Tier 1 Deck-Specific Mulligan Questions for Vintage Gurus...

[Mouth for War]

I've begun putting together a series of proxy decks entailing a host of current and near-current tournament decks for the purposes of playtesting with some friends before large tournaments.  We know how to play each others' decks, and our own, but none of us has more than one piece of Power to our name, so we don't often see many of the Tier 1 decks.

     I've played with a few decks ( notably TnT/$TAKS/MUD variants, GRO variants, FCG, Parfait, Oath, Long ), but they don't seem to "roll" as well as we've all seen them do in past tournaments.  I've read as many of the articles and forums here as possible on these decks, and am fairly well-versed on game play decisions, but the one that I think keeps biting me in the arse is when (and how aggressively) to mulligan...

     So, my questions, to those of you that have a lot more experience with these decks (and any others I've neglected) than I, is this :


How aggressively do you mulligan?  

Are there certain cards (or combinations thereof) that you almost never will willingly start a game without?

     Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I am convinced that the mulligan is one of the most overlooked aspects of the game, especially in my circle...

[Necrologia]

How aggressively you need to mulligan is directly related to which deck you're playing, and which you're playing against. STAX needs to mull aggressively into 3Sphere against combo, but against say, Fish, 1-2 lock pieces of any kind and the mana to cast them is a keeper.

The best thing you can do is establish general guidelines for a deck, and then as you gain experience with the deck, learn how far from those guidelines you can stray. As a general guideline for Long, for instance, keep any hand with a draw spell/tutor and 3 mana. Once you've played the deck enough, you can start factoring other things in, such as the number of lands in your hand vs. waste heavy decks.

In other words, playtest, playtest, playtest.

[BigMac]

a means we use to see if a hand is playable while testing is to keep every hand at first, learning which hands can and will work regularly and which hands dont. Another thing you learn this way is how different hands can work against different decks. If you play it like this you will learn which hands in what matchups are bad and force you to mulligan.

In the end there is not only one way for a deck to mulligan. You always need to keep into account that when you mulligan your next hand will hold 1 card less. So taking a mulligan is also doing some math, how big is the chance of getting a better or worse hand against this matchup, and how big is the chance you will actually draw the cards you need the next couple of turns, or even turn 1.

I must say i still make mulligan mistakes, as i think it is one of the most difficult aspects of magic to date.

[Limbo]

Maybe you can read this article, which was in this topic loaded with useful links.

[Mouth for War]

Maybe you can read this article, which was in this topic loaded with useful links.

     Limbo : Thank you for the link, but I'd already read that particular article (I actually have the article both printed out and bookmarked) - along with the majority of the articles found in that thread, prior to posting my questions.  The Art of The Mulligan does a fine job of giving a general outline for mulligan strategy, but, aside from U/G Madness, no specifics for Tier 1 decks, which was more along the lines of what I was after.

I must say i still make mulligan mistakes, as i think it is one of the most difficult aspects of magic to date.

     BigMac :  I absolutely agree, and that's one of the most frustrating aspects for me (other than making blatantly obvious play mistakes that only retarded chimps could rival).  Playtesting is constantly underway, and now I'm actually taking notes and saving them...  I've got a feeling it's going to take a lot of work than we thought simply to get those decks "down" in order to give an accurate representation when we test our own, and I'm a bit disgusted with myself for allowing myself to slip a little into the "the top decks should be easy to play just because they have Power 9 and are great" mode...

How aggressively you need to mulligan is directly related to which deck you're playing, and which you're playing against. STAX needs to mull aggressively into 3Sphere against combo, but against say, Fish, 1-2 lock pieces of any kind and the mana to cast them is a keeper.

The best thing you can do is establish general guidelines for a deck, and then as you gain experience with the deck, learn how far from those guidelines you can stray. As a general guideline for Long, for instance, keep any hand with a draw spell/tutor and 3 mana. Once you've played the deck enough, you can start factoring other things in, such as the number of lands in your hand vs. waste heavy decks.

In other words, playtest, playtest, playtest.

Necrologia :  Thank you for the specifics.  They've been written down on the respective notes for each deck.  Any advice for a Game One mulligan against an unknown deck?  I would assume the lock for STAX, since that's what it was built on?


     Thank you for your help, guys.  It's much appreciated.

[Mark_Story]

I don't know if you've had problems with FCG and mulligans.  But in my experience.  Keep any hand that has a lackey and a few other goblins, especially if one of those goblins happens to be a siege-gang or warchief/piledriver.  

Other good hands include piledriver, warchief and mana.    

A hand with foodchain/recruiter is a keeper especially if you have a green source.  Against stax, or any control deck you need to keep the pressure up as high as you can.  So mull out of hands that are filled with ringleaders, and no 1/2CC goblins.  And hopefully into good stuff.

Specifically against stax a first turn lackey is essentail to win, he will give you the ability to race the lock components.  Always aim for a combo but be happy with piledriver beatings.

[Mouth for War]

Mark_Story :

     Thank you for the advice.  That was exactly the sort of thing I was looking for when I opened this thread.  Much obliged!

[Kowal]

With TPS you can keep a hand that has a particularly gassy turn one play such as a draw7 or Necropotence, or that has a similarly solid turn two play if you have duress and/or Force of Will for backup.

Don't be afraid to mulligan to five and lower if you have to.  A six land hand isn't going to be anywhere near as good as a four card hand that contains brainstorm.

Speaking of brainstorm, don't rely on it to get you business, because there are only like 8-12 business spells in the entire deck, and the chances you won't see any of them are reasonable.

Also, like control slaver, you can often be rewarded by sitting on that brainstorm for a turn.  Stop to duress first, there's no sense in trying to be a turn one or two combo deck when you're designed to go off turn three.  Sometimes, granted, the deck hands you a bunch of rituals and Bargain.  But most of the time, you're playing a mini-control game until turn three.