Board and Card Games

12:34 AM

Inverse scry

12:47 AM

I'm interested to see how it plays out, but I think it's potentially dangerously powerful for certain decks

I know people said that about the scry rule and that was basically fine, but this is a bigger change

On the other hand, a mull to 5 is a lot less of an immediate death sentence.

It'll definitely allow explosive decks to keep their punch after a mull

Hmm, also might mess with fishing for Leylines. Will be interesting

1:02 AM

I find it amusing that mulligan rules are all named after the location of the tournament where they were first tested, instead of a meaningful name for the actual procedure

We had the Paris mulligan which was replaced by the Vancouver mulligan, and now this will be the London mulligan.

1:15 AM

Damn shame there's not a Tijuana Mulligan

13 hours later…

2:20 PM

This new mulligan feels like a "Scry X where X is the number of cards less than 7, then decide whether to keep it"

but, well, you can't keep the cards on top

2:52 PM

I think the big difference is getting to see the cards before you decided to keep or mull again

I think Combo players are going to be loving this change

giving multiple chances to fish for "the nuts"

plus aggro might even be able to drop a couple lands

it must not be obviously broken though, as they say they have been testing internally for a while, but we will have to see how the community decides to break it

Andrew

3:23 PM

@Malco I have lest trust in their internal play testing than you do Malco, they've missed quite a few things in past.

From what I have seen on MaRo posts there have been recentish changes to Play Design and the creation of "Future Future League" that show they are putting more resources to play testing. There are more than a handful of pros WoTC has hired to test out things, so I don't think there will be anything immediately and obviously broken with the London mulligan.

But when you have 1000's of mtg players collaborating online, unless it is perfect it is just a matter of time before someone finds a way to exploit it

it will be interesting to see people re running the Hypergeometric things for ideal land numbers with the new mulligan

doppelgreener

3:42 PM

The weird thing is they did this before in 2015 and already decided it didn't work.

> 7-7-7 (Shuffle x Back)

This was attempting to do something similar to the scry mulligan we used at Pro Tour Magic Origins, but in a way that was more powerful. Basically, each time you mulligan you draw up to seven, but get rid of cards that you can't use (down to the appropriate smaller hand size per mulligan), thereby increasing the chances that you will have a reasonable hand.

What we liked: This seemed pretty close to right power level for Limited, but had some problems. You generally ended up shuffling your most expensive card back, but if it wasn't obvious, then the decision on wh…

I guess the only difference is the shuffle

not that big of a difference in a format with fetch's but might be relevant in other formats. Where if you are unable to shuffle you are pretty much guaranteeing that you won't draw those cards this game.

but still scry does give players more info about their deck, they know what is on the bottom.

doppelgreener

Honorable mention to Grenzo, Dungeon Warden what with putting cards on the bottom of your library.

4:01 PM

what a weird card....

I also wonder how london Mull works with Serum Powder

probably still put the cards on the bottom, not just a free 7

1 hour later…

5:11 PM

Perhaps split it with the vancouver, where you draw (e.g.) 5 cards, decide if you want to keep them, then draw 2 more and bottom 2?

5:28 PM

might be more fair

Reddit Post of Mathematical Analysis of new London Mulligan:
https://old.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/atgt2k/a_mathematical_analysis_of_the_new_mulligan/

@JonTheMon That seems overly complicated, especially because you're not making the decision based on the cards you will actually start the game with

scry vs loot is interesting, in that with scry, you can know cards you're going to draw but you're stuck with the 5, whereas with loot you take the best 5 but don't know your future draws.

@murgatroid99 Currently you don't get to scry before you keep your hand, so how much different is that?

@JonTheMon Possibly having information about your next draw seems substantially different from possibly replacing a significant chunk of your hand between choosing to keep and starting the game

it increases randomness for sure

It seems a few people are worried that the new mull might be a bit too good for consistency

enough that mulling will often be the correct choice

a bit of an issue in paper, as that means more shuffling at the start of the game

@murgatroid99 So... are you saying that being able to replace some of the worst cards in your hand is bad?

5:40 PM

@JonTheMon I didn't say it was bad

I said it was overly complicated. You're making the first decision based on lots of unknown information and you're making complicated extra decisions after you choose to keep.

I see it as a more complicated/skill-intensive version of the scry.

(which, to be fair, is that they're changing 2 things at once: method and quantity)

4 hours later…

Joe W

10:13 PM

Tijuana Mulligan, is this where for n mulligans you take n shots of tequila??

Next unset combines Ashnod's Coupon and Serum Powder