Mulligans

[FDL]

I am really not for it. Most requests I feel come from rush players. This would just make those decks more consistent, which would lead to more people playing them, which would lead to boring QM and NPE. Ofc you can argue that it helps other player find answer to rush, but in practice those answer are fewer than cards opponent uses to rush because he build his deck for it.

I'm not so sure rush decks will benefit that much. If you mulligan and play on turns 1 to 3, you have one card left in hand. It better be a good one.

Bad Santa is popular in rush and would help mitigate the card loss but playing T2 BS doesn't put a lot of pressure on your opponent...

Actually, stall decks that run a lot of Bad Santa or Bazaar might get the most benefits from this. Finding draw and/or Evil Ascendant is super important for them.

[Shadow Mann]

[QUOTE=Gondorian;497541]Whilst simple to implement, this WILL affect balance and the meta.

I think if you're going to bring this in, then you should also increase the minimum deck size to 50. Otherwise, it improves consistency too much and throws off the balance. With an increased minimum and a mulligan then you will both help and hinder consistency, at the same time increasing variety and reducing the probability of clumping.

This is my feeling as well...either keep the game the way it is with no mulligan, or add a mulligan option while also increase min deck size.

[FDL]

Whilst simple to implement, this WILL affect balance and the meta.

I think if you're going to bring this in, then you should also increase the minimum deck size to 50. Otherwise, it improves consistency too much and throws off the balance. With an increased minimum and a mulligan then you will both help and hinder consistency, at the same time increasing variety and reducing the probability of clumping.

How about we do a PUBLIC TEST with Mulligan and 50-card minimum together? Just have it as an option in Custom Match. The community will give feedback and we go from there.

Testing would be the only way to know, but since we're theorycrafting, here are my 2 cents:

Mulliganing (with a card penalty) would be terrible for most decks in most games (but hey, it can give you the illusion you're in the game after one of the rare SE terrible starting hand ).

Going to 50 cards would be terrible for all decks expect midrange decks.

[Lightning Fury]

Mulligans are a great way to improve consistency in nearly every deck out there with 40 cards. I would want my opponent to use it every time. He loses a card and I get another added advantage to seize control of the board.

[Unruler]

Mulligan is necessary because of 4x of a card is available to be put in a deck, you may draw 3-4 of them in your starting hand, also in 40 card deck it's hard to fish for the card and if you got a bad draw, you're most likely going to lose.

But the way Kyle wants to implement it is poor, you're creating useless mechanic only few people will use, so what's the point to put it in at all? That would be another Word of the Prophet. Disadvantage of loosing a card is pretty huge especially considering that you need sacrifice for resources and having less cards may prevent you from playing those cards, so it's very bad, and while having bad hand, choosing a mulligan may be a no-win situation.

It's also imbalanced because second player mulligans while at more cards, so he has a chance to mulligan more efficiently AND he sees first opponent's play so he can have an idea about what type of deck his opponent is playing.

So, only way of player losing cards in mulligan should be if they choose to mulligan second time. It's ok to have one free mulligan especially if you shuffle your whole hand, you may end up drawing even worse one. It may even be fine to use selective mulligan, like in Hearthstone.

PS Actually, it's the decks with high cost cards that benefit from mulligan the most because if you end up with a lot of high cost cards in your starting hand, you're lost, and rush decks don't care all that much since whole their deck is cheap cards, they would have early game regardless of draw. It's also beneficial to combo decks but those aren't spread in SE.

[Pandevmonium]

I always face Blood Frenzy -> Jeweler's Dream + CB with Amber or Kris -> Puwen -> PotL -> Aldon from well tuned decks, so I don't think mulligan is a serious feature for this game right now.

[Raphael Majere]

Mulligans are a great way to improve consistency in nearly every deck out there with 40 cards. I would want my opponent to use it every time. He loses a card and I get another added advantage to seize control of the board.

This is presuming that aramia / other rush deck are affected by the minus 1 card. If they run with a lot of draw like 4 bs and more, and that the penalty is negligible or manageable, these rush decks might rule the QM. Likewise, as fdl said, similar to the stall/lock decks. Increasing the minimum deck size would aid these stall decks more too. The mulligan needs to be tested to see it's impact in QM.

[raizoir]

If this game was like mtg with lands, then I would say absolutely.

Now for it to be introduced in the game the way it currently is, even with the loss of a card, I would argue that it would simply result in the game being dumbed-down in a sense. There are just too many games that play themselves now and the level of risk in getting a bad opening hand in order to achieve certain plays is just something you should be considering when creating your deck. I therefore consider a mulligan not being offered in this game as a benefit, as otherwise you might as well have a card game which has two AIs pitted against each other, with each always drawing and playing the optimal card.

Another knock-on effect to consider would be that people will be expecting the perfect hand more so than before, especially after a mulligan, which could lead to more rage quits if their expectations are not met. Instead, people should have a plan of what to do with a less than optimal opening hand if their opponent is X and does Y.

[Ness]

Whilst simple to implement, this WILL affect balance and the meta.

I think if you're going to bring this in, then you should also increase the minimum deck size to 50. Otherwise, it improves consistency too much and throws off the balance. With an increased minimum and a mulligan then you will both help and hinder consistency, at the same time increasing variety and reducing the probability of clumping.

How about we do a PUBLIC TEST with Mulligan and 50-card minimum together? Just have it as an option in Custom Match. The community will give feedback and we go from there.

I am all for increasing the minimum deck size!
However, I am against implementing mulligan.

[Vyz]

Mulligan should be here. I don't see any disadvantage to it and the potential benefits are huge (might make combo and control decks possible). Just make it free, the 1 card penalty right away is unnecessary. Increasing deck minimum to 50 is a terrible idea aswell. Also the notion that mulligan helps rush decks more than other decks is ridiculous, dunno what you people are smoking.