Simon Says #24: The Mulligan and M13 Draft

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Simon Goertzen

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In today’s episode, I discuss the fundamentals of a decision we have to face every game: the mulligan. Watch the opening discussion to find out why mulliganning is so complex and difficult. Fittingly, the subsequent M13 draft showcases one of the tougher mulligan decisions I’ve faced in a while. Enjoy!

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  1. I am not sure 6 lands is enough for nighthawk. The odds of you having by turn 3 is really low. Even turn 5 is only 60% or so I think.

  2. Great draft, M2 had me on the edge of my seat – pretty intense.

    Thanks also for the in depth look into mulligans.

  4. Great draft, games, and commentary as usual. =)

    It was very interesting hearing your different opinion of Evolving Wilds this match after watching Jon Loucks (who is madly in love with the Wilds) a lot recently. I think you could have benefited from one of your mountains being the Wilds this draft, but there was no clue to splash when it was available.

  5. I have to disagree with your drafting a bit here. Obviously a final is a fine result, and you were only a damage off of forcing a game 3 in the finals, but Walls of Fire really aren’t very good.

    Pack 1 you pick wall over a forcemage, without considering the forcemage, while you might still be RG agro, which would suit you boar really well and in which forcemage is perfectly fine. I get you can try to play “Red skies”, in which you use your boars as pseudoflyer and your drakes as actual fliers and then having groundwalls is fine.
    However, those are only 5 cards in your deck, if the can block the drake and kill the boar, the wall will basically be useless. Moreover, even in the best scenario, the walls are only ever fine.

    Then there is the problem that walls don’t seem very good in the format. WB exalted will often either fly over or just punch trough, UW flier or BU fliers/evansion can often ignore them. They don’t do anything worthwile against decks with random bombs such as for example the captain of the watch. Even red or green decks can often just punch through with either a lot of guys, rancor, forcemage, deathtouch, 5 power either naturally or through a ring or a beetle on a one of the many 4-power guys.
    Not to mention the horrible dissynergy with stuff like mogg flunkies, dragon fodder, arsonist and even the mugwader.

    It also forces you to make your mana to awkward. Nighthawk on turn 3 is one of the easiest ways to run away with a game if it isn’t timely answered and mugwader with swamps is a beating, while without swamps it is a goblin piker. Knight is also better if you cast it earlier. Without the walls your only double red cards are the drakes and the turn to slag, all of which are still good/fine with less then 11 mountains, personally I would have gone with 9/8, though 10/7 might be fine as well.

    Despite my rant on the subject of walls of fire in your deck, job well done. I always appreciate your insights and your style of analytical commenting. Especially the (somewhat minor) interaction between the mountainwalk enchantment and the boars is something I had never realised and shows your level of insight in the game.

  6. Why didn’t you consider sideboarding crippling blight in M2? Seems to be a perfect answer for this deck that features 2 fog banks, even if he has an unsummon.

  7. @Malthes: I did sideboard Crippling Blight for the third game of this match. I agree that I should have put in in for game 2 already.

    Regarding Vampire Nighthawk, I think you are misinterpreting the role this card is playing in this deck. The Nighthawk is so powerful because it has a noticable impact on the game no matter which turn you drop him. Unlike to Zendikar limited, there exist a lot of good answers to it and a surprisingly high amount of decks can afford to face an active Hawk for a few turns. But this discussion is less about the Nighthawk itself, but about mana consistency and variance.
    My deck is basically 20 red spells, the exalted Knight, Essence Drain and Nighthawk. Even if we count the Muckwaders as having a black requirement, six Swamps is more than enough to support our second color. Every Swamp we play instead of a Mountain has two disadvantages: First, we increase the danger of starting hands without red — these are forced mulligans as we can’t cast any but 3 spells. Second, any extra mountains beyond the first two have their uses given that we want to be able to cast multiple red spells in the same turn and are playing multiple firebreathing creatures.
    Even if your argument about the difficulties of casting the Nighthawk early on are correct, I’d much rather make one of my more powerful cards a bit more unreliable than my entire deck. Furthermore, the games in which I really need my most powerful spells to work hardest are the ones in which I have drawn an above-average number of lands. This means it is more likely that I can cast the Nighthawk. If you want, I am diversifying my variance portfolio: If everything is going according to plan, I might be stuck with a dead Nighthawk in hand, but the rest of my deck (including my dragons) operate to full effect. If I draw too many lands in a drawn out game, I have another high-impact card to counteract the flooding.
    I would have played 9 Mountains 6 Swamps and 1 Evolving Wilds, had I picked one up. I do not suggest playing more than 6 Swamps in this deck. If you are afraid that a card is too unreliable, it is almost always better to cut it completely rather than warp your manabase around its requirements.

    @Comments: At the point you are talking about (Wall vs Forcemage), I have not gotten any green signals apart from the second-pick Boar. By picking the Wall I make sure that my guaranteed primary color is clearly cut off and I am not attached to any other cards for the upcoming second pack. Also, I think you overvalue Yeva’s Forcemage, which is only a Grizzly Bear after you have used up its one-shot effect. While Wall of Fire might not be spectacular, it at least has some important tasks in certain matchups. For the record, if I were to pick a green card out of this pack, it would be Titanic Growth.

    Thanks for your comments!

  10. Maybe this is a topic for another introduction, I don’t know, but it seems like there is a difference between the average power level of the strongest (but perhaps over-drafted) colour and a weaker (under-drafted) colour. You remarked how blue is one of the weaker colours in the format and how you wanted to avoid it, but you faced two solid blue-heavy decks. Now, they were neither dominating nor dominated by your red deck. Could it be just the variance in the booster contents or perhaps blue is under-drafted making the blue decks stronger when they are drafted? I guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe there isn’t a truly best colour because of pack variance and over/under-drafting. Perhaps, on average there are objective power levels of colours, but practically, it doesn’t seem to work out that way. I remember the same thing with AVR where black was perceived as the worst colour, but I saw very many really powerful and solid black decks. What do you feel are the actual and practical power differences between the best-worst colours in a set? Certainly you can draft a very mediocre “best” colour and conversely a very excellent “worst” colour deck.

    Maybe I’m off base. At least, your videos are making me think. =D Thanks for the continued excellent content!

  11. I really think the two wall of flames hurt you. The opportunity cost of not being able to attack versus a slightly cheaper casting is just not worth it. I would have maindecked the fire elementals and one of the other spells instead.

  12. Simon: I have yet to see anyone actually play wall of fire but you. Maybe we and I in particular are all wrong and we should be taking them, it still does not make them much of a signal to other players. Cutting

    If you prefer titanic growth to forcemage, that is also fine. I do not particulary value forcemage, but it plays well in RG agro, often allowing 2-4 extra damage in, and I still think wall of fire is simply not a card in 95% of the decks, including this one.

  13. Sloppy reply, the sentence with “Cutting” should “Cutting only really works with cards others consider playable.”

  14. I think it’s illuminating to consider what the choice to run 6 mountains does in this deck. (All these calculations assume you are on the play).

    To get a swamp on turn two for the knight and muckwaders requires about 1/8 of your deck to be swamps or 40/8 = 5 swamps.

    To get a swamp by turn five for the essence drain requires about 1/11 of your deck to be swamp, a less stringent requirement.

    So for those two cards, 6 swamps seems fine.

    To get nighthawk by turn 3 would require about 2/9 of your deck to be swamp – or about 9 – the effect of only running 6 promotes the nighthawk in the curve to about a turn 6 or turn 7 play (turn 5 or 6 on the draw), which puts it in the “expensive curve topper” category – a pretty good role for it in this deck.

  15. @ Simon

    Outstanding work as always.

    I think Comments has a point – even if you prefer the growth over the forcemage. Cutting a color is well and good, but the primary requisite for cutting a color is cutting playables. And while wall of fire may not unplayable in this format (it has its uses, which you discuss in the vids) it is much closer to a 23rd or sideboard card in most decks than a true playable. Since you picked the Boar over the first flunkies (a pick I disagree with btw, stay in color with such closely comparable creatures!) you might as well pick the card that starts to build a cohesive deck concept, rather than focus on cutting fringe cards. A late Wall of Fire is not going to push anyone into red, or convince someone on the fence to dive in.

  16. Hi Simon! Thanks for another wonderful series of videos. I love your introduction, as always. You provide a few novels models for thinking about (and even “visualizing”) mulligans. Your work is much appreciated!

  17. I really liked your discussion on mulliganing, particularly the insight about the power level of the format which means that you should generally be more conservative in limited than in more powerful formats.

    One other consideration that plays into the mulliganing decision, I think, is the consitency of your deck. It’s why aggro decks mulligan better than control or late game decks. In a pure mono coloured aggro deck with a curve topping out at 2 or 3 CMC, there’s basically no combination of cards you can hold that you won’t be able to cast, provided you have at least 1-2 lands in your opener. That both makes it less likely that you need to mulligan, but also more likely that your 6 card hand will be acceptable. Control decks on the other hand typically play greedier mana bases and a mix of early game removal/ramp/durdles and late game wincons, which means that you’re much more likely to end up with un-keepable hands and more likely to mulligan into something that’s also un-keepable.