September 2015 Banned List Announcement - Upcoming Mulligan Changes?

[Ace/Homebrew]

No changes. But a good amount of the post was dedicated to mulligans.


There will be no rules changes this round, but given the success of the mulligan tests in Vancouver this year we are taking a close look at the Commander mulligan. Our unique "EDH mulligan," aka, Partial Paris, has always been a great tool to help ensure that each game of Commander was fair and memorable as possible, but it has always had its downsides as well. We believe that the Vancouver mulligan might fill many of the same roles as Partial Paris while alleviating some of those downsides. We'll be making our final decision on whether to switch in the next cycle, so until then any input that players can provide will be read and appreciated!
Source (http://mtgcommander.net/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17890)

Sheldon Menery also posted this article to SCG:
Let's Talk Mulligans (http://www.starcitygames.com/article/31692_Lets-Talk-Mulligans.html)

Discussion time!
What does everyone think?

[mini1337s]

No changes. But a good amount of the post was dedicated to mulligans.


Source (http://mtgcommander.net/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17890)

Sheldon Menery also posted this article to SCG:
Let's Talk Mulligans (http://www.starcitygames.com/article/31692_Lets-Talk-Mulligans.html)

Discussion time!
What does everyone think?
I think it is very healthy. I've always found Partial Paris to feel... unfair... almost like some form of shitty tutoring.
The LGS I tend to play EDH at has a pretty wide variety in terms of deck power level, so I'll let the guy with the post-RTR printing deck partial while I'll full mulligan. That said, that's more me trying to even the playing field a bit. Other LGSs tend to just full mulligan, which I prefer.

[TsumiBand]

Most folks I play with have always treated the EDH mulligan as a means to get late-game junk out of your hand and (hope to) draw into mana and/or acceleration. Honestly I think this rule allows for deckbuilding to favor spells over lands and I find that desirable; mana flooding sucks and I've always understood the Partial Paris to be a tool that fights it on multiple fronts (everyone can 'tutor' for mana sources, so you build with less land and you stall less often, which really matters a lot in EDH - the establishing turns are crucial).

I realize that Spikes around the world will always try to break this towards the ideal of a Turn 0 game win, but that's Spike's MO and you can't throttle every aspect of the game that Spike leans on, or else you may as well throw the game in the garbage and play Super Mario Bros. And while each table can establish its own rules and no one forces anyone else to adopt house rules, there's still the problem of the pick-up game where some randoms get together and need to gather around a core set of rules that is well-traveled. Anything that comes directly from mtgcommander and/or the MtG mothership is going to implicitly define the Queensberry rules that define those games. Furthermore, we know that most players are not the tourney-faring, high-money spending, rules-lawyering players which a rule like this aims to affect; this is more or less a flat tax, and it isn't going to really have the desired effect. Money will still explode in all stages of the game and "fair decks" are just that much less fair.

I think the Partial Paris mulligan works just fine.

[Aggro_zombies]

I don't have any huge problems with Partial Paris, but I also think that it goes above and beyond what a mulligan should be. I agree with Sheldon that the thought process when Partial Paris-ing was not, "Can I play the game with this hand?", but, "What is the best hand possible I can make?", which is rather different. If your belief is that mulligans should aim to get you to the former spot then PP does too much, even without considering the pretty steep advantage it gives to combo decks or decks that got greedy with their curves.

[Ace/Homebrew]

I have mixed feelings on Partial Paris. And it has a lot to do with what Tsumi said about Spikes. I could care less if someone keeps 5 and looks at two new cards. What bothers me is when someone keeps 2 and looks at five new cards. :rolleyes:

I think I would prefer they moved to multiplayer normal mulligan rules (7, 7, 6, 5... scry 1 if keeping less than 7).

[Amon Amarth]

Never liked PP because it was too easily abused by everyone. As if we need to make it easier than it already is to assemble two card combos.

[Technics]

Never liked PP because it was too easily abused by everyone. As if we need to make it easier than it already is to assemble two card combos.

We are a bit more lax but we use scry 10 draw 7 (no mulligans) in our group.