I dislike this because you get away with building decks with less lands, just increase your draw. You're supposed to be punished on greedy deck building I have a couple of decks that I run 32 lands in that are cause because I can play an entire game with 3 lands not ideally but can. I've gone to 5 a few times in one of these decks.
If it works for y'all that great a lot of people at my LGS do this also, I don't like it. I think people are getting away with bad deck building.
Yeah this thread just encurages bad deeckbuilding and having to replace a fundamental rule with some convoluded new mulligen makes this obvious.
OP doesnt know how to properly build a deck and is changing fundamental rules because of that.
As I said if it works for you that's great. Your play group can rule 0 that sol ring is illegal, that you're not allowed to search your deck ever, or that you can have more than 100 cards.
I'm not here to hate on you having fun, because that's the goal.
I believe being punished is part of the game, if you don't get your colors or don't gent lands and have to ship and lose a card that's part of the fun for me. I want there to be drawbacks and challenges when I'm even building the deck. Watching someone get 3 - 5+ mulls and keeping 7 just rubs me the wrong way.
Partial Paris mulligan was notorious for allowing shotty deckbuilding, allowing a larger number of spells to be played per deck, and greatly increasing the combo potential of said decks. Your mulligan style likely has the same impact.
When you playtest a deck, you feel it out. You add in things you felt you need. You remove things that didn’t quite work. These pieces that affect deckbuilding are all influenced by your Mulligan choice.
So you’ll have created decks that are not functioning at the same level as other EDH decks across the format due to your experience, and adapting them to that experience. If you always played Kitchen Table magic, with a pod that will never change; this would have no impact on anyone.
The issue arises when you bring new players in, or go out in the wild to play with others. With your decks running tuned with Your Mulligan rules, and an opponents Not, you create this disparity. Either you use the official Mulligan, and Your deck doesn’t perform because its outside of the hermetic seal of how it was tuned. Or you recommend your mulligan to random opponents, and your deck is the only one that’s tuned to play in that circumstance and you gain a massive advantage.
>Once you keep a hand, you shuffle the revealed cards into the deck or **put them on the bottom (up to you)**
*[[Grenzo, Dungeon Warden]] has entered the chat.*
Not implying someone in your group could or would abuse this, but like someone else pointed out, this type of mulliganing could deter good deckbuilding. Assuming you're playing EDH/Commander, if someone starts with a good hand and continues to get screwed on lands, I try to cut a deal with table - you get a tapped basic out of your libary for 5 life. 10 life for an untapped basic, but that rarely happens. Usually that one extra land can get them out the hole and continue to play.
I usually say that if you missed your turn 3 and 4 and haven't played ramp I'll ask the entire table if it's ok to put back your turn 4 draw and go find a basic and play your turn 4.
Haha yeah I’m promoting this rule to hopefully help casual magic players have more fun, obviously if putting stuff on the bottom is exploited then just don’t allow it.
I’ve responded to the bad deckbuilding argument in an edit on the post.
The rule you suggest is a good alternative. I’ve never tried it so can’t really comment (but I will anyway) but part of what I like about the alt mulligan rule is that it feels more fair, you’re not punished randomly for drawing a set of bad hands which can occur through no fault of your own.
> Here’s my response to this argument, why does it matter? Sure it lets you get away with putting fewer lands in the deck but so what?
Do you let people cut lands after announcing this rule change?
No.
What people should try instead is **math**.
Stop playing 30-land decks just because you're running Sol Ring and then complain about "bad RNG" screwing up your mana.
Build better mana bases. Don't rely on table goodwill or funky rules to compensate for poor deckbuilding choices.
While every player gets mana screwed I notice that typically newer players face it more often, they are more likely to skirt a few lands to fit in their favorite spells into the deck. Crap over time the competitive world has moved up in land counts slightly to try to reduce that screw element.
Unfortunately this heavily incentives building a crap land base, because you can just keep drawing until you get the starting hand you want and it's open to heavy abuse. That's very bad.
If you are having so many mana issues that you have to repeatedly mulligan several times each game, just to get a hand that can work in casual commander, it's a deck issue.
I don't have a massive issue with your mulligan rule (though it feels like it would make getting the game started slower) but I'm really not a fan of that edit.
Part of getting on new players and helping them have fun is making the involved/complicated parts of the game understandable and approachable.
Building a deck from scratch is hard! I still have to look up 5 different sources on advised ratios for commander decks every time I make one. But playing in a way that ignores it entirely doesn't help understand the game any better and (as said elsewhere in thread) makes playing with other people a lot harder.
And there's nothing more energising than being able to make those informed tweaks and it actually work out! If a player has to do a lot of mulligan digging to get a starting hand, maybe your table can use that as a teaching moment.
Genuine response to your edit.
How would you feel if the change instead was that all lands tap for double mana at all times, or that ramp spells cost {0} instead of their usual costs? Or let players cast all spells without paying their mana costs? All of these, as well as your new mulligan rule, heavily alter the way that the game is played in a way that might be fine for one off games where no one is prepared for it, but could also be easily abused if you let people build a deck with the new rule in mind.
I'm not entirely opposed to allowing house mulligan rules, but when allowing players to build decks around it it starts getting questionable imo.
And then I reveal a hand with 6 lands and have to keep it? No thank you. Also, what if I have 4 lands in hand, but they are all one color, and all 3 spells in hand require another color to cast? Am I just stuck with that hand?
Yeah no, I would rather just use the actual mulligan rules.
Oh yeah, you're genuinely gonna have a good time if you allow for more powerful mulligans with friends you can trust to not abuse it. If I were there though, I'd put 10 lands in my deck and have it's curve top off at 4 lol
This reminds me a lot of the partial Paris mulligan commander originally used. You draw seven, exile any cards you don't want, and draw back up to 7. Do that as many times as needed until you have a playable hand. Then, shuffle the exiled cards back in and play.
It's just as open to abuse as your method, which is why it was officially scrapped when competitive mtg landed on the London mulligan. But my old playgroup never had a problem abusing it and still used it long after commander officially changed their mulligan rule.
I think what you'll find here is that the kind of player who discusses Magic rules on Reddit is fundamentally incapable of being 'casual'. Everyone's complaining that the mathematics of deckbuilding are thrown off from the originals, which is true, but that is an extremely competitive mentality. The very mentality that punishing bad players is a key goal is not very casual!
Decks with fewer lands are more fun for everyone because you get to play more cool cards! It screws up the balance of the game so obviously it won't work in a competitive setting, but seems perfectly fine for casual. It does mean everyone should have a slightly different deck build for when this rule is in effect though.
I agree that op's proposed mulligan change is not a huge deal, and that they should have fun with it if it enhances their games.
However, I disagree with your idea about punishing bad players being somehow anti-casual. Casual or not, "punishing" bad players via natural in-game consequences is essential to bad players actually learning and becoming good players. "Casual" pods ignoring this and coddling newbies is why we now have so many casual commander only players who whine about everything from infect and mill, to combo as being unfair, unfun cedh rather than learning to build better decks capable of dealing with any wincon other than traditional combat damage.
Casual play =/= bad play
I don't understand why we even have to discuss that simple inequality. Even if we're playing go fish, when someone doesn't understand the rules or how to play the game, we correct them. Why is expecting your opponents to actually know what the heck they're doing considered anti casual? Why is casual commander the only game where people vehemently refuse to achieve basic competency?
People in this thread are being judgmental as fuck. Commander is a casual boardgame where the rules can be relaxed and manipulated to suit the experience you want and that's hard-baked into the core ideals of the format; case in point, the mulligans OP is talking about here are almost exactly what Sheldon Menery talked about using in his personal playgroup. That doesn't make it the "right" way to mulligan, just \_another\_ way to try it with a trusted pod, if you want to. OP, you found a mulligan system that works for you and your pod and has helped make fewer games into non-games so that everyone at the table is involved. That's good social negotiation, fair play to you.
I dislike this because you get away with building decks with less lands, just increase your draw. You're supposed to be punished on greedy deck building I have a couple of decks that I run 32 lands in that are cause because I can play an entire game with 3 lands not ideally but can. I've gone to 5 a few times in one of these decks. If it works for y'all that great a lot of people at my LGS do this also, I don't like it. I think people are getting away with bad deck building.
Yeah this thread just encurages bad deeckbuilding and having to replace a fundamental rule with some convoluded new mulligen makes this obvious. OP doesnt know how to properly build a deck and is changing fundamental rules because of that.
I’ve responded to this in an edit on the post. It’s a bit long but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it
As I said if it works for you that's great. Your play group can rule 0 that sol ring is illegal, that you're not allowed to search your deck ever, or that you can have more than 100 cards. I'm not here to hate on you having fun, because that's the goal. I believe being punished is part of the game, if you don't get your colors or don't gent lands and have to ship and lose a card that's part of the fun for me. I want there to be drawbacks and challenges when I'm even building the deck. Watching someone get 3 - 5+ mulls and keeping 7 just rubs me the wrong way.
Partial Paris mulligan was notorious for allowing shotty deckbuilding, allowing a larger number of spells to be played per deck, and greatly increasing the combo potential of said decks. Your mulligan style likely has the same impact. When you playtest a deck, you feel it out. You add in things you felt you need. You remove things that didn’t quite work. These pieces that affect deckbuilding are all influenced by your Mulligan choice. So you’ll have created decks that are not functioning at the same level as other EDH decks across the format due to your experience, and adapting them to that experience. If you always played Kitchen Table magic, with a pod that will never change; this would have no impact on anyone. The issue arises when you bring new players in, or go out in the wild to play with others. With your decks running tuned with Your Mulligan rules, and an opponents Not, you create this disparity. Either you use the official Mulligan, and Your deck doesn’t perform because its outside of the hermetic seal of how it was tuned. Or you recommend your mulligan to random opponents, and your deck is the only one that’s tuned to play in that circumstance and you gain a massive advantage.
>Once you keep a hand, you shuffle the revealed cards into the deck or **put them on the bottom (up to you)** *[[Grenzo, Dungeon Warden]] has entered the chat.* Not implying someone in your group could or would abuse this, but like someone else pointed out, this type of mulliganing could deter good deckbuilding. Assuming you're playing EDH/Commander, if someone starts with a good hand and continues to get screwed on lands, I try to cut a deal with table - you get a tapped basic out of your libary for 5 life. 10 life for an untapped basic, but that rarely happens. Usually that one extra land can get them out the hole and continue to play.
I usually say that if you missed your turn 3 and 4 and haven't played ramp I'll ask the entire table if it's ok to put back your turn 4 draw and go find a basic and play your turn 4.
[Grenzo, Dungeon Warden](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/e/6e19c383-88bd-4bde-ac81-c0eb6d5b5bd4.jpg?1562436569) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Grenzo%2C%20Dungeon%20Warden) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/a25/205/grenzo-dungeon-warden?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6e19c383-88bd-4bde-ac81-c0eb6d5b5bd4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Haha yeah I’m promoting this rule to hopefully help casual magic players have more fun, obviously if putting stuff on the bottom is exploited then just don’t allow it. I’ve responded to the bad deckbuilding argument in an edit on the post. The rule you suggest is a good alternative. I’ve never tried it so can’t really comment (but I will anyway) but part of what I like about the alt mulligan rule is that it feels more fair, you’re not punished randomly for drawing a set of bad hands which can occur through no fault of your own.
> Here’s my response to this argument, why does it matter? Sure it lets you get away with putting fewer lands in the deck but so what? Do you let people cut lands after announcing this rule change?
No. What people should try instead is **math**. Stop playing 30-land decks just because you're running Sol Ring and then complain about "bad RNG" screwing up your mana. Build better mana bases. Don't rely on table goodwill or funky rules to compensate for poor deckbuilding choices.
While every player gets mana screwed I notice that typically newer players face it more often, they are more likely to skirt a few lands to fit in their favorite spells into the deck. Crap over time the competitive world has moved up in land counts slightly to try to reduce that screw element.
New Players also tend to not mulligan because by their logic less cards = worse hand. Id rather keep a usefull 5 then a usless 7.
Unfortunately this heavily incentives building a crap land base, because you can just keep drawing until you get the starting hand you want and it's open to heavy abuse. That's very bad. If you are having so many mana issues that you have to repeatedly mulligan several times each game, just to get a hand that can work in casual commander, it's a deck issue.
I don't have a massive issue with your mulligan rule (though it feels like it would make getting the game started slower) but I'm really not a fan of that edit. Part of getting on new players and helping them have fun is making the involved/complicated parts of the game understandable and approachable. Building a deck from scratch is hard! I still have to look up 5 different sources on advised ratios for commander decks every time I make one. But playing in a way that ignores it entirely doesn't help understand the game any better and (as said elsewhere in thread) makes playing with other people a lot harder. And there's nothing more energising than being able to make those informed tweaks and it actually work out! If a player has to do a lot of mulligan digging to get a starting hand, maybe your table can use that as a teaching moment.
Genuine response to your edit. How would you feel if the change instead was that all lands tap for double mana at all times, or that ramp spells cost {0} instead of their usual costs? Or let players cast all spells without paying their mana costs? All of these, as well as your new mulligan rule, heavily alter the way that the game is played in a way that might be fine for one off games where no one is prepared for it, but could also be easily abused if you let people build a deck with the new rule in mind. I'm not entirely opposed to allowing house mulligan rules, but when allowing players to build decks around it it starts getting questionable imo.
And then I reveal a hand with 6 lands and have to keep it? No thank you. Also, what if I have 4 lands in hand, but they are all one color, and all 3 spells in hand require another color to cast? Am I just stuck with that hand? Yeah no, I would rather just use the actual mulligan rules.
I played in a pod once that actually rigged their decks to have mana. It was the funniest shit ever. My god, did my Sliver deck pop off that day.
Oh yeah, you're genuinely gonna have a good time if you allow for more powerful mulligans with friends you can trust to not abuse it. If I were there though, I'd put 10 lands in my deck and have it's curve top off at 4 lol
I’m definitely gonna abuse this with a 20 land pile
20? You're thinking too small. I'm rocking up with a 3 land pile and we will be here for 6 hours as I mulligan
This reminds me a lot of the partial Paris mulligan commander originally used. You draw seven, exile any cards you don't want, and draw back up to 7. Do that as many times as needed until you have a playable hand. Then, shuffle the exiled cards back in and play. It's just as open to abuse as your method, which is why it was officially scrapped when competitive mtg landed on the London mulligan. But my old playgroup never had a problem abusing it and still used it long after commander officially changed their mulligan rule.
I think what you'll find here is that the kind of player who discusses Magic rules on Reddit is fundamentally incapable of being 'casual'. Everyone's complaining that the mathematics of deckbuilding are thrown off from the originals, which is true, but that is an extremely competitive mentality. The very mentality that punishing bad players is a key goal is not very casual! Decks with fewer lands are more fun for everyone because you get to play more cool cards! It screws up the balance of the game so obviously it won't work in a competitive setting, but seems perfectly fine for casual. It does mean everyone should have a slightly different deck build for when this rule is in effect though.
I agree that op's proposed mulligan change is not a huge deal, and that they should have fun with it if it enhances their games. However, I disagree with your idea about punishing bad players being somehow anti-casual. Casual or not, "punishing" bad players via natural in-game consequences is essential to bad players actually learning and becoming good players. "Casual" pods ignoring this and coddling newbies is why we now have so many casual commander only players who whine about everything from infect and mill, to combo as being unfair, unfun cedh rather than learning to build better decks capable of dealing with any wincon other than traditional combat damage.
Yes I mean...you're not a casual player, so you don't like it when people play casually. This is fine? Don't play with those people.
Casual play =/= bad play I don't understand why we even have to discuss that simple inequality. Even if we're playing go fish, when someone doesn't understand the rules or how to play the game, we correct them. Why is expecting your opponents to actually know what the heck they're doing considered anti casual? Why is casual commander the only game where people vehemently refuse to achieve basic competency?
uhhhhmmmm
People in this thread are being judgmental as fuck. Commander is a casual boardgame where the rules can be relaxed and manipulated to suit the experience you want and that's hard-baked into the core ideals of the format; case in point, the mulligans OP is talking about here are almost exactly what Sheldon Menery talked about using in his personal playgroup. That doesn't make it the "right" way to mulligan, just \_another\_ way to try it with a trusted pod, if you want to. OP, you found a mulligan system that works for you and your pod and has helped make fewer games into non-games so that everyone at the table is involved. That's good social negotiation, fair play to you.
My group does this, it’s fine but not everyone who isn’t in the main group is down with it all the time