It's official, the PT Origins mulligan rule is here to stay, starting with Battle for Zendikar prerelease!

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I feel weird about it. Mostly because I haven't played with the new rule and I always feel weird about rules changes.

It's great in limited.

I don't like that it decreases the simplicity of the mulligan process, but it's probably a net plus for gameplay.

That's pretty much my position too. Loss of simplicity is definitely a thing, but with any luck the results will be more than worth it.

I like the change to the rule.

I think the rule being good for limited is the most positive change. A lot of times if you mulligan you just lose because often in limited being down a spell is often game over. This will just make mulligans less back breaking and reducing variance in a high variance situation.

At the PT, I guess some people thought that the rule was too powerful so that's why a lot of teams ended up with aggressive linear strategies to better utilize the free scry. I'm not really buying this as I don't think scry 1 is going to help you curve out harder.

In constructed I don't really think this change has that much effect other than helping out combo decks a lot. For most decks scry 1 is not really worth much because if you're playing a normal game of Magic, most things are about card advantage. When you play combo, all of your spells are card disadvantage for a game winning effect. Combo decks already mulliganed a lot to find the desired pieces so I think having a free scry is almost like drawing a free card is certain scenarios.

I think it's a real concern about combo decks, with the counter argument being that combo decks are reasonably easy to hate out and scry mulligans help you find your sideboard card. Probably midrange is helped the least because almost by definition they don't know what they want on turn 1 (other than the limited level - is this hand playable)

I think it's the kind of thing that might be good for standard (since combo is a bit weak, and midrange is dominant). But it seems like it's very good for combo in modern or eternal formats. Possibly a prelude to modern bannings (or theoretically, unbannings)

It would be so wizards to decide that, for example, Amulet Bloom didn't need a banning until they changed the mulligan rule to make it better.

I mean, limited isn't just about who casts the most spells. It's also about bomb rares.

I don't follow close enough these days, but does Scry 1 really make a big enough difference to a single deck to get something in it banned? I mean, how does that work out?

~SE++

I think its less for combo like Amulet, but more for Storm based combo. In storm based combo, you really need a lot of resources to go off in a single turn. In the most basic sense, you need a lot of rituals and ways to chain them together. Because of this, mulligans can be very backbreaking. Allowing a scry 1 means you'll be able to figure out if that card on top is something you actually need. There is the "nut draw" scenario in which you know what your top card is and you can can trip, hold priority, and crack your LEDs into a kill. In a more common way, you'll be able to put the extra land you didn't need on the bottom or the redundant tutor/ritual/etc. The way combo decks work is that they aren't really playing Magic in a traditional sense with removal and creatures and draw spells. Scry 1 is definitely not "draw a card" in this scenario. But when you're trying to build powerful synergies that require specific cards, I think scry 1 tacked onto something can lead towards something fearsome.

I think it's reasonable that this doesn't really matter that much, but I'm afraid of what this could potential do for more powerful formats. Especially for decks that just need a little bit more consistency to succeed.

That's fair. I wonder if there wasn't some other small way to do it besides Scry 1.

~SE++

I don't see the win percentages shifting in a major way even in eternal formats. I'd expect mulligans to 6 to gain 3-4 extra points of win percentage, which is significant, but only to the point of fairness. But we'll just have to wait and see.

What did everyone think of playing with this at the prerelease?

Had to remind to someone that maybe he didn't want to crack that evolving wild yet.
Other than that it seemed fine.

I go to 6 quite a bit more often with the rule. I think I had 1 "non game" at the PR where my opponent got stuck on 1 color, but if my memory serves, he kept a 7.

Didn't affect me. Mulling is a sign of weakness.

This mulligan rule is worse than the one my playgroup uses. We just pick the 7 cards we want and shuffle our decks.

I might end up doing that, but for now I'm still reluctant. I'm not sure how reliable an advantage the scry really is.