@moorebrother1

I think you are grossly overestimating the effect of this change. No one other than Dredge is going to mulligan to oblivion to find one card as you still lose a card every time you mulligan. The new rule just grants you potentially better card quality on your average card in hand than your opponent instead of a strict disadvantage of down cards AND same card quality on your average card.

This argument could be made about any rule change with this kind of impact. For that reason, I find it very >unconvincing.

No mana burn, no damage on the stack, and other rules changes that dumbed down the game still feel very un-Vintage to me so there's that.

Someone on Reddit helpfully noticed that they've already kicked around this idea: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/mulligans-2015-08-07

What we didn't like: This mulligan was way too strong in Constructed, and encouraged big changes in deck building. Perhaps the most notable thing was in Modern and Eternal formats, where sideboard hate got a lot stronger since you could shuffle extra copies back into your decks. Similarly, combo decks got a huge advantage since they could mulligan away possibly useless cards. In one of our biggest rules violations for changing the mulligan rule, it clearly changed the parameters for deck building, and would have a profound impact on how older formats played out.

Has anyone run the nymbers for Two Card Monte? This seems way more relevant there.

My suspicion is, at least in Vintage, that this rule would make mulliganing your average 7 correct. If you have 1-2 more lands than you might want or whatever that you’d probably keep now, this new rule encourages you to ship it instead. I don’t think that’s good.

The other issue I see is in paper, it will make it easier for bad actors to cheat during the mulligan process.

I think people are way too focused on dredge. What concerns me most is shops. This deck already mulligans incredibly well. A 5 card shops hand can still be rather devastating. Having to pick the best 5 of 7 just means its mulligans get even stronger.

@wfain said in Proposed New Mulligan Rule for Mythic Championship London:

My suspicion is, at least in Vintage, that this rule would make mulliganing your average 7 correct. If you have 1-2 more lands than you might want or whatever that you’d probably keep now, this new rule encourages you to ship it instead. I don’t think that’s good.

I don't think that's necessarily true. The impact might be muted somewhat due to the overall higher power level of the average card in Vintage compared to other formats, but I still think going down a card is a big enough drawback that it'll continue to be correct to keep marginal hands like the one you describe.

That idea sure brings a lot of talk!

It certainly makes the game more watchable and spectacular. It could give magic a bit of punch and would bring a wild west era. New strategies could emerge from that rule, which is always great for keeping the game lively.

I'll try it myself, it's the best way to know how it feels!

One thing I didn't think of is that you can avoid Powdering multiple Powders at once, so this rule actually interacts extremely well with Serum Powder. Odds of hitting Bazaar will be higher due to more efficient Powders, not just that you get more looks total.

I can't wait for this to catch on so bazaar and shop can get restricted. Then I can get a reasonably priced playset during the ensuing fire sale :).

@boerma You are correct. While you can't mulligan 7 times, you can certainly mulligan 0 times. The exponent should be 7.

I think the rule has been misinterpreted and that you are supposed to put the cards back before determining whether or not you would mulligan, so you would exile the remaining cards in your hand. In practice, it wouldn't matter as you could just declare you are mulliganing and shortcut the selection. But it would effect Serum Powder and makes me wonder if that was the basis for the rule. And it has interesting applications for Powder in Dredge as it would allow you to save certain Dread Return targets from exile (albeit putting it on the bottom of the deck).

It is interesting how the impact of Serum Powder is much less with the new rule, even if you exile/draw 7 cards. Serum Powder might still be worth it as it increases the number of cards in you opening hands, but that is an interesting debate.

Either they wanted to design around Serum Powder or they had to be careful of the phrase "opening hand" which legally allows stuff like Leylines or Chancellor triggers to be played.

@ajfirecracker Do you think Dredge would still run Serum Powder if you have to put the cards back prior to mulliganing?

@chubbyrain said in Proposed New Mulligan Rule for Mythic Championship London:

@ajfirecracker Do you think Dredge would still run Serum Powder if you have to put the cards back prior to mulliganing?

Hard to say.

I think Powder is actually better with this rule but so are normal mulligans, so it's hard to say how that all cashes out. Note that the cards are put back on the bottom, so Powder is fully effective to dig, and you find Powder more often on more cards, and you can more often avoid exiling multiple Powder for a single effect. So we have 1 neutral factor, 2 positive factors for Powder, and 1 "negative" factor in that the effect is not as sorely needed.

More Powders does also mean more cards in hand on average when you find Bazaar, which is worth a lot when you have disruption elements you can cast from hand.

@chubbyrain said in Proposed New Mulligan Rule for Mythic Championship London:

I think the rule has been misinterpreted

I can really only think of 2 ways this rule would be implemented based on this wording:

1. Draw 7, dont like it. Draw 7, dont like it. Draw 7, like it, put 2 on the bottom.

2. Draw 7, dont like it. draw 6. Dont like it. Draw 5. Like it, draw 2 more to come up to 7, put 2 on the bottom.

Is there another interpretation you are seeing?

@khahan Yes.

3. Draw 7, don't like it, mulligan. Draw 7, put 1 back, don't like it, mulligan. Draw 7, put 2 back, don't like it, mulligan.

Serum Powder is worded so that it replaces the decision to mulligan. You would not exile 7 cards each time under this interpretation as you would have already put the cards back.

This is virtually equivalent to your option 1 (since you could just shortcut putting a card back) except it doesn't work as well with Serum Powder, which makes me wonder if Wizards was trying to word the rule to make Serum Powder worse.

It also could be an effort to eliminate the negative experience of saying "keep", then realizing that over the course of putting cards back that the hand isn't great. This way, you aren't locked into a mulligan until you put the cards back (I would assume).

Got to thinking about this rule a bit and was trying to figure out cards and things that can take advantage of this other than the obvious ones like powder and bazaar and had 2 thoughts.

1 - This mulligan does have some corner cases where it is not strictly better, and many that are. The one thing I can think of is that on the mull to 6 you technically see the same number of cards, but you have the option not to bottom one on a keep. Additionally if you put the scry on top you are protecting it from duress for a turn, where as in the new rule it has to be in your hand.

2 - Squadron Hawk seems very strong to me now. I know that sounds silly but because you get to choose to bottom the cards you don't want, you basically always get to put other copies of hawk back and ensure the copy you keep is a 2 mana 1/1 flying draw 3 (and not 2 copies of a 1/1 draw 1). Obviously the power of this card is more about Jace or brainstorming the other copies away but I could see it getting a real boost if this mulligan rule took effect.

Somehow I doubt Squadron Hawk would start seeing widespread Vintage play, but maybe it has an impact on Modern?

@protoaddct said in Proposed New Mulligan Rule for Mythic Championship London:

Got to thinking about this rule a bit and was trying to figure out cards and things that can take advantage of this other than the obvious ones like powder and bazaar and had 2 thoughts.

1 - This mulligan does have some corner cases where it is not strictly better, and many that are. The one thing I can think of is that on the mull to 6 you technically see the same number of cards, but you have the option not to bottom one on a keep. Additionally if you put the scry on top you are protecting it from duress for a turn, where as in the new rule it has to be in your hand.

2 - Squadron Hawk seems very strong to me now. I know that sounds silly but because you get to choose to bottom the cards you don't want, you basically always get to put other copies of hawk back and ensure the copy you keep is a 2 mana 1/1 flying draw 3 (and not 2 copies of a 1/1 draw 1). Obviously the power of this card is more about Jace or brainstorming the other copies away but I could see it getting a real boost if this mulligan rule took effect.

What immediately comes to my mind is in those situation is Oath targets or big bots like Blightsteel Colossus. Being able to bottom them from your opening hand is pretty strong.

@ajfirecracker said in Proposed New Mulligan Rule for Mythic Championship London:

Somehow I doubt Squadron Hawk would start seeing widespread Vintage play, but maybe it has an impact on Modern?

Stranger things have happened. If this rule comes to pass I may try and brew with it. For certain it will have impact in modern but I could also imagine Legacy seeing a huge pull towards them. It is a format where 4 brainstorm and 4 Jace is a deck still, and carry a Jitte is still a legit strategy.

@khahan said in Proposed New Mulligan Rule for Mythic Championship London:

What immediately comes to my mind is in those situation is Oath targets or big bots like Blightsteel Colossus. Being able to bottom them from your opening hand is pretty strong.

No doubt, but my point was that this was also possible with the old mull rule as well if it was your 6th card. The functional difference I was pointing out is that no known card can be hidden on the top under this new mulligan rule.

I think its a good point that its not all positive with this rule. There are also the cases, where you draw 7 really good cards during the mulligan phase and you end up having to bottom some of them.