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London Mulligan Discussion

Started by Dr. Opossum, 05-05-2019, 04:41:31 PM

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Dr. Opossum

Hi!

The Berlin Highlander community decided to test the London Mulligan for this saturdays tournament. We had 14 players for this testing session with 14 different deck types. After interviewing all participants, I tried to make it somehow clear arranged. In the following table you'll find the participating deck as well as its fought decks of each round (in order), reached points and the key arguments the deck owner gave.

What you cannot find is the name of the deck owner and a ranking/ final standings. In this thread the discussion about the theoretically advandages and disadvantages are mainly focussed. I can see reasons for an overview of how many points the specific deck reached, but to rank the players within the same point cluster could influence the weightning of their arguments.

Important: WE did not test the London Mulligan only, but a combination of our currently used Free Mulligan PLUS the London Mulligan after that. So it replaced the Scry Option in our currently Mulligan combination of Free Mulligan PLUS Scry Mulligan.








Overall thoughts:

- Nearly all of them described the London Mulligan option as "feeling good" within the Mulligan pre-game procedure.
- The main argument of supporters were, that they reduce "non-games", what means primary, that you have too few lands or too many of them (or spell/ land ratio in general).
- Please do not let you impress that much by the decks they played against. Some of them already made some experiences with the London Mulligan in private test sessions, too.
- The main argument of rejecters were, that the London Mulligan (could) benefit specific decks.
- The argument "benefits Combo strategies" occurred both, as a concern and as a hope, depending on the interview partner.
- Some players described the sample size as too small to make their final decision about the London Mulligan
- Overall we had a wide field of notions: "absolutely in love with it", "it has advantages AND disadvantages", "it is definitely too strong" and "i do not know yet".

pyyhttu

Hats off for trying this out. The results are varied, although positively open, encouraging to take this further. I started the discussion back at Finnish community to gather the feedback there.

When there are tournaments in near future at Helsinki, I'll propose to try that London mulligan out.

QuoteAfter interviewing all participants, I tried to make it somehow clear arranged.

What was the question set you used? I could perhaps utilize the same in order to get coherent results.

QuoteImportant: WE did not test the London Mulligan only, but a combination of our currently used Free Mulligan PLUS the London Mulligan after that. So it replaced the Scry Option in our currently Mulligan combination of Free Mulligan PLUS Scry Mulligan.

Just that I understand this correctly: if players decided to mulligan, they would first apply the free 7 mulligan, and only after that, instead of going down to six, they would take their first London mulligan instead?

If so, curious to hear why not just applying the London mulligan?

Dr. Opossum

Quote from: pyyhttu on 05-05-2019, 10:19:46 PM

What was the question set you used? I could perhaps utilize the same in order to get coherent results.


My question set was: "Hey! You! Give me feedback to the London Mulligan!!" and insisting on reasons (e.g. if somebody only answered "It is the best thing I ever saw!"/ "It is utterly broken!"/ "It fixes every problem Magic ever had!").


Quote from: pyyhttu on 05-05-2019, 10:19:46 PM

Just that I understand this correctly: if players decided to mulligan, they would first apply the free 7 mulligan, and only after that, instead of going down to six, they would take their first London mulligan instead?


Correct. It only replaced the Scry Mulligan part of our current Mulligan combination.


Quote from: pyyhttu on 05-05-2019, 10:19:46 PM

If so, curious to hear why not just applying the London mulligan?

That was what they communicated. It was proposed in this form and then realized. The option to replace our current Mulligan combination with the LM completely was not up for discussion so far.

pyyhttu

Finnish community responded quite unanimously that if the London mulligan is embraced with the official rules, the same should be applied, or at least tried with Highlander. Reasoning was, that the standardization of mulligan rule helps to govern the rules, which would make it easier especially for new players to embrace the rules.

Another point made was that the current "free mulligan" rule encourages to shuffle back hands which would otherwise be "semi-ok" or "playable", so this "extra shuffling" portion would now be cut off. So using the mulligan, just because it's "free", shouldn't be the inherent part of the game, which it has now become. Applying mulligan to starting hands in Highlander, compared to other sanctioned formats was deemed higher.


Dr. Opossum

Not sure how a link to a finnish forum should underline your point. A small part of the community can read this and I would prefer a objective summary of the arguments provided (pro AND con) by a finnish council member over google-translating every single post.

Also: Like I already said I am pretty sure our community is smart enough to understand format-based changes. Standardization is not the hurdle our format has.

I think you are right, that a free mulligan encourages shuffling back "semi-ok" hands, but that the London mulligan brings not the same problem convinced me barely. Nevertheless, the community is discussion this topic again. In english. -> Facebook -> European Highlander group


pyyhttu

Will also link for these forums to read this: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/london-mulligan-2019-06-03

London mulligan will become official for all formats from Core Set 2020 release, July 12, 2019. WotC's Rationale on the change, testing process, learnings and the future outlined in that above article, it's about 5 min read.

Quote from: StephanieStandardization is not the hurdle our format has.

It's not, but it weights something as it's seen as potential improvement. Especially when WotC wrote after 6 months of testing:

"Some members of the community have suggested introducing the London mulligan on a format-by-format basis, but, as designers, we feel strongly that having one unified mulligan rule for all of Magic is the right path forward. Many Magic players try out a variety of different formats over their lifetime, and having inconsistent mulligan rules across those formats would be a substantial added complexity cost."

I think we should at least give this a benefit of doubt and start testing this same mulligan.

Quote from: StephanieNevertheless, the community is discussion this topic again. In english. -> Facebook -> European Highlander group

OK, good that discussion there is ongoing. Facebook as a social network is not set for me.