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While I haven't seen a consensus for any particular method of fixing it, I believe that a majority or at least a silent majority of Magic players would like to see extreme mana/muligan issues addressed. Variability that makes games challenging, and requires players to improvise and play based on educated guesses about what they and their opponents will draw is a good thing. Variability that makes games completely unwinnable for one player right from the start is a bad thing. I am only advocating for the elimination of that second type of variability. The "I kept a starting hand of 2 lands and drew nothing but spells for the entire rest of the game" or the "I muliganed a 1 land hand into a 0 land hand into a 1 land hand" type of variability.

Oct 29, 2012 -- 7:43AM, EyeballFrog wrote:

If a shuffled pack being passed to you is a problem, simply unshuffle it (separate by rarity) before picking.

bobus, if you want stats on these things, keep them yourself.  You keep talking about how your opponents only win when certain things happen.  You should also keep track of how often you win because of those same things.  Opponent's mana troubles, your own bombs, your opponent's mulligans, etc.  Perhaps that might give you some perspective on your abilities.

Also, a single mulligan shouldn't be hurting your win rate that much.  A double mulligan, sure, but having to mulligan once isn't really that bad.

It isn't bad to muligan once if you aren't forced to muligan again, and if you don't subsequently hit mana issues anyway (which is generally what you're trying to avoid by muliganing in the first place) Muliganing once and not hitting mana issues only drops my win rate from 80% to 60% in RtR. But when you factor in all of the double muligans, mana shorts and mana floods, it drops all the way down to around 33%, which is worse than the rate for mana flooding a 7 card hand. RtR appears to be particularly bad for this, but in other sets it's still a drop from a win percent in the 80's for non-mana issue 7 card hands to a win percent in the 30's or low 40's once I've commited to the first muligan. Perhaps a lot of games really are being won by one card.

Oct 29, 2012 -- 11:42AM, CaptainHammer wrote:

As a general question, how do you figure out how much mana to put into your deck.  Of the 40 cards, how many are land?  Do you have a formula?

I generally play 17 lands, occasionally 16 if the curve is low enough. I'll play additional mana sources over 17, but never additional lands (well, I suppose sacrifice for creature lands and non-mana producing lands are an exception). I have a good formula for land color distribution, but it's pretty close to the suggested lands formula on MtGO, and you still have to tweak it to account for card strengths and curve.

I played this one at 16 lands:

9 Mountain 7 Swamp
1 Rakdos Cackler 3 Deviant Glee 1 Dynacharge
2 Tavern Swindler 2 Gore-House Chainwalker 2 Rakdos Shred-Freak 2 Rix Maadi Guildmage 1 Ash Zealot
1 Rakdos Keyrune 2 Stab Wound 1 Hellhole Flailer 2 Annihilating Fire
1 Launch Party 1 Cobblebrute 1 Traitorous Instinct
1 Spawn of Rix Maadi

Which had 5 one drops, 9 two drops, 6 three drops, 3 four drops and only one five drop. I had quite a few issues hitting double mountain in my first 3 lands and I mana flooded to 8 lands, 3 spells after keeping a 4 land hand once, but in general it felt like the right number of lands.

I suppose to figure out the exact right number you'd need to run the percentages for how often you'd muligan vs mana short vs mana flood with the deck and your win percentages under those conditions. But I can tell you that conventional wisdom states 19 is much too many for limited decks. Most should be in the 17 land range.

Oct 29, 2012 -- 5:01PM, TEA_DEMON wrote:

Oct 29, 2012 -- 4:37AM, silentbobus wrote:

What do you want me to let go? If you want me to let something go, why do you keep writing about shuffling packs and hands?

what i'm saying is that half of the threads in this forum are you complaining about how you can't accept that sometimes you lose because of something that happens to EVERYONE.

My position on this has been, and always will be that I would prefer that no one lose because of mana issues or muligans instead of everyone. There is already enough variance introduced by the fact that most limited decks field only 1 or 2 copies of each card, you don't need to tack on games where one or both players start down a spell or can't play spells at all for extended periods of time on top of that. I'd rather wins and losses be determined strictly according to play skill and the choices made during drafting. The only reason I bring this up so often is because I find the opposing position ludicrous, and I can't believe people on these boards feel compelled to defend it.

So for you it's very simple, just agree that you think Magic would be a better game without the unwinnable games introduced by mana issues and muligans. Once the majority of people state that they agree with this I will drop this line of discussion. (Except possibly to discuss the best rules revision to make this happen!)