Stepping Up Your Game: Part 5

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jacelightning

19 January 2011

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Table of contents

Why Mulligan
Rules to Evaluate Opening Hands
Rule 1:Know Your Deck
Rule 2: Evaluate the Hands
Rule 3:It Must Fit

Almost every game of magic starts the same way. Two people sit down, shuffle their cards, roll a dice and draw their opening hand. What you have staring back at you once you have that opening hand defines what kind of game you are to play? If you have a hand full of spells and nothing else then you aren’t going to be playing anything unless you draw into enough lands to play something. The opposite is also true that if you have a hand full of land there is nothing that you can play unless you draw it. So with the possibility that any combination of seven cards from deck can make up your hand, the question remains how can the game be setup to ensure that there can be a fully functioning game. The answer to that question is the Mulligan rule. The Mulligan rule reads as follows,

“A player who is dissatisfied with his or her initial hand may mulligan. First, the starting player takes any mulligans. To take a mulligan, that player shuffles his or her hand back into the deck and then draws a new hand of six cards. He or she may repeat this process as many times as desired, drawing one fewer card each time, until the hand size reaches zero cards. Once the starting player has decided to keep a hand, those cards become his or her opening hand. Then each other player (in turn order) may take any number of mulligans. A player can’t take any mulligans once he or she has decided to keep an opening hand.”

-The Comprehensive Rules 101.4

The rules built in a way to allow players to get a read from their opening hand and decide how they sculpt their strategy to win the game. In order to play Magic at its highest level you must understand how to read your opening hands and figure out how to mulligan.

When I first started playing magic the rule that I was taught about keeping hands was to make sure that there were a good mix of land and spells in a ratio of 3 to 4 and occasionally 4 to 3. This is a nice rule for beginners to use, but when evaluating a hand of two Forest, one Mountain, two Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, and two Draco even though the mix agrees with the rule it’s not an opening hand that you want to keep in order to win the game. So in order to evaluate your opening hand, I want to give a list of metrics in order give us a method to use.

The first step in evaluating your opening hand is knowing your deck. By knowing your deck, I mean you should primarily know three things about your deck. First you should know the cards that are in your deck. You should be able to write out your decklist from memory. This sounds really daunting, but let me assure you that if you have tested your deck and thoroughly prepared it you will be able to list it from memory. This does a couple of things it helps solidify your strategy as you know the cards and can think about what strategy they form and it allows you to process information during the game and figure out how likely you are to get the card you need. For instance in a control deck that runs three Day of Judgment you need to know that ratio to figure out when the elf player has 10 power of creatures on the board if you have a good shot of drawing a Day of Judgment or not. Secondly you should know how your deck wins the game. This is crucial information to have as the end shapes the beginning. If you win the game by playing big spells that put the game out of reach like Cruel Ultimatum and Grave Titan then your early game plan isn’t to dominate, but instead to not die and if you want to win by attacking with a leveled Kargan Dragonlord or by Flinging a Lightning Bolt to the player then you probably want a very aggressive start. The last thing you should know about your deck is how you start. This isn’t the look backwards from the end step instead it is a look forward from the opening hand. This is the thought you should have every time you get a hand is how will you achieve a victory from the cards you have in hand.

After you know your deck, you should know what types of hands can be generated and how to evaluate those hands in terms of your deck’s strategy. You see a one land hand can’t be kept in a deck whose plan revolves around resolving big spells but in a deck like the current [[Tempered Steel] deck a one land hand can be a great game. For that same control deck a two land is just as bad, but with an aggressive all in red deck it spark 20 damage by turn 3. Each hand must be evaluated on its own merit. There are a few baselines such as you want to have a good mix of land and spells. First you want the spells to be able to do something. Maybe they are Counterspells, removal spells, creatures, card draw, or artifacts but the fact of the matter is they have to do something to affect the board. Secondly you want the land cards to give you the ability to cast your spells on turn. For instance I was in a Scars of Mirrodin draft where my hand was Island, Island, Silver Myr, Grasp of Darkness, Grasp of Darkness, Riddlesmith, Blistergrub. I mulliganed this hand straight away because there was no sure way that I could play the two best spells in my hand even though I had the ramp spell in the myr which would have led to a hole that I wouldn’t have been able to recover from. Thirdly you want to play each turn as productively as possible. The hand I mentioned above is also an example that you would mulligan for this rule. It is way too clogged with two drops. Part of this problem is fixed in deck design, but there are times where the opening hand is just going to be clogged.

The last thing that I want to touch on as a rule is the fit of the hand to the strategy. A control deck isn’t going to play an aggro strategy. When you truly know your deck and can effectively evaluate your hands, there is one more step. You must not change the identity of your deck. The hand must fit the strategy. A hand of Island, Island, Swamp, Sea Gate Oracle, Sea Gate Oracle, Grave Titan, Grave Titan isn’t a keeper for a U/B control deck as it changes the identity of strategy from control to a beatdown as there are no spells that can interact with the board on turns 1, 2, 4, or 5 without drawing more lands or any more spells. It’s really important with mulliganing that you don’t rush these decisions. Think carefully and completely about each hand and whether or not it can win you the game and don’t be afraid to mulligan. I hope this was helpful and good luck in FNM or at any PTQs you’re playing in this weekend.