Besides these simple hands, not much else can be mulliganed without thinking. Even the one-land hand is often hard to decide on. Are you drawing first? Does your deck contain many cheap spells? Are you holding a card that is so powerful it is worth the risk of mana screw? These are the questions you must ask yourself when deciding to mulligan.

The Aggressive Mulligan

The Aggressive Mulligan is the form of mulligan that is used the least among tournament players. Basically, the Aggressive Mulligan involves pitching a hand that COULD have been played, but you felt it was not powerful enough.

To use the Aggressive Mulligan effectively, you must understand the power level of your cards in the specific match-up you are playing. This is especially true in Constructed, where cards' values vary greatly from match to match. However in Limited play, the value of your cards does not fluctuate as much so it can be easier to Aggressively Mulligan.

The most likely candidates for the Aggressive Mulligan are:

In Constructed play, the Aggressive Mulligan is best suited to beatdown decks. They are better equipped to deal with the loss of a card. Additionally, there consistent design means they are more likely to draw into a hand they are happy with when they mulligan.

The Close Call

Close Call Mulligans are the toughest to make. They usually involve a hand that is very tempting to keep, but you can sense the inherent danger in doing so. While these types of hands make Magic exciting, excitement is not necessarily a good thing to a player who is trying to control their opening hands and better their game.

The most likely candidates for the Close Call are:

Each of these hands must be carefully considered. It is especially important to play the land-light draws perfectly. To determine if you should keep a land-light hand, try counting the number of new cards you will get to draw before you miss a land drop. For example: If I have the opening hand of Island, Peek, Obsessive Search, Phantom Whelp, Hydromorph Guardian, and Mystic Zealot, then I will most likely keep it because I will get to draw several new cards from my cheap cantrips before I miss a land drop. Keeping this hand becomes even easier if I am drawing first. Additionally, my hand contains several cheap spells that will be easy to cast as soon as I draw my second and third land.

The land-heavy Close Call hands are all about not getting mana flooded. It can be tempting to keep five and six-land hands because you know you will have access to all your mana. But you must also realize that your options are severely limited from the beginning of the game and you have put yourself at the mercy of your deck when you keep a land-heavy draw. In fact, this issue is so complicated that it gets its own section.

The Five Land Hand

For years, I have debated the merits of mulliganing and keeping five-land hands in both Constructed and Limited. To this day, I still hear top players giving different perspectives on the issue. It is my contention that keeping five-land hands is not the correct play in the majority of situations. I believe that keeping five-land hands will result in a higher chance of mana flooding at a crucial point in the game.

Whenever you shuffle your deck, you are hoping for an even distribution of land. When that happens, you get smoother draws. But other times, there is a large land-clump somewhere in your deck, just waiting to show its ugly face. We have all seen it. We have all drawn four lands in a row during the late game and lost to a single 2/2 creature in a close game.

The best possible time to face a land clump is when you are ahead in the game. That way, you still have a chance to win the game on the strength of your current position. But dealing with a land clump when you are even or behind is not easy. This is where mulliganing the five-land hand ties in. When you draw five lands in your opening hand, you have basically started with a land clump on top of your deck. Sure, you will begin the game with plenty of land, but every land you draw for the rest of the game will be of little use. Lets look at the numbers:

You have a Draft deck containing 40 cards, 17 of which are land. You draw an opening hand featuring three lands. Pretty good. But what are the odds of drawing another land? You still have 33 cards left in your deck, 14 of which are land. That would be a 42% chance. This percentage increases with each non-land card you draw and decreases with each land you draw. You will most likely draw a few more lands during the opening turns and develop smoothly with plenty of playable cards.

Now, lets look at this scenario with the same deck, but a five-land opening hand. What are the odds of drawing more land? Twelve out of 33, or 36%. That is a lower chance, but not much lower than 42%. You will probably draw into a few more lands in the opening turns as well. But unlike the three-land draw, your next lands won't have much use. The 4th and 5th land are much more valuable than the 6th and 7th land. Effectively, you have significantly decreased the card quality of your deck during the opening turns of the game. Eventually all lands become fairly useless, but you don't want cards to be useless early in the game while both players are struggling for board position.

Each card you draw should be looked at as a separate event. Just because you drew five lands in your opening hand doesn't mean you will draw six spells in a row. The cards you draw are random, each and every time. Good players want to leave as little to chance as they can. So, relying on drawing spells from the top of your deck is not a good game plan. This is another reason mulliganing a five-land hand is the right play. Keeping it puts you at the mercy of your deck.

Of course, this rule can be broken given the proper circumstances. Before, I mentioned keeping a five-land hand that contained two powerful spells. This is in line with the hand valuing techniques I discussed earlier. If the average hand value for your deck is 9.00, then you could conceivably keep a hand of value 8.00, although it is underpowered. This means you might keep a hand containing two 4.0 cards, but you need to be careful when doing this. You should make sure you will have a good board position with only those two cards while you wait for reinforcements to arrive. I still think keeping this hand is wrong in a majority of situations, but it is important to think about it before acting. Additionally, there are cards that can increase the value of extra lands, such as Seismic Assault or Cephalid Scout. These cards increase in value when you have a land-heavy draw, thus they increase the overall value of your hand.

Another reason to break this rule is if you are significantly better than your opponent. If you have determined that the primary threat against you is mana screw and NOT your opponent, then keeping your five-land hand might be the right play because you will undoubtedly outplay your opponent even if you draw extra land.

The Other Side

I have heard several arguments from skilled players against mulliganing five-land hands. Their arguments could be used against the Aggressive Mulligan as well. Basically, they have said the odds of drawing well from your deck are better than the odds of getting a good six-card hand. I disagree with them. I have demonstrated above that there is a 36% chance you will draw an "unwanted" land on your first draw phase when you keep a five-land hand. Those odds only get worse as the game goes on. But what are the odds of getting a decent draw out of your deck?

If you have a Constructed deck handy, I'd like you to try an experiment with me. Deal out a seven-card hand face up onto a table. Then, repeat this process until you have dealt out eight total opening hands. If your deck is 60 cards, then you should have four cards left over; set them aside. Now, look at the eight possible opening hands. For each hand, ask yourself, "Would I mulligan this hand?"

Below, I have listed the results of my own experiment using a fairly generic OBC Quiet Roar deck:

Hand 1: Keep Forest Forest Forest Basking Rootwalla Quiet Speculation Arrogant Wurm Wild Mongrel	Hand 2: Keep Island Forest Island Quiet Speculation Circular Logic Circular Logic Aquamoeba	Hand 3: Keep Forest Forest Basking Rootwalla Deep Analysis Roar of the Wurm Circular Logic Arrogant Wurm	Hand 4: Keep Island Forest Island Wonder Deep Analysis Wild Mongrel Wild Mongrel
Hand 5: Keep Island Island Forest Forest Roar of the Wurm Aquamoeba Aether Burst	Hand 6: Close Call Island Island Island Arrogant Wurm Arrogant Wurm Basking Rootwalla Aquamoeba	Hand 7: Mulligan Forest Wonder Circular Logic Quiet Speculation Aether Burst Aether Burst Roar of the Wurm	Hand 8: Keep Island Forest Forest Roar of the Wurm Basking Rootwalla Quiet Speculation Wild Mongrel

As you can see, there are only two hands listed that should be mulliganed. Hand 6 is very interesting, and deserves further analysis, but for now we can consider it an Aggressive Mulligan hand. From this crude example, we can see that this particular shuffle gives the deck a mulligan rate of 25%. From my own empirical testing, this seems to be about right. On average, I would say that anywhere from one to three hands will be mulligans out of the eight.

The above example is an oversimplification, but it serves a purpose. What I am trying to establish is that a majority of hands you could draw from your deck will be good. Thus when you mulligan, the odds that you will get a playable hand are in your favor. Of course, nothing can replace the loss of a card, but that is a separate issue. I am just saying you don't need to fear drawing into a worse hand when you mulligan. Sure it sometimes happens, but the odds are against it.

In Conclusion

The most important thing to remember is that you need to evaluate your hand's strength each and every time you are faced with a mulligan decision. You shouldn't just pitch one and no-land hands automatically and keep everything else. You might be giving wins to your opponents that could have been yours. Above all else, I hope you realize that bad draws might be more under your control than you thought. And bettering your game is all about finding things that YOU can control.

Questions? Comments? E-mail me: bccaccount@hotmail.com

Josh Lytle