At the beginning of the game you have a choice to make, whether to
mulligan or not to mulligan for a new hand. Often, new players struggle
with this choice and are not really sure when it is best to opt for a new
hand, because when you mulligan your next hand receives one less card.
What tends to happen in an opening draw is that you'll get a great
hand with your most powerful spells, but you only drew one land card. Or,
you might draw four land cards and three mediocre spells. In these
situations you may wonder if it would be better mulligan for a new hand or
roll the dice and keep them to see what happens.
The best advice we can give you is that you need to know the mana
curve of your deck in order to know exactly what to do. If you stuck to the
advice we gave you in the earlier chapter on the subject, then it's a no
brainer of what to do. However, if you strayed away from it then you'll
have some decisions to make.
The key is to look at the mana cost of the spells you drew in your
hand. For example, if the below example was your opening hand then it
most likely would make sense to keep it.
3 one man cost cards
2 two mana cost cards
2 three mana cost cards
1 land
This hand is worth keeping because you have 5 one to two mana cost
cards. That means you can at least play three turns with that one mana in
hopes that you pull a second mana by the third turn. If so, you can then
start casting your two mana cost cards. You have a lot a leeway here.
However, if you drew this type of hand below, it would probably be
best to mulligan it.
o one mana cost cards
o two mana cost cards
2 three mana cost cards
4 four mana cost cards
1 land
This is not a good hand to have because with only one land and 6
cards costing three to four mana to cast, you'd be lucky to cast anything by
the third turn (that is if you by chance pulled two more land in a row.) Its
just worth it to keep it, so you should mulligan this hand.
Now, here's a tricky example. Do you think you should mulligan or
not mulligan this hand?
2 one mana cost cards, which are Elvish Mystic, a creature that you
can tap to add one green mana to your pool
o two mana cost cards
3 three mana cost cards
1 four mana cost cards
1 land
At first glance, you may think to mulligan this hand as per the advice given in the last example because you only have 1 land and 4 three to four mana cost cards. However, this hand includes 2 one mana cost cards that produce mana themselves. That means it's a safe hand to play with because even with only 1 land you can also tap the Elvish Mystics for mana and play your three mana cost cards. And, hopefully by turn three or four you would pull at least one more land to cast your four mana cost card. Hopefully these tips have helped guide you in knowing when to mulligan or not at the beginning of a game. Although each time you mulligan your lose a card from your hand, its better to play with only five cards and have strong hand, then it is to play with seven that don't give you any advantage. Many times you'll find that the right choice to mulligan is actually the tiling that helped you win the game.
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