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

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.

We do a 7-10 at my LGS. You draw 10 cards to start and ditch 3 back to the bottom. Kinda fun

"Yeah I'll try this" 😂 I've said it many times playing digimon, getting greedy lol

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.

Why not Sol ring instead of chrome Mox? The ideal best hand shouldn't only have six cards and you already had your colors on those duals. Instead of pre-ordained for a land why not just have another land?

I feel the opposite about mdfc land/spells. I do like to play on the margins a little. The majority of those spells are not good enough for a spell slot. However when I view them as land that can do that utility if I need it to, they suddenly look a lot better. I usually play 37 lands. My ramp varies by the deck strategy, plus the average mana value, the top of the curve, and how much green it has. I will consider ramp as land substitute as it's a mana source in a pinch as opposed to mulliganing and potentially getting a worse hand but only if the hand is worth it.

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.

alternative mulligan house rules encourage bad deckbuilding. just play more lands

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.

Our group allows free mulligans if you have a 0,1, or 7 land hands as well.

I kept a 2 land hand in a deck with 56 lands in it (gitrog, and it usaully works fine) I didn't draw a single lamn or ramp spell the entire game.

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.

you guys should play each other with these hands

What are your thoughts on the perfect fit sleeves for double sleeving and what brand do you suggest? (I've only seen dragon shield at my lgs)

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

This is aimed at mid/new players...but you keep hiding the mana values... smh

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!

My group has a “scry 3 before the first mulligan” rule. We scry 3 only before the first mulligan in hopes of not having a terrible experience 👌

I'm ngl. Yall are very nice to each other lol coming from a family who's dad has played since alpha(he hates new mulligan too ngl) we literally are always trying to WIN period. Sol ring and mana crypt and or an otk opening hand? Hell ya, I'm winning lol 😆 🤣

Toss the Bojuka Bog, keep the Signet. You're doing nothing on T2 so you can cast the Signet guilt-free, and you'll have the colors for Linvala. The advice of "never toss lands" is incorrect.

The way my Play group mulligans is a bit different from normal, If somebody likes their hand they can keep it, other players who don't like their hand can mulligan as normal, but if more than one player mulligans more than 2-3 times, both players have the option to go for a mulligan reset, meaning they get their free mulligan and the amount of mulligans they've done resets, this only happens if at least 2 players don't like their hands and the more players who don't like their hand the earlier you can go for the reset 2 players is 3 mulligans and 3 players is 2 mulligans, this prevents people from exploiting the mulligan rule as more than one person has to want to reset the mulligan count, Also the person who likes their hand gets to keep their hand as normal

I can't stand Jimmy

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

Needed 3 weeks to realize CommandZone is doing something else than set reviews again.

I play 34 lands in all my decks and just accept my fate that Ill have a higher variance in what I can draw. My decks also tend to be pretty low on curve, usually curving out around 2.5 to 3 so they can work on less lands.

Take a new 7. Just do it quickly. I don’t care if you get a god hand let’s just get it going

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

Don't. Life's a lottery, be lucky.

The biggest issue with multiple free mulligans is that you incentivize people to create poor decks. I could run 20 lands and as long as I get multiple free mulligans then who cares. Learn the craft.

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.

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

I need to know where DJ got that shirt, it looks really good

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

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.

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.

Ez.
Dont mulligan.
Merry Christmas.

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.

How is JIMMY on THIS episode?

I wanna see that Liesa deck! D:

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

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

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

I just do free mulligan every game. Idc how many mulligans to have fun

Is 38 lands a normal amount in decks? The only deck I Have that has more than 33 lands in it is Lord Windgrace (40).

My favorite “should of mulliganed” story comes from an old InQuest magazine where it was an archenemy game of one with an unlimited budget and everyone else playing with commons. One guy opted to play mono red and kept a hand with either one or no lands because of a fist full of shock and bolt and the like. If he had a land it was destroyed by turn 3.

It is turn 14 and the synopsis is “SHOWSTOPPER: Jeff plays a Mountain.”

It was the last land he played that game, which lasted 3-5 more turns.
Yes his team lost.

A free first mulligan is my favorite policy. Reasonable leniency towards newer players who don't know their decks yet is definitely fine by me, since they may not even know what a good hand looks like yet with their setup. I'm not giving three free mulligans to the veteran player with 5 different win conditions that all cost a minimum of $10 per card in their deck. They should know better, and they should know what a good hand looks like by this point.

SPIDERS WITH BOXING GLOVES

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

i have a feather, the redeemed deck that runs perfectly fine on 2 lands (as the cmc of that entire deck basically is 2) and card draw is kind of detrimental with the recursion you have :/