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On June 21 2016 12:46 Frudgey wrote: Anyways, I'm pretty new to Magic and I'm having a hard time knowing when it's good to keep my starting hand or when to mulligan.
From my understanding you want around 3-4 lands and you really don't want to go down to fewer than 6 cards in your starting hand. I also realize it might depend on what deck you play. So for reference, I like to play Red decks with a lower mana curve and a Green/White Enchantment deck with an average(?) mana curve.
Feedback/advice would be awesome.
Thanks!
Red deck with a low mana curve? Most likely burn or red deck wins(RDW) archtypes. In this case, 1 or 2 land hands will be considered decent. Especially if you have a lot of 1 or 2 converted mana cost (cmc) cards.
As for G/W enchantment or what I assume is an average mana curve, a 2/3 land hands will be decent. Can't really say much about it as there is too much variance.
For mulliganing, just do it! I normally will go down to 4 cards hand if I feel that the current hand isn't good without thinking much. As you mulligan more often, you will get more experience in when to do it or not. Learn from your mistakes!
On June 21 2016 11:29 Draconicfire wrote: Emrakul confirmed. Hope they do this set well.
Hello there squiddy fuzzy wuddy EMN set icon. + Show Spoiler [Rant] + I'm a bit sick of eldrazi especially after ROE ver 2...Hopefully we will only see around 10 colourless cards since Emrakul 0.2 is card 6/205
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Frudgey you can always skype/PM me or yangers if you have specific questions. I'm also always up to practice if you ever want!
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Does anyone play on MTGO? I've been playing a lot of commander and now vintage on there, it's pretty great aside from a few random ass MTGO bugs. Sold my paper GW tokens deck for basically full p9 and blue vintage staples, and it's great to be able to get reasonable games anytime I want.
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On June 21 2016 12:46 Frudgey wrote: So I don't know if this an acceptable place to ask in general Magic the Gathering questions, so please let me know if this isn't the place for it!
Anyways, I'm pretty new to Magic and I'm having a hard time knowing when it's good to keep my starting hand or when to mulligan.
From my understanding you want around 3-4 lands and you really don't want to go down to fewer than 6 cards in your starting hand. I also realize it might depend on what deck you play. So for reference, I like to play Red decks with a lower mana curve and a Green/White Enchantment deck with an average(?) mana curve.
Feedback/advice would be awesome.
Thanks!
Feel free to post hands that you have trouble with on this thread too. I always do that w/ my friends and it helps a lot.
On June 21 2016 14:46 Thermia wrote: Does anyone play on MTGO? I've been playing a lot of commander and now vintage on there, it's pretty great aside from a few random ass MTGO bugs. Sold my paper GW tokens deck for basically full p9 and blue vintage staples, and it's great to be able to get reasonable games anytime I want.
I play a ton of MTGO. I only do modern, standard, and limited tho. I have a few pauper decks too.
BTW, anyone been keeping up with modern? Going to Dallas this weekend, and I'm wondering if Burn is a good choice right now.
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Straight outta Johto18973 Posts
On June 21 2016 12:46 Frudgey wrote: So I don't know if this an acceptable place to ask in general Magic the Gathering questions, so please let me know if this isn't the place for it!
Anyways, I'm pretty new to Magic and I'm having a hard time knowing when it's good to keep my starting hand or when to mulligan.
Firstly, never feel afraid to ask a question when you don't understand something and want to learn to become better.
Secondly, knowing when to mulligan is surprisingly hard even if you have a lot of experience. So don't feel bad if you're finding it hard. Even if you read tons of theory, you won't really "get it" until you actually put it into practice and get your reps in.
The best thing you can do and this applies to many things in life with complicated decisions) is to build a mental framework which informs your decision making. Sort of like a mental checklist or flowchart, with caveats and exceptions. Developing this framework will help you not only understand what the correct decision is in familiar scenarios, but also why it's the correct decision, and having a guide to use in unfamiliar scenarios.
On June 21 2016 12:46 Frudgey wrote: From my understanding you want around 3-4 lands and you really don't want to go down to fewer than 6 cards in your starting hand. I also realize it might depend on what deck you play. So for reference, I like to play Red decks with a lower mana curve and a Green/White Enchantment deck with an average(?) mana curve.
For MtG mulligans, there are three key factors you should think about before you mulligan.
1. What is my deck's plan and can I execute it? When you look at your hand for the first time, ask yourself "What am I actually going to do in the first few turns of the game?"
You correctly identify that, for example, an aggressive Red deck wants low mana cost cards immediately. If you're the aggro deck in a matchup, you want to be doing damage to their face. [1] [2] [3] So if your first few turns don't give you a good start, eventually you have a board full of small 1 or 2 mana creatures facing down those big 4 or 5 mana creatures that eat up weenies.
The idea of having a mix of lands and spells is correct, but doesn't always answer that "What am I doing" question. Take your GW Enchantment deck for example. You might have a really nice hand with lands and spells you can play. But let's say you're against a Red aggro deck. And you ask yourself "What does my hand do in the first few turns?"
You want the answer to be something along the lines of "Well, I have some spells I'm going to play on turns 1/2/3 that can slow down the aggro deck (maybe a creature I can use to chump block). Extra bonus cause I have 3 lands so I will still hit my land drops, and by Turn 4 it's likely I'll draw another land and then I'm in good position to start deploying my 4-drops and then take over the game."
If your answer is "Well, I don't do anything that actually matters versus small aggresive creatures until Turn 4 and then I might be dead" you should reconsider your hand. Even if it's a mix of lands and spells! Spells you never get to cast, or spells that don't actually do anything in a game are dead cards anyway. Having a Circle of Protection: Green means you do something Turn 2, but it's still useless if your opponent isn't Green!
2. Can I actually get a better hand? Sometimes your deck just actually doesn't do well against other decks or there aren't many relevant cards in your deck. Or sometimes you may get some really good important cards you need in a matchup but also a bunch of useless cards. This is when you need to ask yourself if it's worth taking a mulligan.
Let's use the GW Enchantments vs Red aggro as an example again. Let's say you're the GW deck, you know you're playing vs Red, and your hand contains Sunlance, a Kor Firewalker and some other decent cards but aren't super amazing in this matchup. [4]
Ok, so this hand already gives a pretty good answer to the question "What does my hand do in the first few turns of the game?" You have something reasonable to do for the first two turns of the game, and you're not going to die in four turns like last game (you hope!). It can probably stall for a while for you to draw other cards that matter and take over a game. You might have one or two enchantments to get some combo running. But can you do better?
If you basically don't have any other cards in your deck to play in the first few turns versus a Red deck then sure you keep. However, if you're gone super heavy in sideboarding or just naturally have a ton of Red-hate like Nyx Fleece Ram and Wall of Omens then chances are you might actually find a better hand. If you're on the draw, you get to also draw that card on Turn 1 and also scry the top card of your library if you mulligan. So you may lean towards taking a mulligan on a decent hand because there's a very good chance a random 6 card hand will just be better. [5]
3. What format am I playing? This seems like an odd thing to mention specifically, but it will inform how you think about the first two question. The format you play does matter. On a scale of Sealed -> Draft -> Block -> Standard -> Modern -> Legacy -> Vintage, the formats get faster and faster. Your fundamental turn begins to drop.
Most importantly though, the roles in each matchup are more pronounced. In slower formats with less powerful cards, there are less things worth taking a mulligan to find.
Taking a mulligan has a cost. In a format like Modern, I might mull really aggressively to find that key sideboard card that instantly wins me a game like Choke against a blue deck running mostly Islands. But if you have, let's say, a really basic draft deck in a slow format that's not about synergy how important is it as an aggro deck if you don't have a one-drop? Do you even have enough one-drop cards that make it likely you'll find it? And will having that one-drop matter enough to cover losing a card and maybe getting worse cards in the rest of the hand? [6]
Different formats will have different speeds and power levels. As such, your natural inclination to take a mulligan should also vary. For example, I will ship a hand back and try for a new hand much more when playing Modern than when playing Limited because early gameplay matters so much more.
But really, just play lots and have fun! Sometimes you need to go with your gut and having lots of experience from seeing how things play out can be imformative too. Knowing things like :Oh this hand is still too slow in this matchup" or "Yeah I have better 6-card hands I will regularly draw" is something that comes from experience.
If you want some practice, try shuffling and drawing hands of a deck by yourself and seeing how you feel about them. Maybe "goldfish" and play imaginary games and see what actually happens. Also, there are a lot of MtG articles online worth reading too. [7] I've made a lot of sweeping generalisations here and I haven't really proof-read this so I'm sure smarter people than I have much better things to say!
Notes
- If you haven't read the seminal article "Who is the beatdown?" I really recommend it. It was THE original article about understanding your role in a matchup. The key conclusion is if you don't understand your role in a game, you lose. Understand who has the responsibility to end the game, and who wants to just live and take a controlling position.
- Just on another tangent, the idea of the Fundamental Turn is also very important. Again, and old article but a good one. The key conclusion is that there's no point having a great Turn 6 play if you're already dead or as good as dead on Turn 4! Keep asking yourself "What do the first few turns look like?"
- I know it's another footnote, but some of these articles are really old so the cards and references will be dated. And formatting and writing styles have gotten better in recent years. But worth reading. If you use Google, you might find other people's takes on the issue. A lot of MtG concepts get rehashed for the Hearthstone crowd for instance becaue the theories are so similar.
- I'm making some things up here because I don't actually know what a GW enchantment deck looks like. Probably things like Enchantress's Presence to start drawing deep into your deck.
- This can sometimes be not very obvious! In a recent Grand Prix tournament, Pascal Maynard was playing a mid-range big stuff deck versus an aggressive artifact deck. He drew a hand with several good removal spells, looked at it, and then basically shipped it back and started shuffling his deck again. I might have kept in his case, but he's a better player than I am and clearly thought "Nope. I can do better."
- Owen Turtenwald, a professional MtG player, wrote this article. It was a response to another pro's article about why they would mulligan a hand and he explained why he thought sometimes it's just not worth it. It's a good read.
- Apart from checking out the rest of the CFB series a few I remember from olden times include this one about mana and quality of cards and this one with some general principles. I'm sure there are probably better and newer ones around now. Maybe someone else in this thread knows some...?
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Straight outta Johto18973 Posts
On June 22 2016 04:25 Whole wrote: BTW, anyone been keeping up with modern? Going to Dallas this weekend, and I'm wondering if Burn is a good choice right now. Still a Tier 1 deck. Abzan Company is floating around with Kitchen Finks and all, and there's a decent aggro presence so people are still packing some hate. But in the last few GPs I think the attention was on things like Tron and the new Jeskai Nahiri breakout deck. The format is also pretty wide atm so there's competition for sideboard space.
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About Goblin Trenches, what makes it as busted as people have been saying it is? I think I started understanding when I viewed it as "Pay an initial cost, then turns any land in hand into Raise the Alarm."
On the other hand Raise alone didn't strike me as that good. Defensively it's fine but offensively it's two small bodies that'll easily get chumped unless you're allowed to go pretty wide. And there are other things that make tokens for kinda cheap early on so the trenches don't look that explosive either if you have decent cards to play on curve.
How do you play them? Do you just drop them asap, hit your 3rd or 4th land drop (whatever your deck needs) then start unloading lands every turn on top of playing your small drops to be mana-efficient while going pretty wide? Or is it something you drop whenever you don't have something better (eg. a creature or something to deal with a blocker) and then if you don't win the game turn 5-6 like you'd want you still have gas if you start drawing excess lands, giving you more resilience/reach later on?
I thought the tokens could be good with anthem effects, but Intangible Virtue's a rare, and drafters seem to shun orcish oriflamme, so it's not that.
Oh, and nothing to do with MTG, but since I came across Moonbear. + Show Spoiler +
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On June 22 2016 08:34 Alaric wrote:About Goblin Trenches, what makes it as busted as people have been saying it is? I think I started understanding when I viewed it as "Pay an initial cost, then turns any land in hand into Raise the Alarm." On the other hand Raise alone didn't strike me as that good. Defensively it's fine but offensively it's two small bodies that'll easily get chumped unless you're allowed to go pretty wide. And there are other things that make tokens for kinda cheap early on so the trenches don't look that explosive either if you have decent cards to play on curve. How do you play them? Do you just drop them asap, hit your 3rd or 4th land drop (whatever your deck needs) then start unloading lands every turn on top of playing your small drops to be mana-efficient while going pretty wide? Or is it something you drop whenever you don't have something better (eg. a creature or something to deal with a blocker) and then if you don't win the game turn 5-6 like you'd want you still have gas if you start drawing excess lands, giving you more resilience/reach later on? I thought the tokens could be good with anthem effects, but Intangible Virtue's a rare, and drafters seem to shun orcish oriflamme, so it's not that. Oh, and nothing to do with MTG, but since I came across Moonbear. + Show Spoiler +
Since it's "Sacrifice a land" and not "Discard a land" it makes all the lands that you have on the battlefield not just those in your hand potential Raise the Alarms, which is great for go-wide strategies. Also there's stuff like Rally the Peasants at common, Flame-Kin Zealot at uncommon that work really well with it.
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It's busted because it is a low cost, hard to interact with "flood protection" card. Excluding fast formats and fast decks, limited games tend to be pretty long and grindy, and this card basically makes you favored vs anyone going into the late game. Most of the time you don't need more than 6 lands, so turning every land past that into a Raise the Alarm is pretty big game. Especially since on the final turns, you can sacrifice basically all of your lands and go for the win.
I like to explain these types of cards like this: Assume you and your opponent both have decks that are 17 lands and 23 vanilla 3/3s. Y'all play a game and draw equal number of 3/3s and lands. If one of your 3/3s was instead a Goblin Trenches, you'd win the game in a landslide. In an actual game, you're always trying to make your cards at least trade for one of theirs...this is why two-for-ones are so great. So assuming that on average you and your opponent has the same amount of two-for-ones and draw the same amount of lands Goblin Trenches pulls you ahead by a ton.
Basically it breaks parity wide open. Then it also had the benefit of making your opponents attack a nightmare and you don't lose if you draw more lands than your opponent either.
Or is it something you drop whenever you don't have something better (eg. a creature or something to deal with a blocker) and then if you don't win the game turn 5-6 like you'd want you still have gas if you start drawing excess lands, giving you more resilience/reach later on?
This is basically it. I don't know the set well, but in certain aggro decks, you could very well play it very aggressively by saccing lands super early.
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Oh, right, it's sac-ing, hadn't read it. Indeed it also means that you can't play "too many" lands either. I had thought that people labeled it as super strong in go for the throat aggro deck, but I understand better in the context of a Limited war of attrition.
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On June 22 2016 07:57 MoonBear wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2016 12:46 Frudgey wrote: So I don't know if this an acceptable place to ask in general Magic the Gathering questions, so please let me know if this isn't the place for it!
Anyways, I'm pretty new to Magic and I'm having a hard time knowing when it's good to keep my starting hand or when to mulligan. Firstly, never feel afraid to ask a question when you don't understand something and want to learn to become better. Secondly, knowing when to mulligan is surprisingly hard even if you have a lot of experience. So don't feel bad if you're finding it hard. Even if you read tons of theory, you won't really "get it" until you actually put it into practice and get your reps in. The best thing you can do and this applies to many things in life with complicated decisions) is to build a mental framework which informs your decision making. Sort of like a mental checklist or flowchart, with caveats and exceptions. Developing this framework will help you not only understand what the correct decision is in familiar scenarios, but also why it's the correct decision, and having a guide to use in unfamiliar scenarios. Show nested quote +On June 21 2016 12:46 Frudgey wrote: From my understanding you want around 3-4 lands and you really don't want to go down to fewer than 6 cards in your starting hand. I also realize it might depend on what deck you play. So for reference, I like to play Red decks with a lower mana curve and a Green/White Enchantment deck with an average(?) mana curve. For MtG mulligans, there are three key factors you should think about before you mulligan. 1. What is my deck's plan and can I execute it?When you look at your hand for the first time, ask yourself "What am I actually going to do in the first few turns of the game?" You correctly identify that, for example, an aggressive Red deck wants low mana cost cards immediately. If you're the aggro deck in a matchup, you want to be doing damage to their face. <sup>[1] [2] [3]</sup> So if your first few turns don't give you a good start, eventually you have a board full of small 1 or 2 mana creatures facing down those big 4 or 5 mana creatures that eat up weenies. The idea of having a mix of lands and spells is correct, but doesn't always answer that "What am I doing" question. Take your GW Enchantment deck for example. You might have a really nice hand with lands and spells you can play. But let's say you're against a Red aggro deck. And you ask yourself "What does my hand do in the first few turns?" You want the answer to be something along the lines of "Well, I have some spells I'm going to play on turns 1/2/3 that can slow down the aggro deck (maybe a creature I can use to chump block). Extra bonus cause I have 3 lands so I will still hit my land drops, and by Turn 4 it's likely I'll draw another land and then I'm in good position to start deploying my 4-drops and then take over the game." If your answer is "Well, I don't do anything that actually matters versus small aggresive creatures until Turn 4 and then I might be dead" you should reconsider your hand. Even if it's a mix of lands and spells! Spells you never get to cast, or spells that don't actually do anything in a game are dead cards anyway. Having a Circle of Protection: Green means you do something Turn 2, but it's still useless if your opponent isn't Green! 2. Can I actually get a better hand?Sometimes your deck just actually doesn't do well against other decks or there aren't many relevant cards in your deck. Or sometimes you may get some really good important cards you need in a matchup but also a bunch of useless cards. This is when you need to ask yourself if it's worth taking a mulligan. Let's use the GW Enchantments vs Red aggro as an example again. Let's say you're the GW deck, you know you're playing vs Red, and your hand contains Sunlance, a Kor Firewalker and some other decent cards but aren't super amazing in this matchup. <sup>[4]</sup> Ok, so this hand already gives a pretty good answer to the question "What does my hand do in the first few turns of the game?" You have something reasonable to do for the first two turns of the game, and you're not going to die in four turns like last game (you hope!). It can probably stall for a while for you to draw other cards that matter and take over a game. You might have one or two enchantments to get some combo running. But can you do better? If you basically don't have any other cards in your deck to play in the first few turns versus a Red deck then sure you keep. However, if you're gone super heavy in sideboarding or just naturally have a ton of Red-hate like Nyx Fleece Ram and Wall of Omens then chances are you might actually find a better hand. If you're on the draw, you get to also draw that card on Turn 1 and also scry the top card of your library if you mulligan. So you may lean towards taking a mulligan on a decent hand because there's a very good chance a random 6 card hand will just be better. <sup>[5]</sup> 3. What format am I playing?This seems like an odd thing to mention specifically, but it will inform how you think about the first two question. The format you play does matter. On a scale of Sealed -> Draft -> Block -> Standard -> Modern -> Legacy -> Vintage, the formats get faster and faster. Your fundamental turn begins to drop. Most importantly though, the roles in each matchup are more pronounced. In slower formats with less powerful cards, there are less things worth taking a mulligan to find. Taking a mulligan has a cost. In a format like Modern, I might mull really aggressively to find that key sideboard card that instantly wins me a game like Choke against a blue deck running mostly Islands. But if you have, let's say, a really basic draft deck in a slow format that's not about synergy how important is it as an aggro deck if you don't have a one-drop? Do you even have enough one-drop cards that make it likely you'll find it? And will having that one-drop matter enough to cover losing a card and maybe getting worse cards in the rest of the hand? <sup>[6]</sup> Different formats will have different speeds and power levels. As such, your natural inclination to take a mulligan should also vary. For example, I will ship a hand back and try for a new hand much more when playing Modern than when playing Limited because early gameplay matters so much more. But really, just play lots and have fun! Sometimes you need to go with your gut and having lots of experience from seeing how things play out can be imformative too. Knowing things like :Oh this hand is still too slow in this matchup" or "Yeah I have better 6-card hands I will regularly draw" is something that comes from experience. If you want some practice, try shuffling and drawing hands of a deck by yourself and seeing how you feel about them. Maybe "goldfish" and play imaginary games and see what actually happens. Also, there are a lot of MtG articles online worth reading too. <sup>[7]</sup> I've made a lot of sweeping generalisations here and I haven't really proof-read this so I'm sure smarter people than I have much better things to say! Notes
- If you haven't read the seminal article "Who is the beatdown?" I really recommend it. It was THE original article about understanding your role in a matchup. The key conclusion is if you don't understand your role in a game, you lose. Understand who has the responsibility to end the game, and who wants to just live and take a controlling position.
- Just on another tangent, the idea of the Fundamental Turn is also very important. Again, and old article but a good one. The key conclusion is that there's no point having a great Turn 6 play if you're already dead or as good as dead on Turn 4! Keep asking yourself "What do the first few turns look like?"
- I know it's another footnote, but some of these articles are really old so the cards and references will be dated. And formatting and writing styles have gotten better in recent years. But worth reading. If you use Google, you might find other people's takes on the issue. A lot of MtG concepts get rehashed for the Hearthstone crowd for instance becaue the theories are so similar.
- I'm making some things up here because I don't actually know what a GW enchantment deck looks like. Probably things like Enchantress's Presence to start drawing deep into your deck.
- This can sometimes be not very obvious! In a recent Grand Prix tournament, Pascal Maynard was playing a mid-range big stuff deck versus an aggressive artifact deck. He drew a hand with several good removal spells, looked at it, and then basically shipped it back and started shuffling his deck again. I might have kept in his case, but he's a better player than I am and clearly thought "Nope. I can do better."
- Owen Turtenwald, a professional MtG player, wrote this article. It was a response to another pro's article about why they would mulligan a hand and he explained why he thought sometimes it's just not worth it. It's a good read.
- Apart from checking out the rest of the CFB series a few I remember from olden times include this one about mana and quality of cards and this one with some general principles. I'm sure there are probably better and newer ones around now. Maybe someone else in this thread knows some...?
What an old man. Block doesn't exist anymore.
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Its ok, just replace Block in that list with full-box Sealed.
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On June 22 2016 09:40 TheYango wrote: Its ok, just replace Block in that list with full-box Sealed. Is that a thing that's actually caught on? Because everything I've read about it makes it seem like random anecdotal 'hey here' s something new my playgroup tried this one time along with the super popular formats 'wizard's tower' and the totally not-dead 'tiny leaders.'
It's not something I'm ever likely to play since I can't throw $150 at mtg at a time.
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On June 22 2016 09:25 WaveofShadow wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2016 07:57 MoonBear wrote:On June 21 2016 12:46 Frudgey wrote: So I don't know if this an acceptable place to ask in general Magic the Gathering questions, so please let me know if this isn't the place for it!
Anyways, I'm pretty new to Magic and I'm having a hard time knowing when it's good to keep my starting hand or when to mulligan. Firstly, never feel afraid to ask a question when you don't understand something and want to learn to become better. Secondly, knowing when to mulligan is surprisingly hard even if you have a lot of experience. So don't feel bad if you're finding it hard. Even if you read tons of theory, you won't really "get it" until you actually put it into practice and get your reps in. The best thing you can do and this applies to many things in life with complicated decisions) is to build a mental framework which informs your decision making. Sort of like a mental checklist or flowchart, with caveats and exceptions. Developing this framework will help you not only understand what the correct decision is in familiar scenarios, but also why it's the correct decision, and having a guide to use in unfamiliar scenarios. On June 21 2016 12:46 Frudgey wrote: From my understanding you want around 3-4 lands and you really don't want to go down to fewer than 6 cards in your starting hand. I also realize it might depend on what deck you play. So for reference, I like to play Red decks with a lower mana curve and a Green/White Enchantment deck with an average(?) mana curve. For MtG mulligans, there are three key factors you should think about before you mulligan. 1. What is my deck's plan and can I execute it?When you look at your hand for the first time, ask yourself "What am I actually going to do in the first few turns of the game?" You correctly identify that, for example, an aggressive Red deck wants low mana cost cards immediately. If you're the aggro deck in a matchup, you want to be doing damage to their face. <sup>[1] [2] [3]</sup> So if your first few turns don't give you a good start, eventually you have a board full of small 1 or 2 mana creatures facing down those big 4 or 5 mana creatures that eat up weenies. The idea of having a mix of lands and spells is correct, but doesn't always answer that "What am I doing" question. Take your GW Enchantment deck for example. You might have a really nice hand with lands and spells you can play. But let's say you're against a Red aggro deck. And you ask yourself "What does my hand do in the first few turns?" You want the answer to be something along the lines of "Well, I have some spells I'm going to play on turns 1/2/3 that can slow down the aggro deck (maybe a creature I can use to chump block). Extra bonus cause I have 3 lands so I will still hit my land drops, and by Turn 4 it's likely I'll draw another land and then I'm in good position to start deploying my 4-drops and then take over the game." If your answer is "Well, I don't do anything that actually matters versus small aggresive creatures until Turn 4 and then I might be dead" you should reconsider your hand. Even if it's a mix of lands and spells! Spells you never get to cast, or spells that don't actually do anything in a game are dead cards anyway. Having a Circle of Protection: Green means you do something Turn 2, but it's still useless if your opponent isn't Green! 2. Can I actually get a better hand?Sometimes your deck just actually doesn't do well against other decks or there aren't many relevant cards in your deck. Or sometimes you may get some really good important cards you need in a matchup but also a bunch of useless cards. This is when you need to ask yourself if it's worth taking a mulligan. Let's use the GW Enchantments vs Red aggro as an example again. Let's say you're the GW deck, you know you're playing vs Red, and your hand contains Sunlance, a Kor Firewalker and some other decent cards but aren't super amazing in this matchup. <sup>[4]</sup> Ok, so this hand already gives a pretty good answer to the question "What does my hand do in the first few turns of the game?" You have something reasonable to do for the first two turns of the game, and you're not going to die in four turns like last game (you hope!). It can probably stall for a while for you to draw other cards that matter and take over a game. You might have one or two enchantments to get some combo running. But can you do better? If you basically don't have any other cards in your deck to play in the first few turns versus a Red deck then sure you keep. However, if you're gone super heavy in sideboarding or just naturally have a ton of Red-hate like Nyx Fleece Ram and Wall of Omens then chances are you might actually find a better hand. If you're on the draw, you get to also draw that card on Turn 1 and also scry the top card of your library if you mulligan. So you may lean towards taking a mulligan on a decent hand because there's a very good chance a random 6 card hand will just be better. <sup>[5]</sup> 3. What format am I playing?This seems like an odd thing to mention specifically, but it will inform how you think about the first two question. The format you play does matter. On a scale of Sealed -> Draft -> Block -> Standard -> Modern -> Legacy -> Vintage, the formats get faster and faster. Your fundamental turn begins to drop. Most importantly though, the roles in each matchup are more pronounced. In slower formats with less powerful cards, there are less things worth taking a mulligan to find. Taking a mulligan has a cost. In a format like Modern, I might mull really aggressively to find that key sideboard card that instantly wins me a game like Choke against a blue deck running mostly Islands. But if you have, let's say, a really basic draft deck in a slow format that's not about synergy how important is it as an aggro deck if you don't have a one-drop? Do you even have enough one-drop cards that make it likely you'll find it? And will having that one-drop matter enough to cover losing a card and maybe getting worse cards in the rest of the hand? <sup>[6]</sup> Different formats will have different speeds and power levels. As such, your natural inclination to take a mulligan should also vary. For example, I will ship a hand back and try for a new hand much more when playing Modern than when playing Limited because early gameplay matters so much more. But really, just play lots and have fun! Sometimes you need to go with your gut and having lots of experience from seeing how things play out can be imformative too. Knowing things like :Oh this hand is still too slow in this matchup" or "Yeah I have better 6-card hands I will regularly draw" is something that comes from experience. If you want some practice, try shuffling and drawing hands of a deck by yourself and seeing how you feel about them. Maybe "goldfish" and play imaginary games and see what actually happens. Also, there are a lot of MtG articles online worth reading too. <sup>[7]</sup> I've made a lot of sweeping generalisations here and I haven't really proof-read this so I'm sure smarter people than I have much better things to say! Notes
- If you haven't read the seminal article "Who is the beatdown?" I really recommend it. It was THE original article about understanding your role in a matchup. The key conclusion is if you don't understand your role in a game, you lose. Understand who has the responsibility to end the game, and who wants to just live and take a controlling position.
- Just on another tangent, the idea of the Fundamental Turn is also very important. Again, and old article but a good one. The key conclusion is that there's no point having a great Turn 6 play if you're already dead or as good as dead on Turn 4! Keep asking yourself "What do the first few turns look like?"
- I know it's another footnote, but some of these articles are really old so the cards and references will be dated. And formatting and writing styles have gotten better in recent years. But worth reading. If you use Google, you might find other people's takes on the issue. A lot of MtG concepts get rehashed for the Hearthstone crowd for instance becaue the theories are so similar.
- I'm making some things up here because I don't actually know what a GW enchantment deck looks like. Probably things like Enchantress's Presence to start drawing deep into your deck.
- This can sometimes be not very obvious! In a recent Grand Prix tournament, Pascal Maynard was playing a mid-range big stuff deck versus an aggressive artifact deck. He drew a hand with several good removal spells, looked at it, and then basically shipped it back and started shuffling his deck again. I might have kept in his case, but he's a better player than I am and clearly thought "Nope. I can do better."
- Owen Turtenwald, a professional MtG player, wrote this article. It was a response to another pro's article about why they would mulligan a hand and he explained why he thought sometimes it's just not worth it. It's a good read.
- Apart from checking out the rest of the CFB series a few I remember from olden times include this one about mana and quality of cards and this one with some general principles. I'm sure there are probably better and newer ones around now. Maybe someone else in this thread knows some...?
What an old man.Block doesn't exist anymore. If he's an old man, you must be a fossil. At the very least you belong in a museum!
Also do all decks have some form of mana ramping/card search functionality, or is that more just Green/Blue decks? Because I'm building decks and I'm wondering if I should always be incorporating cards that either let you draw cards, search for them, or something similar.
I understand that you get better at deck building the more you do, but I'd happily accept any pointers!
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Unless you're aggro enough that you're aiming to kill before your starting hand + turn draws run out, card draw's always a very good thing to have. Pretty sure that's part of the reason white weenies decks include Thraben Inspector (although 1/2 for 1 isn't a bad stat distribution once you add the bonus from Thalia's Lieutenant and Always Watching).
Ramping's almost exclusively a green thing (and some artifacts do that too, of course), while searching for cards (tutoring) is colour-dependant. Green usually tutors for lands/creatures (there are exceptions, see Traverse the Ulvenwald, but it's mostly that). White tutors for enchantments, sometimes small creatures. Blue tutors for sorcery/instant spells. Black tutors for most stuff but there's a cost associated with it, and it's mostly in old formats. I don't even know what red tutors for apart from the wish.
Also it depends on your deck. If you have a simple plan with a lot of redundancy, tutoring isn't as important since you'd usually find what you need by drawing normally. Combo decks that want particular pieces tend to be interested in tutors more, same as control decks with silver bullets/limited answers for some situations.
But even if you don't have tutors, card selection is itself an important concept. Actually good people here will certainly correct me, but I tend to think of scrying as the same thing as drawing in the short term: if it's a card you want, you ensure you're getting it next (especially when you scry on your upkeep, or right before a draw effect), and if it's a card you don't want/can't use atm, then putting it on the bottom of your deck or drawing it is the same thing: it's off the top and puts you closer to the cards you actually want to draw.
I'm talking about all this but Pore over the Pages is an amazing card selection spell in standard atm (especially in conjunction with madness), while Pieces of the Puzzle is ignored despite it digging deeper if you were looking for a specific answer and not just draw cards in general/shape your hand. Maybe it'd receive more love if "truer" combo decks than mono-U prison showed up.
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On June 22 2016 11:01 Frudgey wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2016 09:25 WaveofShadow wrote:On June 22 2016 07:57 MoonBear wrote:On June 21 2016 12:46 Frudgey wrote: So I don't know if this an acceptable place to ask in general Magic the Gathering questions, so please let me know if this isn't the place for it!
Anyways, I'm pretty new to Magic and I'm having a hard time knowing when it's good to keep my starting hand or when to mulligan. Firstly, never feel afraid to ask a question when you don't understand something and want to learn to become better. Secondly, knowing when to mulligan is surprisingly hard even if you have a lot of experience. So don't feel bad if you're finding it hard. Even if you read tons of theory, you won't really "get it" until you actually put it into practice and get your reps in. The best thing you can do and this applies to many things in life with complicated decisions) is to build a mental framework which informs your decision making. Sort of like a mental checklist or flowchart, with caveats and exceptions. Developing this framework will help you not only understand what the correct decision is in familiar scenarios, but also why it's the correct decision, and having a guide to use in unfamiliar scenarios. On June 21 2016 12:46 Frudgey wrote: From my understanding you want around 3-4 lands and you really don't want to go down to fewer than 6 cards in your starting hand. I also realize it might depend on what deck you play. So for reference, I like to play Red decks with a lower mana curve and a Green/White Enchantment deck with an average(?) mana curve. For MtG mulligans, there are three key factors you should think about before you mulligan. 1. What is my deck's plan and can I execute it?When you look at your hand for the first time, ask yourself "What am I actually going to do in the first few turns of the game?" You correctly identify that, for example, an aggressive Red deck wants low mana cost cards immediately. If you're the aggro deck in a matchup, you want to be doing damage to their face. <sup>[1] [2] [3]</sup> So if your first few turns don't give you a good start, eventually you have a board full of small 1 or 2 mana creatures facing down those big 4 or 5 mana creatures that eat up weenies. The idea of having a mix of lands and spells is correct, but doesn't always answer that "What am I doing" question. Take your GW Enchantment deck for example. You might have a really nice hand with lands and spells you can play. But let's say you're against a Red aggro deck. And you ask yourself "What does my hand do in the first few turns?" You want the answer to be something along the lines of "Well, I have some spells I'm going to play on turns 1/2/3 that can slow down the aggro deck (maybe a creature I can use to chump block). Extra bonus cause I have 3 lands so I will still hit my land drops, and by Turn 4 it's likely I'll draw another land and then I'm in good position to start deploying my 4-drops and then take over the game." If your answer is "Well, I don't do anything that actually matters versus small aggresive creatures until Turn 4 and then I might be dead" you should reconsider your hand. Even if it's a mix of lands and spells! Spells you never get to cast, or spells that don't actually do anything in a game are dead cards anyway. Having a Circle of Protection: Green means you do something Turn 2, but it's still useless if your opponent isn't Green! 2. Can I actually get a better hand?Sometimes your deck just actually doesn't do well against other decks or there aren't many relevant cards in your deck. Or sometimes you may get some really good important cards you need in a matchup but also a bunch of useless cards. This is when you need to ask yourself if it's worth taking a mulligan. Let's use the GW Enchantments vs Red aggro as an example again. Let's say you're the GW deck, you know you're playing vs Red, and your hand contains Sunlance, a Kor Firewalker and some other decent cards but aren't super amazing in this matchup. <sup>[4]</sup> Ok, so this hand already gives a pretty good answer to the question "What does my hand do in the first few turns of the game?" You have something reasonable to do for the first two turns of the game, and you're not going to die in four turns like last game (you hope!). It can probably stall for a while for you to draw other cards that matter and take over a game. You might have one or two enchantments to get some combo running. But can you do better? If you basically don't have any other cards in your deck to play in the first few turns versus a Red deck then sure you keep. However, if you're gone super heavy in sideboarding or just naturally have a ton of Red-hate like Nyx Fleece Ram and Wall of Omens then chances are you might actually find a better hand. If you're on the draw, you get to also draw that card on Turn 1 and also scry the top card of your library if you mulligan. So you may lean towards taking a mulligan on a decent hand because there's a very good chance a random 6 card hand will just be better. <sup>[5]</sup> 3. What format am I playing?This seems like an odd thing to mention specifically, but it will inform how you think about the first two question. The format you play does matter. On a scale of Sealed -> Draft -> Block -> Standard -> Modern -> Legacy -> Vintage, the formats get faster and faster. Your fundamental turn begins to drop. Most importantly though, the roles in each matchup are more pronounced. In slower formats with less powerful cards, there are less things worth taking a mulligan to find. Taking a mulligan has a cost. In a format like Modern, I might mull really aggressively to find that key sideboard card that instantly wins me a game like Choke against a blue deck running mostly Islands. But if you have, let's say, a really basic draft deck in a slow format that's not about synergy how important is it as an aggro deck if you don't have a one-drop? Do you even have enough one-drop cards that make it likely you'll find it? And will having that one-drop matter enough to cover losing a card and maybe getting worse cards in the rest of the hand? <sup>[6]</sup> Different formats will have different speeds and power levels. As such, your natural inclination to take a mulligan should also vary. For example, I will ship a hand back and try for a new hand much more when playing Modern than when playing Limited because early gameplay matters so much more. But really, just play lots and have fun! Sometimes you need to go with your gut and having lots of experience from seeing how things play out can be imformative too. Knowing things like :Oh this hand is still too slow in this matchup" or "Yeah I have better 6-card hands I will regularly draw" is something that comes from experience. If you want some practice, try shuffling and drawing hands of a deck by yourself and seeing how you feel about them. Maybe "goldfish" and play imaginary games and see what actually happens. Also, there are a lot of MtG articles online worth reading too. <sup>[7]</sup> I've made a lot of sweeping generalisations here and I haven't really proof-read this so I'm sure smarter people than I have much better things to say! Notes
- If you haven't read the seminal article "Who is the beatdown?" I really recommend it. It was THE original article about understanding your role in a matchup. The key conclusion is if you don't understand your role in a game, you lose. Understand who has the responsibility to end the game, and who wants to just live and take a controlling position.
- Just on another tangent, the idea of the Fundamental Turn is also very important. Again, and old article but a good one. The key conclusion is that there's no point having a great Turn 6 play if you're already dead or as good as dead on Turn 4! Keep asking yourself "What do the first few turns look like?"
- I know it's another footnote, but some of these articles are really old so the cards and references will be dated. And formatting and writing styles have gotten better in recent years. But worth reading. If you use Google, you might find other people's takes on the issue. A lot of MtG concepts get rehashed for the Hearthstone crowd for instance becaue the theories are so similar.
- I'm making some things up here because I don't actually know what a GW enchantment deck looks like. Probably things like Enchantress's Presence to start drawing deep into your deck.
- This can sometimes be not very obvious! In a recent Grand Prix tournament, Pascal Maynard was playing a mid-range big stuff deck versus an aggressive artifact deck. He drew a hand with several good removal spells, looked at it, and then basically shipped it back and started shuffling his deck again. I might have kept in his case, but he's a better player than I am and clearly thought "Nope. I can do better."
- Owen Turtenwald, a professional MtG player, wrote this article. It was a response to another pro's article about why they would mulligan a hand and he explained why he thought sometimes it's just not worth it. It's a good read.
- Apart from checking out the rest of the CFB series a few I remember from olden times include this one about mana and quality of cards and this one with some general principles. I'm sure there are probably better and newer ones around now. Maybe someone else in this thread knows some...?
What an old man.Block doesn't exist anymore. If he's an old man, you must be a fossil. At the very least you belong in a museum! Also do all decks have some form of mana ramping/card search functionality, or is that more just Green/Blue decks? Because I'm building decks and I'm wondering if I should always be incorporating cards that either let you draw cards, search for them, or something similar. I understand that you get better at deck building the more you do, but I'd happily accept any pointers!
Many decks have no mana ramping, card searching (tutoring), or card drawing, so they are by no means necessary. You should include those cards when they help further the strategy you're going for. So for example a very aggressive deck wouldn't usually have ramp.
In general, ramping is most commonly in Green, card drawing is most commonly in Blue, and card tutoring most commonly in Black, but even then not in all decks.
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Thank you all for all of the detailed responses. Shout outs to Moonbear for writing a thesis!
I feel like I can learn a lot from you guys!
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Going to my first ever Gameday today! Relatively new to MTG but have been aware of it (had friends that played) for 20+ years. Prior to MTG I had played a fair bit of Hearthstone the last few years, never had the time or dedication to reach Legend however, (peaked at rank 5 a couple seasons.) I started my Magic journey right when Shadows over Innistrad was released, so far been to a few FNMs some drafts, and a couple Commander Tournaments, as well as 3 pre-releases for Eldrich Moon.
I am attending 3 Gamedays this weekend, with today being the softest competition (the store I'm going to tomorrow is generally a little tougher) my friend and I that are attending are really hoping for a Top 3 for at least one of us, and top 8 for both, should be around 16+ attending today.
I think I might do up a little blog after the events are over. Good Luck to everyone competing this weekend!
Decklist:
+ Show Spoiler +
Post your decks if your are competing!
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Bant company Barf
But srsly welcome to mtg :D
I don't think I'm going to be able to make it this weekend but in case I do I'll probably be running a mono R thermo alchemist deck. Tried a creature based RG aggro last week and didn't do too badly but I think straight burn is slightly better positioned against the meta.
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I'm not playing but if I was I'd play BW Control. This standard format is really weird. At first I thought Emrakul would reign supreme, but it isn't doing well online while Bant Coco and UR Thermo Alchemist are doing great. I got the RPTQ next week so I'm scrambling to find a deck to play. I've played BW control, GB Delirium, Temurge, Jund Delirium, and back on BW control. Still not sure if any of it feels good lol.
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