When I decide to throw away my hand and use a mulligan, should I simply draw a new hand from the library or shuffle my thrown hand into the library before redrawing? I'm mostly interested in magic-the-gathering mulligan rules, but I believe a "mulligan" isn't system-specific; I'd accept a well-sourced system-agnostic answer as well.
-
9As a slight comment, a mulligan is game specific. Where in Magic you have to replace your entire hand with N - 1 cards (which is repeatable), for example Hearthstone (Digital Card Game) allows you to swap up to N cards out for new ones, but only once. Both actions are called 'Mulligan' in the respective games.– DavyApr 5, 2016 at 15:23
1 Answer
In Magic you always shuffle your hand into your library then draw a new hand.
103.4. [...] To take a mulligan, a player shuffles his or her hand back into his or her library, then draws a new hand of one fewer cards than he or she had before. [...]
-
3Of course if you're not playing in a sanctioned event, you can use whatever house rules you want. For instance, some people still do the partial mulligan when they play EDH. Apr 5, 2016 at 16:59
-
1Forestalls the interpretation that you can choose to keep some of the cards, then mulligan the rest. It is a painful holdover from casual that I've seen pop up at FNMs with younger crowds. Apr 5, 2016 at 19:58
-
1@DrunkCynic It also is how mulligans worked in EDH until a few months ago, so if someone was coming from that perspective and hadn't heard of the rules change they could easily misinterpret it.– diegoApr 5, 2016 at 20:00
-
1I must stress the word always. Unless you're playing some house-rules-alteration or EDH, you must always mulligan this way. This is non-negotiable at any sort of sanctioned MTG event. Apr 6, 2016 at 19:37
-
Good terminology for not shuffling when mulliganing is "Lazy" mulligans. They are a common and good option for commander: a format not sanctioned for competitive play (only sanctioned for casual events).– LovesThaApr 7, 2016 at 6:06