wasteland or Rishadan Port).
This hand would obliterate a hand without Swords to Plowshares, but would lose horribly to that card. My opponent grimaced when they looked at their seven, thought hard, then said 'keep' underconfidently (and I could tell they weren't bluffing). I knew the hand was a keeper, and confidentally put double Curiosity on my Elves, and drew so many cards I quickly had an unassailable lead.
Without that tell, I would have mulliganed that hand, and likely lost the game.
Consider the implications of this. (The quote refers to the rock elf deck in the article, but the argument holds true for most legacy decks).
A seven card hand with 3 lands in it is better than a six card hand with 2 lands in it (both have 4 spells). The first hand guarantees making your third land drop, which even makes it "faster", if by speed you mean being able to empty your hand as quickly as possible.
A six card hand with only 1 land gets you one more spell, but you're very likely to miss your second or third land drop, which hardly equals greater speed. The conclusion is that decks such as this shouldn't mulligan a 3 land hand, at least not for the fact of it having 3 lands and to increase "speed".
If you do mulligan a 3 land hand with a deck like this, it's because of mana mismatch or poor spell selection (no one-drops etc).
A series of seven articles using Magic to explore the very stuff of the Universe!
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[Click here for the articles!]
A completely randomized deck of 40 spells and 20 lands should produce 2.3 lands in a starting seven on average. Randomization revolves around a mean and standards of deviation. A deck that isn't completely randomized will have junks of land and spells. This produces weird draws outside the standards of deviation. Complete randomization statistically produces betters draws. Decks not shuffled properly will deviate more from the mean.
In essence, randomized decks produce better draws on average.
Randomizing is to break up the clumps from the previous game (lands and graveyards for example), however, you break up these clumps, but because it's *random* you run the risk of creating new clumps.
However, not sure why, but some people believe that the more you randomize the closer you approach the perfect 2 spells 1 land pattern, which is a complete fallacy.
Technically, insufficiently randomized decks carry a penalty
As judges we still have an issue with what exactly defines a 'legal' shuffle - you'll note the only recent changes to shuffling docs are that pile 'shuffling' is no longer considered shuffling at all (do it ONCE by all means, to count the cards in your deck and that of your opponent).
Generally we allow riffle shuffling 4 times or more, but statistically if you want to randomise completely, you should do it around 7 times. Sounds like a lot, but riffle shuffling (and the variants for the dexterity-challenged like myself) are super quick - to be honest you can probably manage those 7 times in the time it'd take to do a pile shuffle!
If a player does what you suggest (shuffle lots between rounds and then just does a quick shuffle at the start of the round) he's likely looking at a game loss penalty. Shuffling is not just about what *you* have done to your deck, but what your opponent has *seen* you do to your deck
Currently playing: Mono White Control.
Also agree with the others: a properly randomization of the deck is not done to produce better draws, it is done because it is required.
Arguably, a non-randomized deck could provide better draws (stacked deck).
He added the on average bit for a reason. The key is consistency.
I agree with a lot of the stuff you said, Meyou.
The "on average" makes no sense in this context. Whether the draws will be better or worse on average if you perfectly randomize the deck depends entirely on how the deck is stacked before you start shuffling.
For example, if you stack the deck perfectly the average draw will be worse the more you shuffle the deck.
On the other hand, if you pile all the lands on top of the spells, the average draw will tend to get better the more you shuffle.
Also, you can gain a lot of information of your next draws if the deck is not properly shuffled. For example, if you draw your only copy of Yawgmoth's Will, you can assume that you will draw a Dark Ritual soon, because they were placed next to each other before you started your (limited) shuffling of the deck. Information like this can give a significant advantage.
I'm not advocating cheating like this, I'm just saying that the claim that "randomized decks produce better draws on average" isn't necessarily true.
For the record, there's no such thing as a "standard of deviation". The term you're meaning is "standard deviation". As you seem to know, the standard deviation is a standardized unit of measurement for describing how far a value deviates from the mean. The phrase "standard of deviation" would if anything refer to a set of regulations governing minimum quality of the execution of a process labeled "deviation".
Call me a Grammar Nazi, but I promise you that the kind of mindset that pays attention to that kind of detail will also improve your Magic game.
Also, I'm bored and feel like typing on my lunch break. So sue me.
Sorry, I'm afraid I don't follow you. He's stating that you will get more consistent ( read: better ) draws if you randomize a deck. You're stating that you'll get EVEN better draws if you stack ( don't randomize ) your deck. What exactly are you trying to prove by saying that stacked decks draw better than randomized ones?
To be on topic, I really think that intimacy with your deck comes from playtesting. A lot. And that is where randomized decks are very, very important.
I'll rephrase, and hopefully it will be more clear:
If you don't perfectly randomize your deck, it is more or less stacked. If you have information of how the deck was stacked before you started shuffling, you can assume that the card order is somewhat similar after shuffling (since the shuffling was limited). If the card order before shuffling was ideal, it is likely that the card order after shuffling will have similar qualities. In addition to this, you can do some qualified guesses on what cards you will draw next. Thus, you gain advantages by not perfectly randomizing your deck.
In fact, this reminds me of a friend of mine who after a finished game put his hand, graveyard and permanents in play on the bottom of his library. Then - he claimed - he could just start the next game by drawing from the top of his library, since those cards were randomized. What he didn't realize was that his deck practically was stacked; he knew what cards were at the bottom of his library, and therefore he indirectely had information of the cards on the top of his library.
Sorry for the long post. Hopefully I made myself more clear now.
A properly randomized deck doesn't go "spell spell land, spell spell land"... that's a stacked deck.
The math has been done exhaustively in other articles, but a randomized deck with 23 land will have something like 5-11 "clumps" in it, on average. (a clump being a string of 2+ land)
7 shuffles isn't enough to completely randomize a deck. I believe the minimum for 60 cards is 8. Again the math has been done exhaustively in other articles, but the *minimum* to have it possible for a deck ordered 1-2-3-4.. to, by riffle shuffling, end up 60-59-58-57... is 8 shuffles. But that's minimum.
If you want to be good about it, go for 9-12.
I think the tournament rules mandate 4 shuffles minimum, which is woefully insufficient, and why I always shuffle my opponent's decks at least 4-6 times. More if they're just bad at shuffling.
Then they have the gall to wonder why they're not getting perfectly 2 spells 1 land draws anymore... lol.
A quick blurb: I don't know where this cheating and stacking thing is coming from since I am whole-heartedly promoting shuffling followed by more shuffling. The more shuffling in my mind the better. Shuffling randomizes decks.
If people want to argue the point randomizing doesn't necessarily result in better draws, I can participate in that discussion.
Overall I thought this was a good read.
And about this shuffling argument. The claim under dispute is shuffling or randomization lessens the need to mulligan. As a generality it is true. Since blind shuffling is involved, no one can put things into any particular order, the only thing that can happen is that things fall out of order. Clumps are a specific order of cards actively ordered by a player. The randomization, by nature, destroys that order. Of course there are always exceptions, but those exceptions are rare enough to make a statement of generality. Shuffling reduces clumps. And for practical reasons that's all we care about. So yes shuffling reduces the need to mulligan.
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3. Super Mario 64
2. Ocarina of Time
1. Cave Story
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There's 2 issues here.
1 - The requirements to randomize (prevents cheating).
2 - The desire to spread out mana / spells in a favourable pattern (prevents mulliganing).
The need for (1) above is obvious from a tournament perspective.
Note however that the rules and the game actually don't care one bit about part (2), that's purely personal.
Starting from a known deck configuration (after a previous game for example) likely means your deck is stacked in an unfavourable manner, so yes, shuffling and lots will generally make the deck draw better. But if you start with a random deck and shuffle it, you still only end up with a random deck. Sounds obvious but there is a point where shuffling becomes unecessary - you can't have more random than random.
And finally, it doesn't matter how much you shuffle, a random deck will almost always have clumps of lands and spells. That's just how it goes. If it were otherwise, it wouldn't be random!
Currently playing: Mono White Control.
/grammar rant :-D
The mtgsalvation articles are written by unpaid writers and editors. We do it for the love of the game. This also includes moderators and other staff. If anyone feels they can have a positive impact, please feel free to offer your services. We do the best with what we have and who we have at our disposal. People who are willing to give up time for their expertise and insight are always welcome.
As for the grammar, feel free to point out certain examples. I used to hate writing and I am now making up for lost time. As such, I do pay attention to valid points made. It helps. It is much better when I get explanations to reasons behind them.
As such, I am glad you at least found some of it interesting regardless of the bad grammar.
I'd actually be totally willing to assist in proofreading MTGSalvation's articles, if they'd have me :). I'm nowhere near perfect, as I said, but I'd at least be able to clean up the more obvious mistakes & change the wording around for the parts of the article that don't flow properly. It wouldn't be too much of a time commitment (and besides, it would look great on my resume :p). If this is something that MTGS would be interested in, by all means, contact me.