How to Mulligan | The Command Zone 504 | MTG Commander Podcast

hi everybody just a quick disclaimer before you start this episode we were experiencing some minor microphone issues while recording and so the audio quality might not be up to our usual standards we did our best to clean it up we think it's still listenable so we apologize for the inconvenience but we hope you'll still enjoy the episode thanks you have entered the commands your destination for all aspects of Elder Dragon Highlander enjoy your stay foreign what's up everybody you're watching slash listening to the command Zone podcast I'm one of your host today Jimmy wah I'm another host DJ and the third host is not here because we only have two hosts on this show uh Josh is chilling in the back while me and DJ handle the tough topics the real questions that's right how to perfect the Mulligan perfecting the Mulligan or um in the Doctor Strange Love twist how to lose the game before the first turn and how to not lose the game before the first turn yeah if you're mulliganing incorrectly then you can sabotage your entire Commander experience we're gonna make sure that you get to play more Commander yes and uh if you're gonna hold that hand throw it back or take a mulligan we're gonna break down the Mulligan and all the good things about it but in order to Mulligan you need cards and in order to get cards you need to go online and check out our sponsor card kingdom.com command that's our affiliate link you have an incredibly huge selection from a warehouse filled with cards and all of them in different uh Styles as well as qualities so if you're looking to make a budget build you can choose I just want to get some scrapped up cards it's going to cost me way less don't care that's the style I'm rolling with and I'm going to put myself on the budget for a deck look you're supporting a store you're getting the cards you want there could be nothing better outside of that except for putting them into some sleeves that's right Ultra Pro is our other sponsor shop.ultural.com command there is so much great product on this website when you get your cards you're going to want to protect them put them into the sort of the cases the sleeves the play mats make your Battlefield look awesome because the next time you're smashing your opponent and Mulligan incorrectly it's gonna be worth it finally you can support the show directly at patreon.com command Zone that's where we get to talk about our patrons directly we get to talk to them directly in fact on Discord every single tier unlocks a Discord we have tiers that allow you to play spell table games with me and all the other people on the staff every single month very exciting and of course we shout out one lucky Patron every episode so this episode is dedicated to desired plays desired slash plays you slash rock thanks all right let's talk about perfecting the Mulligan so to begin at the beginning DJ should we Define the Mulligan because there's been a lot of them there's a lot of types and here's the thing that could be really confusing if you go online and sort of look up magic Mulligan sometimes you're gonna get old versions of the Mulligan things that are out of use oh that's right and we're not going to talk about you know the partial Paris or all these other old we're gonna talk about the Mulligan as it exists right now in this initial definition so the current Mulligan we have is called the London Mulligan because only it's the last version we have because I think version is the best it's a good one yeah okay too so to take them all again a player shuffles the cards in their hand back into their Library draws a new hand of cards equal to their starting hand size then puts a number of those cards equal to the number of times that players takes them all again on the bottom of their library in any order all right a little confusing let's take it back to the top first things first you can only mug in at the beginning of a game you can't just do this time you wheel fortune and I'm like I'm gonna you know what I'm a mulligan this yeah me too me too so Mulligans happened at the beginning of the game you draw your opening card the hand of seven most of the time seven yes yeah most of the time seven and if you don't like it or if it doesn't match as uh sort of what we're gonna talk about in the episode today you can throw it back into the deck shuffle your deck draw another hand of seven and that's the first time we've mulliganed so according to the London Mulligan you take one card because it's the first time you Mulligan and put it on the bottom of your library now if you don't like that new seven you do it again draw another seven and this time you do two cards now there is a big difference here in Commander which is you get a free Mulligan yay yeah what they say is all multiplayer games and Brawl online that they let you get a free Mole again yeah so you can actually grab a hand of seven don't like it put it back take another hand of seven and you don't need to put any cards back now obviously there were some people that were like hey what about grenzo dungeon Warden and you're stacking the bomb your deck when you Mulligan you are you are but we've we've seen this uh Mulligan be in effect now for several years I think and it has not made a difference in terms of giving people an unequal Advantage uh if anything you know back in the day when you Mulligan you would just draw six cards then five then four felt really punishing really yeah because when you draw seven and you're able to put one away you at least can put the card that you're not gonna use or is the worst card in that hand if you're just drawing 60 don't get that option because one thing that we've noticed across different formats of command uh commander and magic in general is that going down a card is huge yes like being down a card at the very beginning of the game like it is a lot and in competitive 1v1 that's actually a big deal where people like oh man you really got to pay attention to mulliganing and if you're down a card your odds of winning go down a lot a lot and it's big too it's not just like oh it's 10 then 10 no it's like 10 if you go down to six 30 40 50 it gets even worse when you go down to five but that's the thing if you keep a really bad hand of seven your win percentage is going to be lower than had you Mulligan and that's sort of the difference that we're gonna be talking about today on the show so I know we weren't going to talk about old versions of the Mulligan but one thing we want to give sort of note to is that some people out there including our own play group Mulligan a little bit differently yeah and we're calling these house rule Mulligans or house Mulligans and because Commander is a complex format with a hundred card decks and a lot of variants sometimes it's easier to I mean look there have been times all right we're I've Mulligans and we have this you know just take a mulligan get to a good hand of seven six or seven times you just never get a good hand and if you're stuck with the traditional Mulligan rules then you're kind of screwing yourself you're not gonna have a great time in that game yeah you're out of the game so so in in this play group in general you know we're like hey just get a capable half seven if that takes you three or four times fine stay with seven yeah but we don't want you to be dropping your hand down to four cards after a while because you're playing strictly by the rules because no one wants to play a game and one person is just completely out of it because they had to take some aggressive Mulligans so that's the commands on play group my own personal play group we do the same thing are you in other play groups that do something similar yeah I mean even when I go to lgs's we'll just sit down and establish with the table like hey Mulligan rules what do you guys want to do and sometimes people are like we get two free Mulligans and I think oh that's great that's better than yeah that's better than sort of going the traditional route um now the rules committee has commented on this a lot as well I think all the way back to like 2015 2016. and they say that the RC continues to use and recommend the guess uh Mulligan so this is mulligan sevens to a playable hand don't abuse this for trusted play groups but that's not something that can go in the established rules so it's a bit hard for them to write hey uh in the official rules of Commander just do it till it feels good so this is named after guess or geese I don't know how to pronounce his name who is a magic judge Hall of Fame inductee and the rule is basically this you draw seven if you don't like it don't shuffle your deck that can take a long time just put those seven cards aside draw another seven and then repeat until you have a hand and then when you're done take all the cards that you drew prior that weren't in your opening hand Shuffle it back in your deck and then start and actually I've seen that sort of set it aside because what you're supposed to do is shuffle them all together and take a brand new seven cards yeah the set it aside and just draw the next seven is something that I see a lot in in conventions local game stores places like that because they care a lot about other people's time and they realize that they just want to get the game going and shuffling takes a long time and so you just take the next seven and like okay I got it and then you can spend the first turn going around shuffling yeah now there are cases where you take the seven and it's got a card in there that you've just been dying to play but you have to Mulligan the hand and then in that case you know sure Shuffle it back into your deck but keep in mind that you don't want the beginning of the game to take longer than the rest of the game and I've had times where we're sitting there for 10 20 minutes just trying to resolve those first hands every single time yeah and can decks are hard to shuffle no no kidding so unless you're a speed shuffler I really enjoy just putting the seven aside taking another seven off the top and you know what if you're if there really is a card in that hand that you wanted so be it draw another seven you're shuffling your deck maybe you'll get it later in the game one thing that I've heard people say when it comes to very free Mulligan policies like just get another seven get another seven yeah is that they they do kind of discourage the get another seven or search for soul ring or something like that yeah they want they wanna until you get yourself yeah and so sometimes people sometimes someone's like okay I have a really good seven but they're like I'm gonna bottom this soul ring and take the next card yeah just Shuffle it back in because sometimes you feel bad about being having a really lenient Mulligan policy and then playing out a really explosive hand rather than a keepable hand and you could just look into that you know what I mean so sometimes people self-sabotage their super explosive hand when they've taken a couple Mulligans and just be open with your playgroup about that yeah yeah I'm actually a big fan of that as well if you've Mulligan four or five times because you just get no lands or all lands and then your opening hand is like soul ring and a perfect because you throw away all the bad hands yeah now you get this God Hand and you're like oh my gosh what am I gonna do but honestly I'm like there like is it keepable I would be like yeah it's keepable but actually I'm just gonna throw back this soul ring and take the next card and they're like oh yeah cool okay yeah and usually that's that's fine it kind of shows that they've given you flexibility when it comes to the Mulligan and you're giving flexibility back when it comes to the hand you're keeping yep now keep in mind more competitive groups will probably be a little more strict on Mulligans because those decks have a much higher chance of getting a hand that is explosive or maybe even a turn to turn one kind of kind of wind yeah well but also we are building uh in general balanced decks you know what I mean and in competitive people are trying to get every Competitive Edge possible and so they're actually actively cutting down lands and trying to tune everything perfectly and they're making sacrifices on the deck building and knowing that it might hurt them on the Mulligan side and knowing that it might hurt them in their first turn you know where they have to you know where they might be operating on fewer lands than normal and that's kind of the risk they take in their deck building and competitive people they love riding that line you know what I mean yeah I'm gonna take the risk of like having as few lands as possible exactly exactly and so and so they have a a deck with very tight margins and so they probably need to be playing a little bit closer to those Mulligan rules yeah and when it comes to competitive decks too sometimes a hand of four cards with the exact right four cards is better than that random hand of seven so and that's kind of part of the game that's part of the game yeah it's part of the plan because they have ripe tutors redundancy all that good stuff and card draw um now let's talk a little bit about why Mulligans matter uh this is I think this is the heart of the episode now we're gonna do a fun experiment later where DJ and I have drawn theoretical sevens out of our decks I want to talk about why we you know what what sort of keeps our what our thinking is around that but Mulligans matter because you just don't want to play a non-game of magic we want to play Magic and we want more real games of magic where we're playing and interacting with our friends and we've all played those games where you just get stuck on lands and you just sit there yeah I've done it on camera multiple times you know just how painful and bad it is so yeah don't fall into that trap and non-games can happen actually really often I actually see I would say on average one out of four games there's one player in the game that just doesn't have a good game and I think that this can be mitigated by making sure that you have all the tools that you need in your opening hand and learning sort of these Baseline uh criteria for mulliganing properly yeah and as we've seen like Mulligans matter because people are also afraid to take them and that usually by the way this sentence I hear before a game when someone's about to have a bad game they go yeah you know what I'll try this I think I'm gonna do it a little bit they're just like I probably shouldn't keep it immediately but I will like the heavens all the time it really does happen all the time and you know it's great I'm sure you love riding motorcycles too without a helmet but maybe you know it's taking over the top of their deck like they hope the top of the Decker is going to fix their hand yeah oh my gosh well here's the thing you have 99 cards in the commander deck when you draw your up in the hand you have 91 92 left or whatever don't be silly with it so Mulligans matter we don't want to have players that have non-games and if you're seeing them for an hour and a half plus and not playing a game then it's just not a good use of your time and you're not gonna feel good about it too so every commander deck is different right they all have different sort of intricacies and ways that they play out but in general there are a couple of Baseline goals as to what you're going to look in for your opening hand and what matters right so for me the big one is just get your game plan going um if your opening hand supports that then it is it's a hand that you don't want the Mulligan away so let's take a look at a couple of commanders Reese the redeemed classic uh celeznia Commander that makes tokens in your opening hand you're probably gonna want the ability to cash your commander pretty easy to one drop but you also want to make tokens and copy them and whatever that means right you're using Mana ramp to get to Reese's ability or you have cards that are just going to double up on tokens or you have cards like cryptolethora that's going to let your tokens tap for Mana either way you're making tokens copying them and attacking with them so if your opening hand supports that thesis then it's a good hand so do you do you find sometimes that when you're deck building you can draw part of your deck that really doesn't support that thesis or in general time okay so what kind of cards do you think would be in your your commander deck where you're just like oh like it doesn't synergize at all with the normal with my command or the plan do you think it would just be like you draw too much interaction or you draw too much of one of one thing yeah so a lot of decks that we've built for game nights oftentimes you get cute with it and I'm sure you've had this problem too where it's like I'm not just going to build in one sub theme I'm gonna build in five sub themes but the fifth sub theme requires sub themes three and four to be in play for that to work and a lot of times we say you draw the wrong half of your deck and it could be not just in the wrong half maybe it's even the wrong 10 of your deck and you're like or like you said great example too much interaction you'll need to keep a hand with five removal spells and two lands because that's not actually getting your game plan going that's all in reaction to other things that might theoretically happen and you mentioned cryptoth right and what if you have crypto right but no tokens no no ways of like sort of doing that so there are ways to draw sort of the wrong half of your deck or yeah or interaction that you feel like you don't need and you can't really get your game plan going your deck should have a game plan yeah yeah and looking at your opening hand you should say does this opening hand match the gameplay yeah that's why it's so important that goldfish are deck too is to know the different combinations of cards that you can go into your opening hand that can get that game plan going great example of this is the next example which is yuriko the tiger's Shadow so this is the command that wants the Ninjutsu itself out what are the qualifications in ninjutsu have an unblockable creature or unblocked creature so you're gonna need to have that in your opening hand because what are you gonna do draw it off the top probably not right to turn four or five to finally get your Ninjutsu going yeah then you're not really doing the purpose of the deck and Eureka is a great example too because you've got 10 drops in there really high Mana classic cards and if you all those cards in your opening hand then that is a hand you should not keep but let's say it's half and half at the very least you can get your game plan going but it makes your hand look a little worse for Kalia the vast we have something like a little bit different it's gonna need an angel a demon or a dragon and hopefully some way to get to Kalia to be able to make that game plan work yeah and so every single one of these examples has different cards that's that work with the game plan and so you should be able to look at your deck and know what it's planning to do and then look at your hand and say well okay how is my hand getting me to the purpose of the deck yep and then the the second sort of Baseline goal is we mentioned a little bit but stand a chance against the table is how I've classified it so this includes card draw and Mana ramp if you have a hand that's just a bunch of cards you can't cast or you have to wait till turn five to cast it that's not great you're not going to stand a chance at the table interaction is on that list as well but it's not necessarily the highest priority and then the same goes for like recursion recoverability or like your uh your heroic intervention type cards and a lot of this I think is dependent actually on who you're playing exactly it's the meta and it's your it's kind of the feel because there are some play groups and sometimes we play that where we bring out like our glass can index where we do a big thing and we have very little interaction you know what I mean and sometimes we play against uh someone like Craig and you need to have a source of Pusher for that first infect creature or one one that can just block it so Craig goes elsewhere yeah um now note that the Baseline goal of winning is not included in keeping in a good opening hand and why a mulligan matters because you're not trying to unless again your CDH do you think in CDH they have a we so right now we have a path towards getting our game plan going yeah in CDH do you think that they actually have that game plan to winning the game yeah I think so or making sure right they have a fierce guardianship or a free counter spell just stop someone else from winning the interaction is more important to getting to the win is more important whereas the strategies that we've talked about it's like I'm not talking about winning I'm just talking about getting my first dragon out with Kalia or getting my first trigger with urico it's just like starting the engine going yeah or even protecting Kalia because I know that this table has trained themselves and I've trained them to remove it on site so I think winning is not something that necessarily sculpt in the opening hand unless you're doing like a tainted packed combo or something it's really about staying alive and healthy and making sure that you are it's kind of like pushing a car have you ever pushed a car that's in neutral I have it's not fun it's a good point but it's also slow going but once you start pushing enough or you hit a hill then you're moving right have you ever pushed the car uh and then it starts moving away from you you faster than you and yeah we're not pushing anymore yeah and you're just ramping and all of a sudden your car is gone and like oh I ramped too hard so it's the same idea I think for regular uh EDH which is you're pushing that car and it takes a while to move it you really have to put some effort in the beginning but once you do and you're going then you're in the clear um it's you know you're not building momentum in your opening hand you just gotta build momentum through your deck yes and and also don't die very quickly and stay alive and healthy don't die all right what is a good hand well here's the thing I think that one of the the baselines that that we all use when we look at a hand is like all right do I have lands and spells yeah you play lands and you tap those lands to play spells I mean is that is that I mean if we're talking Baseline is that all I really need can they turn the episode off now but it's like hey make sure you have a good mix of lanes and spells in a way no actually yeah I was gonna say yes but actually don't turn the episode off we need you to stick around and I want to watch a couple pre-roll ads or something uh the thing about you what you said is very true though a good hand is obviously going to have a mixture of lands and spells and this sounds that's the Baseline what people look at the first thing is they're like all right I got my land drops I have something I can cast to keep all right is that is that it no it's it's close you're getting there it's like you're you're painting by colors and you're missing the feel of the colors got it so that might be level level one maybe even level zero if it's all in all colors and you're missing a lot of colors yeah if it's level zero I think it's level zero because it's level zero otherwise it's you have all lands or all spells and you can't keep that here okay good so typically the ratio that we've seen is you have three or four lands and three or four spells now of course the Spells and that stuff they need to work together so let's talk about how it goes a little beyond that so in terms of lands uh let's say you're playing a a three color deck you can't just keep a land that only has or a hand that only has one color of Mana unless it's got away with the spells to dig you out of that right yeah that's right I think that you definitely need to make sure that you can because if you're thinking about what's in your deck and what can kind of like how your plan is developing uh probably two-thirds of the cards that you draw are a lot of the cards that you draw are need to be able to be played if you wanted to develop your game plan if you don't have the right Mana then it's not going to work yeah I was playing against someone on uh from our Discord on you know patreon and they were playing a slime foot deck and unfortunately the Slime puts a black and green Commander they kept opening hands with only forests in them and said you know what I think I'm gonna get there guess what happened DJ uh I'm pretty sure that by the tone of your story they did not get they did not get there or when they did get there it was too late and then they weren't really a force in the game so lands should give you access to the color of your commander unless you have you know ramp or Mana fixing to get you there so let's take the Slime foot as an example do you think that was a bad decision I mean because sometimes we do results oriented thinking we're like and he didn't get there ah horrible decision yeah yeah but what if they actually do have a lot of you know duels in there yeah or more swamps than forests yeah yeah like I'm wondering I'm wondering how big of a mistake it is and that might be when we get into the nitty-gritty of of sort of evaluating hands and finding out well what are the odds of him you know maybe the odds were even good but at the same time you can't it's RNG for a reason random number generation you have no idea what's on the top of your deck now I could see ways to secure that hand with a rampant growth or a wild growth or that type of effect not wild growth but like something else you didn't have any ramp to in order to fix that was their game plan significantly impeded by not having slime foot out on turn three or turn four turn five a hundred percent okay they were playing enablers for a slime flexibility but never were able to actually get the core engine piece out so you have essentially the the game plan the Synergy of your game plan and how that is like the most important thing that you can do and then you're like okay does this hand lead me towards my game plan in that situation it did not it did not and then you have to but then you have to weigh it you have to weigh okay how many cards are left in my deck that will help me get to that game plan am I likely to be able to to draw that card keep in mind lands typically 36 37 in your deck that that's less than half so it's worse than the coin flip in terms of just raw drawing the land and in this case he was looking for another color which might be even half of that half of that hopefully it's hopefully it's the more hopefully it's like 20 left in the deck or something like that and if you're trying to cast slime foot on three that's three chances that's not even right 25 three chances I would not necessarily bet on that because if it goes wrong it's not just going a little wrong it's not like oh I I uh you know I poked myself and it hurts a little bit it's like no you you kind of just tripped yourself and you're taking a long time to get back up that's the internal map about how bad is it for your strategy yeah you know if if you just say like oh man I can't cast my commander I wanted to but guess what I'll cast something else or I'll just I'll wait and everything will be fine versus yeah oh I've actually just undone a lot of you know what I've built up in the stack and and in the last few turns and a lot of times we get shiny object syndrome where we see the other very cool cards in the hand and uh or even sometimes it's like hey you have an ancient tomb it's like that doesn't have for colored Mana though have you ever have you ever had someone say like oh man this hand would be so good lands in it yeah and they're like seven non-lions there's seven cards you're like yeah of course if you had a hand of ten cards seven of those beautiful things in three extra lands it would be great but yeah perfect throw it back you don't have enough lands yeah and don't count tempo of the false god or Maze of it as a land in your hand as well that can be a tricky thing because having a template with a false god and opening hand is one of the reasons why you don't play the card you know all right now let's talk about the spells in your hand obviously they they should be castable by the lands in your hand if you have you know a spell that's one black black but you only have white Mana that that is not a good spot to be in and I think as well in general the spells that you have in your opening hand you want to be able to cast them in your initial turns so turn two three four and if a spell costs more than lands in your hand and the ability to ramp let's say you have a expropriate or a seven or an eight drop you may as well consider those cards to not be in your hand it is almost as though you have already Mulligan two six or five so in Sample hand three lands in your colors and three creatures you got three drop of four drop and a seven drop I'd say this hand is closer to six cards than seven you're so far away from that seven drop and and it doesn't mean that you when you're playing a seven drop a lot of times you're not necessarily even hitting that on turn seven yeah you know you might miss a land drop and you might have a hard time being able to cast that out and seven turns is so far from now you might even find other things to do before then yeah totally I mean it's just it's so far away that it might it shouldn't even factor into your calculations yeah and I think you know if you have three lands in your hand you can reasonably expect again we're talking 35 34 well do you want to go do you want to go through it sure so this is this is a lot of debate where some people are like three versus four ah yes you know and in general you have let's say 30 you should have like 37 38 lands maybe even more with modal dual face Lanes in there um but hopefully you have about that okay so if you are drawing a hand of seven and you have you know three lands in your hand and that means you have about 35 lands left in your decorative yeah and that's 35 out of about 90-ish cards because you've drawn the opening hand of seven maybe you have a partner Commander but it's around 35 out of 90. so exactly so those aren't clean numbers but it's closer to one and three than than 50 percent and so if you're thinking about okay well I'm going to draw a land every third card how long until you run out of lands pretty fast you play like you draw a card for your first turn it's not a line you play when you down to two lands in hand you draw your second card you play a land you're down to one landed hand you draw your third card statistic card it's a land statistically supposed to be a land but it may not be but let's just say it is yeah now we have two lanes in your hands exactly you play one and you're down to one land in hand and now you're starting over again and you draw another card and your play your fourth land for the turn but now you're out of lands yeah and then you miss your fifth language yeah and five is a very important number I think four Commander players especially uh now this is just like very napkin you know there are people that really get into weeds when it comes to the math of this but I actually think that three three lands if you don't have some sort of ramp or some sort of way to card draw or filter or get deeper if you get unlucky then I actually think that that might not be enough and I would prefer four I'd actually prefer three in some way to get a little bit deeper or have some sort of selection yeah but but four is actually where I feel safest that's why we have the three to four kind of line yeah and you can't cut lands in half to get three and a half so you're going to have to choose between three and four um even five land hands I've seen people keep because they have a way to filter discard whatever it is but yeah it's true by the time you get to that fourth land drop and statistically you're right you're actually not looking great uh unless you have more redundancy in your hand to help you get there so if you have again three lands in your hand and let's say it's three lands and then five or four words just creatures you know what I mean yeah like the play out and not no way to ramp no way to filter you're gonna give me three lands and then a bunch of like like Mana dorks that ramp too because that doesn't get you drawing more cards either and it could be three lands and five or four five drops and that's not good either so now we're gonna talk a little bit of a ram which is like where does ramp fit into this because I've seen people keep two land hands with two pieces of ramp in it I've seen people keep one land hands with a bunch of ramp in it so if you have an Arcane Signet in your opening hand does that to you replace one of your lands absolutely not all right I would agree oh we got do you have more things can I explain why yeah yeah no explain okay so this one's easy to agree on I think all right so ramp is great because it advances you a turn in in order for you to deploy or use your resources using more recess for your opponent and getting bigger things faster is very powerful okay and so ramp is undoubtedly good we all kind of agree on that we all play a bunch of rainbows we definitely agree on that yeah like we we all agree on we all play a lot of in our decks and so if you play a piece of ramp but you miss your land drop you just undid your ramp right yeah turn two you played your Arcane Signet because you had two lands two three great job then you missed your next land drop you just undid that that Arcane Signet might as well have been away but you actually spent two Mana to cast that like exactly yeah yeah so Arcane Signet does not replace the land in your opening hand in fact that's one of the things I also see is a very common mistake Commander players make is they go oh I got a couple of sick ramp pieces I'm gonna be fine as long as I draw three lands over the next five turns and that's not a great place to be now let's say we have a gilded lotus in your hand does that replace the land no definitely not definitely not that one's an easy one too big all right how is a tough one if you have a rampant growth in your hand does that replace a land none of these replace the land uh they really they really don't but they could if you're if everything else is in place yeah and you have nothing else to do on turn two and you feel like you can get out of it on turn three then I would theoretically keep that rampant growth hand I don't know if I would keep the Arcane Signet because I think it's too easily disrupted yes yeah but here's the thing like none of these actually replace the land you know they might be they might be like an okay substitute maybe as you're scraping by but the key of these cards is to be ramp not Lance right you know what I mean and so so people give them that that great ramped value in their heads but if they're just another land I don't know what do you think about two land two land rampant growth I hate it because you turn to rampant growth turn three don't draw land then you but your rampant growth became your land and hopefully turned four years hopefully well here's why I think is that hopefully you need some exit strategy because you have nowhere to go up past that you know what I mean yeah like you have nowhere to go so hopefully you need an exit strategy where it's like okay and then now on turn three I can play my draw spell or I can play I can dig deeper for this land then I think you might be fine but that's such a narrow situation and so many people uh just say oh yeah it counts as a land and then they leave it there but really it's a much more specific situation yeah now a lot of these conversations shift because another thing we're going to talk about being in the good hand is card draw so that was the key right in order the key because that's the thing that can get you deep enough that it mitigates the the randomness of having to draw a land right you're gonna draw even two extra cards by the time it gets to that third turn that crucial third turn you've really increased your chances of making sure you hit one of your land drops exactly and then you've insulated yourself from the randomness of your deck that could manage screw you yeah and in a lot of ways I think we've come around to this which is card draw may be more important than ramp in your opening hand because let's say you have a theoretical situation where you play everything out of your hand by turn three and then you're just drawing lands or high Mana Valley spells you're dead in the water so card draw really makes sure that you're not stuck in a unfavorable position well remember Jimmy we talked in the uh build up your commander collection kind of thing yeah about smoothers in general and we both kind of went back there and like the idea of smoothers being essentially like okay this can get me to a land if I need to or get me past lands if I if I don't need that anymore so preordain opt serum Visions ways to scry and draw cards simultaneously for a cheap price yeah adventurous impulse uh in in green uh Once Upon a Time can do stuff like that too anything that lets you select between land or not land uh in accordance with your strategy yeah so I think if you actually had to prioritize one over the other I would prioritize card draw over ramp now this isn't to say that ramp is not necessarily more important than card draw in fact I think both of them are it's so close but when it comes to an opening hand of Magic the last thing and again I've seen this happen to so many people they dump their hand on the table they had nothing else to do and then they draw dead a couple of turns and all that advantage that the ramp got them is completely erased because the games of Commander typically are not one on turns one through five they're one on turns seven through eleven so you're going to want to make sure that you're preparing for that outcome as opposed to the one where it's explode at the table do a Cassius Marsh turn three ugen did he win that game he didn't he didn't you really need when to win a game of magic everything needs to line up you need to be able to have the Mana because Mana allow you to deploy other resources yeah you need to have those other resources you know and the faster you can do that the better and getting to all of those things quickly means that you need to hit your land drops you know it means that you need to get land ends when you need them and not and non-lands when you don't need them and you need to have those sort of big impactful things as it goes along so you need land drops ramp card draw and the big impactful things that's too many things you know too many things do you either need to line something up perfectly or you need that acceleration of card draw to get you all of that stuff yeah and to be able to power through more enough of your deck that you get to what you need in the right time yep and don't forget your commander also counts as sort of being in your hand it's your eighth card your sometimes ninth card if you're playing with partners and a lot of commanders these days have card draws stapled onto them so if your goal is ramp to play my commander and then card draw off of my commander that is more sound than I'm just going to play ramp to just dump everything out in my hand and not have card draw as a backup and hope yeah and just pray pray that your you know the cards you draw at the top are going to help you out so breaking it down we got okay it's not just about lands or spells are getting the right amount it's like okay let's first evaluate how many lands are are in here and whether I can I can make sure to hit my land drops or make sure to accelerate out into relevant things yeah and then also looking at the non-lands and saying okay what are these relevant things is it ramping into things that are reliable that I can cast like my commander or is it card draw that gets me deeper into my deck to make sure that I have more looks at something relevant in the mid game yep and a lot of times cardra can also be stapled like to discarding or whatever and that could be part of your game plan too so just keep in mind that I think hard draw is more important because it's the thing that will let you have the most options and options are really what you want in a game that's not trying to be four or five turns all right now beyond the uh Beyond this is all about just not getting a non-game I feel like you got a little bit yeah it really it really it is it's yeah this is really about having a non-game which is playing the game that your deck was designed to play really you know because you could have a you could have a game where you ramping drunkards and stuff like that but you want your deck to do the thing and that means you need all of those components working together yeah and sometimes you know you can Mulligan even in more casual formats you can Mulligan more aggressively if you're playing by the traditional London Mulligan rules to just give yourself that extra Advantage if you really know what you're looking for but I think that's just something that CDH is taking into consideration more than casual players I don't really think about like I'm gonna Mulligan until I get that perfect four because you've got 99 cards in your deck it's going to be difficult to sculpt that hand on your opening hand but use the cards in your opening hand to help you sculpt that hand later in the game all right we're gonna do a really fun exercise when we get back about actually looking at a couple of decks that DJ and I have and evaluating some hands and there's an exercise that you can join along with too so we're going to take a quick break to talk to our to hear from our mid-roll sponsors and in that meantime go grab a deck we'll see you in a sec this episode is sponsored by Better Health Factor golden manual but when I wanted to work on myself well I'll tell you what there ain't no manual for the human brain I'll check the mystical archives and everything that's why I turned to a professional license therapist seeing my line of work when you got a specialty job you need an expert contractor a therapist is like that for your mind helping you to navigate Challenge and emotions and understand the inner workings of a complex engine that is you and is the world's largest therapy service better help us match three million people with professionally licensed and 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shopping cooking or cleaning you'll have even more time to do the things you love every meal is dietitian approved and with 30 plus choices each week including vegetarian and Protein Plus options you can eat healthy without ever getting bored oh man that sounds great I really wish I had a Parmesan crusted chicken with Italian veggies wow this is delicious wait where were you hiding it you don't want to know and that's a factor fact head to go.factor75.com command 60 and use code command 60 to get 60 off your first box that's code command six zero at go dot factor75.com command 60 to get 60 off your first box the holidays are coming up and that means there's plenty of shopping to do now a lot of us have friends and loved ones with pretty specific hobbies and it can be hard to find that perfect gift yeah but with Etsy no interest is too obscure Etsy has plenty of special presents for everyone on your list and they're ready to ship for the holidays you can shop for jewelry Decor or personalized gifts and it's especially good for magic players they've got tons of awesome gaming accessories from Custom deck boxes to incredible cars Alters we even use Etsy to make the game nights live championship belt now that's about Fit For A Champion with Etsy it's easy to find gifts that are truly meaningful and for all budgets plus you're always shopping directly from makers so every purchase supports a small business a gift from Etsy he just really feels thoughtful and as they say it's the thought vessel that counts and if they don't say that they should because it's a good Mana Rock new to Etsy use code Mary 10 that's m-e-r-r-y-10 at checkout for 10 off your first purchase again that's code Mary 10 maximum value 50 offer ends December 31st 2022 see terms at etsy.com terms for gifts of all kinds Etsy has it shop etsy.com welcome back we are defining the Mulligan how to not lose the game before it's even started uh now we're gonna do an exercise in hand evaluation and I'm really excited about this this is an exercise that any of you doing can do at home right now if you're driving uh don't don't just don't maybe mentally try and do it and if you're watching the video version of this you'll see the cards pop up on screen otherwise we'll do as good of a job as we can to explain what's going on so the first step is to go grab a deck look through the cards and to craft the best possible opening hand of seven that you can well why would we do that the odds of us getting that best possible seven is is minuscule it's a fever dream why would you ever do that because you need to understand what it is we always say this in Our Deck text this is the best card in the deck and knowing that is really powerful because sometimes if you need to tutor it up or you need to understand how I'm going to win in this situation you have to think about those cards and now we're talking about how I'm going to win this game of commander and so we're going to do the same thing by looking at your opening hands it also gives you a ton of perspective because I thought this would be easy I'd be like all right I know me too I thought I picked the best one and it really it really wasn't and one thing that I realized is that the cards that I thought I was gonna be putting into the open hand I wasn't putting in there because uh it it didn't do everything what I mean like yeah yeah yeah I I at first I was like all right let's get all the fast Mana possible it's gonna be so explosive and it didn't do anything yeah you know or uh well there's some other sort of security things going on there too but really what it did it have me reevaluate the perspective of oh just this is what I'm looking for does my deck do this enough yeah and you're and it's going to be again different for every deck yeah so we brought two different flavors of decks but once you've done this you've grown your best hand the first experiment is just play the handout over three turns without drawing any cards and see what happens right so you're not drawing for your opening hand you're just playing the cards in your hand and looking okay when this is all said and done what does it look like and then do that again but do draw some cards this time and notice the difference now the second step in this uh is to take that perfect hand and then replace every single coordinate with a technically worse version of that card or effect so if you have a fact and that becomes like a more average hand right because you've taken the the framework for what you decide is perfect and you're like all right I'm I'm not going to get this perfect hand all the time let's downgrade it in every way yeah and see what that does to my perfect hand yep and of course you can uh then you know if you have a fetch land it just becomes a regular land or a tap land even and then a lower Mana value card becomes a higher Mana value card pretty simple stuff and then from that sub optimal hand imagine what would happen if you had the Mulligan one card away what card you're taking away then if it was a kind of five what card are you taking away then it was a hand of four what cards you would take away and this is really going to start honing you on understanding what makes a good opening hand also evaluating from one level like the ultimate level down down a grade you can also kind of say well okay what if I were to go down another grade or go down another grade and then you kind of have the range of what you'll uh of what you'll be okay with as soon as you get that hand of seven and you're like actually I've downgraded enough where I don't want to keep this anymore yeah like then you know like oh I actually have a visualization of what isn't good enough yeah and then you have a point of comparison yeah and you can be like oh I've got the worst version of this effect but the best version of this other one that actually balances out because I've done enough this exercise to know I just need these two in some combination to get me where I'm going exactly so Jimmy what's your deck so I have a kaikar the winds Fury deck this is one a blue red and a white for a legendary creature bird wizard it's a 3-3 with flying and it says whenever you cast a non-creature spell create a 1-1 white Spirit creature token with flying and then you can sacrifice the spirit to add red one red man to your Mana pool now this deck is probably along one of my more competitive decks uh it has a lot of really cool win conditions in there and it's all about jamming a bunch of spells quickly and playing with a low curve I think the average CMC is like 2.5 or something yeah very much so very hot very cool um so the power level is pretty high and that's going to affect my best opening hand as well as sort of the sub optimal opening hands so I'll start off I'm gonna get get my deck I'm going to look through the cards I'm going to craft the best possible opener I can alright you ready card number one it's a land it's scalding charm fetchland gets me a man to fix it three color deck the second card is Aaron Mesa another fetch land can grab me exactly the lands that I need the third card is Chrome MOX so this is a artifact that costs zero Mana it says imprint when it enters the battlefield you may Exile a non-artifact non-land card from your hand and then you can tap it to add one Mana of the exiled colors to my Mana pool so this is fast Mana this is very much now looking to be more on the competitive side uh and that's my Mana Suite now the rest of the cards by the way this land only has two lands in it by the way the rest of the cards is one's a preordain so it's a blue Mana for a sorcery describe to then draw a card and then a Mystic Remora which is one of the best card draw spells in the game a Jessica's will we all know how good this card is and then dragons rage Channeler and this is a red Mana for a 1-1 human Shaman whenever you cast a non-creature spell surveil one so you look at the top car library and you can put that card into your graveyard and there's some other text on it that isn't relevant here so this is my perfect hand what do you think of it DJ I think it is super aggressive uh one thing that I wanna that I'd like to point out is that Chrome mocks right there I mean obviously fast man is super powerful yeah but you're gonna have to imprint a card under that that's right that means actually going down the card in my hand I'm exiling a card from my hand in order for that to make Mana so do you think that's a good idea or a crazy idea well you have three sources of card advantage and one source of card filtering in your deck already so I think that you're going to be able to make up for that card Advantage yep so the reason why this is a perfect hand for me is because I have options right turn one I am going to draw a card and that's gonna affect my hand if it's a card that I go oh it's a it's a higher drop I can put it under my Chrome box in that case I can have an incredible opening hand I can play dragons race Channeler followed by a Mystic Remora surveil one dig through my deck start putting things in the graveyard are you looking for lands or at this point I am let's say that you were lucky and you got a big drop to put under Chrome box since you're like great my hands intact uh are you looking for lands or spells I'm actually looking for lands right now because I have a Mystic Remora and a Jessica's will and these things Jessica's will is way better if I get my commander out my commander is for CMC four Mana value so in the opening phase I'm probably looking for lands but here's the thing if I find another I have a lot of cantrips in here and I have a lot of effects that say cast a spell dragons race Chandler makes his hand amazing because even if I get Shadow Rift or something that says give us something something draw a card I actually get to draw a card and get the dragon's rage Chandler trigger off it so I'm really starting to dig through my deck if one in three of Jimmy's land cards in his deck are lands then filtering effects are more likely to get them there than if he would have skipped on the dragon race Channel or the pre-ordain and added another land to his opening hand yeah and I love preordain because it's cry to draw a card and we just said hey if you're drawing a car that's about 33 chance Sky 2 plus draw card usually means you should be able to find the land in those top three if that's what you're looking for but here's the thing if I draw a card and I don't want the Chrome mocks turn one I can save this for later I can save this for turn three to cast my commander a little earlier and no one sees it coming or I can save it for what my commander is out and get a free trigger and get a spirit from Kai car so how much of this deck of this opening hand is reliant on Mystic Remora drawing you two cards actually not that Reliant because I have a pre-ordained and a dragon's rage Chandler so the redundancy is what makes this hand so good is because I have multiple ways to go you know what if I can't and if I'm a with a non-competitive group and no one's gonna be playing non-creature spells on turn one then I don't want to play Mystic Remora in fact I may even put Mystic Remora under the Chrome box which seems crazy but once you realize that the deck is all about just churning through and casting spells for really cheap you kind of understand where I'm going with this and at what point in time do you think you're going to cast that Jessica as well is that going to be on turn three or ideally not I would love to cast it when my Commander's out so I can get both parts of the effect its power levels just high enough that you're fine having it open your hand just that you can like sandbag it until turn five maybe even yeah hopefully four because You'll Play Your Commander early yeah uh I'm just recognizing that Jessica's was one of the most powerful cards in the deck and so having it just in your opening hand means you if you're in a real bind you can cast it on turn two with a chrome box in the land and Exile cards off the top of your library and play a land outfit so one or you can use it as a effect to get you know five or six red Mana from someone else so here are the things that we've noticed so far uh Jimmy has enough lands or Mana sources in general to play everything in his hand okay he's only one land or manosource away from playing his commander and really getting his strategy going uh he has multiple sources to draw cards or select or find what he needs and continue finding what he needs even in the mid late game and one of the most powerful cards for his deck just as well so he's rounded It Out by having the Lansing AIDS the card draw the filtering getting to his strategy and a big Haymaker for his deck and flexibility as well which is the reason why I'm able to boldly say I'm keeping a two land hand because I have multiple options on turn one two and three about how I'm gonna get myself out of a situation should things not go my way and not put myself at a disadvantage for doing so now Jimmy does this hand fold to anything like if I you know because sometimes we sculpt the perfect hand and it's like oh someone maybe yeah I was gonna say maybe counterbalance it doesn't hold two on one oh my gosh but as we've seen with Commander typically you know people are saving their counter spells and their interactions get countered what about if someone kills your dragon that is going to be tough right the drags Ray channel are dying is bad but that's why again we have the Mystic Remora preordained and Jessica's will great stuff yeah and again dragons race channel gets incredibly powerful the longer it sticks around so it's a great card to have in your opening hand all right but this is not going to be the the normal opening hand what's a more normal opening hand that we can all right so a more normal opening hand is a mountain instead of a scalding Tarn a island instead of an arid Mesa or vice versa a azorious Signet instead of a chrome MOX much more reasonable uh serum Visions instead of preordained so the difference here preordained describe to the draw cards serum Visions is draw a card then scribe too and I think we can understand why scribe too then draw a card is better than just drawing a random card and then scrying uh it said Mr grimora I've Got Deep analysis so this is a sorcery for three in the blue Target player draws two cards or I flash it back for one in blue and pay three life for my graveyard I've got a card called battle him which only does sort of one half of Jessica's will and it says add red to your manipul for each creature you control and it's also conditional and then instead of dragons Ray Chandler I have recruiter of the card which is a tuna white one that enters the battlefield you may search your library for a creature card with toughness two or less put it into your hand then shuffle your library uh gets dragon wing Channel it gets Dragonite Channel it gets a bunch of other stuff in the deck okay this is definitely a step I I like this exercise it's definitely a step down in every single way let's just start Baseline are you keeping this hand I think I am still keeping this hand because it's as easy or is it on the edge this is a hundred percent on the edge and it's on the edge because of a few factors one I only have two lands in here if I don't draw another land sure I can play recruit of the guard with the Signet but that's not going to get me to where I need to also my deep analysis costs four Mana so this is one of those hands where you look at it and it's probably one where you're sweating because you go if I don't draw land if I can't see them you're leaning on the serum Vision it's pretty hard but I think I think the serum Visions will get you there it will I think in some in a lot of cases but there are times right this deck runs 35 lands or something that there you could just have kind of a big chunk of non-lands or at the top of your library and then you just put yourself into a real pickle and the thing is the light on so light on lands but we're hoping that the serum Visions can get you there yep obviously not as explosive because you're ramping on two instead of actually like playing everything in your hand on turn one yeah exactly um and then you have some late game stuff like battle him which doesn't do anything uh right now but we do know that it's powerful very similar to just as well where it needs a little bit of setup but we do know that down the line is powerful do you feel like this is like a six card hand like you were describing with the seven drop with this battle him even though it's a one drop I think so because the next thing we're gonna do DJ is if I had to get rid of one card and Mulligan this down to six what is the first card that would get rid of and you're correct it's battle him this is a card that requires other creatures to have set up uh given my current hand I have one creature and when I play it battle him is going to just add one red man into my Mana pool not good enough so I've had to go down to six I would instantly take battle him out and then when I keep this hand still actually it's looking pretty rough I don't know now the second part but here's the thing you got the card draw with serum Vision yeah serum Visions will get you to your other land and then deep analysis will get you to the more card draw so that maybe you can salvage this hand I would keep this six okay great in that case what would you remove then to make it a hand of five well I just pointed at the I think serum Visions is critical you can't get rid of it absolutely and then deep analysis is gonna undo your Mulligan and so I think you then you have to get rid of recruiter of the Guard yeah I think it's actually a close balance because you all don't know the deck list but recruit of the Guard can grab a lot of very powerful creatures in the deck and those creatures all have some of them have card Advantage Stacks stacked onto them as well so I think it's actually like a 50 50 split for this deck in particular between deep analysis and recruiter of the Guard uh because record of the guards is a tutor it gives you a little more flexibility by the time you play it you're gonna have additional information so maybe that's valuable but yeah if I was going down I mean it isn't it is a turn three play like rather than but then again deep analysis if you do hit your land drop is a turn three play as well yeah correct correct so it is a very very close thing here so I think actually a recruiter of the Guard is very close to deep analysis in the next card I would cut now let's say we do cut the recruiter of the Guard would you keep this five land or five card hand and I think so I'm thinking about what would I go to four yeah right I'm keeping most F if I have land drops I think I'm keeping most Five Card hits yeah like if I had five lands and I had to keep five lands or go to four I think I would keep five Lanes okay and though if I did have to go down to four then we're cutting probably the Deep analysis I have a question if you had a five land of if you were at five and had the decision to go down four but you had five lands ooh would you by the way this doesn't happen because we don't Mulligan this way anymore yeah right right but what I I mean maybe I mean I guess if you were if you were at five and you drew seven lands and you had to have been been I think it would really depend on my commander at that point uh and what I know about my deck um if I'm a landfall deck definitely not keeping that hand because I have a ton of lens in my deck and I'm likely to draw those instead so I think it's really really close in that case um but yeah that is my experiment with kaikar um really fun to do this I'm I'm interested to see what did you what did you learn from this I learned a couple of things one this deck allows me to get a little greedier than other decks because I'm packing a lot of heat in the card draw and card Advantage territory in these opening hands I have preordained Mystic remorse serum Vision steep analysis and dragon trade Chandler and Jessica's will right all and even recruit of the guards all of these cards allow me to go get more cards whether I'm drawing them or tutoring them on my deck so having a critical mass of these in my deck allows me to keep a two-land hand with a ramp spell or even sometimes there is a world where you could say with this first Top Hand of all these amazing cards that you could potentially even get rid of a land when you're mulliganing downwards because you have preordained Mystic Remora Dragon race Chandler and just a lot of ways to start churning through your deck now did this exercise firm how you've built the deck like you do have enough of these One Drops you have enough of these artifacts that's a good thing uh one thing that I'm that we're going to show in mine is that I'm like it might have exposed a weakness in my deck as I'm going through this exercise interesting yeah well let's jump over to your deck then now DJ what Commander are you bringing to the table here all right I'm bringing Lisa shroud of dusk so this is a little bit of a lower power level it's an Angel Tribal Deck with a sub theme of Life game okay uh and I knew that you were bringing a really tuned powerful awesome deck and so I wanted to get on the more uh yeah the more like Hey we're gonna play five drop Angels like like Sarah Angel OG is in this deck like that's the kind of that's the kind of power level that we're going that we're going on okay uh but let me explain the commander Lisa shroud of dusk is two white white black for a five five legendary creature creature Angel rather than pay two for each previous time you've cast this spell from the command Zone uh this game pay to life that many times so it's always going to cost five from the command Zone just some extra life it's got flying and LifeLink and whenever a player casts spell they lose to life so it's going to be taxing everyone as they play more and more spells as you just chain into one drops it's gonna be like two life two life oh yeah my deck actually looks pretty bad against this one because I'm trying to play curve come ball into this it's like yes good the console of allegations okay so uh power level is a little bit lower obviously we have a five drop Commander it's got cool Angels it's got a sub sort of like tribal theme to it as well exactly one thing about like the decks in general that we do is sometimes we choose a theme that's a little bit lower but like we've thought out every single card and things are pretty tuned right even though we've intentionally included like Sarah Angel and random other angels and stuff like that okay so what I started off with was three lands okay in my ideal deck it's a cavern of souls uh which I can put on Angel and make sure that my big Angel doesn't get countered very nice uh Godless Shrine uh which is a dual land and a vault of Champions which is dual land right I have a lot of uh very Mana intensive uh cards that are like double black triple white even your commander that's two white white black exactly and so having as many dual lands as possible uh is gonna be really good okay then I included Soul Ray I'm gonna put soul ring in my ideal opening hand by the way you may have noticed that idea didn't have soaring in my opening hand because my commander costs one red white blue so I don't actually like soul ring in my opening hand nice well I mean your Chromebox served a really good breakfast and I'm wondering what was the room like where what were you gonna cut for soul right right I don't know like I think that was really intentional yeah um but whereas I have a lot of big chunky angels that are like three white wide or something like that and I've included the the black and white man to go along with it okay uh I included a second piece of ramp Arcane Signet ah and then I included uh some sort of angel that could give me card advantage or a ramp and basically Smash in I chose the battle angels of tear oh this card is great battle angels of tear is two white white for a four four Angel night it's got flying and Myriad whenever battle angels of tear deals combat damage to a player draw a card if that player has more cards in hand than each other player then create a treasure token if that player controls more lands than each other player then you gained three life if that player has more life than each other player wow so with Myriad it's actually swinging and attacking every player so there's a good chance that all three of those would trigger exactly well I know and also I just dump my hand because I have two poor sources of ram ah he's coming out on turn two and I've deployed a ton of cards so I'm going to be drawing cards and getting and then like more Mana hopefully right right get some treasures and ramp into stuff and then uh my next turn I realize that I have six Mana conveniently and I'm gonna play bolus to Citadel and not there's that it's three black black black and with the current hand you have you're able to cast I was barely cast whoa that's amazing though right you can cast a two white white spell as well as a three black black black spell so so here's the this Expo okay I looked at this and I was like oh man this is kind of a dream hand you know what I mean kind of it's like amazing I can play I can play an angel and start smashing in and gaining card advantage and then and yeah and life and then I have bolus acidity that was super fast to be able to play stuff off the top of my library for life this is a life game deck so I have lots of ways to gain life uh my commander can help me gain life and everything will be fantastic but I realize that this kind of opening strategy required two Mana rocks right so tapping into Arcane Signet how many Mana rocks do I actually have in this deck hmm what are like the likelihood of you opening up a can trip a Mana rock or something else you picked like one of each category kind of and I doubled up on a critical category if I really needed this many Mana rocks like I should probably have like what like 15 16 yeah 17. I don't I have nine ah well this is a white black deck as well the ramp is actually not that great exactly and so that that kind of said well if this is my ideal deck if this is my ideal sort of curve out like I'm not doing myself a big service by picking a hand that's just like so out of control so actually one thing that I did is that I ended up cutting the Arcane Signet and putting in something like a three drop Angel oh so I put in Inspire I substituted it inspiring overseer I will be an extra turn behind everything but it'll be more normal for for my deck the odds of drawing two pieces of ramp are just kind of like outlandish with the number I've had I haven't I've been selling Arcane Signet hand and what feels like forever yeah well and so and so what I would need to do is if I wanted that I need to go back and revisit the number of pieces of ramp that I have in here right uh and so I've adjusted that okay so let's go to that was a pretty awesome opening it pretty good both of them are pretty good too pretty good okay let's go to the worst version okay not the worst by the way just a worse a worse a worse version yeah okay this also has three lands uh one of them is bajookabag okay or early bajukebox just feels bad I was looking at him like what could be the most like heart-wrenching land first time it's like bajukebox anyways and then I have two other Basics uh my ramp is a three drop it's pristine Talisman okay it's got life games synergies in here so it could be good but I don't have easy and fast ramp right uh I my three drop I replaced I put in respect resplendent Marshall which is just a solid little 3-3 beater Angel but it does better in the late game when you have angels in your graveyard uh or Angels on the battlefield that you can Anthem things like that and so even I even have to decide well am I gonna keep this hand that has two black sources and responded angel that doesn't work you know or am I gonna play this on three I don't know I might even be left behind yeah dude Talisman on three instead right exactly and then I have something like linvala keeper of Silence another tough to cast card access one a two white white exactly but I think that it's a good replacement for battle angels of tear because it's like okay I have these uh impactful four drop Angels but battle angels of tear is just like oh it accelerates me ahead whereas the Fallen keeper of Silence but like it could shut you down yeah I like that actually it's yeah I got the reverse effect it's like the reverse effect and but when I'm doing a mulligan decision I can't know right if this linvala is going to be a good payoff or not yeah you have no idea exactly um and then a much worse card Advantage engine from bolus to Citadel is sanctuary Warden uh new companion card amazing and draft by the way also just to be amazing an angel Dexter yeah it actually is pretty awesome uh four white white 4A 55 uh Angel Soldier it's got flying uh Sanctuary Warden enters the battlefield with with two Shield counters on it it's great uh when it enters the battlefield or attacks you may remove a counter from a creature or Planeswalker you control if you do draw a card and create a 1-1 green and white citizen creature token so this is card Advantage but just nowhere near the six drop a bolus Citadel right well I really like this hand actually but it does have some awkwardness to it because you're not able to necessarily play that white white now let's say I see you have a Talisman over there exactly what if what if your uh Talisman of hierarchy replaced your Talisman of indulgence because it doesn't seem like you're getting a little indulgent see here's the thing that's one card one Mana Rock switches one ability to play your hand out and suddenly I go from like oh I might have a non-game too I can cast my spells right I can do my game plan and how important that is that is it's insanely important and I think that that is the key that we're talking about in a lot of these a lot of these things like is having a non-game worth it and it's not honestly no and so that one tiny change of being able to cast your spells ends up having it worth it I'm not excited about this seven card hand but at least I can play my resplendent martial I can play linvala I can play my you know I can go into five and then go into six right okay so let's say the Mulligan down to six here was the first card you're taking out I'm gonna take out the three three beater oh okay yeah so here's the thing so Jimmy took out the high-end card uh because he wasn't gonna get there it was something that was way later in the game uh I had a low enough impact low Drop card that I'm just gonna say look I'm I'm okay not making a presence on the battlefield I'm gonna cut the low impact card and keep the high impact cards right so you're gonna take out the resplendent Marshall as your six how about if you go down to five where are you taking out it's tough here I gotta take out the six drop I can't I can't do nothing I can't take out the Lin Val and do nothing until then but now you're taking out the land taking out the land is so scary without that without any card Advantage exactly yeah because now you're stuck with two lands of a Talisman and a four drop and a six drop so I think you do have to take the six drop out here yeah and now your hand by the way is three lands a Talisman and a linvala oh my gosh maybe I'll take out the Talisman yeah I could see that but at the same time now you cannot even cast the other cards oh my gosh this hand see the thing is that goes from a hand on the edge to it to like when you don't have all the pieces together to get your game playing going just taking out a couple cards can be a big deal yeah and uh what if you're going down to five are you taking out the sixer up now yeah six drops gone yeah so now your hand really just looks awful so in this case the thing that you're missing most of here that I know this is cards you know what I would do I would keep the Talisman and I'd go to my commander okay there you go so that that's great that's great right now you're thinking about the eighth card in your hand which is your commander and thinking you know what at the very least I can get that game plan going and I built my deck around this thing so yeah yeah the Carly Advantage thing is huge once you start cutting down the cards and like really saying like okay you really wish you start off with a very with a very edge case at the end and then you're like okay cut it down cut it down cut it down and by the way these are not easy choices notice Jimmy and I are going back and forth being like uh what do I cut yeah like how do I how do I do this how do I turn this into a real game plan yeah you know how much money would you give just to get that inspiring Overseer in your opening hand instead just a regular two in the white angel that draws you a card oh my gosh so much yeah so that's the difference between one three drop and another it's why it's in the ideal hand where it's like just like play my play my game get something on the battlefield get a little bit deeper yeah so really that card Advantage is what changed and you could tell too right you're in a white and black Deck ramp is not your specialty neither is even card right to a degree right because White's primarily in there and black is good but it's not I can I can rely on card draw that's one thing that I'm very that I'm good at is that I will play the angel like this is not a very impressive Angel but it does sanctuary yeah yeah Sanctuary Warden or this uh this Angel this three drop angel that draws a card yeah and so if you do go through DJ decks I will have sign in blood Knights whisper all the sort of card draw sort of things and so I can go into my deck knowing that if I go through four or five cards in here I'm gonna find some source of card Advantage right because you built into your deck exactly so let's talk about some takeaways here I think looking at the two hands now we're talking about not talking about Muller getting down to six or five I think you almost always keep the worst version of your hand that we laid out here um and because it has the key components it's got card draw it's got card Advantage it's got the things that you need to get your game plan going we gotta we go up to this the before the mineral before we the very first thing we talked about it's like okay does does my hand get me to the strategy of my deck yeah and even though the worst versions you're like you yeah they do yeah can I play lands so that I'm not left behind and can I get to the strategy of my deck when you answer yes then that's a good sign that your hand is is good and worth keeping yeah and it's also important that we were able to create two versions of the same hand because it means that repeat effects and redundancy is also really important in the deck and helping you to feel comfortable about mulliganing right when you're mulliganing you should know if you're playing those top seven cards aside like hey I have other things that do what I'm looking for so I'm not just hoping to draw the one Mana Rock the shoot right yeah the people that they're like I don't like the one where you just put seven aside and then Shuffle yeah they're like no I only have one copy of this I need it no you want redundancy redundancy effects that are important to your strategy yep and then obviously when we every single time that we started taking cards down from seven to six to five we never removed the lands that's really really important to think about you know when you do go into that situation is the lands are the most important part and missing a land drop is time walking yourself you're really not helping Advance your board State and you're really putting yourself in a bad position I think one reason why we never remove the lands though is because when we first sculpted our opening hand we sculpted it so that we knew that we'd be able to hit our fourth land drop yeah and as we cut down like I'd be like Oh I'm not sure I'm gonna hit my fourth land drop anymore do you know what I mean and so then then part of me was wishing that I had four lands instead of three yeah you know because in general I do lean towards keeping four lands you know instead of a three lane instead of a three-lane hand but when but when you have a really good one a hand a lot of times three lanes is okay yeah and as we keep getting rid of more and more things we're like oh my gosh now it's really uh hampering my ability to get to four lands five line six six lands yeah and the cards that were removed first High Mana value or uncastable cards or cards that don't function by themselves right battle him uh and then redundant effects too if you ever got two card dress spells two you got Arkansas and the soul ring you can get rid of one of them um so I think this is really cool you you wrote this down that you're creating snapshots of keepable hands it's almost like you blink you open your eyes and you're like oh God that lands ramp card draw a little bit of interaction that's that's a hand I can keep and the fact that you can make multiple versions in your deck means that you're gonna be able to see the Spectrum from the best hand possible to a mediocre hand to a hand that is not keepable and if you understand that when you draw your opening seven you're in such a better position because that's what professional magic play is all about right is really knowing your deck and understanding when you should mull again and knowing you know what my deck has the capability to get me out of this I'm going to keep the hand like this instead yeah I mean if you're professional magic players they know they're at xol that they they know the Mulligans yeah they know that this is a mulligan this is not a mulligan and they've studied it and they've seen them and they know what it takes in their deck it's so much harder with a hundred cards and they're all different uh and a lot of it has to do with like the unknown of what's going on your deck and so you have something that's actually really complicated yeah all right let's talk about a couple of adjustments here these are just more Edge case scenarios but it's good things to think about when you're mulliganing and design the Mulligan if you're playing at a high powered table and you expect most players to have some explosive deck they're going to combo for wins and turn two or three do you change the ideal hand that you have uh in terms of what it looks like hopefully I'm playing a deck that's also that high power level and so yeah because I either need to interact with them or race them right you know what I mean yeah exactly either you're trying to beat them first or you're trying to make sure that you have the removal spell the further Nature's claim or whatever for their very powerful combo piece or their counter spell exactly and so if I just have something that curves out nicely and that has lands and then I have card draw into other stuff I'm like that might not even be good enough yeah you know so so definitely uh dependent on what is going on in your meta game or in your table okay this one's gonna call back to game nights episode two where I justify keeping a hand that has ancient tomb and sensei's divining top in it and uh the question is when should you if ever take risks I mean I've brainstormed locked myself many times in my life oh no which just lets you know like that you can whiff on three you know like you can go three cards deep in with yeah uh and so I would say it happens a lot more and this could be confirmation bias but it feels like it happens more than you expect yeah well I think it does happen more than you expect because people are not good at statistics honestly yeah yeah people don't understand the the odds are the the chances of you drawing a land even if they might vaguely understand the numbers you know that's a good point so a risk like you used a really risky example I would not take that risk at all ah yeah and I shouldn't have either by the way because it's a stupid thing to do one you don't have color producing mana and you have a deck that is three colors in this case it was three colors it was the shoe index that preceded the chi card deck and so I was like you know what I can I've got so many ways of doing this I can draw a card with the Top If I really need to go right and it just ended up being an absolute disaster now what if it was in seven ancient tomb it was a regular land and a fetch land in a sensei's dividing top now you've got a little more options here because 100 you see six you see like you can't immediately well yeah you play it and then the next turn you the next time there's a two-land hand in Seven Nation too yeah then you could then you could even top and if you're if you're not in the top you get to pick what you want you play the fetchland you get to see another fresh three and then oh yeah I would totally keep that yeah so I think but also that's not even that that's not even that good that just kind of barely struggles you yeah that's a good point because even if you hit your up next land like was there something else that gets you there or are you just still relying on the top to get you to even more land and what does the rest of your hand look like right so you have to consider that it's not just like you you don't want to also be in the position of like I'm just gonna really stretch it my luck and really just make sure and trying to make it work but every turn you're sweating like that is not the right place to be if you're trying to play a game of magic let's take the other side of of sort of taking risks though sometimes uh your deck might be a mismatch for the table right you know what I mean okay and this sometimes happens where like I sit down and people are we're having that pre-game conversation where they're like oh yeah this is a really powerful deck okay I'll play my really powerful for deck okay and I'm looking down and I'm like I've got angels do you know what I mean like and so then I'm like okay maybe I do have to take risks get try for the most explosive hand keep the thing that might be on the edge so that I can maybe hang right right that's really interesting and that's a great way to transition into the listeners what do you think about these educated scenarios what do you think about your own Mulligan tips and tricks or even disaster horror stories because well I want to hear some horror stories I want to hear some horror I want to hear some Arcane tombs in the studio do not do it don't do it uh if you want to see why you don't do it watch game that's episode two it's a great throwback but yeah let us know what your house Mulligan rules are what you've sort of done to help mitigate that maybe even change your deck building patterns because now you know back in partial Paris days we were running 3132 lands because you could just throw cards back that isn't the case anymore so let us know how it's affected him and of course when you want to make your deck feel a little better when you want to add in a little bit of a a smoother you want to tune it up some redundancy head on over to cardkingdom.com command and should you want to buy sealed product they got you covered too in fact they have a massive inventory which is one of the reasons that we love Card Kingdom so much and then go to shop.ultrapro.com command buy some accessories for your game pieces protect them make sure that when you're shuffling up that it looks so nice in those cool sleeves that match your commander or the play mat that matches your commander whatever it is shop.ultrabelle.com command that's our affiliate link make sure you do that okay thanks everyone for listening and thank you to our amazing team here at the Commando we've got Damon Shawna Gillis Arthur millercraft Ashland Rose lady danger Manson lung Craig Blanchette Josh Murphy Jake Boss Josh Lee Kwai at Patrick Lam Jordan preaching Sam Walton Grove Galati truck tie Jamie block Mitch Trevor and Evan limberger special thanks to Jeffrey Palmer for the 11 cards animations at Living cards MTG on Twitter and DJ work in the world find you you can find me over at jumbo Commander I have a YouTube channel I put videos up there check them out that's how YouTube Works make sure you subscribe as well hit that notification Bell give DJ all that support because hanging out with him podcasting is a bunch of fun you can find more fun on his channel awesome all right everyone keep mulliganing uh people are getting no no Mulligan correctly that's what I want you to do keep that hand a second now all right bye everyone we'll see you next time peace foreign for further inquiries send an email to commandcast rocketjump.com or ask us on Twitter at jf1 and at Josh Lee Kwai see you later alligator [Laughter]

Channel: The Command Zone

Views: 78,943

Keywords: video game high school, ted wong, vghs, wong, jfwong, jimmy, magic, the, gathering, mtg, magic the gathering, strategy, game, trading card game, deck, tactics, commander, general, elder, dragon, highlander, politics, josh, lee, kwai, cards, Card Game (Game Genre), negotiations, command, zone, podcast, the command zone, edh rules, mana, mana bases, Game Knights, GameKnights, gameplay, arena, brawl, historic, alchemy, oathbreaker, mulligan, dj, jumbo, brothers, war, all, will, be, one, march, machine, mom, 40k

Id: aWoEzXLUppM

Length: 76min 28sec (4588 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 14 2022