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Cracking the London Mulligan - Results from simulating 2 million hands for Modern decks

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  1. Deimos
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    Magic the Gathering is testing a new mulligan rule at Mythic Championship London next week, and this article is an analysis of the impact it could have on the Modern format. Over its history,...

    Magic the Gathering is testing a new mulligan rule at Mythic Championship London next week, and this article is an analysis of the impact it could have on the Modern format.

    Over its history, Magic has used two different mulligan rules, with this new one potentially becoming the new official system if it seems to work well.

    You start with a hand of 7 cards in MtG, but before the game starts you can choose to "mulligan" your hand as many times as you want, which means you shuffle your entire deck and draw a new potential starting hand. The systems all act slightly differently:

    1. Original method ("Paris mulligan"): each time you mulligan, draw one fewer card for your starting hand than the previous time. On your first mulligan draw 6, second mulligan draw 5, etc.
    2. Current method since September 2015 ("Vancouver mulligan"): same as original, except after both players have decided to keep their hands, any player that took any mulligans can "scry 1" (look at the top card of their deck and choose to either leave it there or move it to the bottom of the deck).
    3. New potential method ("London mulligan"): always draw 7 cards, then choose X of them and put them on the bottom of the deck, where X is the number of mulligans you've taken. So on the first mulligan you put 1 on the bottom (keeping 6 in hand), second mulligan 2 on the bottom (keeping 5 in hand), etc.

    The new method is interesting because you still end up with a smaller hand each time, but you have some control of what the smaller hand is made up of. Some people are concerned that this might be too powerful for combo-like decks since they'll be able to more easily ensure a good starting hand.

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