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.
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.
This BG food hand has to be a mulligan. Hand has no synergy and gy hate is not even that good vs phoenix. You can't count on goose surviving for playing your spells. There is no way you risk to lose the game for not drawing a land when all your average hands are good vs phoenix
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.
This BG food hand has to be a mulligan. Hand has no synergy and gy hate is not even that good vs phoenix. You can't count on goose surviving for playing your spells. There is no way you risk to lose the game for not drawing a land when all your average hands are good vs phoenix