Mulliganing is a tedious procedure in EDH because we all know that shuffling 100 cards i s"not easy".

In EDH we use the gentleman's mulligan (playable not your combo), because it's a fun format. Maybe we could change the mulligan to lose the shuffle. *GASP*

I propose to TEST with: when you mulligan, instead of shuffling back your initial seven and drawing seven new cards, you put your initial seven aside and draw the following seven instead (ooohh I've written it as a replacement rule ). Keep setting aside and drawing new ones untill you have a PLAYABLE hand. Then shuffle your library. maybe this will help speed up the start of the game.

laterz

I firmly believe that such an experimental form of muliganing is needed, and if you trust people to not abuse it will give great results.

My group has been using free muligans with 0,1,2,6 or 7 land hands, and paris muligans if you want it when you have 3.4 or 5 land. We tend to find this lots of fun, but very very slow.

I had suggested this to my local group back in Virginia, and it was met with a lukewarm reception and we never tried it. I kind of like the idea.

How about "no shuffle until after you find a playable hand?" That will save time.

I think I usually try and lug my own informal mulligan rules around wherever I play:
- It's OK to peek at the top 2 cards to check for an improvement in your mana situation
- Like 2HG, it's a one game match (typically), and so you can have a free mulligan.

I think I'm going to test enforcing Gis' suggestion, I like it. Will feedback.

The last few weeks my friends seem to have been happy with:
* Take a free mulligan if you hand is unplayable
* Don't shuffle till you keep your hand (just put the previous hands to the side)

If we felt someone was abusing the mulligans we'd ask them to reveal each hand they mulligan.

At italian National, in games I played, I let my opponents to take as many mulligans as they wanted to, with the simple rule "You have to have a playable hand, not the perfect hand". None abused of this, and I think the games was funnier, for everyone had a competitive hand.
Another evening, we added to the first free mulligan the rule "You can free mulligan if you have only two or less playable lands, or six or more lands". "Playable lands" means that, for example, with only two bouncelands you were allowed to mulligan. It was fun.

in my group we play with the 0-1-7 rule. this means that if your opening hand contains 0, 1, or 7 lands, then you can take a mulligan. we do this because we want to actually play a game. when somebody starts out with a bad hand, then that person isn't playing the game, he's just drawing & discarding, wishing for lands. it gets boring not just for him, but also for everyone else at the table.

My gentleman's agreement is 0, 1 or 2 mana sources is unplayable in a 1v1 edh matchup. And the worse you can shuffle the more free mulligans you get. Rewarding the weak, go USA go!

to me and my group EDH is so casual we don't care how many times you take mulligans. We have one "Big Deck Mulligan" (ie. free mull), then you must go down to 6, and if the 6 isn't good and you hafta go down to 5 half the time we'd just let you go back up to 7. It's kinda weird how it works for us because sometimes we'll make you go to 6.

This is a pretty savage case of thread-necromancy, but ah well

The problem with 017 mulligans, or "just mulligan till your hand is playable" policies it that they either reward bad deckbuilding or, even worse, hide the effects of bad deckbuilding until its too late.

A good EDH deck should play 38-42 mana sources -- the best deckbuilders I know (RobRoy, TigTigger, BKM, Dickinson) all tend to the high side. New players tend to skimp on mana though, sometimes going as low as 34-35 in an attempt to shoehorn in more fun cards. Allowing them to mulligan until they have a good starting hand is actually quite mean to these people because it appears to mitigate the problem but it just screws them in the mid and late game anyway. The mulligan lets them hit their first 2-3 land drops at pace, but then they lag behind as the game proceeds... leaving them impotent for most of the game every time, and surprised when their opponents steamroll them with more resources.

As such, I prefer to enforce regular mulliganing... the length of EDH games makes the distribution of cards far more important than the actual number you start off with.. even if you go down to 5 (which is 3! mulligans) to find a good hand, you're only down 2 cards on everyone else which is likely to be irrelevant over the course of a long game if you have a reasonable amount of mana.

Just my opinion though... how you mulligan is definately a local group kind of deal.

The (non-Elder-Dragon) Highlander players around here use a strange rule for your first mulligan -- they call it a "poker mulligan." You shuffle any number of cards from your first seven into your library then draw that many to get back to seven cards in hand.

If you can't get a hand in one iteration of that, though, you visit Paris as usual.

I like the 2HGish rule. One free mulligan if your hand is trash and then it's Paris time.

Although I haven't seen a whole lot of hands get thrown back, so it hasn't been a problem around here.

<cough>

Usually we just mulligan until we have playable hands.

norbert88

Same here, we'll also allow people to peek at a card or two.
The game is for fun, no one cares. haha