Not Even in Limited; Go Back to Vancouver

First, the article that inspired this one, here.

 Zvi's been a famed Magic writer longer than I've been effectively playing the game.  To very briefly summarize the above linked article, Zvi advocates for a reversal of the London Mulligan, citing repetitive gameplay, while laying out some of the benefits but mostly the many drawbacks it provides.

The London Mulligan refers to the current mulligan rules, where you put back cards from your hand to the bottom of your library equal to how many mulligans you've taken.  Mulliganing to 6, for example, leads to drawing a new hand of 7, and placing 1 chosen card to the bottom, 1 being equivalent to times mulliganed.  I've been a naysayer of the London Mulligan since it's debut; I despise anything that increases idle time in Magic, such as shuffling and major complexity.  The London Mulligan makes it better to mulligan, meaning more shuffling and thus, more idle time.

Initially I was somewhat swayed to the prevailing opinion, that this would increase skill, increase agency, and by extension make Magic a better, more fun game for myself.  Whenever presenting my thoughts on the matter, I always prefaced it with "I know I'm in the minority" or some other mitigating statement.  It's tough to go against everyone else, especially when you're not even confident that your thoughts have merit.

Again from Zvi's article, and from many others I've seen discussing the matter, such as LSV in a recent stream; people seem to find the issue in constructed formats, and don't take issue with it in Limited.  As someone who barely touches constructed, most of my London Mulligan experience is in Limited, and I see it as a net negative.

Hand Comparison Contest

Sit yourself down at a fictional table, playing a deck you've just theoretically drafted against a phantom opponent.  You draw your opening hand; it's an acceptable 4 land and 3 mediocre spell hand, and you decide to ship it back.  Your opponent does the same, shrugging briefly before shipping their 7 back.  On 6 now you've got much better options, 4 land again but our spells represent a perfect, backbreaking curve, with our 4 drop bomb rare supported by our best turn 2 and turn 3 plays.  As we intelligently won the die roll, we rub our hands together, expecting to make short work of our opponent. It turns out that our opponent also has a great one, but as we're up first and have that 4 mana rare, we crush them before they can really get going.

Obviously this isn't the most common of scenarios, but I think it illustrates a few of my problems with London Mulligans.  When Mulligans are less punishing, we see better hands more often, and when comparing good to great hands there's often not much of a game being played.  The best hands in Limited often allow for no real agency from the other side; you kill everything they play, you curve great cards into your great rare, you pull off some powerful combination, maybe a Lucky Clover and Harvest Fear.  Your opponent lines up the right interaction? Great, now they're the winner.  They don't? A crushing and swift defeat.  I believe there's some exacerbation of the play/draw difference at play as well, an awful thing when being on the play is generally such a large and free advantage.

• Less punishing mulligans lead to games disproportionately about opening hands, reducing agency.
• Being on the play is in part balanced by more punishing mulligans.  As being on the play is advantageous, there's no reason to make it more so.

Reduced Novelty

 

If I was to define Limited in an abstract way, it'd be a competition at who can maneuver novel scenarios best.  Limited is a format where redundancy is a big investment; most decks will only have duplicates of a few cards and basic lands.  Despite the format having a small cardpool, usually in the 250 card range, you might go 4 or 5 matches without seeing some of the good common cards, and many more without seeing more conditional ones, or let alone rares and mythics.  For a Throne of Eldraine example, I've only had one Outlaw's Merriment cast against me in at least 200 matches played.  The sense of mystery, where I never really know what I'm going to play with or play against always keeps me coming back, and has fueled my passion for Limited over the years.

The London Mulligan represents an uncomfortable amount of erosion of this novelty.  I could honestly do with more variance, as the adapting is what makes Limited interesting, and having more draws that are more centered around whatever each player's best few cards are makes things less interesting. Someone I follow on Twitter, who I'll credit in this article later on if I can identify them, said something to the effect of "[The London Mulligan leads to less scrappy games]".  Limited is all about scrappy games, and piecing together victory with a bunch of semi-random puzzle pieces.  I'm against anything that reduces what I think is the best thing about Magic Limited.

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg