Picture this: you shuffle up your deck, draw your opening seven cards, and immediately feel that familiar knot in your stomach. Two lands. Five spells. No clear game plan. Your opponent sits across from you, confidently keeping their opening hand while you’re stuck wondering whether you should risk it or start over with six cards instead.
Welcome to one of Magic’s most important decisions that happens before the game even begins. The mulligan decision—whether to keep your opening hand or shuffle it back for a fresh seven—can make or break entire games. Today we’re diving deep into this crucial skill that separates experienced players from newcomers still learning the ropes.
What Exactly Is a Mulligan?
In Magic: The Gathering, a mulligan is your opportunity to reject your opening hand and draw a new one. Here’s how the current mulligan rule works, step by step:
After drawing your initial seven cards, you decide whether to keep them or mulligan. If you mulligan, you shuffle those seven cards back into your library and draw seven fresh cards. Then you decide again—keep or mulligan? Each time you mulligan after the first, you’ll put one card from your hand on the bottom of your library after deciding to keep. So your second mulligan leaves you with six cards, your third with five, and so on.
This system, called the London Mulligan, replaced several previous versions and generally gives you better chances of finding a playable hand. The key insight? Your first mulligan is essentially “free” since you draw seven cards again, but subsequent mulligans cost you card advantage.
The Fundamentals: What Makes a Hand Keepable?
Not all opening hands are created equal, but most keepable hands share certain characteristics. Understanding these fundamentals will guide your mulligan decisions across every format and deck type.
Lands: Your Foundation
Land count matters more than anything else in your opening seven. Here’s the general guideline most players follow:
Two lands: Usually keepable if your deck has a low mana curve and some cheap spells to cast early. A hand with two lands, Lightning Bolt, Monastery Swiftspear, and Lava Spike might work perfectly for an aggressive red deck.
Three lands: The sweet spot for most decks. Three lands with a reasonable mix of spells gives you room to develop your game plan while hitting your early land drops.
Four lands: Generally fine unless your hand lacks cheap spells to cast. Four lands with expensive spells only might leave you doing nothing for several turns.
Five or more lands: Usually too many unless your deck specifically wants to ramp up quickly or your spells are particularly expensive.
Your Mana Curve in Action
Beyond raw land count, consider whether your lands actually cast your spells. A hand with three Islands and four red spells won’t function in most decks. Similarly, a hand with only expensive spells and no cheap plays might leave you vulnerable to aggressive opponents.
Look for hands that let you do something meaningful on turns two and three. A classic example: two lands, Llanowar Elves, Steel Leaf Champion, and Ghalta, Primal Hunger gives you a clear progression from accelerating mana to deploying threats.
Synergy and Game Plan
Some hands keep themselves. When you see powerful synergies or a clear path to victory, that often trumps perfect mana considerations. A hand with Aether Vial, multiple cheap creatures, and Cavern of Souls might be worth keeping even with just two lands in a creature deck.
Common Mulligan Mistakes New Players Make
Learning from typical errors accelerates your mulligan decision-making. Here are the traps that catch most beginning players:
Keeping Slow Hands Against Fast Decks
Context matters enormously. A hand with four lands and expensive spells might work fine in a slow, controlling matchup but could be disastrous against an aggressive deck trying to win by turn four. Pay attention to what your opponent is playing and adjust your keepability standards accordingly.
Fearing the Mulligan Too Much
Many new players keep marginal hands because they’re afraid of going down to six cards. Remember: a focused six-card hand often beats a dysfunctional seven-card hand. Don’t let loss aversion prevent you from making the right choice.
Not Considering Your Deck’s Strategy
Different decks need different things from their opening hands. A control deck can often function with fewer lands since it plans to draw extra cards and play a longer game. An aggressive deck needs early plays and consistent mana to curve out properly. A combo deck might keep unusual hands that set up its key synergies.
Format-Specific Mulligan Strategies
Your mulligan decisions should adapt to the format you’re playing. Each has its own pace, interaction level, and typical game length.
Standard and Pioneer
These formats typically reward consistent hands that execute your deck’s core strategy. Look for hands that let you play Magic for the first several turns without immediately falling behind. Since games often go longer than in older formats, you have some breathing room with your mana development.
Modern and Legacy
Faster formats demand more from your opening hand. You need either a quick start or powerful disruption to slow down your opponent. Hands that do nothing until turn three or four often lose to combo decks or aggressive strategies before you stabilize.
Commander
Multiplayer formats change everything. Since games last longer and you’ll draw many more cards, you can afford to be pickier about your opening hands. Look for hands that either ramp effectively or provide card advantage over the long haul. A hand with Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and your commander might be worth keeping even with just two lands.
Advanced Mulligan Considerations
Once you’ve mastered the basics, these deeper concepts will refine your decision-making further.
Thinking About Your Opponent
Game one, you’re often guessing, but games two and three provide crucial information. If your opponent played a bunch of counterspells game one, that slow four-land hand might be exactly what you want for game two. Against a combo deck, prioritizing disruption over perfect mana might save you the game.
Play vs Draw Considerations
Being on the play or draw affects your mulligan standards. On the play, you can afford slightly greedier keeps since you get the first action. On the draw, you might need faster hands to keep pace, but you also see one extra card before making your first plays.
Sideboard Games
After sideboarding, your deck’s priorities often shift dramatically. If you brought in four copies of Thoughtseize against a combo deck, a hand with one of them plus reasonable mana might be keepable even if it lacks your normal game plan. Conversely, a hand full of removal spells might be poor against the control deck that just sideboarded out all their creatures.
Practical Mulligan Scenarios
Theory helps, but specific examples cement the concepts. Here are some realistic scenarios you’ll face:
Scenario 1: You’re playing an aggressive red deck and draw seven cards: three Mountains, Goblin Guide, Monastery Swiftspear, Lightning Bolt, and Boros Charm. This hand keeps itself—perfect mana, early threats, and reach for the late game.
Scenario 2: Your control deck hand contains two Islands, Wrath of God, Counterspell, Sphinx’s Revelation, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and Elspeth, Knight-Errant. This looks powerful but does absolutely nothing for the first several turns. Against an aggressive deck, this is likely a mulligan despite the card quality.
Scenario 3: Playing a midrange deck, you see one Forest, Tarmogoyf, Dark Confidant, Liliana of the Veil, Lightning Bolt, Bloodbraid Elf, and Kolaghan’s Command. Powerful cards, but only one land means you probably can’t cast anything. Clear mulligan.
The Gray Area Hands
The trickiest decisions involve hands that could work but aren’t ideal. Maybe you have two lands and several three-mana spells—not great, but not unplayable either. These decisions often depend on your risk tolerance, your opponent’s deck, and how your particular deck performs with suboptimal hands.
Building Your Deck to Mulligan Better
Smart deckbuilding makes mulligan decisions easier by increasing the number of keepable hands you’ll see. Consider these principles when constructing your deck:
Mana Base Quality
Consistent mana fixes many mulligan problems. If your deck needs specific colors early, invest in dual lands, mana creatures, or artifacts like Chromatic Lantern. The more reliably your lands produce the right colors, the more hands become keepable.
Curve Considerations
Decks with smooth mana curves generate more keepable hands than top-heavy or extremely low-curve builds. If you’re constantly mulliganing hands with the wrong mix of cheap and expensive spells, your manabase might need adjustment.
Redundancy
Having multiple cards that serve similar functions increases your chances of drawing functional hands. If your deck absolutely needs cheap removal to function, playing eight one-mana removal spells instead of four gives you much better odds of seeing them in your opener.
When You’re Still Learning
Mulligan decisions improve with experience, and that’s perfectly normal. Every expert player has kept hands they should have mulliganed and vice versa. Here are some tips for accelerating your learning:
Start conservative. When in doubt, prioritize hands that let you play Magic over hands that might be powerful later. A functional six-card hand beats a broken seven-card hand more often than you’d expect.
Pay attention to what happens after you keep or mulligan. Did that two-land hand work out because you drew lands naturally? Did mulliganing to six give you the consistency you needed to execute your game plan? These results inform future decisions.
Don’t results-orient too heavily. Sometimes you’ll make the right mulligan decision and still lose, or keep a bad hand and get lucky. Focus on the process rather than individual outcomes.
Your Next Steps
Mastering the mulligan takes practice, but the concepts we’ve covered will immediately improve your decision-making. Start by focusing on land count and basic functionality—does this hand let me play Magic for the first few turns? As you gain experience, layer in the more advanced considerations about matchups, play-draw dynamics, and format-specific needs.
Try this exercise: next time you play, pay extra attention to your mulligan decisions and the reasoning behind them. Keep a mental note of what happens—did that borderline keep work out? Would you make the same decision again? This kind of active reflection accelerates improvement faster than any amount of theory.
Most importantly, remember that mulligan decisions are one of the few ways you can directly impact your win percentage before the game even begins. Every tournament champion and casual commander pod regular has developed strong mulligan skills. With practice and the principles we’ve discussed, you’ll develop this crucial skill too.
Your opening seven cards set the stage for everything that follows. Make them count.