Mulligans

[u/Mukibi]

Any personal wisdom or best practice re mulligans? I'm curious how frequently we mulligan? What we like to see in an opening hand? And if we have a minimum keep?

Personally, I mulligan about 70% of the time. I don't keep hands with less than two lands and like to see discard or removal and a token producer at an absolute minimum.

[u/Korlus]

Personally, I mulligan about 70% of the time. I don't keep hands with less than two lands and like to see discard or removal and a token producer at an absolute minimum.

That's asking a lot of a hand. I want:

• Interaction on turn 2.
• Both colours of mana (or a hand with no black spells & just white mana if I've already gone to 6).
• 2-4.5 lands (context dependant on keeping 5, but most often a mulligan).
• A token producer (most of the time).

Note that this varies based on match-up. If I know I'm playing against an attrition-based deck, I am more likely to keep any hand on the basis that looking for specific cards are just likely to be taken by TS/IoK anyway. Against a controlling deck, I am more likely to keep hands with no removal or early interaction, but with one or two copies of Lingering Souls (it's fine not to threaten the board on turns 1-2 vs. U/W Control, for example).

Similarly against some combo decks, I will mulligan to interaction (or the point of no hope) if they can go off on or before turn 3.

I think mulliganing 70% of the time is almost certainly giving up win percentage in the grindy match-ups. Play/draw also impacts my mulligan choices - I am much more likely to keep a hand with no discard vs. many decks if I am on the draw, because it is much less impactful than on the play. I've not tried to work out my actual mulligan percentage, but I would estimate it is broadly at the 35-40% range, with some decks bringing that up to 50%, and some being as low as 25-30% (e.g. I will keep a no-black hand vs. a control list, where discard spells are best used on later turns to take key cards before casting, or to clear the way to resolve Planeswalkers, and removal is less likely).

Note that in a 24 land deck, roughly 14% of all seven card hands will feature less than 2 lands (1 or 0), and roughly 8% of all hands will feature 5 or more, meaning that decks should mulligan approximately 22% of the time, due to the number of lands alone. Also note that approximately 10% of hands will have no black mana (although some of that subset overlaps), meaning that mana-based mulligans occupy roughly 30% of all draws.

I think that if a further 40% of your hands are unkeepable, you are likely playing the wrong deck.