Keep or Mulligan? | Commander Clash Podcast 82
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- čas přidán 13. 02. 2023
- The crew discuss whether to keep or mulligan these hands in commander. What do you think?
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#MTG #magicthegathering #mtgcommander #edh #mtgone - Hry
Richard really went "My Grandpa's deck has no pathetic cards!"
The fact that Seth calls a beanie a “winter hat” is so incredibly on brand
I'm from upstate near Queensbury and thats what we call it.
It's an Albany expression
I lived in Canada for 2 years. I still call this a touque.
Beanies are year round
Thats what call it too, different language tho
This episode has affirmed that Richard's winrate is a product of his environment.
They never punish him for greedy deck building. He often wins by letting other people go off first so there isn't enough removal left to deal with him afterwards, it's almost a meme at this point that they keep letting him get away with it
He has a lot of next level takes that I agree with, but some just don't hold up in most environments
Playing against three other players in the pod run who 11 pieces of targeted removal between them is peak commander clash and Richard loves to take advantage of that
I think that's harsh, I've said in the past he's in a bit of a bubble with some of his takes but he's a good player.
Yeah he's gotta be playing against not super players. 1 mana removal is situation? Can't tell if troll or bad.
@@simonp4832one for one sucks in commander. Play more boardwipes
44:46 Seth just pulling a whole jug of orange juice out of nowhere and taking a huge swig really got me for some reason 😂
42:30 Preach Tomer!!! Too many players rely on other people to remove game-ending threats and don't play enough interaction.
Its the tragedy of the commons.
My favorite part was starting off telling everyone to mulligan more..... Proceeds to have at least 1 person say they keep every risky hand presented. Lol. Very entertaining episode nonetheless.
The biggest mistake I see my opponents make in commander is to not take their free mulligan or go to six and say “this hand is bad but we’ll try it”
Not surprised he always flip flops
I feel called out by this comment 😭
Don't forget complaining about your hand is part of commander politics
@@confuciu not unless its actually bad. in commander good politicians don't lie.
I always assess my opening hands by asking "if my next few draws are the exact opposite of what I want, can I still progress my game plan?". It's actively helped me become a better player and will win you more games.
Yeah, i found the same thing to be good advice. Judge your hands by the worst possible outcome, not the best, unless you really want to gamble
the worst draw will make you lose no matter what you hand looks like. playing to probability and whatever your outs are will always be more consistent
@@wldnrkls do you honestly think they were saying to assume you draw 12 lands in a row and lose the game never doing anything but making land drops? and if you didn't assume that then why leave this response?
As much as we clown on Richard for having such a giga-brain deckbuilding strategy I would really like a dedicated deckbuilding episode from people in the cast. I’d love to see how Crim uses his removal slots/Richard finds way to go under the radar. Might be boring for some others but I’m always intrigued.
They hate to play removal then wonder how something like the sardine goblin was able to take over a whole game
I like Seth's logic but I've watched him lose to the one land one keep to many times lol
deepfake seth alert
Repeat after me: ramp without making land drops is not ramp
Also, my mulligan desicions always comes to something I've first heard from Day9: make sure that your opening hand has a plan without needing extra cards. Two lands an a rampant growth is a plan, one land and a rampant growth isn't
Even then, 2 lands and a rampant growt is only worth it if you have a 3-drop, or a 4-drop that's worth the risk
Also ramp without something to ramp into isn’t ramp
@@hanschristopherson8056 There's always your commander! And while I agree, I prefer to be flooded than screwed
@@nik700 No kidding, especially with all the Wheel of Fortune effects folks play. Sometimes the cards just come to you.
Having a hand that needs to draw into extra cards is perfectly acceptable, as long as the effects you need are redundant enough in your deck (e.g. needing 1 creature with 30 in your deck).
Not sure why Richard is doing all the hosting parts of the podcast, but I'm actually loving it way more
Richard: "I don't play sketchy situational cards like spot removal"
Me: "stares at literally any board state ever, especially on where there is a commander on the battlefield"
Yup exactly why he can do that because he is betting that everyone else is to scared to go give up interaction and basically he is gambling that either someone else has the removal or that he is low priority to kill giving him and other time to find removal or a board wipe.
@@mark1A100 If you can fly under the radar you can replace those removal spells with things that win you the game.
If your answer to a scary board state is spot removal, you should build a better deck. Respond to a scary board state with an even scarier board state. A 1 for 1 puts you and one opponent down a card vs your other 2 opponents. They're inherently bad for YOUR chances of winning. They negatively affect you.
@dontmisunderstand6041 that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying he refuses to play spot removal. And forces other people to deal with problems that occur because of the build up which wouldn't occur if he ran spot removal and had proper threat assessment. People who sit there and don't do anything and then complain about things not being done are the most unfun people to platy with. I shouldn't have to deal with other people's problems in the game simply because they refuse to play a very specific and important part of the game
@@douglassmith8069 I explained why spot removal inherently lowers your chances of winning in a multiplayer game. Anything less than a 3 for 1 is a net negative. You are better off having not played that card and instead played a good card. That's just how the math on it works. Just build your deck in ways that don't automatically lose to every possible creature that hits the board. It's easy to do if you're not wasting 15 deck slots on inherently negative instants and sorceries. Yes, every deck should have some form of removal. Should it be instant speed? Depends on your deck. Should it be on a permanent instead? Probably, but depends on your deck. If you automatically lose every time anything enters the battlefield, to the extent that you need a constant influx of spot removal just to keep up, you built your deck wrong.
I can kind of see why Richard thinks single target removal is bad in your opening hand, but this can only apply to low power/sub 6 pod. The more you raise the powerlevel the better early removal becomes. high/8.5 pod spot removal in your opening hand is a good/high-average card in your deck. Max/10 pod I usually mull if I don't have spot removal, counters, or other early interaction, especially if I am facing commanders that demand it.
I think the demonic tutor hand is a mulligan, and I'm surprised no one brought up the biggest issue with it. Your primary concern with the 6 lands/farewell hand is getting run over before you get to wrath and start your game, but if you're hitting every land drop and showing that you're flooding you can go under the radar. If you're in that same situation, but you cast a demonic tutor, now you have a huge target on your back because they don't know that you only tutored for a draw spell or a wrath. The other players will assume the worst, and you'll take every hit for that turn cycle between your tutor and your wrath. That's especially true if you have a commander that becomes busted with one other specific card.
That last hand should be a hard keep. 3 lands gets you to Kodama's reach on turn 3. You have a spot removal for any problematic early card draw an opponent might have like Rhystic or Sentinel. You have a removal for any scary mana dorks that come out early like Selvala. You're guaranteed to have 5 lands on turn 4. You can play your commander (assuming 5 cmc or less) on turn 4. And you have had 4 card draw to draw into other useful things like more card draw, creatures, or other ramp. This hand would be the hardest keep of anything I've seen.
i play 6-7 spot removal like tomer. its good to be able to interact with things that are getting crazy
Yea Richard is just wrong with this thinking
@@jamesday123456 yea I go no lower than 5 spot removal. I don't understand Richards theory of. Well if I lose to it we get to another game
@@dmany13 5 huh? been feeling like 3 is too little lately maybe ill try 5 in the next deck and see how that goes
My answers for casual commander:
Meme Hand - never keep
1st hand - never keep
2nd hand - never keep
3rd hand - 50/50 chance of keeping, depends on the deck. Elfball or something that runs dorks 100% keep.
4th hand - never keep
5th hand - never keep
6th hand - never keep
7th hand - never keep
8th hand - never keep
9th hand - never keep (yes even with dockside)
10th hand - potentially keep only because faithless looting turn 1
11th hand - never keep
12th hand - depends on the color balance within the deck. if it's more red sided and I'm rolling red cards in hand like Seth said, this is okay. if not then 100% ditch the hand.
13th hand - probably never keep, also probably rebuild the deck to get rid of cards like the temple lol
14th hand - depends on the deck. if it's a huge overall mana cost deck and any non-land you draw is gonna be a big deal then... sure? but generally speaking instantly mulligan.
15th hand - agree with Seth, depends on the MDFCs whether I keep or not.
16th hand - depends on the table. if people are ruthless this hand is really stupid to keep, but if they're gonna be kind of nice and not smack me then it's worth risking the top deck strat since I'm likely to delete the board (also an instant mulligan if somebodys likely running counterspells)
17th hand - never keep
18th hand - almost always keep
19th hand - just wincons in my hand? nope. never keep. (unless it's my deck's entire strategy?)
20th hand - never keep. having strongest card in hand at start doesn't matter.
21st hand (the only actually interesting hand) - snap keep with tomer. spot removal and ramp ANNIHILATES the player with the strongest start while also putting you ahead on lands lol you will ALWAYS have a good target to use this against. the people who kept dockside or run ramp dorks etc you instantly dunk on AND your hand has ramp! you're likely to draw into something good as well since you're probably not running a ton more ramp or spot removal and are drawing into lands with ramp on top of shuffling multiple times due to your ramp so you have a high statistical chance of drawing into gas. you guys undervalue removal and often lose due to not running it IMO.
I might have missed some? had to do some stuff and had to skim back through to do all my answers lol
The best thing that's happened to my meta is when I wasn't able to come play for a while and everyone had to learn not to rely on me to solve the problems.
Just an anecdotal observation from being hit with a similar situation to the 38:58 Two mountains, faithless in the purphoros choice... that would have me thinking for a minute, and if keeping, i would not be doing so confidently. i've definitely been punished by assuming i would draw into the seemingly-likely "enabling" land - faithless only *guarantees* to dig the first 2. If the 5th card down still isn't a 3rd land, you are starting to sweat on turn 3, with the classic "draw...pass".
I think something forgotten about in all of these example is the fact you have a commander too. Im willing to keep hands with alot of lands in commander cause if nothing else I have my commander to play. Always remember that 8th card you always start with
regarding the one mana tutors: many of them can search for a mdfc that is a land
42:10 Fallacy of the Commons in a nutshell. Thanks Tomer for not falling into it.
i mean we have already had Crim prove that a opening hand sword/path can be massively impactful and turn 1 players god hand into a they are out of the game. and how funny that it was Richard that was on the receiving end of that while sitting here talking about how bad removal in opening hands is.
@@atk9989 bolting someone's mana dork can do so much.
Green players often looks at their and goes "cultivate, land, 2 cmc mana rock and a mana dork. That's great" but remove that mana dork and they are set back so much
Its interesting to hear the crew work through their decisions rather than the actual decisions. I would not mind hearing everyone's individual takes on deck construction.
swamp + vampiric tutor is almost always a keep, especially in something like cedh because you can get mana crypt, or if it was a UB dual you get Mystic Remora and stabilize in a turn or two
Yeah cEDH is the definition of greed and I love everything about it
Tomer getting deep into his Joker arch with the winter hat 😮
A caveat to Richard's point about not playing/keeping hands with spot removal: sure my hand may be slow and weak, but those removals can bring my opponents to my speed. I tend to play removal that can hit multiple types of cards. And if I hit people's rocks, dorks, ramp etc. It's essentially like I'm playing stax, I'm slowing everyone else down to my speed so I can stay in the fight. I'm not saying it's a perfect solution but that's how I often will play if I end up keeping a 1-2 land hand with a couple spot removals and not much else.
i mean its almost like there was a commander clash episode where Richard turn 1 got out a 3+ drop commander through jewled lotus and Crim swords/pathed it and Richard was a non factor for the rest of the game. you never know how fast someone else might start.
@@atk9989 would love a link to that game. It's easy to say the swords was great there as it stopped Richard from being a threat but that isn't the only metric. How much did the card disadvantage hurt Crim? Would be an interesting game to analyze.
@@jayjayhooksch1 If I have to discard a single card from my starting hand to completely take one player out of the equasion, how is that not worth it from a card advantage perspective?
@@SWAT6809 because taking one player out of the game doesn't mean anything if it puts you into a spot where you're at a disadvantage against the remaining two players; there's no glory in coming in third.
@@jayjayhooksch1 You are using 1!!! card for it. By having 1 player technically defeated, your odds of winning rise to 33%. Are you telling me the 1 card from your hand youre missing drops you back below 25% winrate, so over 8%? That seems like an argument that I cant see working out.
I think I first heard this on limited resources but sage advice I follow for mulligans is 'if you need more than one thing to go right for your hand to function, don't keep it'
For example: if you're on rakdos have a mountain and a swamp and all you need is a third land of any colour then that's a keep. But, if you're on rakdos, have two swamps and have mostly red cards, now you need a red source AND a third land so that's a mull.
You also have to see what your opps are playing. Are you the control or the aggro? If you are facing an infect deck, you probably want a creature to block or make that player turn their head the other way. Same with problematic commander... do I have enough time to deploy my main plan or do I need some removal or a faster start? Also, take into account that in our format, you always draw a card even when going first.
I've mulliganed hands with a 2-3 lands and 2 ramp pieces but since they don't have a plan or way to make it into the late-game (e.g., card draw)... I ditch them
I love this episode! Great examples and discussion. Thanks for the content.
For that Purphoros hand, you go FLooting discard abrade (because it's mid in cmd) and Magus so you can cast Feldon use him to wheel every turn
This entire conversation just makes me want the bounce lands on arena for historic brawl...
And THAT just makes me want stone seeder hierophant on arena... and that makes me want wild growth and abundant growth... and exploration.... and fastbond... and.....
Using a bounce land on a Zendikar MDFC land always feels 👌👌👌
Bounce lands are the best lands because they're effectively 2 lands in 1 card.
Tbh I just want arena to have all of the cards. Just release every set. Go backward in time with them, give people some excitement. They've already got that mythic that creates copies of the power nine into your deck, there's really not much more absurdity to worry about. Release everything. Let me play the game with cool cards.
I had a mulligan the other day that was like an awakening moment. The new 7 was the same cards but the more efficient copy. The cheaper ramp spell, the better draw spell, the better tutor, and the better creature.
Definitely mulling more. It was very insightful to hear your guys takes. Keep at it and clash on!
This feels like Richard with Jund good stuff player mindset and Seth with Tron highroll mindset haha.
to answer the land tutor question. Open the gates, Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal, Traverse the Uvenwald, Thirsting Roots, Scheming Symmetry, Safewright Quest, Reclaim the Wastes, Lay of the Land, Land Tax, Dig Up, & Attune With Aether.
Search for mana dorks with Sylvan Tutor, Worldly Tutor.
Search for Mana rocks with Enlightened Tutor.
soooo.. about 58:15 .. where are the mentioned links to Frank Karsten's land math? idk if I am being stupid, but they don't seem to be in the descriptions and I'd be really interested what Tomer references there
Now that i know that Sett is from upstate New York i can only think of steamed hams
Appart for the 2 land cultivate/dorkside or the 3+ land hands I mull all these hands
My playgroup adopted a unique mulligan rule and it has proven to be a universal net positive in fun. We draw 14 cards, keep 7 and put the rest on the bottom of our libraries. It fixes mana screw and flood while also supporting every deck's game plan. It does allow you to play less lands, but there are no second mulligans so deckbuild to our rule at your own risk.
Doss your playgroup play combos?
Just for fun I playtested the 6 lands and Demonic Tutor. I fetched up a nice 4 mana card draw spell and by turn 5 I had my commander, removal, counters, ramp, and more draw. That's the easiest keep of my life! Tomer is 100% right on that one!
My group has infinite free mulligans with the understanding that we're not to abuse it.
When I have an opening hand with mana rocks in my Grixis deck I look at them like fixing not ramp.
I 110% keep the 6 lands night's whisper. You're 100% to hit all your early land drops which are the most important and also you have your commander.
Great episode!
I think because of the way White ramp works I’d definitely keep the Esper Sentinel one land as long as I didn’t have green in my commander color.
Depends if I am going first no, if I am going last in turn order yes.
To add support to Richard saying "run less spot removal": if you run more tutors (blah blah sweaty, yes i know), you can def run less removal cuz that tutor IS your removal and IS your ramp and IS your win con. (Que the people coming to tell me this is a "casual game" and "go back to cedh" lol)
The issue is so many people are just looking at ramping as being more valuable than having ramp in hand, when they're overlooking the most powerful form of ramp: Playing a land every turn. A land with 3 lands and no ramp is worth more than a hand with 2 lands and a rampant growth. With the second, you're spending 2 mana to get your third land. With the first, you have your third land for free!!
Someone else pointed out an excellent point as well: Don't evaluate your hands by your best draws, but by your worst ones. If you have a no land hand, evaluate it not as if you will draw your lands, but as though you won't. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
Don't know if you're basing this on opening hands but it seems like you do. Playing a land every turn is of course optimal but the thing is that you still have draws left for more lands. A hand with Rampant Growth + 2 lands is actually better if you draw more lands in the first few turns, so I can definitely understand keeping it. Another thing is that even if you don't draw any lands, if there's no 2 mana cost card in your hand you could argue it might still be better to have 2 lands + Rampant Growth because you wouldn't have any other play. It does slightly lower the chance for another land but it also means you start turn 3 with the 3 lands instead of having to play the third land on turn 3, which means if you'd draw a land you'd still be land up.
the worst hand i have ever kept and still won was: (kept a 6) Plains, land tax, reanimate, a 5 drop and 2 six drops. Best and worst keep i have ever kept.
As a timmy with average cmc over 5 in most of my decks, I'll keep any 6 lander every time.
So, in response to the Esper Sentinel play, Richard talked about Ancestral Recall, usually if I have 1 or 2 lands, and a Ponder type effect, I will keep the hand.
thumb up for richard is back
I missed Richard on the podcast! But all are really good too
An interesting realization I had. I have a Grenzo deck, and realized I should mulligan wicked aggresively to try to stack the bottom if my deck.
I like the premise of this episode and always great job however looking at 2 or less than 7 cards and deciding to keep or mull doesn’t cut it there’s so many factors and just going off of Xyx is in hand I’ll keep if bxr is not keeping to actually have this convo in ameaningful way u need to see all 7 than discuss everything else fairy tale land and doesn’t matter.
22:27 soul absorbed
Y'all need to mulligan more often! Also, I would keep these hands with only one land. 😂
The biggest question I've struggled answer for commander is whether high risk keeps might improve odds. With four players you lose more often than win. Does an average performance do enough against three opponents where one is fairly likely to get lucky? So with that in mind why not take the big risks with the big payoffs?
Still don't play this way since having fun is the actual point, even if winning is the goal. So it's not unreasonable to avoid the explosive starts that might be less satisfying win or lose. If the risk pays off and the game ends early, or the risk doesn't pay off and you do nothing all game, neither option is more fun.
It feels like there is always an episode that exemplifies the flaws in one of them. This one being Richard's.
I hate to mulligan, I have been known to keep very questionable hands, but sometimes your opponent just draws lands for 10 turns and you can eek out a win that feels terrible. My most basic rule is that the hand should hit the deck's 'desired' mana total, which usually means 2 or 3 lands and a ramp source or two, I hate keeping 2 lands without some kind of playable ramp. My most questionable keeps involve Battery lands like Bottomless Vault, they are slow but can play pretty well sometimes, I don't always get burned for keeping a Battery in a hand that's low on land or leans into mana rocks.
1 land and a 2 mana ramp card is a terrible keep, it's also super easy to whiff on land draws. That said when I have the exact hand Seth is talking about, Forest + 2 mana ramp spell and + 3 mana ramp, it's usually in my 28 land mono-Green deck. Under 70% chance of having a real hand vs having a hand that literally does nothing if you don't draw a land isn't very favorable math. 2 lands with Kodoma's Reach is a hand I'd probably look at keeping, but again it depends on the deck, needing to draw another land is a bad place to be in, it's just too easy to draw non-lands when way more than half your deck is non-lands.
It's worth noting that 'keeping' because you have a bunch of ramp to serve as your land drops is actually pretty terrible, you're using mana to do what your hand should have let you do without a cost, if someone else built around actually drawing lands they'll do better since they're playing actual cards. I'm not saying you need to build 50 land deck, but run some lands folks! Remember, if you actually want to expect to see 3 lands, it's 43 lands. I run 45 in my Tatyova deck, the deck would be better if I could run a few more, but even at 45 lands you often fail to start with 3 lands, which feels terrible in a deck that lives for landfall.
Who among us is running 30 lands willy-nilly? I do see the odd deck that's just shaved too many lands (it's like when someone over plucks their eyebrows, it's very noticeable when it's badly done), but even I tend to use 34 as my default if I'm just building a deck to test it out, I do start higher for some decks but I think most decks should look at running lower to the ground cards and let the lands slide a bit, small draw effects are (to my surprise) not at all bad cards in Commander.
Incubation Druid is not a great card in a 5 colour deck in my experience because of that draw back, but I guess it's great in 2 colour.
I feel like the Esper Sentinel thing is very much a question of turn order, if you're not first or 2nd ship that terrible hand IMHO.
If Richard dies and goes to some weird ironic hell he'll have to play my Pavel Maliki deck until he embraces removal and situational cards, it's crawling with removal and weirdly interactive cards. It's not actually a terrible deck, it just uses bad cards in good ways, so it's a rewarding deck to play that rewards user competence highly.
Hypergeometric calculators are a very good tool, I use one for every deck (over and over), and for pickier decks (like cEDH) I run the mana base through many more calculators, using multiple event conjunction calculators was a godsend in cEDH deckbuilding. I didn't do math in university, but I had to do a bunch in Welding School, including finite portions for math classes, not really sure why tbh, probabilities aren't super important in Welding, but maybe in the engineering end of things you need it? idk. Either way, it's still easier to use a calculator to speed things up, but I have had to dig out my old textbooks. I leaned hard into the stats for my weird low(ish) budget Legacy Elves deck to try to minimize the number of mulligans, and since the deck sucks at drawing cards it's incredibly useful. Still, I can Definitely can see why people competitive build a completely different deck, mine curls up and dies if a Burn deck looks at it, even if it goldfish turn 3s pretty easily.
I build around getting green sources in most of my Green decks that aren't mono, it's too easy to fix via Green ramp, at which point your hand is good. This is also why I still run Myriad Landscape in 5 colour decks, it's great to dig out two Forests without needing Green to do it. Still, without Green I would be lying if I said I enjoy running Basics outside Mono-Black, and that's mostly because of Cabal stuff. I guess if you use (and tutor for) Dreamscape Artist you'd want a bunch of Basics to dig out, there are corner cases.
That 6 lander with Sign is a solid keep if it's your second hand and you'd have to lose a card, but it would depend on the Commander.
That 'lands, ramp, interaction' is my 'nut draw' in my cEDH deck, it's Zur and I don't really need anything else in my opening hand. Swan Song, Swords, Sol Ring, a Signet and 3 lands is what dreams are made of if your Commander can just find Necropotence.
While I sympathise with Tomar’s argument for running removal, and I myself dedicate around 15% of non land cards to removal of some sort in most of my decks, I don’t know if his argument holds up to the math. The argument here is similar to the Prisoners Dilemma, in that if everyone runs removal everyone is happy, but if you choose to not run removal you get a higher win percentage, but everyone not running removal leads to everyone being unhappy.
The problem is, under the last scenario, if you choose to run removal you likely won’t experience a higher winrate. If you playgroup is parasitic they’ll just look to you as “the answer”. It’s tough. I think running removal increases your winrate, but not due to any “this helps the table” type of argument.
Spot removal in commander is the prisoner's dilemma
land tax, tithe for me (and even vamp, gamble, or enlightened tutor to find them) are auto-include because they make so many hands playable
Six lands, Demonic Tutor into Midnight Clock.
First- and second-turn tutors are bad politics if you don't reveal the card (Vamp Tutor, Demonic Tutor). Even if you tutored a land, the table will suspect that you have a great hand already and just tutored up some bomb that will kill everyone.
Whether or not that causes problems for you depends on the table, but the one-swamp-Vampiric-tutor has that additional risk. You'll look scarier than you are.
If Richard weren't the Codfather, I can't imagine everyone else would be so accepting of his decision to barely run removal just because everyone else is dealing with the threats that he can't/won't address. The optimal play response is always to target and punish the greedy player, but the social dynamic would be so toxic...
I would say not make a pre-assesment who to target, let each game play out who to target at that moment.
And target only the things you yourself get hit by (if possible, not all situations allow that)
My spot removal is always instant speed, and my protection spells all protect specifically my board (like boros charm, teferi’s protection, hero’s intervention, blink shield). So i stay safe and get ahead while the others have to self their own problems.
Other opponents hitting other opponents also is work done you don’t have to do yourself.
Is my experience and my perspective. Maybe it works for your group too, who knows.
@@RuudAwakening I don't disagree with what you're saying at a general level, but there's a consistent trend with Richard on Commander Clash and the group doesn't adjust. If he's just gonna run gas and little/no removal while also sandbagging until someone starts going off and is then dealt with, they need to treat him like he's always holding threats and either run extra removal or just put his life total in a bad place so he's forced to commit to the board early
@@towelociraptor fully agree, look for, learn from and adjust on previous mistakes
In the context of MtgGoldfish I mean they should look out for the moments Richard usually turns the tables. Which I think you're right, they still don't.
Putting myself as part of that group, I would be or become the early game engager, and my protection/interaction methods would probably be max out on "you can hit the others but not me" cards.
Like teferi's protection, herioc intervention.
Or instant speed board wipes, to be able to "clean up" the greedy - pillow forty - combopiece - stuff.
And then ignite my big move in my own turn.
You convinced me to mulligan more since atm I have the most fun with shigeki and the other cool two mana card is oath of druids in my deck so.... Mulligan to find cards that I love to play and have fun with is possibly the way for me 😊
Doesn't matter what the odds of drawing a 2nd/3rd land is, every time I keep a hand like that there isn't a single land in the top 15.
play 41 lands. always hit your 6th land drop.
is there a vid where richard goes into why he loves dosing dagger so much lol?
If you watch the commander clash games over a long period of time, the card itself is quite good. If you play low cmc creatures to equip/attack and play board wipes that get rid of all nonland permanents, having a land that taps for 3 can keep you far ahead once you wipe the board clean.
I swear seth showed us that comandeer play not long ago as a segue into one of his games 😂
There is a part of mulligans I have never heard anyone talk about in commander (cedh particularly). You have to beat three players. That means you should be looking for the high rolls.
Keep taking decent hands and you’ll keep coming in second place.
What if you had to win a 20 sided die roll vs 3 others and you could chose between a roll of 10 or a 50/50 shot at 20 or 1?
You take the 50/50 shot at the 20. Obviously and period.
This doesn’t even touch on the singleton nature of the format and the difference between the best and worst cards in your deck or the free mulligan.
If I had to take a guess at the mathematically correct % of first 7’s you should keep to give you the highest possible win % I bet it would be around 10%
All of these hypotheticals are dependent on whether there's any cards that can be cast with the available mana in hand.
If you have a lot of low CMC in hand that you can cast, then you can slide a low mana hand.
If you have no card you can cast, then all of the low mana hands become far more Sus.
I am assuming all Analisys, (As given) is if you have cards in hand (that aren't shown) you can't cast with available land.
Honestly, if the hand has at least 3 lands and at least 2/3rds of my colors... I'm keeping. I will generally ditch >= 5 as well. Any draw +3 lands is an auto-keep as well.
28:14 Am I missing something or isn't all of white "ramp" reliant on an opponent being green or missing a land drop?
At this point in my life, Im almost positive that Seth was born with that beard. I cant imagine him without facial hair.
Please don't forget to add Frank's articles next time! You promised and it took me way too long to find them :( Love the content though ;)
Two lands and reach is always a keep right? (As long as one land is green) you have 3 draws to hopefully get the third land. Theoretically, if your deck is built well and you have shuffled well, one in three/four cards are lands. The likelihood you get a land is great.
I also call them just "hats"
I think it would be interesting for them to go through the exact same hands and say whether they'd keep it on Camera, where the potential of not drawing that land could potentially ruin the content with them doing nothing.
Players should use their free mull more often also keep all one landers lol
Any reason Phil wasn't able to step in? Too short notice?
In my playgroup, we mulligan (for free) until you get a playable hand.
That way, there are no feel bad games and we only play 2 to 4 time per month.
Mulling more is the way to go... except when I'm playing in paper and too lazy to reshuffle. 5 Lands and no gas? Eh, I'll draw into it.
I have no idea why they'd instantly chuck back a 6 land, especially if your commander costs 4-6 and gives immediate advantage. Then talk like you don't get a draw every single turn which could be ramp or playable spells and would just sit there for six turns playing land drops.
For Sentinel draw, if I'm going first I mull, going last I keep. Much *much* more likely to be fed into when players are on two lands.
Mulling is more deck-dependent than hand-dependent, Sythis can happily keep any seven cards, but a Slicer might just as happily mull to four if it means it comes out faster.
I knew someone with a no land ragavan deck that was pretty fun, too bad the server was against playing it since they wouldn’t rate it without lands, she had to add some mdfc lands just to get them to let her play
0:40. It's a winter hat.
Richards conclusion that its ok to be slow because you wont get punished is also an argument for risky keeps.
Okay here's the real test. Swamp, dark ritual, phyrexian arena. Rest of the hand is 4+ drops and one of your opponents is green/white
I think there should be a V 2.0 of this, where we see the entire opening hand, see the commander, and have an idea of a deck list. Actual sample hands from pre-cons for example.
Edit: More of them lol
To build off of this, an episode where it’s just past hands they’ve kept on Commander Clash, but don’t include whether they won or lost
Yeah, that would be really cool. They could also prepare it before-hand, so they have more time to think, and can review their answers kind of like the Tier List video. They could even add a "Mull or Keep" segment to each Podcast, as a 2 minute segment that can easily be turned into a Short/TikTok.
Path to exile IS ramp
Richard is big brain.
Why would you go down a card, two life, and a draw step for one land with a card that could grab anything? Vamp tutor hand is not good enough
in opening hands I have to have 3 lands unless I have a sol ring and another ramp spell then I'll keep a two lander.
1:04:48 I don’t see how this is different than keeping 4-5 lands and waiting that many turns to cast a high cmc spell or your commander. You have 5-6 draws to get the other color you need so this feels like basically the same situation right? Maybe you aren’t technically guaranteed to draw that land but if you built your deck right you should be able to draw into the ramp or color before that 5th turn and even if you don’t you should still be able to draw into some decent action that only has that color.
8:08 I'm with Tomer. I would keep this, as long as I have a 2-3 drop in hand (and as long as I noticed how functional this is with no lands). I must run into much less artifact hate that the Codfather.
If i have a game winning combo in my starting hand, I will mull, because you'll get the win way before everyone else has begun to spin their wheels and you become the insta threat the next few games. Unless you are playing to win, its not worth it
I gauge my hands generally by Count of Actions. If my starting hand is not ideal, but has multiple spells or abilities it can use with the mana in it, that's serviceable. If the hand doesn't have any spell or abilities in it that can be used with the available mana, then I cannot keep the hand. 3 or 4 land hands where the other cards are usable with that mana are the best possible. 2 land hands with one or more 2 drops aren't bad. But a 2 land hand with all 5 drops is terrible.