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by belval 31 days ago
Alternatively you give everyone a free mulligan and if they decide to start with <3 lands in their hand or no mana ramp that's on them.

My issue with guaranteed lands is that they remove the randomness of some lands. I am not guaranteed to get my "no maximum hand size" land and my rogue passage to make my creature unblockable in a typical game of commander. I have to plan for it by using stuff like expedition map.

2 comments

Drafting last Friday, my first hand was zero lands, my second hand was one land, my third hand (bottoming two) had three lands. However, I then kept drawing four-drop spells and no more lands for 8 turns.

So is it "on me?" Or is it just that the game just is high variance?

Free mulligan means on your third hand you would only bottom 1, not 2.

Besides, with a 37 lands commander deck, the chances that in 4 hands (if your limit is bottoming 2, 5 cards in hand) starts getting low. Around 1 in 10 and that's ignoring mana rocks (2 lands + 1 mana rock) which probably brings it much closer to 1 in 14+.

If you add the chances of more than 4 lands (also fairly undesirable) your odds of a bad forced hand climb to 1 in 7, which is still pretty far from the 50% chance the original post is talking about.

Without the free mulligan you would be at 1 in 4, which is why I said free mulligan is the way to go.

Only allow certainty for basic lands?