Mulligans

[Jao]

would dumb down the game imo.

part of what separates the truly great players from the average ones here in SE are 2 things:

the ability to make a well-tuned deck
the ability to sac properly even with a bad starting hand

one of the reasons why i still play SE even with HS around is that i feel HS is too dumbed down. i feel no excitement or rush when playing it. there's no mental pressure. a lot of the moves in HS can be done half asleep. you don't even have to agonize over sac choices.

one of the mechanics i love in SE is saccing. everything about this game is making the correct sac choices. adding mulligan gives players with weak saccing abilities a free pass.

reason why i love SE is that you are forced to deal with a bad starting hand. not only that, but you are forced to sac with already a bad starting hand. these things allow for the better players to rise and for the weaker players to fall.

[huynguyenquang]

the player going second gets a mulligan choice after seeing 7 cards instead of the 6 that the player going first sees, so there's a bit more added benefit to offset the first turn advantage.

He also gets to see the card that his opponent plays on turn 1, be it the last harvest, birgitte, loom, etc.

And yes, rush decks may benefit more from mulligan than others since they rely on a good opening much more.

[Vyz]

It needs to be without card penalty, otherwise what Lahri said is true and that kind of mulligan is a bad idea.

How exactly is saccing harder when your hand is bad? When your hand is full of good cards that's when the ability to sac correctly matters most. Btw a bad hand can never ever beat a good hand, not when you're playing against decent players. So unless your aim is to farm noobs all day you should want the mulligan.

[Bazzel]

Awesome idea

[meeklosh]

Finally mulligan FTW!

[QuantumNinja]

would dumb down the game imo.

part of what separates the truly great players from the average ones here in SE are 2 things:

the ability to make a well-tuned deck
the ability to sac properly even with a bad starting hand

one of the reasons why i still play SE even with HS around is that i feel HS is too dumbed down. i feel no excitement or rush when playing it. there's no mental pressure. a lot of the moves in HS can be done half asleep. you don't even have to agonize over sac choices.

one of the mechanics i love in SE is saccing. everything about this game is making the correct sac choices. adding mulligan gives players with weak saccing abilities a free pass.

reason why i love SE is that you are forced to deal with a bad starting hand. not only that, but you are forced to sac with already a bad starting hand. these things allow for the better players to rise and for the weaker players to fall.

Fully agree with everything here. With a well-constructed deck, bad starting hands really don't happen all that often.

With a 39 card deck with exactly 20 cards which cost 3cc or less, you have a ~0.12% chance of not drawing one by turn 3 if you went first and a ~0.04% of not drawing one by turn 3 if you went second. Obviously those odds get even smaller if you include even more 3cc or less cards.

The point is, with careful deck construction, you can be almost guaranteed to be able to do *something* by turn 3. Being completely hosed by a bad starting hand really should almost never happen. The odds I quoted above roughly translate to something on the order of 1 game out of every 1000 where you won't be able to make a play by turn 3.

Even if you find yourself in that rare situation where you're unable to make a play by turn 3, that means you've only had 4cc+ cards in your hand up until that point. Again, with careful deck construction, some of these higher cost cards should be aimed at being able to pull you out of a bad starting hand. Things like Lightning Strike, Tidal Wave, Supernova, Anklebreaker, Soul Seeker, Portal, etc. can often help mitigate a bad starting hand. Unlike Magic, where you can literally be unable to do anything for several turns when you get mana-flooded or mana-screwed, at least in SE you can continue to build up your resources every turn and make progress toward your 4cc+ plays.

So yea, I just don't really see any need for a mulligan in SE. Those frustrating starting hands are so few and far-between, there's really no need to invent a solution to something that barely even a problem to begin with.

[Airact]

..see Vyz, so we can both (maybe even Airact) agree that it's not really about mulligan, but about MOAR CARDS to play with )))

what i mean to say is, that if we have more cards, we can build around more different strategies, hell we might even make them consistent enough so that we don't need to mulligan at all, and on the other hand if we do get mulligan, i think given the current card pool we will most likely help 'certain' decks more than we hep others, thus damaging balance.

..imo mulligan really only matters in card games that use 'mana-cards' such as MtG, as there it mitigates for when u r getting mana-screwed


and as for my intial comment towards what u had said, i was only laughing at the 'free' part, not at mulligan as such (just so that i'm not misunderstood)

I just want to play different archetypes and both mulligans as well as a bigger card pool help with that.

[Padawan Pete]

Make it cost some gold to mulligan.

[Vyz]

Fully agree with everything here. With a well-constructed deck, bad starting hands really don't happen all that often.

With a 39 card deck with exactly 20 cards which cost 3cc or less, you have a ~0.12% chance of not drawing one by turn 3 if you went first and a ~0.04% of not drawing one by turn 3 if you went second. Obviously those odds get even smaller if you include even more 3cc or less cards.

The point is, with careful deck construction, you can be almost guaranteed to be able to do *something* by turn 3. Being completely hosed by a bad starting hand really should almost never happen. The odds I quoted above roughly translate to something on the order of 1 game out of every 1000 where you won't be able to make a play by turn 3.

Even if you find yourself in that rare situation where you're unable to make a play by turn 3, that means you've only had 4cc+ cards in your hand up until that point. Again, with careful deck construction, some of these higher cost cards should be aimed at being able to pull you out of a bad starting hand. Things like Lightning Strike, Tidal Wave, Supernova, Anklebreaker, Soul Seeker, Portal, etc. can often help mitigate a bad starting hand. Unlike Magic, where you can literally be unable to do anything for several turns when you get mana-flooded or mana-screwed, at least in SE you can continue to build up your resources every turn and make progress toward your 4cc+ plays.

So yea, I just don't really see any need for a mulligan in SE. Those frustrating starting hands are so few and far-between, there's really no need to invent a solution to something that barely even a problem to begin with.

You are trapped in the mindset that this is how decks must be designed. It is only true BECAUSE there is no mulligan. Combo decks and control decks don't exist right now because those rely on drawing specific card (as in 1 of the 4 copies) instead one of the 10 3cc allies which are almost the same. The chance of that is significantly lower than what you calculated. Result is the boring midrange grind we have right now. Don't you want more variety?

[Shadow Mann]

Make it cost some gold to mulligan.

No play in-game should cost gold or SC (i'd love to have something to spend my gold on, but a mulligan is not it)