The rule is a product of the Pro Tour, and is called the “Paris Mulligan” for the location of the first Pro Tour is was popular at. It cuts down significantly on luck, and adds significantly to skill. Knowing when to take a mulligan is one of the most important skills competitive players can have. The ability to throw back hands that just don’t work is extremely important in making the game skill-testing. It is true that mulligans are probably heavily abused in Vintage (and Legacy to some extent), but I’ve not heard anyone consider it unreasonable to be able to aggressively mulligan. It adds a ton to the strategic depth of the game, and hardly makes you able to draw a perfect hand every game. The abuse in the Eternal formats is just part and parcel of the high power level of the format.
I don’t understand why you think a more burdening penalty should be placed on unplayable hands. When you shuffle 60 cards together, there is an extremely wide range of hands. Giving up access to certain cards just because you drew them in an unplayable hand hardly seems fair. The game is a whole lot more fun when both players are able to at least minimally execute their decks’ strategy. Sitting there doing nothing because you drew a hand without enough lands, without cheap spells, or without any coherence is not fun. It allows all sorts of decks to be more likely to draw winning hands - both combo decks as well as decks with answers to them. I would rather not play the game “Who draws a playable hand?” - I’d rather play Magic.
The appeal to nostalgia argument is a logical fallacy. Just because you liked it one way doesn’t mean the old way is better. Yes, certain sorts of decks would likely do better without current mulligan rules, but that doesn’t mean the game is worse for them. It just means you have a different preference. The mulligan rules add far more to the game than anything they may take away by allowing more high impact difficult decisions, and letting more decks be reasonable to play.
Plus, decks need to be consistent regardless. Your opening hand is only one aspect, one that has a very simple rule that allows games to be not only more skill-testing, but more fun by decreasing the number of unplayable opening hands.
Regarding the “Paris mulligan” rules: I am indeed thinking of “Vintage” format games which is an artifact of my involvement with the game - it’s really what I still think of when I think of MtG from having last played in 1997-ish.
I appreciate that this rule makes it important to get judgment calls right between “this is kind of a sucky draw but I’ll live with it” versus “it’s unplayable to the extent that I’d accept a do-over with one less card in hand”. However when you say * I would rather not play the game “Who draws a playable hand?” - I’d rather play Magic*, I would agree, but counter that Magic is at its core a random draw card game, and no other such game I’m familiar with allows arbitrary mulligans. This includes card games like Poker, Bridge, BlackJack or Rummy, dealing with a bad draw is the measure of skill, not deciding when to declare a do-over.
Magic is different from those games in generally requiring Land as mana sources and non-Lands for taking game actions, so I would think it’s generally fair for game play mechanics to allow a mulligan (even infinite mulligans) for having 0/7 or 1/6 lands in hand… Until you point out that there could exist decks designed to be land-lean in the first place which would unfairly benefit from such a rule, or some kind of absurd filibuster deck of all lands designed to force a draw by using up all the clock time doing mulligans (and somehow I know someone would try that if the rules didn’t forbid it).
Really the better way to solve the unfairness of drawing a “bad for the deck strategy, but not 0/7 or 1/6 land hand” is to have matches be not to 2 victories but to 5. But then rounds would take too long for tournament play.
You should take my opinions in the context of the source they’re coming from also - which is, a player who hasn’t played the game in 14 years and rarely played in tournaments even back then, preferring social games and decks geared to exploring interesting cards or concepts or themes to the cut-throat, 60-cards-plus-sideboard, win-in-5-turns-or-die-trying types of decks the tourney players tended to sport.
It’s not just a matter of nostalgia. The friend I usually play with, with the decks we usually play, I win a little more often than I lose, even though his deck gets stronger when things go right. Why? Because the deck I use is much less vulnerable to getting “bad hands” to begin with. Most of the cards in it only cost one or two mana, and several of those produce mana themselves, so even if I get relatively mana-screwed, I can still limp along with it and sometimes even win with just one or two lands all game. Now, the trade-off for that, of course, is that when I do get enough mana, I sometimes find myself with more than I have any use for, while my opponent is laying down stronger cards, but that’s the trade-off I had to consider when making the deck. That trade-off was, I think, a significant part of the game, but it’s not any more.
BTW I do intend to give the now-standard “Paris Mulligan” approach a few tries before deciding whether or not my own house rules will forbid it. I can see how it would focus attention on “my deck’s core strategy vs. yours” and away from the classical secondary concern of dealing with mana-screw/mana-mania, but my gut reaction as a game player (and especially a card game player) is extreme distaste for allowing arbitrary do-overs that itself become an in-game meta-decision, whereas constructing a deck to deal with mana-screw/mania is a meta-decision at deck construction time where it belongs. The bottom line though is that if I find the games more fun while playing with the rule, I’ll embrace it.
Paris Mulligans are not about mana-screw (1-land mulligans work fine for that), they are about a lack of playability. You might have a red fast creature and burn deck, and draw 4 lands and three burn spells. That hand is in general absolutely awful for an aggressive deck and should be mulliganed. If you’re playing against a deck that uses creatures as mana acceleration you might have exactly the tools you need to fight it, but even then you don’t have any win conditions, just answers - and you’re playing what’s supposed to be an aggressive deck. If you don’t throw down a creature or two you’ll give them time to draw into more mana sources. Mulligan that hand and hope for say 2 lands, 2 creatures, 2 burn spells. Maybe you get 3 lands and one creature instead, or only 1 land but most of your cards cost will cost one. Maybe you’ll have to mulligan again and get 2 lands, a creature, 2 burn spells, and now have a reasonable chance at winning.
Sure, the hand you’re throwing away has playable spells, and you’ll likely have a decent chance of winning if you draw well, but it pales in comparison to pretty much any hand with a creature in it. You play maybe 20-30 creatures, but you can’t draw one every single time. You design your deck so that there’s a wide range of hands you can play profitably, but generally for aggressive decks that will never include ones with no permanent threats. They may be only 5% of hands, but they will happen. Instead of trying to play out a hand you’re pretty sure is a stinker, you can cash it in for something more promising - regardless of your deck’s strategy or speed.
Your nostalgia is for pouncing on decks that are forced to keep 2-landers with expensive spells, but you fail to recognize the times that your deck loses because it had to keep a 4-lander with poor threats.
Having played with Paris mulligans for years, I find it baffling that anyone would choose to play by the old mulligan rules.
Paris mulligans are elegant and applicable to many situations, not just 0,1,6, or 7 land hands, but also a wide variety of unplayable opening draws. In my mind, it’s one of the best rules changes in the history of the game.
No, I acknowledged that. And my answer to decks like you describe that absolutely need the Paris mulligan rule is that without the Paris mulligan, those decks just wouldn’t be viable. Big deal; there are googols of other nonviable decks. If I had a deck that could fail that easily, I wouldn’t say that the rules should be changed so that it could win, I would say that it deserved to fail.
I think the divide on the Paris Mulligan rule is going to follow similar arguments for and against the Designated Hitter in baseball. The one camp prefers “game purity” (Chronos and I, in this case) where basic meta-game principles are not bent to suit a certain style of play or desired outcome. In baseball this would be the idea that “all players who bat must take the field and vice versa, or leave the game due to substitution”, in MtG, “you design your deck before the game starts, including sideboard swapping, and then you play the cards you draw”). The other feels there are some aspects to the game worth emphasizing or “unbalancing” the core game to achieve; “having a poor hitter 95% of the time in the lineup means pitching around the guy in front of him and the game bogs down for 2/9ths of the lineup”, or “land mana isn’t the only way to get screwed on the draw, I want some kind of protection against a draw that mismatches card costs or colors with the land I do get”.
I will admit that the Paris Mulligan allows for more reasonable tournament play in a best-2-of-3 format, because the likelihood of one bad draw (however you design a deck it won’t be impervious) influencing the final outcome of the match is much higher otherwise. As I said, my preferred solution as a game designer would be to make it a 4-of-7 format. After a certain point luck is still part of the game, and if your deck gets “bad draws” so often that’s indicative of bad construction more than bad luck - with the Paris Mulligan it’s possible to duct tape over that issue to some degree as compared to before.
And as I also said, I’m going to play with it a few times before really making a call. It could be that losing a card from your draw with each mulligan is actually extremely balancing. My problem is that on the face of it, the rule greatly facilitates decks that depend on drawing one or two specific cards early in the game, which I typically fund un-fun.
I think you will change your mind when you play with it a few times. Losing the card is enough of a penalty that you won’t do it spuriously.
At its core, Magic is meant to be a game of interaction between two people. How many games have you played where one person is hopelessly behind from the beginning, going through the motions, just waiting for the other person to finish them off? Paris mulligan rules reduce the number of times that happens. It makes games more competitive and enjoyable.
There’s another reason for it: it lets you match stranger types of decks in a casual setting, particularly when you’re experimenting with weird stuff. Luck is already a considerbale factor, and the poeple I play with don’t enjoy complete curb-stomps based on it.
Absolutely false. Your deck gets to be threat-heavy, because you’re only running, what, 32% land or so, meaning more of your draws are spells than the slower control deck that might be running upwards of 45% mana sources or more. This is a fundamental aspect of deck building that is still a critical part of the game at every level. The Paris mulligan does not remove that aspect in any way, because it’s a factor that affects your draws through out the game, not just your opening hand.
Wow, it’s totally be a long time since I actually played. I don’t think I like this Paris Mulligan rule or no more mana burn. I started Magic way back in Fallen Empires and didn’t really get into it until around the time of Ice Age or Alliance. However, I didn’t have the money as a high schooler to buy those cards, so I had to rely on crappy decks of commons and uncommons.
To add my 2 cents, I’m not totally enamored of the new mulligan rule because I think you’re supposed to just play with the hand you’re dealt. One mulligan for a hand with no lands is fine, but not switching out hands 2 or 3 times until you get your power combo. My response to those people would be to just play what you have and hope you draw your super card at the next turn. Or just keeping putting out 1/1 creatures to block his until you draw something to eliminate the threat. Then again, I was always just a casual player so these types of insane deck construction techniques never took hold with me.
I remember the moment I abandoned all hope of becoming a good player and decided to just play for fun: I was playing some other kid during lunchtime when I was killed on the first turn by a Channel/Fireball/Black Lotus combo. Didn’t even get to look at my hand. Shit, that’s no fun at all
Though I haven’t played since probably Visions, I do try to get a couple of packs of each edition. Generally, I spend about $10-$20 to get some packs and that’s it. It’s fun to collect, and it’s not too expensive when you don’t care about building decks or getting power cards. The only specific cards I’ve actually spent money on were ones with good art on them, or cards with weird abilities I like. I couldn’t play a game now because I would be too far removed from the rules to know what’s legal and what’s not. Plus, when they introduce a new rule, I can never remember what it does before the text explaining it is removed in the next edition
In the context of the game, the number of cards you have available to employ is your single biggest resource. Deciding to change your hand for another one with a smaller number of cards is not undertaken lightly.
It’s not necessary to mulligan “until you get your combo,” because in most games decks don’t have a killer combo. But how a deck develop is inordinately sensitive to starting conditions. Sometimes a player will mulligan so they get a creature and the mana to cast it because if they don’t get some early pressure, the game is over before it starts and all that remains is going through the motions.
Another rule change you might not be aware of; the player who takes the first turn of the game skips that turn’s draw step. I can’t remember when that was instituted though.
I think the play/draw rule was instituted in 1994 or early 1995, since I started playing competitive Magic in 1996 and it was already an “old rule” by then.
I never played in tournaments or in any kind of official capacity. I think when I did play against people in high school there were some “House Rules” variants, so that rule was still new to me in 1996 or so.
I sometimes construct decks for fun. I never play against others because nobody I know plays anymore, so I play against myself (damn, that’s sad ). I was never that great of a deck builder though, so I would make theme decks just to mess around. When playing Blue, I just load up on every type of counterspell I have and a couple creatures. My Red has a fun land destruction deck. I always despised those cards so I decided that if I couldn’t beat them, I’d join them. I have an entire Artifact deck whose damage comes almost solely from Mishra’s Factories and tiny creature generating artifacts. Half the things in my Green deck regenerates, and my White has been known to focus just on getting as much life as possible to and overwhelm the opponent with small 1/1 or 2/2 creatures. But my favorite color’s always been Black. Regenerating skeletons, weird creatures that do graveyard stuff, instant creature destruction makes it my most versatile deck. I think a few years ago they did something stupid like restrict Dark Rituals, but I always ignore that. I don’t have great cards to begin with, so when I play against myself, I use my entire collection, from Legends to Scars of Mirrodin. And I put in creatures that look cool but kind of suck (Teefa’s Dragon, Sol’Kanar the Swamp King). Because I play for fun
I don’t think it was instituted that early, to be honest. The annotated 4E rulebook I have doesn’t mention it, and that was a mid-95 publication.
It did appear in the 5E rulebook, which was released in 1997.
I’d guess it was one of those rules which started out as a DCI tournament rule, and made its way into the main rulebook. (There are several of them, not the least of which is minimum deck size.)
