Pattern Recognition #115 - Try Again

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

4 July 2019

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series. Written by myself, berryjon, I aim to bring to my reading audience each week a different look into some aspect of Magic: The Gathering - be it an individual card, a mechanic, a theme, or even just general history. I am something of an Old Fogey and Smart Ass, so please take what I say with a grain of salt. I enjoy a good discussion on the relevant subject matter!

Hey everyone! Today's subject came to me when I was talking to a co-worker, and my "Pulse of the Spike" guy whom I talk to when I want a Spike's view on things. Hey Nathan! If you're reading this, thanks!

So anyway, we were chatting, and the subject of the new London Mulligan came up, and I realized that this would make an excellent article! After all, why not talk about the nature of your opening hand, and some of the ways Wizards has tried to address the fact that, despite everything the randomness of the game itself can screw you over.

And, if I need to pad out my word count, I'm going to talk a bit about how a different game handles its own opening hands. I think it's one of the best out there, but if applied to Magic, would break the game so hard that the Earth would go with it.

But first, let me talk about the nature of your opening hand. In many ways, what cards are in your opening hand dictate not only how you play the game, but at what pace, and how you react to your opponent. Or even if you play at all.

When you look at an opening hand, of, say, Mountain, Mountain, Mountain, Mountain, Volcanic Island, Plains and Shivan Dragon, why would you keep it if you had any choice? You wouldn't! So, here is where the Mulligan comes into play.

In definition, a Mulligan is a.... stew created using odds and ends, and is an associated racial epithet for an Irishman? WHAT? Why is this even a thing?

No, rather the term Mulligan - and the definition I want to use - comes to us from the game of Golf - is a second chance at your initial play. And this game even has a full paragraph to itself in the article! Neat.

Anyway, in terms of Magic, when you mulligan, you admit that your opening hand is nonviable or simply just a poor one overall, and you wish to try again. This is only natural, and it can happen to the best of us at any time. Now, there has to be some way to prevent a person from simply declaring a mulligan over and over again until they get their perfect hand, and this has been something that Wizards has struggled with since the beginning.

Now... let's see, when was the last time, I did this..? Long enough? Good!

In the Beginning, the world was without form, and void.

Or rather, in the beginning, the Mulligan Rule was invoked for one of two conditions. If your opening hand consisted of all lands, or conversely, no lands, you could reveal it to your opponent, then you were allowed to shuffle your hand back into your library and draw a second hand of seven cards, which you had to keep, regardless of the condition of the hand.

In the early days of Magic, this was mostly acceptable. The odds of drawing a hand of all-or-none are pretty long, and doing it twice in a row pretty miniscule. And the idea behind the mana curve had yet to be sorted out, so play was... awkward back then. And having a poor hand wasn't seen as a serious risk of a loss.

In more casual environments, the restriction was loosened a bit to "One Land, or one Non-Land", while the same rules applied, and the process could be repeated a couple of times, as long as the hand was shown each time.

But, in 1997, Wizards decided to formalize a better Mulligan system, one that didn't reward players for poor deckbuilding skills, and could be used at the growing tournament scene. Called the "Paris Mulligan" after the Pro Tour in the city of the same name (despite being used in Boston and LA earlier), this Mulligan allowed the player to shuffle their hand into their library for any reason - not because of a glut or absence of lands - and draw that many cards minus 1. They could repeat this process as often as they liked, until they kept a hand, or were reduced to drawing zero cards in their opening hand.

This version of the Mulligan allowed players to toss their hand for more reasons, from off-colour cards, to high cost cards with not enough mana, to anything else. However the downside to this was each subsequent hand was one card less.

Fewer cards in your hand means that you have fewer options - and unless you're playing or with their ability to draw cards, you would be at a disadvantage if your opponent mulliganed less than you.

And at high level play, every advantage is one that could be needed to win.

Now, there is an edge case here. If you have fewer cards in your opening hand, this means that there must be more cards in your deck. And if there are more cards in your deck, then it's just that much longer until you draw out and lose the game by decking yourself.

An edge case, I agree, but when I have won Draft/Sealed games because I had 41/42 cards in my deck, it's one I can accept as happening.

However, as time went on, and decks became more finely tuned, the Paris Mulligan started to show cracks with age. Especially when players would keep mulling down and still worry about their hands.

In response, in September of 2015 - 18 Years after the Paris Mulligan was introduced, the Vancouver Mulligan was formalized and introduced into the rules. This version was actually a small tweak to the Paris Mulligan, one designed to help smooth out the game after the first hand. To this end, if a player Mulliganed, they would draw a new hand as per the Paris Mulligan. Once all players have finished their mulligans, if anyone has an opening hand that is less than their starting hand, then they could Scry 1.

This change was implemented to allow for players to take more calculated gambles with their hand, especially if they were not playing first, but rather drawing first. By knowing what their first draw was - or by putting a poor fit for their hand at the bottom of their library, a player could make a more informed decision about what they would do with the hand they had chosen to play.

Don't do what I did when I first heard about this Mulligan version, and misread it to have a player Scry N, where N is the number of cards in their hand short 7. So Mull to 5, Scry 2.

This version was a definite improvement as it did exactly what it was meant to - smooth out the opening turns of the game, giving players more opportunity and incentive to take a hand that might not seem good on the surface, but would become good with time.

However, this didn't actually fix anything. Rather, it just gave players who started the game with cards short in their opening hand a glimpse into the future. It didn't change that they were still cards down, and that once they drew their first card, they were just in the dark about what came next as if they hadn't scried at all.

Tomorrow, this changes.

Tomorrow, the Vancouver Mulligan will be replaced with the London Mulligan.

Tested out both on paper, and on Magic Arena, the London mulligan attempts to solve the fundamental issue of a poor hand in a different manner. Now, whenever you Mulligan, instead of drawing progressively fewer and fewer cards, you keep drawing seven cards. But, once you decide to keep your hand, you then have to place a number of cards from your hand onto the bottom of your library in any order equal to the number of times you have Mulliganed. You do not get to Scry.

Wait. Cards on the bottom of your library? Huh, I Foresee an upswing in Grenzo, Dungeon Warden Commander decks if the idea turns out to be viable.

Anyway, the idea behind this is simple. You are removing some degree of uncertainty from a player's opening hand by allowing them to choose and keep which cards they want from their selection of seven. The idea here is that each player can optimize their opening plays from their seven, putting the unwanted or poor choices at the bottom of the library where they - probably - won't see the hand again.

Here, the loss of the Scry is irrelevant because the London Mulligan is designed to reduce the element of chance in the slowly shrinking opening hand.

How is this going to work you wonder? Well, I've thought about it, and I think it will work well. By being able to pick and choose the cards in ones opening hand from the seven, each player can better prepare for their opening plays and counter plays, while at the same time limiting the cards in hand to incorporate the basic implementation of the Mulligan in the first place. To not reward players for bad deck design.

But it is too soon to see how this all works out. We went 18 years from the Paris to the Vancouver Mulligans, while it only took four years until the Vancouver gave way to the London. How soon before Wizards tweaks the Mulligan rules again? And why will they? Will they bring back the Scry 1 or will they try something different? Only the future will tell.

In addition, I want to talk about Multiplayer Mulligans.

Whenever there are more than two people at the table, the first mulligan each player takes is 'free' in terms of cards drawn. That is, your first mulligan is still to seven cards, and under the London rules, no cards are put away. The second Mulligan sees one card tucked, while the third means two cards tucked and so forth.

This also applies to Commander, with the additional caveat that each new hand does not first require shuffling the old hand back into your deck first.

Yet I find myself with subjects still to talk about. What exactly makes for a good hand? How can a player define and know what they want to keep and what they don't?

Well, the answer is that it depends a lot on the deck in question, the player in question and a few other factors. But I think I can reduce these complications to a few major aspects.

The first is the mana costs of cards in hand. A player should expect to play at least a card every turn, even if it's a reactionary card like Cancel or Lightning Bolt in order to not fall behind the opponent. Every card that is played that isn't given a response in the form of something to directly counter the played card or to match the new resource on the field is a step in which a player falls behind, and those first few turns are absolutely vital. This means a solid mix of lands and non-lands to keep the game from falling further and further behind.

In my favourite style of deck - Aggro decks - this is a fairly easy thing to accomplish. A solid Aggro deck is designed with a low mana curve in mind, and plenty of redundancy. They can afford to lose a card or two and maintain plenty of the necessary early game-threat to win the day.

However, starting out with fewer cards in hand also hurts the Aggro deck immensely. They are already under a self-imposed clock, and they tend to need every resource they can get. Starting with fewer cards in hand means that they will run out of resources sooner, rather than later. And a single turn can make all the difference to a finely tuned Aggro deck that finds itself a card short and a turn late.

For Combo decks, the London Mulligan presents a curious challenge. With ever decreasing cards in hand, they have to start asking themselves the hard questions about what they need to keep to get through the first turns, and if they can afford to keep a vital piece of their winning combination in their hand even though it would be dead weight at best, or an unprotected target at worse? Or perhaps they can gamble on having their winning hand, and needing to draw into being able to survive long enough to pull it off?

Control decks are much like aggro decks in that they should have early responses, and can usually hold a hand to hold off those equally early threats. However, unlike Aggro, a Control deck typically has some means of getting more resources faster, such as through pure card draws like Divination or even Opt if they can spare a turn to fall behind in the threat response. They can dig themselves out of the hole they start in - as long as their small hand holds out.

While each style of deck has things to gain and lose from the London Mulligan, I suspect that it is Aggro decks that will come out ever so slightly better for it. Not because the London Mulligan was designed this way, but rather because they are the ones that tend to benefit best when each style of deck has smaller hands.

But then, this is also highly dependent on the deck, and the player in question to successfully leverage their limitations to the best of their ability. A good deck can fail even with the best of intentions, so for the love of Urza, don't assume that your deck holds an advantage because you and your opponent are starting with the same number of cards - even if that number is seven!

Now, let's talk about a different game. The Babylon 5 Collectible Card Game. Sadly long dead, I want to talk about how this game handled their opening hands. Each player's opening hand consisted of 4 cards, one of which had to be their Starting Ambassador (think your Commander), and the other cards could be any card in the deck as long as they didn't share a card type.

Uh... example time. I'm playing as the Narn Regime. My Starting Ambassador would be G'kar, and my other three cards would be Ko'Dath, a Character (which doesn't count for duplication with the Ambassador), Build Infrastructure, an Agenda, and Quadrant 14, a Location.

Players of B5 should recognize this as pretty much the archetypal Narn Speed Start, which allows for explosive early growth at the cost of not being able to reliably interact with anyone else until turn 3 or four.

Now, B5 could get away with this because each card type was completely distinct from each other. You didn't have the overlap that Artifacts have with Creatures and Enchantments, and the timing rules of the game make the division in Magic between Instants and Sorceries a non-starter. Also, the game's primary resource, Influence was abstract, not a distinct in-game item like Lands are in Magic. The game was designed from the ground up with the idea that you could pick and choose your opening hand, and balanced in the early game with this resource base in mind.

Now, this is not to say that B5 couldn't bend the rules it laid down. Both Captain Sheridan and G'Kar were versions of your Starting Ambassador that let you have an extra card in hand at the cost of having a weaker version of said Ambassador, in addition to requiring an additional cost to replace them with a better version. On the other hand, Londo Mollari, the "Gambler", turned this around by stopping you from having any other cards in your opening hand, but giving you a bonus for your first few draws.

I have a deck running the Gambler Mollari that wins either by playing the diplomacy game and busting out a win thanks to Altruism or going all out on a Master of All victory. It's hilarious!

But I think this segue had finished its course. You may wonder why Magic doesn't have hand construction as part of its rules, and the reason is that the game was never designed for it. In fact, it would be a horrible idea! Hell, just for kicks, take your favorite deck and build a hand of five cards. These are the five cards that you want to see in your opening hand. It doesn't matter if you have one copy of a card in your deck, or four. You can put one copy in your opening hand.

Huzzuh! You now have a God Hand. That perfect hand that means your deck will win on time, every time.

Except now your opponent has one too. You really want to try your luck at that?

So, randomness is required for Magic. It keeps the games interesting by preventing the same decks from making the same plays every time, while the Mulligan system allows each player to alleviate the worst of a bad draw. It's a good compromise, and one that I think we're all happy to live with.

I for one, am happy with it.

Join me next week when I talk about something. What? I don't know! Yet. But I'll see you then.

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!