Keep or Mulligan #1
Hey everyone!
Today we’re going to do a Keep or Mulligan article, where I present you with some interesting hands and you have the option of keeping or mulliganing. I’ve also included a Turn 1 play situation that came up during our testing and that I thought was worth talking about. I’m going to leave you with the hands today and post my answers and explanations tomorrow.
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Scenario 1:
You’re playing Legacy, Izzet Delver against Reanimator (Black/Red). It’s Game 2 and you’re on the draw. Your relevant sideboard cards are two Force of Negation and two Surgical Extraction. Your opponent is on the play and they mulliganed.
Your opening hand is:
Keep or Mulligan?
Scenario 2:
You’re playing BG Food in Historic, and you’re post-sideboard against Izzet Phoenix. You’re on the play and your opening hand is:
Keep or Mulligan?
Scenario 3:
You’re playing Mono-White Aggro in Standard, and you’re on the play versus an unknown deck. Your deck has 2 Legion Angel maindeck and 2 in the sideboard. Your opening hand is:
2 Plains
Keep or Mulligan?
Scenario 4:
You’re playing the Rakdos Invoke Despair deck in Alchemy. It’s Game 1 and you’re on the play against the Rakdos Mirror. Your opening hand is:
2 Swamp
Keep or Mulligan?
Scenario 5:
You’re playing Alchemy Izzet (a UR deck based around casting Invoke Calamity on Body of Research and then after that sacrificing it to Kazuul’s Fury) versus a Rakdos deck. This is Game 2, you’re on the play, and your opening hand is:
I assume we’re keeping, but which land do you play on Turn 1 - Pathway or Jwari Ruins?
I will be posting my answers to these five questions tomorrow, but in the meantime feel free to discuss your answers in the comments. Also make sure to subscribe to my newsletter on Substack, it’s completely free and it will send you an email every time I post a new article.
See you tomorrow,
PV
I only play Standard so can only comment on hand 3.
This is tough and I want to agree with Leandro. It’s a very uneasy feeling to not have a turn three play. And we’re banking on a good turn two draw.
Initially I wanted to keep, but at 4 lands and nothing until I can play the LA in reality, mulligan.
My opinions:
Hand 1
Keep: Reanimator is a proactive strategy that will devote all it's resources to the combo. On g2 they will have ways to interact with our interaction with discard. This hand, while not proactive, will be enough to survive the early turns and Expressive Iteration will help you offset the card disadvantage on the mid-late game.
Hand 2:
Mulligan: The match Food versus Phoenix favors Food (in the sense that if both decks do what they want to do, food will usually win). This means that when playing with food, it's more important to keep hands that are good at doing the main gameplan than hands that just buy time. This hand lacks a gameplan besides using Tormod to slow them down and this isn't enough in the matchup. It also might just lose due to mana screw as Phoenix can easily kill the Goose.
Hand 3:
Mulligan: This hand is terrible against midrange. Initiate is weak and Legion Angel gets walled by Lolth. This is also not great against proactive strategies; when you go turn 1 Initiate, turn 2 portable hole and nothing on turn 3, this should make it pretty clear to the opponent that you have Eiganjo or Wanderer. There is also a good chance you don't want to Hole their 1 drop; this might cause a conflict on turn 4 where you have to decide between interacting with Eiganjo or playing Angel. On the draw this hand would be good as hole would remove their 2 drop and you would have more draws to fill the curve. On the play, you can do better.
Hand 4:
Keep. In a midrange mirror, what I am looking is enough lands and something to do on the early turns. This hand has both.
Hand 5:
Pathway. You have enough lands in the deck + Iteration and Divide By Zero to hit your land drops. Meanwhile, Jwari is a good interaction that can prevent them from snowballing.