How to Mulligan | The Command Zone 504 | MTG Commander Podcast

[@nik700]

The best mulligan advice I've heard it from Sean Plott in Spellslingers: make sure that your hand has a plan without depending on future draws

[@adamrobinson6951]

This sounds good in theory, but may be overly optimistic in many casual games. Using the London mulligan rules, I find I often have to mulligan to 5 cards just to get a reasonable land/spell balance. If you're taking limitless free mulligans then you can afford to be picky, but having to accept card disadvantage often means accepting the three lands, Rampant Growth and interaction without having a threat or blocker in hand.

[@DangoHsu]

@@adamrobinson6951 It sounds like your deck needs some adjustment imo. Maybe the land/spell ratio is a bit off, or the curve is skewed too much to the higher side. It might be that we view "casual games" differently, but brewing lower power decks to me doesn't mean to just replace the higher power cards with less efficient substitutions. Making sure that it still functions reasonably is also important. For example, with less efficient cards, a deck might need more lands, rocks, and ramps. Just my two cents tho.

[@commanderpower99]

@Adam Robinson you may want to revise how you deck is built. Maybe it needs a few tweeks to get more consistent.

[@blakeallen9694]

I love that show!

[@frankmart3339]

@@DangoHsu but day 9 doesn't play commander. That advice makes more sense when you have only 60 cards and 4 copies of everything you need

[@CheeseProds]

The “Yeah, I think I’ll try this” line is the most relatable thing I’ve ever heard. 😂

[@wavehead89]

"I'm feeling saucy today!"

[@steveheist6426]

One mulligan rule I introduced for my POD is that, if *everyone* mulligans, it doesn't count. The "free" mulligan only goes into effect once someone has a hand they want.

[@Duchess_Van_Hoof]

We reflexively do this from time to time

[@bradsimpson8724]

This is a house rule for us, too.

[@midnightlemon4255]

More episodes like this please! I love the deckbuilding/gameplay oriented episodes. I honestly don't watch any of the set reviews because I can't keep up with the products anyway, but I love your other content!

[@anstapa6118]

I feel like I say this every time he’s on, but DJ is such a great host. Love the way he keeps the conversation going.

[@CaptUvula]

Agreed 1000%

[@watchmebscene]

My play group likes to draw 10 cards, pick 7 to keep and put the other 3 on the bottom of your library in a random order. It really helps from having to shuffle multiple times from not having enough lands.

[@Hammythepig93]

we do the same!

[@TB317]

I like this!

[@green_dragon_knight]

This is a great approach to mulliganong that saves a lot of time on shuffling

[@dukestariowa]

Nice. I'll see if my group wants to try this! Someone is always mana screwed it feels like, maybe this will help!

[@wykydtron]

We call this the New Haven mulligan

[@CreateWorlds]

Miss Josh and Jimmy episodes like this but I’m glad for an episode that isn’t a set review 😅

[@Northwraith]

rare these days when it feels like they print a set every other week

[@Brisk83]

Wow a command zone episode that's not a set review. Too rare these days keep it up guys.

[@zacattack32441]

I would blame wizards for that.

[@alexwelch3362]

Their set reviews should be one video each (in my opinion) with commanders (that aren’t standard focused legendaries) and standout cards. I think a good example of how they’re overdoing it with set reviews is the recent brothers war/transformers sets. Not only did brothers war get split up, but there were 2 separate videos for the transformers legendaries for Autobots and Decepticons. Not that I don’t appreciate what they do - they just go very in depth with things that could be addressed much quicker. I’d assume the ads they produce also take a lot of time and resources.

[@TB317]

@@alexwelch3362 I mean, they can't predict who will want what from each set. For sets that I am interested in, I very much appreciate the in depth reviews. I can't keep up with all the product wizards puts out and only have 1 leg in the game half the time, so when a set comes out that catches my interest, this is my go to source for the run down I need. As for the adds, they pay for a large portion of what what they do at significant expense. I imagine they get lucrative sponsorships BECAUSE they have a track record of well produced adds. They also are much more entertaining as a viewer than the commercial adds they could be injecting in the videos.

[@MrGrimord]

Our playgroup use the "draws 10, keep 7" rule and we love it to avoid "no-game" issues.

[@davismoore5961]

This is the content I have been waiting for! love when you guys talk edh philosphy/gameplay!

[@willvmurdaugh]

Yessssss. This is the content that I love from you folks.

[@JoshuaFlores-ke6od]

Of most episodes I feel this one was more interactive with the best hand exercise. It really helped as a newer player to figure out just what the hell i want my deck to do and how I'm going to do that with the first hand I draw and then tone it down even further. So far I've built an "Artifactocrats" deck with Monoblack Ashnod and realized I could have card draw, ramp, tutor, sac outlet, and massive combo after or by turn 3 with a perfect hand. Still figuring out the actual win con but this episode really helped figure out how to accomplish the deck's goal with the first couple of hands you draw. Thanks!

[@TeamCardgaming]

Warning this is a mulligan horror-story: Last friday I took two mulligans because I only had one land in my hand. On my third seven cards, I had only one land again. Normally I would have said ok mulligan to 5 but I thought having three (2 mana cost) mana rocks might be ok if I hit just one more land. So the game started and I waited for turn 9 (maybe even longer) to draw a second land and I only got it this "fast" because another person decided to use a wheel of fortune type effect with which he can decide who wheels. By that time I had drawn 5 more (two mana cost) mana rocks (I play 38 Lands in the deck). I had already started to discard 2 of them because of handsize. So the wheel effect let me draw 8 cards - for only the cost of losing 5 mana rocks from my hand. All of a sudden, 6 out of my 8 new cards are lands... It was a disaster.

[@maxducoudray]

Luck that bad trumps mulligan choices. Sometimes the shuffle simply removes you from contention when playing MtG.

[@metricarea7546]

[@davidbilich1708]

I have a solution for this. Look at the board state and the next time in your pod someone is having a bad opening make the following suggestion to the group: "hey guys James is having really bad luck. What if we tutor him a basic on top of his library" Nobody wants to see folks have no fun. But nobody knows what to do about it. This will grow in your LGS and become common place to help put that guy that's getting a mana drought.

[@twitchster77]

Something I don't like about the idea of a bunch of free mulligans...is that it rewards bad deck building. I have a friend who's struggling to figure out how important lands are and often runs way too few. Being able to mulligan until he gets 3 or 4 in his opening just further instills bad habits and hinders the natural learning process.

[@ColorwaveCraftsCo]

I think in that case where you are playing with someone who is new to the game or new to deckbuilding, you stick to the official mulligan. Only use the house mulligan when you are playing with a more experienced group.

[@benbird2100]

@@ColorwaveCraftsCo Even with the more experienced group, it tends to reward people who intentionally put less lands into the deck in favor of additional high-synergy combos. I just don't agree with rewarding bad deck building, or rewarding people who KNOW they are running the risk of a bad draw when they intentionally run lower land counts in their deck.

[@sixzerotwo]

@@benbird2100 I think this is fair; often in casual games I will declare that I need to mulligan down to 5 or 4 and the table will tell me to just keep a new 7. I always say that Id rather play by the mulligan rules so that I am forced to learn my decks weaknesses the hard way.

[@ashleyprior6712]

One of the groups I played with once had their own rules that they drew 7 and if they didn't like cards they would keep switching certain cards out untill they were happy. Then they would say stuff like you're so bad at deck building as you shouldn't have more than 18 lands 🤣 I don't play with them anymore.

[@lauravturner]

Yeah we always establish mulligan rules but it's usually one free mulligan for Commander and no free mulligans for other formats.

[@iNCoMpeTeNtplAyS]

I like the draw 7 and 1 free mulligan. If you're deck needs to constantly mulligan (not just 1 game) maybe go back to the drawing board and look at how your deck is constructed. If you constantly mulligan hands with too many lands, maybe make some of those lands cycling lands. If you constantly draw too many nonlands, add more land. There are plenty of apps and websites that can help with that.

[@mizzlchieizzl]

Guy in my LGS said his commander playgroup has a rule, draw 10, then either bottom 3 and draw on your first turn, or bottom 2 and skip your first draw. This is really handy for trying new decks to get started I think especially. Spending way less time mulliganing

[@dorsalfin22]

This is so important! Do not be afraid to mulligan! I had to mull down to 5 last weekend at my lgs. And I won that game. More than one colorless mana in a 3+ color deck in the opening hand may as well be a landless hand

[@z.scott.porter]

Hats off to the architect of this video. Great educational video on a topic that gets overlooked far too often.

[@mightyone3737]

There are a few ways to look at ramp that I think are all correct: 1. You can run very little and run a higher land count (probably over 40 for most decks) while trying to run lots of lower MV spells so that you have a consistent land into spell pattern, with card draw allowing double spell turns. 2. Run a fair bit of ramp and skew your deck's MV upwards, such a deck should still have enough lands to hit early drops, decks like this want to hit reasonably high MVs and likely runs lots of 6-8 drop spells, a deck like this might want to hit 5 or 6 lands and 1 or 2 ramp to get to 8 a bit early because the deck can do something explosive at 8 mana generally. 3. If your deck wins via achieving an excess of mana and having your Commander out (Sisay comes to mind), then you probably want an ungodly amount of ramp alongside a high land count, you don't care what else you draw, you just need to get your Commander out and win the game after getting enough mana out. 4. Run very few lands and tons of ramp because you hate drawing lands, this is a cEDH mindset and it also tends to run lots of filtering/draw to help offset this low land count (if your Tymna/Kraum deck draws 5 cards per turn, it's quite plausible that running under 30 is fine as long as you're able to mulligan until you can get a Commander out early), this often involves running mostly MV 1 spells, with a small number that cost more. The way ramp is sometimes used that it shouldn't is in place of lands, where a deck needs to hit ramp in order to achieve it's necessary MV, many ramp cards end up being dead draws later, so if you have 15 ramp effects because you don't want to draw 'duds', you have to consider if running 8 more lands wouldn't be a better deck building choice, and playing actual spells on every turn. The problem with a deck that runs ramp instead of lands is that the deck will consistently have dead turns where it does nothing but play ramp, if it very quickly starts missing land drops that deck will be falling way behind 99% of the time, ramp is rarely a true progression of your board if that's all you're doing, mana dorks are creatures but most are just barely that. If your deck wants to hit 6 MV and needs to do so asap, be very cautious about running under 40 lands, if you only hit 4 drops and need to waste 1 or 2 turns to end up at 6, you might not even be at that mana value early, 30 lands needs to see ~14 cards to see it's 4th land, if you run 5 drops you should think very carefully about running so few. I see a lot of people with oddly low land counts, and I usually assume it's because their playgroup lets them mulligan more, and their deck cares a lot more about 2 or 3 lands in the opener than it cares about drawing 5 in time for their 5th turn, these players are probably 'gaming the system', but if their whole group does it then who cares? I have a few decks that really push the count down, both decks use lots of Green ramp, one ends up fairly fast because it can recur it's ramp, the other tends to rely on getting a card draw effect out like Howling Mine, but in my experience either deck can usually keep a 2 land and ramp hand. Both need some actual cards to follow up/precede that ramp, but while both are 'statistically likely' to draw keepable hands most of the time, they are exceeded in mulligans only by my cEDH deck (which runs 34 lands atm, which is lots for cEDH), which just draws abysmally sometimes, I used to run 39 lands in it and still consistently got screwed, odds be damned (I'd have playtests where I'd mulligan more than 10 hands away before I got a hand that was even theoretically keepable, just kept drawing 1 and 0 lands). TBH, both those Green decks tend not to go down more than 1 card, if that even, so I don't feel like it's a real problem, but both decks have plans to make up for the lack, and intend to derive advantage from a higher ramp count (both care about bodies, so a dork is worth much more than a land in many situations). The funny thing about the one deck is that it's Golgari, and I figured I could just cut back on Swamps as I had lots of Green ways to ramp out a swamp if I hit a Forest, even though the numerous black spells need Swamps to cast (Forests do very little beyond casting ramp and Protean Hulk), I've actually been pretty happy with it so far. I agree we're bad at stats, but we're especially bad at scaling our reaction to likelihoods, I'm often frustrated when playtesting a new deck and draw what feels like a bad hand, only to look at the odds and realize it's bad but not unlikely, and that if that's what that deck produces at that point it's time for reworking, not anger at the Gods. I feel like I'm better than average with stats (I did some Finite math in College, did fine at it haha), but I struggle mightily with this sometimes.

[@IBeScrappyDoo2]

What I think is hilarious is jimmy is usually the one who misses his land drops more than anyone else on this show.

[@drunkgerbil9962]

Keep up the good work! Honestly just want more content from all of you!

[@joshuacarr333]

Wowowow I’ve never been this early on an upload! Thanks for the everflowing content guys! Also, so excited to hear Rachel joined the crew!!

[@Vangeltheunderdog]

important advice about mulligans is to allow yourself to get comfortable with mulliganning down to 4 or 5, if your previous hands are mediocre. You can't complain about getting blown out of the water if you are the type of person to keep mediocre hands, just because you're afraid of the minus 1. One of my most memorable games, a "don't try this at home" moment, was a hand that I mulliganed to 4 for, with ZERO lands. I had an Ornithopter, Curse of Opulence, Simian Spirit Guide, and a Surveyor's Scope. This specific combination allowed me to generate the resources I needed to artificially keep up with the rest of the players, and actually come out with the win, as well. Yes, it's true that one removal card would have put me in a dire situation, but the same can be stated for the unlikely scenario where those greedy turn 1 Sol Rings get countered. No hand is 100% perfect; there is always something that can stop it, but if the hand simply goes with the flow, not attempting to establish a strategy, then you guarantee your defeat.

[@deejayf69]

I think the best advice anyone can give to Mulligans is this: Don't be a Jimmy Wong

[@Werneurr]

Very nice episode! More insight into mulliganing is always useful. Also fun to see DJ again. Our house rule for mulligan is one free mulligan, than go London Mull to 6, repeat, London Mull to 5, repeat, repeat, repeat, etc

[@cptregalz8091]

This was absolutely amazing. I know it's a bit older but the mulligan exercise is really helpful

[@bradleyhoward9638]

I would keep the sol ring. We play with the London Mulligan but have a house rule called double mulligans. Once you mulligan to 6 we will give you another free mulligan. After that you have to keep 5 but we will allow unlimited mulligans to 5 provided after your second mulligan to 5 if you continue you must reveal your hand to prove it's not keepable according to the group vote. So far no one has had to mulligan that many times and we've been doing this since the London Mulligan became official.

[@Putrefax]

Favourite houserule for mulligans is the standard London with the free one from multiplayer format, but if your hand has no lands or all lands you can reveal it and get another free one. Because screw that noise.

[@Chaoslorden]

This is a great video! I've just changed my Beledros Witherbloom deck around and alot of it has to do with consistency from the start. I have discovered that spells that can get a land or do something else are great, especially those for one mana. It makes me able to know I have a third land coming, or a second land for my 2 mana ramp spell and from there use my three mana and then four mana ramp spells that gets lands into play. Once the lands are in place all kinds of crazy things will happen. Altough I've built her as a.. 7 maybe 8 powered deck. Not super spiked but very well rounded and fair. It's easily my favorite deck. It can do everything I want and still make fun games. 😊

[@Duchess_Van_Hoof]

Related to the subject, I realized that maybe half of my losses were due to shuffling poorly. And just yesterday I had a similar issue of 5 lands in hand and drawing 5/7 lands for the next few turns. I have to preshuffle it a few times before the next magic night. As it was, it was unplayable. Admittedly, I had 6-7 things I could topdeck at various points to win. If I had a decent hand I would probably have won.

[@erikohman2294]

Wow! Im like one minute in, and I dont think Ive seen a version of Jimmy Wong this happy and hyped. Best intro ever! Not saying people need to be all hype all the time, but I was legit happy by the level of engagement here.

[@kennybaukchoi]

Finally something that’s not just product related.

[@DangoHsu]

With Wizards releasing so much more products and tons more of new legendaries nowadays, this kind of topic become rarer to see at Command Zone. I for one would love to see more of these even if it means that some sets or legendaries won't be reviewed. There might be ways to decrease episodes of reviews while keeping up with the new products though, grouping nearby sets or similar legendaries together is the first that come to my mind. Nonetheless, I'll still watch what you guys publish no matter the topic. Great show, great guys, great vibe. Keep it up!

[@Drewbe821]

My Spelltable pod has their own draw method that helps mitigate the need for mulligan: draw 10, keep 7.

[@Andrew_Venn]

My irl pod does the same, but normal 7, then draw 3. If you have no usable hand, redraw 7, and draw 3, 3 to the bottom. It's never moved passed that.

[@Kazz1187]

That’s awesome

[@Crymble]

That mostly solves land drop problems, I'd say. Mulligan can also give you multiple chances at drawing combo pieces. But good idea!

[@SaintAnix.]

Glad you guys enjoy that. Fun is the most important thing. But remember when you play with others, that they probably won't be using your house rules. Try not to change the way you build a deck based on how a single friend group resolves mulligan or you might find yourself wondering why your deck sometimes just doesn't work as well in the wild.

[@Drewbe821]

@@SaintAnix. absolutely. 👍

[@palefrog]

It looks like DJ lost quite a bit of weight. Good for him!

[@kennethayers6225]

My advice is that people should have more basic lands in their decks. Replace spells with them. Around here we stick to the standard rules for mulligans. You should build you deck such that you don't need the crutch. That being said we usually wait until everyone has finished mulligans before you put the cards on the bottom. Depending on how that looks we may just keep those seven. Agree with the idea of not shuffling the hands back in every time being a kinder and faster way.

[@Duchess_Van_Hoof]

I love basic lands, they are so reliable. Always come in untapped, really helpful most of the time and I frequently become happy to see them.

[@adamxiong8558]

In my play group… what we do is, draw 10 keep 7 and put the 3 other card at the bottom of the deck.. If that first 10 is bad.. you put it at the bottom and draw an extra 10 and keep 7. And if your have another set of bad hand, sorry that’s all you get bc you’re looking at 20 cards to start.

[@serafimb2319]

Finally an original episode again! I was getting a little tired with all the set reviews tbh and with the rate of new sets coming out, i thought we weren't getting out of that loop again

[@adamrobinson6951]

My group uses a house rule for mulligans: Draw 10, discard to 7 (bottom of library). If you still can't make a worthwhile hand, draw 7 as normal, then draw 7 and discard to 6 etc. By my reckoning, this makes it much easier for everyone to have a playable hand without encouraging players to mulligan repeatedly for the perfect start, and without endless shuffling or endless decision making. It's like an extreme variation on the London Mulligan, without relying on the honour system apparently common in other groups. Mathematically I think it works out roughly comparable in odds of drawing a 3-5 land hand to the free mulligan, (free mulligan: ~72% chance of success, house rule ~68% chance of success). I also estimated the expected number of spells in the starting hand that can be played with mana produced from starting lands (ie: if you start with 2 lands, how many 0, 1 and 2 drops do you have in hand). The London mulligan gives an expected 2.2 playable cards in the opening hand with a 23.2% chance of having one or fewer playable cards. By comparison, the initial draw for the house rule gives an expected 3.7 playable cards with only a 7.6% chance of one or fewer. Calculations above assume you won't mulligan more than twice on the London Mulligan, but also didn't account for any mulligans using the house rule. These numbers are skewed as discarded from the mulligan or from the house rule are not accounted for. However, I think the number of options provided is more interesting than the number of cards kept. It is likely that the player using this house rule would be forced to discard some playable cards. Note: don't rely on my maths here. It's the result of 3,000 quick simulations using my deck, and will not be accurate for other builds. It also doesn't account for ramp at all, though playable card numbers would suggest that the house rule is more likely to result in playable ramp cards.

[@Dragon_Fyre]

When you say draw 7 and discard to 6, I assume you mean shuffle one card back into your deck, right ? There are ways to abuse being able to put a target card into your graveyard to start the game such as with reanimation decks.

[@rulamagic]

For anyone wondering, the chance of getting a land by looking at 3 cards is 75.4% using hypergeometric distribution and assuming 34 lands are still in the deck.

[@ColorwaveCraftsCo]

Been waiting for this episode for a long time!! Thanks Command Zone!!

[@barofsoap8098]

My house rule for mulligans is:london mulligan down to 5, after 2 mulligans, you stay at 5 cards. So if you mulligan thrice, you only lose a card twice. This punishes poor deck destruction while still keeping it reasonable, since if you know you'll have a gis mulligan, you can build your deck with more gas and light on the lands, which you wouldn't do with a london mulligan.

[@DarkEinherjar]

My rule of thumb: if your opening hand does nothing unless you topdeck a land, ditch it.

[@Dark-Pikachu1]

So what about white land and Esper Sentinel one land hand

[@faperito2389]

I'd mull that. One mental misstep and you're dead.

[@JohnDoe-vc5qb]

The best mulligan advice is never give up, 1 card isn’t THAT bad.

[@petesalzl1]

Fate is my commander, I mulligan down to zero.

[@faperito2389]

A couple months ago I won going to three and being stuck at 1 land for the first 4 turns, then I got back in the game by getting 3 lands into play at once plus my land drop for turn!

[@pedropohren]

The deck i grabbed for the challenge: my 7yo Daretti, Scrap Savant deck. My perfect hand: Ancient Tomb, Lotus Petal, Sol Ring, Lion's Eye Diamond, Myr Battlesphere, Mindslaver and Canoptek Tomb Sentinel. Contrary to the theory, this is a turn 1 hand: play Tomb, play Petal, tap Tomb for mana and play Sol Ring. Play L.E.D., sac it for RRR and discard the other 3 cards. CRRR in the pool, play Daretti, minus 2 him saccing Lotus Petal to bring back either Canoptek, if any of my opps have something worth exiling, or Myr Battlesphere, to build a wall of creatures around my turn 1 planeswalker commander with only 1 counter on it in case anyone tries to attack it. Boom. Turn 1, commander on table - it being a reliable source of card advantage and graveyard filling, with 4 mana up to cast whatever comes off the top of the deck, and the combo is already set on my grave (Mindslaver on the grave, for when i get Daretti's emblem i can combo off with it) along with another artifact creature that i can use to keep pillowforting around my commander. Maybe the only thing that could be different would be swapping the MS or one of the creatures for a Ichor Wellspring, in order to still have something in hand when the whole loop resolves, so when i activate Daretti's +2 ability next turn, i'll have two cards to discard and make the best use possible of his ability. Plus, i'd still have the Petal up, so if i drew anything with R in its cost, i'd still be able to cast it.

[@didupaytheone2678]

Everyone does a great job, keep up the good work , waiting for next games

[@ketchumall8243]

i am so much more okay keeping a 5 or 6 land hand over a 2 land hand. At least i have a commander that i know i can play eventually lol. Thats the benefit of commander. I think you're allowed to keep a hand with another land or 2 than a 60 card deck would want to keep cause you always have the commander.

[@FlowBerni]

We mulligan until we have enough lands to play the first hand. It's a trust thing, but i play with my best friends. It's quite common that one of the players mulls away a "too good" hand (for example sol ring plus arcane signet plus carddraw). The goal of every game is to see every deck to do "the thing" and to overcome the archenemy ^^

[@32narutofan]

Oh heck, yeah! I was just looking into this!

[@accendidap5791]

For those who don't like the 'just mulligan to a good hand of 7,' but also want to promote casual gameplay, the house rule we use for mulligans is: 1 free mulligan every other mulligan. We still use the London mulligan of draw 7 put one back, but it goes like: 7, 7, 6, 6, 5, 5, 4, 4 etc Instead of 7, 7, 6, 5, 4, etc This allows for more mulligans while still following a ‘strict’ rule (there can of course still be exceptions)

[@domthompson7992]

Jimmy gonna Jimmy, 'What's your perfect hand' 'Easy, two lands!'

[@DylanHilliard1]

Our play group allows us to Scry 2 at the beginning which helps with land drops and it evens out the play and makes it consistent among the table.

[@Dragon_Fyre]

I think the Mulligan option is largely to address starting with an unplayable hand ie. all land or 1 or less land… if you can show that either applies, it should be a free mulligan. If not, you should draw 1 less card to mulligan.

[@fleamarketkeanu]

This is definitely a level up episode

[@DanielBajo]

There are very few non-land cards that count as a land, but Land Tax is one of them (so long as you are not first in the turn order).

[@twitchster77]

Carpet Of Flowers is another card I'll consider a land in my starting hand against my friends (who always play islands) as long as I have another land to cast it.

[@andrewluscomb1519]

My favorite house rule mulligan was the turn order was determined by least mulligans not dice roll. The first to keep went first and so on

[@Flip4Crypt]

My playgroup has the regular mulligan rules, but before going down to 4, you can opt to take a "Forced 7" whatever you draw is what you get, so at least (provided you get a land or two) you're in the game, better than a 4 generally

[@phantsyprantz6377]

against my better judgment, I once kept a hand for my endrek sahr deck that consisted of sol ring, wayfarer's bauble, expedition map, moonsilver key, viscera seer, crypt ghast, and bolas's citadel. I ripped a swamp off the top and won the game handily, resolving bolas's citadel on turn three or four

[@tysonjanney1850]

They didn’t mention: there are some commanders that will FORCE you to mulligan until you hit removal (a well-built Yuriko deck comes to mind). If they have a 2/3 drop commander that can kill the table by then 5/6, you might need to keep mulling until you hit removal or else you have the non-game of “they just win immediately.”

[@daynehahn6134]

My play group has a very unique way to do things. We place 2 basic lands face up on the table and draw 5 cards. We then are allowed 1 free mulligan of 5, if necessary. When you have your 5, add the 2 lands to your hand to complete your 7. This way EVERY player is guaranteed at least 2 lands to begin with and can actually play Magic. Weird, but effective.

[@GeekandGlory]

I think it is important to also know your deck. I have a Jorn God of Winter Voltron deck. I can get away with 3 lands (at least one being forest) and an equipment for Jorn so I can start swinging. Jorn acts like artificial ramp in a pinch he untaps all snow permanents on attack. So cast something in first main phase, cast something in second main. The perfect hand would be 4 lands, equipment and card draw but my decks game plan could get away with less. It's all about the game plan.

[@TerasGaiabane]

My playgroup uses the house rule of, if at any point during mulligans you draw a hand of 0 usable lands, that mulligan is skipped. If it was your free one you have another free one. If that was going to be your mull to 6, you still go to 6. You have to reveal your hand to the table to prove its true. We define usable as something that with the cards in hand cannot guarantee mana. So if your only land is temple of the false God, or a bounce land, or rupture spire, that would be deemed unusable, but a hand that contains a temple of the false God AND a bounceland wouldn't count because you can bounce the temple turn 2. Things like evolving wilds and fetch lands also don't count as unusable because they can guarantee you get a source of mana.

[@dariuszwawrzyniak3465]

Cool episode! It would be fun to see (maybe in a future episode) more examples of random hands which ones to keep, which to mulligan and why. I wonder if DJ's ideal hand would benefit from replacing the Talisman with Lightning Greaves. Sol Ring into Greaves T1, he could still play Battle Angels turn 2 and swing right away. If he gets a treasure with the Angel attack that makes T3 Bolas's Citadel possible and if not, he can play Liesa instead.

[@robwilson4619]

Mulligan advice from Jimmy “no lands” Wong

[@Dragon_Fyre]

Do as he says, not as he does ;)

[@calenhoover1124]

jimmy rocking the only merch i've ever bought. Love Rhystic Studies so much!!!

[@jasonharville1865]

There should be some punishment for building decks that need to mulligan often. But what we do is after free mul you have to go down to 6 but if then if that is a mul, then keep 6.

[@petesalzl1]

When mulliganing, the first thing I do is check the gol'dang manual.

[@ichik]

As someone who won games of commander where I went to 4-5 starting cards, I really disagree with endless free mulligans. Even when your playgroup honestly tries to avoid abusing it, this still feels like cheating. Being unlucky is part of a nature of the game and the format, disallowing that to happen just doesn't sit well with me. P.S. By no means the playgroups that I play with play cEDH, but still thanks to all the power-creep and abundance of deck-building content everyone's been optimizing their decks over the years. The explosive starts are not that uncommon and wins by turn 5-6-7 are not unheard of. Players are actually quite disliking the resulting environment, but nobody's rushing to cut Jeska's Will from their decks. Allowing everyone to mulligan 5 times until they find a good seven would be putting even more gas into this fire.

[@Sir_Yosef]

Pretty much only play with friends, personally believe the most fun way to play is having everyone have 3 mana producers in the first 7 cards. If you don't you show your hand and mulligan. Again I only play this way with friends but you can get some good commander games out of it!

[@peoplesoft2784]

You have the Vegas. 3 piles of 7, pick one. If you don’t like any of them you have to take the 4th hand of 7. 3 piles of 4. Pick 4, 2 and 1 Big deck London. Draw 10 bottom 3

[@MrJZNICA]

My playgroup normally does something that a friend taught me and it’s called Rex’s rule: you pick 3 basic lands from your deck and then you draw 4 more cards, but there’s no mulligan. You have to keep that hand. I feel like it’s pretty fair.

[@Crypt4l]

Keep everything with 3+ lands, card draw or ramp. Ship everything with 2- lands and neither. Keep everything with 4, or 5 lands without card draw and ramp, ship everything with 6 or 7 lands. 3 lands no card draw/ramp, 2 lands + cheep card draw /ramp are the only hard decisions.

[@PureSolace]

London Mulligan is best mulligan. People should start building decks with that mulligan in mind, and not the 'infinite mulligans' that plague Commander currently. Half the point of brewing is creating a playable mana base and spell synergy as best as possible knowing that there will be some games where you have a drought of mana or you get flooded. It's all in the luck of the draw. That's Magic!

[@CapitalZ100]

My house rule is you get 1 free Mulligan as standard. As long as everyone Mulligans it also counts as free because why force players down to 6 when there is no advantage to be gained, may as well all stick with 7. It seems to work well for us & people are less likely to stick with risky hands.

[@Svefngengill]

Kind of interesting to try the "perfect hand" exercise with my Lazav deck. It includes 3 cards that are so specific in function that I basically can't replace them with anything else in the deck. Also, how do you factor bouncelands into mulligans? Like beyond just that it's a "slow" land. It does mean that with just 2 lands in hand you can hit your first 3 land drops. It does have the issue that if you don't have a 0 or 1 mana spell, you might have to discard down to hand size turn 2. But could that be considered worth it? Would you consider that a form of "smoothing" in a sense? (Turn 2, draw card, end step discard the least useful card still in hand?)

[@TheGreenMittenz]

A house mulligan rule I like is that instead of taking 7's until you get a keep-able hand you take 6's. That way there is still a real cost to having a greedy mana base but you still generally avoid a non-game.

[@Kalimier777]

Oh boy.. I did this exercise with my Budget Kinnan deck. He’s nuts man

[@MegaAttackbear]

Our group does it a lil differently we draw 3 separate hands off the top and pick the best one then shuffle and if all 3 are somehow really bad we allow that you shuffle all 3 and draw a new hand but you have to keep it

[@andrewsowl8696]

Is this why Land Tax is so good lol?

[@ilyafoskin]

My house rule for Commander is if you have a hand of all lands or no lands, you can reveal your hand to get a free mulligan but only once this way. You can still use your regular free mulligan in addition if you mulligan into a bad hand. I think this is fairer because in those situations, taking a mulligan really isn't a choice and your free mulligan would be wasted before you get a hand where you actually have the option to assess if it's good enough to keep. If you mulligan and still get a hand of all or no lands, then you probably didn't shuffle properly in the first place and it's your own fault

[@adamrobinson6951]

By my calculation, the odds of drawing all lands or no lands twice in a row is about 1/600, with odds of around 1/152 for it happening to someone at a four player table. This suggests it will happen occasionally, but it's reasonable to suspect poor shuffling if it happens often. Interestingly, if you allow a free mulligan for a one land hand too then the odds of one of four players drawing such a hand twice in a row becomes around 18% - a fairly common occurrence (a roughly 5% chance per individual).

[@king65891]

My playgroup loves playing at a higher level and seeing what everyone is capable of so we draw ten for our opening hands and then put three on bottom and unlimited mulligans.

[@lightfut]

Jimmy rocking the Rhystic threads!

[@philippniemann8842]

An idea that I just had: At the beginning of the game everybody draws 10 cards and shuffle three back into their library. It would actively work against being screwed or flooded. And it would be much more strategically for everybody.

[@DynamicSheep]

How is JIMMY on THIS episode?

[@kaalesrex2933]

it depends on playgroup, experience level and format, but mulligan rules, that are too lax, encourage bad/greedy deckbuilding .. so commander one free mulligan is fair given the big deck and singelton, but more shouldn't be necessary, since you can play 7Lands+ infinite commanders .. in 1v1 60 or 40 card formats the normal mulligan rule is alright, although I do allow 1 free mulligan for my cube, after all it's singelton and most of the time we play it multiplayer

[@subirchaklader9842]

Horror Story in commander for my Tajic, Legions Edge is anytime i take a hand less than 3 lands in opening hand. Although sometimes, if you have a crappy hand, the players leave you alone, and then you snap victory from the jaws of defeat.

[@AusSkiller]

The way I decide mulligans is simple, I just ask myself "With only the cards from my opening hand would I be ok with my board at the start of turn 4?" if not then I should mulligan. But sometimes I get greedy and ignore that, I was playing my Omnath, Locus of Mana deck, had a potentially amazing hand I had 2 lands, harrow, verdant bloom, zendikar resurgent, nyxbloom ancient, and genesis wave, all I needed was a 3rd land and I'd be all set for a massive genesis wave on turn 6 or 7 at the latest which in my play group is usually going to put me in a position that will be impossible for anyone else to deal with (we play very casual decks). In a deck with 40 lands and 4 spells to get a land at 2 mana I figured it would be fine, but by turn 9 I still only had 2 lands and had not been able to play a single spell.

[@Onetrack320]

That’s the point of randomness

[@gahbunk]

Generally speaking, 38 lands is the golden number.

[@faperito2389]

I'd say like 36 or even 35, but yeah, for sure, the number is between 35 and 40!

[@Shanton0001]

You almost had to Mulligan on the Mulligan episode because of the audio issues. 😂

[@nicks4802]

Just played the WORST game of commander I’ve ever had to sit through. Couldn’t cast ANYTHING in my hand for the entire game after my commander got target and killed by a salty player. I was essentially locked out of playing my commander again and nothing i drew after that made sense to play since my synergy was out the window. On top of that, i needed 2 more green mana, Which I didn’t draw until the turn i was finally killed at the end if the game. It SUCKED. Had to sit there and hold my tongue for 2 hours, when I could’ve just gone home to eat dinner. But its “rude” to scoop when someone does something super crappy to you like that. “You cant just throw off the game for the other players when you quit” But my lord, i wanted to go home after turn 4. Dont let anybody talk you into “just one more” game. If you’re hungry, go home. Save yourself the trouble and make sure you eat properly. Its waaaaay more important.

[@DarkDax12345]

Honestly I HATE free mulligans anymore. We only have it with one play group because whenever we allowed it people would abuse the hell out of it. Had an almost cedh elf player go against 3 precon decks one time and he mulled 9 times and '"it was the first playable hand" but it had the tutors he wanted and the best cards in his deck. He won turn 3 and then gloated about hoe he just drew the best cards. I called him out on it in front of the whole store and since then the policy at that store is 1 free the rest you are required to put a card back per. I always keep it that way now

[@faperito2389]

I don't get people that use free mulls. Why break the rule that prevents exactly those situations from happening? It's so dumb. Where I'm from, everyone just uses the regular rule, 1 free mull, no more.

[@izzy4752]

In our play group we do a Gentlemen’s Mulligan, so if anyone has to mulligan more than twice then they can draw back to seven

[@zacharyrodrigue734]

for our playgroup we do the standard mulligan with 1 free mulligan except that we start the count only when one person on the table keep thier hand. EG: we all mulligan our first hand and after somone says I keep, so we all have one free mulligan the fourth hand will be the first hand to but back a card.

[@causedirt1787]

My playgroup does the london mulligan as usual, but intead of droping to 5 cards we just mulligan until we have a hand with at least 3 lands and then we must keep that hand.

[@haroun1760]

Our playgroup has free mulligans untill you have at leased 3 lands. If you want to mulligan when you have 3 lands or more it will cost you a card and a second card after that Biggest problem I have when starting to mulligan down to six is that the hand I draw is worse than the one I had privious and so I have to go down to 5 with a big chance that one is the same or worse than that one before that and I know I'm better off scooping

[@zararok]

Actually the math it is a bit wrong what DJ brought up, due to the effect of a commander that should be considered to be in your hand. Thus you have 8 cards to play, this will though support his decision of keeping 4 leads instead of three. Thus if you keep four lands in your opening hand you got 4 lands and three spells in hand + another spell in your commander. It is not fool proof but 4 lands should get you all the way there :D edit, they just brought up the 8th card

[@marsrocks247]

In my playgroups we just mulligan until we have hands we want to keep, and if anyone feels they got unfair advantage from that they will bottom a powerful card and draw off the top. Sometimes the free mulligans get abused, but very rarely. Most of the time people mulligan four or five times, then say they are gonna bottom their fast mana, and we start the game.

[@thekagemaster]

‘How to Mulligan’ 1:16:28. Now that’s value.

[@axiswolfstar]

The worse is when you have a great hand, 3 lands and plays turn 1-3, and then you don’t draw a mana rock or fourth land for 10+ turns.