I have this house rule we call "3-3-3". basically, if you cant play a land for 3 turns, you may search your library for 3 basics, put them into your hand, and skip your draw for the next 3 turns. I kinda like it, it helps out a bit
I would cut it to 2-2-2 as turn 3 is too late. If you didn't drop a land on 2, you're basically screwed if you don't have one by turn 3. Also, pulling 3 lands out of your deck guarantees too much.
I've tried out some other "solutions" to this (they were mostly just stupid "what if" rules changes). One was having lands in a separate deck (all lands, basic or not) and during your draw phase you would choose to draw from one deck or the other, and the starting hand had a guaranteed 2 lands (5 from your spells deck, 2 from your lands deck). Another was being able to pay a price for a fake-land. At your upkeep, you could choose to exile the top card of your library face down as a "Token Land" that tapped for colorless. This was just me and a friend who occasionally play magic and we didn't put too much thought into these changes and didn't at all make them as a solution to being land screwed, so take them with a grain of salt.
How about this: Each player starts with six cards in hand and after that, they can decide to either fetch a basic land from their deck to their hand or draw the seventh card. After that they decide to mulligan or not.
I personally always thought that it would be better to have 60 card decks that split into two before the game starts. You can have a minimum of 40 card main deck and a minimum of 0-20 land deck . You draw 3 from the land deck and 4 from the main deck as a starting hand. And every turn that passes to you, you can choose to either draw from the main deck or skip your normal draw phase and draw from the land deck which ensures you 100% get a land. So essentially, if you play Vintage and you have a deck that relies on 0 lands you would have a 60 card main deck and 0 card land deck. But most standard decks would want a 40 card main deck and a 20 card land deck or they could figure their own ratio out like 50 main deck 10 land deck etc depending on what deck you're playing and what your curve is.
Possibly separating your lands and spells into two decks? All of the normal deck building rules still apply (4x a card max except basics, 60 card minimum for the deck (which would include both your lands and spells decks). You still draw only one card per turn, but you can draw from either your lands OR your spells. Cards that draw more cards allow you to draw the same number of cards, but you can divide the number of cards you draw amongst both halves of the deck. This way, you canconsistently make your land drops, thereby decreasing losses to simple variance and luck, but it still maintains some of that variance by way of you may not draw the ideal, or correct, land even if you draw from your lands deck. Your opening hand must be drawn face down, so you can't just draw from your spells deck until you decide that you need lands, then draw that many lands. Or, you have to state, "I'm going to draw four spells cards and three lands", then you do that. You look at your 7, and decide whether or not to Mulligan, repeat the process. Any interactions that involve deck manipulation (tutors, scrying, drawing, etc), must be declared prior to performing the action, i.e. I'll cast divination, drawing one land and one spell card, then you perform the effect. Play omenspeaker, "I'll scry 2 on my lands deck", so that you can control which lands you're drawing, but your spells are still random. Milling would work the same way, though I think that there would have to be some way to mitigate people just building a mill deck, milling out your land cards, and causing you to just die because they'd only have to mill, say, 24 cards to win. Anyway, this is longer than it needed to be, but this is definitely something I'd love to fix. Losing to Mulligan's/land flood/screw just sucks!
This is an Idea I've had a couple of years ago just a little after I first started playing magic. I just got so sick of getting totally stuffed by just by how a deck dished out lands (flood or screw). It seems like the people who play the game just live with it as part of the game, personally I think that's just silly and it is a issue I think more should be done about. This is the easiest and most effective way I could think of and it makes sense to me, having lands and spells be two separate libraries. Some cards would need to be errataed to still work, mainly cards that "look at the top card of your library" as well as "you can play lands and/or spells from the top of your library". And I'm not sure how your starting hand would work (you just always have 2 lands? You pick how many lands? Not sure). I would just suggest that decks must have a minimum amount of lands (20 for a 60 card deck as an example) to stop aggro/low CMC decks just have 5 lands and the rest spells. Overall though I think this or something similar would vastly improve how the land system works and it would just the worst part of magic which is just not being able to play your deck when you draw no or WAY too many lands just because of chance.
Each player may exile a basic land from their deck before they draw their first 7 cards. Either before or after the mulligans are complete, each player may also choose to swap 1 card from their hand with the basic land that is in exile. That card remains in exile for the rest of the game. "You too Squee!"
House rules I play with my friends: 1. Mana mulligan, reveal hand if it has no lands free mulligan 2. Gentlemen's mulligan, one free mulligan no matter what your hand was
Shiny Umbra I like the Mana Mulligan idea. If you have to Mulligan due to either 7 nonlands in hand or 7 lands in hand (either of which is arguably just as bad as the other), you get to Mulligan for free. I think that might be the easiest solution and keeps the game from being completely broken. You also have to show your opponent, or a judge (I think I prefer the judge so that you don't have to start off the game with your opponent knowing exactly what you're trying to do.
My friend has a deck that make us CAN'T do that. His deck is 58 mountain and 2 wincon. If he can free mulligan until he doesn't have 7 mountain in hands, he auto wins.
There’s a simple solution to this issue, dbs has done it already, let players play cards from their hand as though they were lands but that only produce colorless mana. There’s even a cool mechanic that would let you play the a card that was played as a land, I call it Reservoir, maybe I should make a video about it. It would solve sooooo many mana problems mtg has. And it wouldn’t replace lands or anything (you would still colored lands after all) Edit: the cards would be played face-down.
That's Caster Chronicles, not DBS. DBS uses the Duel Masters system of playing cards as mana of their colour, but has M:TG's cards requiring multiple coloured mana. If designing a game from scratch it's a better system, but M:TG's costs are based around lands as they put a strong downwards pressure on costs so it's not a great solution.
How about a system where, once per game, before resolving mulligans, you may reveal your hand to your opponent. If you do and if that hand has either zero or all land, you get to mulligan for free (7 hand mull to 7). This gives you some assurance, keeps you at 7 cards, but gives the opponent information about your deck as a trade off. This way, your punishment for doing this is mitigated the most in game three, where your opponent knows what deck you play, and you really don’t want to get land screwed.
New sideboard “mana well”- contains 2 basic lands. On your second or third turn after your draw phase, you can choose to draw a basic land from your “mana well”, if you do choose a target card from your hand and remove it from the game. This cannot be done on the first turn or on any turn after the third. Ensures that any player can have at least two lands, so they aren’t as screwed, also limits the ways in which person can abuse it. Think it would work pretty well
Do a restricted partial paris mulligan. Each player can choose any of numbers of land, or non-land cards (but not both) from their hand and exile them, and draw that many cards. Then shuffle the exiled cards back into the deck. It prevents most of the hand-sculpting, but also prevents most cases of mana screw and mana flood.
Separate decks between basic land and everything else. Have 2 decks and when you draw the starting 7, draw from both at any amount you want from each to get the 7
Either separate libraries for lands (like in fow) Or put a land (or 2) in command zone that you can play if you have 4 lands or less, then reveal your hand to prove you're screwed and play a land. An alternative is to go search instead of getting it from the command zone and forfeit your next draw step.
high variance is one of the factors that keeps people coming into and back to this game. The chance all be it small to beat someone who actually knows what their doing when you are first starting and don't is a big part of the mass appeal of the game. land screw, and flood happen. if you remove variance from the curve then you would need to add variance to the cards alla hearthstone. outcome certainity is a great way to shrink a player base
surely the real way of designing a game with mana ( a system i like because it can control the pace of the game) is to make it so every card in your hand can ALSO be mana? it adds skill because it forces players to make meaningful choices on what cards to crush into mana, it opens up interesting design elements as well, subpar cards can be premium mana sources and vice versa
I like the hearstone aproach to mana, they saw the problem in magic, and have it fixed from day one. you get 1 "land" per turn (the mana cristals), and some card may help you get cristal faster or take away a cristal temporarily for a spike of early power
Idea: You can use your entire turn to deal with mana screw or flood. You skip all other phases of your turn, and no effects can be trigged on your turn if you use one of the following actions: 1: [Invigorate] You can use up your entire turn to discard a basic land to draw a card. 2: [Conjure Leyline] You can use your entire turn to discard any card to search for a basic land and play it tapped.
Just throwing it out there since you mentioned Cardfight Vanguard; In Vanguard the units you are allowed to call/guard with are limited to the Vanguards grade, which you advance by one every turn. (i.e. You start on a Grade 0, advance into a Grade 1, which allows you to call/guard with Grade 1 or lower, etc) There is a chance you might miss the next grade, but even then there is an Action called G-Assist which would let you check the top 5 cards of your deck for a possible target. All in all pretty balanced and only very few games ever are decided by the equivalent of "mana screw".
Managing the RNG is part of the deck building and playing process. I enjoy the aspects of minimizing potential weaknesses to the lowest I can while maximizing my chances for victory. The tradeoffs of enough land chance, of being mana screwed or flooded, are things to remember and I think more enjoyable.
2 examples come to mind (besides Hearthstone which you mentioned already). The WoW TCG had quests instead of lands which you played and then had special effects on them. You could also play any card from your hand face down as a blank quest which had no special effects but still counted as a resource. So the decision was to wait for another quest or burn a card you might need to stay on curve. Hex Shards of Fate has a very similar system to MTG (5 colours and resources in the deck) but with some differences. I'll describe it in MTG terms so you get the idea. Say you play a forest - you now have 1 total mana and 1 green threshold. Play a mountain next and you have 2 total mana and a green and red threshold. Play another forest and now you have 3 total mana with 2 green and 1 red threshold. The spells have threshold requirements to play, such as 1G, 1G and 1R or 2G and 1R, but your mana is always generic. So for example with 3 mana, 2G and 1R threshold you could play 3 1 cost cards with R thresholds, or a 3 cost card with 2G threshold, or a 3 cost card with 1R threshold. There are then different types of resources that do different things (like not giving you mana now but letting you scry instead) and other cards can give you thresholds or temporary mana. I like this system much better as it is more flexible, but it is still not perfect as you can still get resource screwed.
So yeah, the two different draw piles (one lands, one spells) would work, and as far as other card games that make it work are the WOW card game (where you could just play any card in your hand face down as a "mana producer" or actually, in MTG, the Big Deck format. Since it's played with 0 lands, you draw 7, and you can put any card in your hand down as a land for mana, and that land produces 1 of any type of mana that appears in its casting cost. So Zedruu could produce 1 red, white, or blue mana per turn.
What if you separate the deck into two. One has all your lands, and the other has everything else. Then, whenever an effect interacts with the library, it interacts with one of the two of the players choice. So for example: mulligan: mulligan across both of them. Draw step: draw from one of them. Scry: scry from one of them. Search your library: search one of them. Place something into your library: place it back in the deck where it belongs. etc. It would make drawing for combo pieces easier, and milling would be way more powerful, but it fixes the problem in a simple way.
Till Land Drop 2/3 On every upkeep step you can discard/exile a card from your hand, and get a Basic land from your library... If you do, Skip your draw step Sounds good enough?
My solution for dealing with mana screw would be to once per game, if a player has 3 or more cards in hand, they may reveal their hand with 0 lands in it, to search their deck for a basic land and add it to their hand. Adding a cost to it means that a player won't do it unless they need to. This is only addressing half of the issue, both mana screw and mana flood are "the lands problem".
A fun way I like to play with friends, build a 60 card deck, no lands, max of 2 colors, you draw your seven, then for lands, you can play any card face down in the land area, and it stays there, add's a fun bit of strategy trying to decide which cards in your hand to turn into land.
A real simple solution is to completely change the way decks are made and how untap/draw phases work. This would completely warp the format but would all but solve mana screw. Instead of a 60 card deck 15 card side it would change to a 40 card main deck, 20 card land deck, and 15 card side. Opening hand you would draw 5 cards from your main deck and just one from your land deck. Then on your draw phase you can draw from only one deck, so you can draw from main or draw from land. Any cards that search for lands only search the land deck. Now the problem comes for cards that search either or and in that case you'd search only one deck.
There is a command zone in standard, it the zone were emblem end up in. For consistency sake, allow either a partial mulligan that you can reveal and keep up too 2 basic and draw the rest of your hand, or a free mulligan without the scry.
For what its worth, get a basic once per game on hand size discard seems great. Unsure how exploitable it would be, but seems like a good boost to screw and limited in its application. Once per game seems key though
My solution is to have a separate 'land deck' and you draw one card from your land library and one from your normal library each turn. OR you can choose to draw a land or a non-land card.
I like your "if you discarted a card you may fetch for a basic" rule, I would just tune it so people don't take advantage of it, for example your oponent can choose if they want that discarted card to go to the graveyard or to be exiled, you don't draw a card your next turn...etc.
I've talked about this with a friend before. My idea was if they did a separate deck for lands and you can choose at your draw step weather you draw a land or a playable card
I use two house rules: the first one is if you missed a land drop you can exile two cards from your hand put a basic land from your deck onto the battlefield untapped you can only do this 3 times, or if you missed a land drop for 2 turns and you don't want to exile two cards from your hand you can shuffle your library and then your opponent cuts it.
Richard Garfield fixed many of these Magic issues when he designed his second Deckmaster game-Jyhad/Vampire: The Eternal Struggle (VTES). Read that rulebook and you'll see the fix. Only thing was that it's a multi-player game with longer games. Otherwise it was/is the best CCG when it came to always being able to play your deck.
Force of Will uses a seperate 10-20 card land deck. Tap your commander to get a land. If it's tapped can't cast it. If it's on the field cant tap it for land. It basically means if you get mana screwed it's your fault for casting your commander too early. You still have the issue of colors in decks that have more than one though.
They should just give us more consistent cards that fit into the draftable archetypes of a deck. Basically, the key is to print more cards that can be either a valuable spell, or a land, or both, without having it so far bellow the curve where playing it makes you lose _unless_ the other person gets mana screwed / flooded. Here's a couple example of cards and effects that improve consistency without ramping you or making it too easy to play your top-of-the-curve win-cons: - Anything with cycle: Can't play it? Don't need the land? Just draw another card instead. - Any scry effect - Any loot effect - Any one mana deck thinning instant or sorcery whose effect is: "pitch this in the graveyard and chose another card instead" (opt, adventurous impulse, etc.). Extra points if this card has synergy with draft archetypes; e.g. it only picks up a land or [insert archetype]. - All the effects that allow you to put a land in your hand rather than in play (e.g. skittering surveyor). Basically, more cards that do not ramp, and do not give card advantage, but give us the choice between X and a land, at a reasonable opportunity cost. These one mana "consistency cards" should exist in all colors for all archetypes.
They should add a "Any time you could mulligan, you may reveal your hand. If you have less than 4 lands in your hand, then you may shuffle your hand into your deck and draw that many cards" rule. Or maybe 3 lands. This would guarantee you a 4(or 3) land hand, and allow decently built decks to work most of the time. Maybe restrict this to twice or maybe 3 times, to make it harder to abuse.
I really liked how a game called duel masters had their mana system set up. Almost every card would produce mana with stronger cards producing more. So you constantly had to make choices about putting your big game winning creature into the mana zone and getting a boat load early, or if keeping it would be worth it to try and ramp up to. But ya trying to fix the entire core mechanic of the game this late would just break it. Anything making it easier to constantly get land would make the game entirly about mathmatics and there would be decks that no matter what would always win unless you specifically make a deck to shut it down and get owned by everything els.
I think a good compromisso wold be to have a segunda deck only for básic lands, and during your draw step, foi may chose to draw from it instead. Nasci land searxhes from it , but especial lands still goe on the main deck
Any time you would discard a card due to 7 cards in hand, if you did not play a land this turn you may discard a card and search your library for a basic land and put it into your hand? Might still be too bad, but I could see it being helpful.
How about this? At the beginning of the game everyone should choose to reveal to their opponents the amount of basic lands they are going to put in their hands. Then the players shuffle their decks and draw cards until they reach 7 cards, makes sense? That still wouldn't fix the mana flood though but it's a good for mana screw.
maybe wotc could split the decks like old L5R, left deck "mana pool/resources", right deck "spellbook" Starting hand is 4 from the spellbook and every turn u draw 1 from resources and 1 from spellbook. max hand would still be 7. edit: oh a lot of people suggested something like this already
I believe Garfield addressed the issue, luck is not mutually exclusive to skill and it serve a function in facilitating fun or at least addiction. Consider the Monty hall problem if you were given a choice of three door one containing a prize the other losers, then one door is removed that you did not choose, if given the choice to switch will give you double the odds of winning if you do. Correctly managing luck does reward you in life and does punished you for doing it wrong. Not just poker proves this but casino as a whole is a logically puzzle of profiting off of luck. Consider the following if you're counting cards and you have a slower but more accurate system or a faster system that will nonetheless make you money. Which is better? The one that makes you the most money in the shortest amount of time or perhaps the one that provides the better quality of life. A match or even a round of MTG is not the game, the game is trading the card, building the deck, speculating on the cards, its talking about the cards, its making money off the game, and sometimes its playing the game. Getting mana screwed or flooded is a price of this system. Would getting rid of the system be profitable for WoTC? Well no, because this game is basically legal gambling. Also, I like the idea of spell lands and utility land.
Have you seen Richard Garfield talk about how lands and mana add an element of chance? We need chance to be in the game for new people to enjoy and have a chance of winning. Its an interesting video everyone should check out
Last I knew Force of Will had a separate deck for the mana base, which is actually a great idea if MTG took this idea then you wouldn't get Mana screwed
There an online tcg called Spellweaver that does it nicely: it lets players return a card to their deck to search for a resource (land equivalent), could work in mtg, but dayum if that wouldn't be a lot more shuffling (my least favorite part of paper tcgs)
Dragon Ball super did it so that cards make "Mana" of their color but are played like lands. However multi-colored cards would become a problem, as they would be able to produce 1 of any color. Maybe have 1-color cards come in as basic lands, 2-color cards come in tapped, and 3-color cards come in tapped and lose 1 life, 4-color cards come in tapped and lose 2 life, and 5 color cards come in tapped and lose 4 life (to give a bigger disadvantage to 5 color decks).
Stephen Newman no... the land would be in your hand... not on the feild. You grab 3 basic lands from your deck, shuffle, then draw the remaining 4 to have a hand of 7
Maybe the pledge sistem where you can reveal a permanente and out it in play face down as a básica land of the colour of the card,(only one color) , during the initial turns. Maybe from hand or maybe from top of deck idk
If wizards ever makes another in set, they should make a mechanic where cards get a bonus if you are mana screwed. Example: A 2/2 for 2 that gets +1+1 as long as you have 2 or fewer lands. All the cards with the mechanic could have flavor text complaining about getting mana screwed
I know this is 2+ years old. Simple solutions is for MTG. To add something like a mana stone. A card that start in play. That can store mana max of 2, pull land if land less than 3 and you discard a card, and some other abilities.
do mulligan like hearthstone. draw 7, choose what you keep replace ones returned.... you stuck with the 7 you now have....still adds luck, but better mulligan system.
I like the “you have to discard because you have 8 cards in hand, go get a land” but I think deck builders could technically abuse this: you could run fewer lands and have more “tools” available in your deck because you could only run say 7 lands and 53 bombs, knowing, you can go get a land if you’re land screwed.
In modern , legacy, vintage etc the probability of being mana screw is very low instead of standard, due to great variety of mana fixers and great card drawings ( one of the main reasons why these formats are kinda broken). Of course this doesn't mean that lands as cards are not a problem of the game . Sorry for my poor english
You should look into an online game called Eternal. I think you'd like their concept for "lands" but keep in mind that it would only be possible as an E-game (E = Electronic for those of you who didn't know).
Hi, I agree 100%, lands in the deck is the worst mechanic of mtg. Thanks for the great fixes mathematically speaking, though a bit clunky in game mechanics terms, but again it's mtg we are talking about so streamlined game mechanics are not the greatest asset of the game.
So this was the exact reason I loved hecatomb. Yeah hecatomb remember that short lived gem with with the weird 5 sided plastic cards where you were bringing about the apocalypse? I utterly loved that games answer to mana. You still had mana but mana was any card in your deck it just went into the mana pool tapped as mana of its color but was no longer a viable spell.
The randomness is something enjoyable of the game. How to build around it is also a fun part of deck building. If something had to change, I'd say Mull to 5 = Tutor a basic to hand. Mull to 4 = Tutor a basic to hand, randomly discard a card from opponent's hand because LOLOLOLOL (cuz srsly a mull to 4 is a loss).
I think what it should do is if your mana screwed for 3 turns you get to draw a land card instead of drawing any card but then you have to shuffle your library ear
I like lands but it is a bad mechanic. I think a solution would be to expand on that idea of a separate deck that is just basic lands that you can choose to pull from Either deck to form the initial 7 and at each draw step choose either. Its much easier to track and the existing land placement mechanics apply. But if you want to use nonbasic lands they have to be in the main deck. Though it still suffers from being more formulaic...but because you have to choose Id think its slower.
FoW does a separate mana deck, you tap your leader and you call a stone from your stone deck, thought oh starting to play commander with my friends like that
I have a idea if you have 8 and need to discard within the first 4 turns then you may Mill yourself till you find a basic land. Then you must exile those cards you put into the graveyard
Ok so what if you draw 6 cards to start the game, but don't have any lands in your deck. You have a separate land-deck, you draw 1 from it and one from library per turn.
Change the mulligan rule. If you mulligan to 6 and don't have 2 lands in your opening hand and your scry doesn't give you a land you may search your library for a land and put that card into your hand. With 5 you do that twice. Also I hate the games where you don't get more than 3 spells in 6 turns and all you have is land... Mathematically you want the consistency to play whatever you want on the corresponding turn. The "last" way is if you play a game and you get mana screwed (too many lands or not enough lands) and can verify it then the game is a draw and move on to the next game.
The best fix would be to make all cards count as lands and not use "LANDS" at all. For example you could be like OK I have 3 cards left in hand should I drop one as a land so I can cast X or should I hold them and wait another turn for something else.
i had a deck with 20 lands, first hand, no lands, second hand, no lands, okay... third hand, no fuckin lands, i literally got down to one card, there were a total of zero lands in all the 28 cards i drew. i dont know what the odds of that are, im pretty sure theyre really fucking low, but if it can happen, it will happen.
I had a game where i lost because the other dude mulled to five. we were both playing abzan stall decks, and I decked myself. He only won because he had two more cards in his library.
Wouldn't getting rid of mana screw just help the Netdeckers by decreasing variance. Without that variance magic basically becomes chess. Also the only "real" format that doesn't have best 2/3 is commander which usually uses different mulligan rules which help reduce mana screw/flood.
So, assuming you won't keep a 1 land or less hand, make a rule that has "(2): search your library for a basic land of a type that you already have in play and put it into your hand. Activate once per turn." Some variation of that would eliminate much of the luck, but leave enough fairness to avoid a super consistent deck. But it does have the issue where putting cards/lands into your hand directly makes very specific decks go from neat to degenerate
Sgt. Nukem01 Thank you, in my head I had only ever thought of it being used on upkeep or drawstep but I see how problematic not defining that explicitly is.
It's still broken in October 2020 ... been playing mtg all day ... to count and experiment how manytimes I get mana flooded (drawing 4-6 lands straight) or not drawing any lands at all (usually stuck on two lands for 5 to 8 turns) using the same deck with optimized land to mana casting ratio. Out of 15 games, I got flooded 7 times and 5 games where I'm Mana Starved. I went another 15 rounds with the same deck, but this time I Mulligan more than half the time and it seems to help a tiny bit with the Land issue but with Mulliganing I tend to be more Land starved than being Flooded. Also when I play against Millers, I tend to see alot of Lands just being Bunched up. MTGA is no longer fun anymore as it's becoming more annoying and frustrating ... I think I'm going back to paper Magic.
If you'd have to add that many lands for one library then make your library smaller, so you don't have a 200 card library + all the lands you want, balancing your library is part of the game
What if instead of the traditional mulligan you could discard a card faced down then draw and reveal a card faced up from your library for each card in your hand (seven times). Then put the faced down cards at the bottom of your library and put the faced up cards into your hand. That way if you have a terrible starting hand you can work toward making it better card by card. The current method is a lot more unforgiving so instead of changing the lands why not change the mulligan?
Or even just go full five-card draw with it, and have it so you set aside any number of cards face-down, draw that many cards, and then shuffle the set aside cards into your library. Works for Hearthstone, so why wouldn't it work for Magic?
Menoshe That works too but I’d still say putting the faced down cards on the bottom is better. I’m not a fan of shuffling too much before the game even starts. Which is why I’d like to see a better alternative to the current mulligan.
Menoshe I should probably also point out that while your method is simple and easy to learn. My method allows for you to chose whether to continue discarding or not based on what card you revealed rather than setting any number of cards aside and not knowing what you’ll get in return. My idea has less luck involved.
It does, but is that a good thing? Giving your opponent knowledge of your hand is a small price to pay to effectively loot *7* times before the game even starts. I think that's going to give FAR too much consistency. The method I suggested doesn't help as much if fishing for a certain card in your deck, but it DOES help if, given a 2-land opening hand, you just want to mulligan into a third land. I actually ran the numbers and, assuming you keep your best spell and your 2 lands and mulligan the others in your 24 land deck, you have about an 89% chance of finding at least one more land- pretty good odds to be able to play a decent game of Magic.
Menoshe You’re right, after some consideration (and consulting my pals that I play MTG with) I realized that my method goes too far. The Hearthstone method as you suggested is definitely better, and would also be better than the current mulligan method for MTG. Generally the idea behind this is still that the mulligan should improved upon rather than changing anything about the lands.
The "if you must discard a card the first time in a game, you may instead discard down to 6 and search your deck for a basic land" would be awesome... as long as Dredge is banned.
My brother-in-law quit Magic because of the land issue. He like the VS model of being able to use one of your cards as resources. You could choose to play it, or make it a resource. I thought that was kinda ingenious. I know it makes for a more streamlined game, but you never could use the excuse "well I got mana screwed, that's why you won" after the game comment.
so if you wanted this land thing to be fixed there are a couple ways In my opinion make cycling a evergreen because when cycling is legal decks are almost always more consistent or do the hearthstone system where you get one land per turn. Pokemon runs on the land system but it is called energy same concept different way its played. Yugioh runs on a power system so it starts at you can play a 4 star creature and you can't play one more than 4 stars without sacrificing your other creatures (don't ram me if this changed I stoped playing 5 years ago). Hearthstone plays a you get one mana a turn but there's only one mulligan so you can end up with a hand of 3 cards with 5+ cost and die to zoo and hunter.
I have this house rule we call "3-3-3". basically, if you cant play a land for 3 turns, you may search your library for 3 basics, put them into your hand, and skip your draw for the next 3 turns. I kinda like it, it helps out a bit
DJ Ethanol 2. Makes sence, as you would have enough cards in hand
The only problem is being mana flooded, but that is still less problems to worry about
That seems awkward, if you're brushing up against hand size anyways. Would suck to search out three basics, just to have to discard to hand size.
I would cut it to 2-2-2 as turn 3 is too late. If you didn't drop a land on 2, you're basically screwed if you don't have one by turn 3. Also, pulling 3 lands out of your deck guarantees too much.
@@dyciefisk2535once i has 8 mana in hand and iirc 4 in hand...
I purpose a separate land library, and you pick from which library you draw from, even from the original draw.
I've tried out some other "solutions" to this (they were mostly just stupid "what if" rules changes). One was having lands in a separate deck (all lands, basic or not) and during your draw phase you would choose to draw from one deck or the other, and the starting hand had a guaranteed 2 lands (5 from your spells deck, 2 from your lands deck).
Another was being able to pay a price for a fake-land. At your upkeep, you could choose to exile the top card of your library face down as a "Token Land" that tapped for colorless.
This was just me and a friend who occasionally play magic and we didn't put too much thought into these changes and didn't at all make them as a solution to being land screwed, so take them with a grain of salt.
How about this: Each player starts with six cards in hand and after that, they can decide to either fetch a basic land from their deck to their hand or draw the seventh card. After that they decide to mulligan or not.
I personally always thought that it would be better to have 60 card decks that split into two before the game starts. You can have a minimum of 40 card main deck and a minimum of 0-20 land deck . You draw 3 from the land deck and 4 from the main deck as a starting hand. And every turn that passes to you, you can choose to either draw from the main deck or skip your normal draw phase and draw from the land deck which ensures you 100% get a land. So essentially, if you play Vintage and you have a deck that relies on 0 lands you would have a 60 card main deck and 0 card land deck. But most standard decks would want a 40 card main deck and a 20 card land deck or they could figure their own ratio out like 50 main deck 10 land deck etc depending on what deck you're playing and what your curve is.
This should be the official rule!!
This will solve the mana problem forever.
Possibly separating your lands and spells into two decks? All of the normal deck building rules still apply (4x a card max except basics, 60 card minimum for the deck (which would include both your lands and spells decks). You still draw only one card per turn, but you can draw from either your lands OR your spells. Cards that draw more cards allow you to draw the same number of cards, but you can divide the number of cards you draw amongst both halves of the deck. This way, you canconsistently make your land drops, thereby decreasing losses to simple variance and luck, but it still maintains some of that variance by way of you may not draw the ideal, or correct, land even if you draw from your lands deck. Your opening hand must be drawn face down, so you can't just draw from your spells deck until you decide that you need lands, then draw that many lands. Or, you have to state, "I'm going to draw four spells cards and three lands", then you do that. You look at your 7, and decide whether or not to Mulligan, repeat the process. Any interactions that involve deck manipulation (tutors, scrying, drawing, etc), must be declared prior to performing the action, i.e. I'll cast divination, drawing one land and one spell card, then you perform the effect. Play omenspeaker, "I'll scry 2 on my lands deck", so that you can control which lands you're drawing, but your spells are still random. Milling would work the same way, though I think that there would have to be some way to mitigate people just building a mill deck, milling out your land cards, and causing you to just die because they'd only have to mill, say, 24 cards to win. Anyway, this is longer than it needed to be, but this is definitely something I'd love to fix. Losing to Mulligan's/land flood/screw just sucks!
This is an Idea I've had a couple of years ago just a little after I first started playing magic. I just got so sick of getting totally stuffed by just by how a deck dished out lands (flood or screw). It seems like the people who play the game just live with it as part of the game, personally I think that's just silly and it is a issue I think more should be done about.
This is the easiest and most effective way I could think of and it makes sense to me, having lands and spells be two separate libraries. Some cards would need to be errataed to still work, mainly cards that "look at the top card of your library" as well as "you can play lands and/or spells from the top of your library". And I'm not sure how your starting hand would work (you just always have 2 lands? You pick how many lands? Not sure).
I would just suggest that decks must have a minimum amount of lands (20 for a 60 card deck as an example) to stop aggro/low CMC decks just have 5 lands and the rest spells. Overall though I think this or something similar would vastly improve how the land system works and it would just the worst part of magic which is just not being able to play your deck when you draw no or WAY too many lands just because of chance.
how to basially play mtg with lands outside deck:
1) drop mtg
2)pick up force of will
3) ????
4) profit :^)
a random land every turn is worse then being able to decide how to sequence your land drops from your hand.
@@peternordstrom9991 It's not actually that bad
What kind of loser would want to play a lame anime mtg rip off.
Each player may exile a basic land from their deck before they draw their first 7 cards. Either before or after the mulligans are complete, each player may also choose to swap 1 card from their hand with the basic land that is in exile. That card remains in exile for the rest of the game.
"You too Squee!"
I want to thank you for that comment, cause it really helped our gametable, 4 years after it was written. You, my man, are a genious!
House rules I play with my friends:
1. Mana mulligan, reveal hand if it has no lands free mulligan
2. Gentlemen's mulligan, one free mulligan no matter what your hand was
Shiny Umbra I like the Mana Mulligan idea. If you have to Mulligan due to either 7 nonlands in hand or 7 lands in hand (either of which is arguably just as bad as the other), you get to Mulligan for free. I think that might be the easiest solution and keeps the game from being completely broken. You also have to show your opponent, or a judge (I think I prefer the judge so that you don't have to start off the game with your opponent knowing exactly what you're trying to do.
its casuals, so yeah other person but just anyone to check
My friend has a deck that make us CAN'T do that. His deck is 58 mountain and 2 wincon. If he can free mulligan until he doesn't have 7 mountain in hands, he auto wins.
ZenoxDemin I mean you can limit number of mulligans (like twice) cause I thought of when we started but didn't care enough to think on how to abuse it
There’s a simple solution to this issue, dbs has done it already, let players play cards from their hand as though they were lands but that only produce colorless mana. There’s even a cool mechanic that would let you play the a card that was played as a land, I call it Reservoir, maybe I should make a video about it. It would solve sooooo many mana problems mtg has.
And it wouldn’t replace lands or anything (you would still colored lands after all)
Edit: the cards would be played face-down.
That’s what the original Warcraft card game did
That's Caster Chronicles, not DBS. DBS uses the Duel Masters system of playing cards as mana of their colour, but has M:TG's cards requiring multiple coloured mana. If designing a game from scratch it's a better system, but M:TG's costs are based around lands as they put a strong downwards pressure on costs so it's not a great solution.
Literally Duel Masters (nobody remembers that game)
How about a system where, once per game, before resolving mulligans, you may reveal your hand to your opponent. If you do and if that hand has either zero or all land, you get to mulligan for free (7 hand mull to 7). This gives you some assurance, keeps you at 7 cards, but gives the opponent information about your deck as a trade off. This way, your punishment for doing this is mitigated the most in game three, where your opponent knows what deck you play, and you really don’t want to get land screwed.
New sideboard “mana well”- contains 2 basic lands. On your second or third turn after your draw phase, you can choose to draw a basic land from your “mana well”, if you do choose a target card from your hand and remove it from the game. This cannot be done on the first turn or on any turn after the third.
Ensures that any player can have at least two lands, so they aren’t as screwed, also limits the ways in which person can abuse it. Think it would work pretty well
Legends of runeterra has THE BEST mana system tbh
Do a restricted partial paris mulligan. Each player can choose any of numbers of land, or non-land cards (but not both) from their hand and exile them, and draw that many cards. Then shuffle the exiled cards back into the deck. It prevents most of the hand-sculpting, but also prevents most cases of mana screw and mana flood.
what if we had a serperate land deck, but had to pick on draw to draw from land or spell deck?
Separate decks between basic land and everything else. Have 2 decks and when you draw the starting 7, draw from both at any amount you want from each to get the 7
Either separate libraries for lands (like in fow)
Or put a land (or 2) in command zone that you can play if you have 4 lands or less, then reveal your hand to prove you're screwed and play a land.
An alternative is to go search instead of getting it from the command zone and forfeit your next draw step.
high variance is one of the factors that keeps people coming into and back to this game. The chance all be it small to beat someone who actually knows what their doing when you are first starting and don't is a big part of the mass appeal of the game. land screw, and flood happen. if you remove variance from the curve then you would need to add variance to the cards alla hearthstone. outcome certainity is a great way to shrink a player base
As for fixing, you could do the command zone basic, but exile a card at random from somewhere to play it?
surely the real way of designing a game with mana ( a system i like because it can control the pace of the game) is to make it so every card in your hand can ALSO be mana? it adds skill because it forces players to make meaningful choices on what cards to crush into mana, it opens up interesting design elements as well, subpar cards can be premium mana sources and vice versa
I like the hearstone aproach to mana, they saw the problem in magic, and have it fixed from day one.
you get 1 "land" per turn (the mana cristals), and some card may help you get cristal faster or take away a cristal temporarily for a spike of early power
Shuffle deck -> draw 13 cards and keep 7. Put the other 6 in the top or bottom of the deck in any order you want.
This may be it tbh
Idea: You can use your entire turn to deal with mana screw or flood. You skip all other phases of your turn, and no effects can be trigged on your turn if you use one of the following actions:
1: [Invigorate] You can use up your entire turn to discard a basic land to draw a card.
2: [Conjure Leyline] You can use your entire turn to discard any card to search for a basic land and play it tapped.
Just throwing it out there since you mentioned Cardfight Vanguard; In Vanguard the units you are allowed to call/guard with are limited to the Vanguards grade, which you advance by one every turn. (i.e. You start on a Grade 0, advance into a Grade 1, which allows you to call/guard with Grade 1 or lower, etc) There is a chance you might miss the next grade, but even then there is an Action called G-Assist which would let you check the top 5 cards of your deck for a possible target. All in all pretty balanced and only very few games ever are decided by the equivalent of "mana screw".
What if after the 3 turn no land drop, you MAY mill the top of your deck into exile until you hit a land. It could work
Managing the RNG is part of the deck building and playing process. I enjoy the aspects of minimizing potential weaknesses to the lowest I can while maximizing my chances for victory. The tradeoffs of enough land chance, of being mana screwed or flooded, are things to remember and I think more enjoyable.
2 examples come to mind (besides Hearthstone which you mentioned already).
The WoW TCG had quests instead of lands which you played and then had special effects on them. You could also play any card from your hand face down as a blank quest which had no special effects but still counted as a resource. So the decision was to wait for another quest or burn a card you might need to stay on curve.
Hex Shards of Fate has a very similar system to MTG (5 colours and resources in the deck) but with some differences. I'll describe it in MTG terms so you get the idea. Say you play a forest - you now have 1 total mana and 1 green threshold. Play a mountain next and you have 2 total mana and a green and red threshold. Play another forest and now you have 3 total mana with 2 green and 1 red threshold. The spells have threshold requirements to play, such as 1G, 1G and 1R or 2G and 1R, but your mana is always generic. So for example with 3 mana, 2G and 1R threshold you could play 3 1 cost cards with R thresholds, or a 3 cost card with 2G threshold, or a 3 cost card with 1R threshold. There are then different types of resources that do different things (like not giving you mana now but letting you scry instead) and other cards can give you thresholds or temporary mana. I like this system much better as it is more flexible, but it is still not perfect as you can still get resource screwed.
So yeah, the two different draw piles (one lands, one spells) would work, and as far as other card games that make it work are the WOW card game (where you could just play any card in your hand face down as a "mana producer" or actually, in MTG, the Big Deck format. Since it's played with 0 lands, you draw 7, and you can put any card in your hand down as a land for mana, and that land produces 1 of any type of mana that appears in its casting cost. So Zedruu could produce 1 red, white, or blue mana per turn.
What if you separate the deck into two. One has all your lands, and the other has everything else. Then, whenever an effect interacts with the library, it interacts with one of the two of the players choice. So for example: mulligan: mulligan across both of them. Draw step: draw from one of them. Scry: scry from one of them. Search your library: search one of them. Place something into your library: place it back in the deck where it belongs. etc. It would make drawing for combo pieces easier, and milling would be way more powerful, but it fixes the problem in a simple way.
Till Land Drop 2/3 On every upkeep step you can discard/exile a card from your hand, and get a Basic land from your library... If you do, Skip your draw step
Sounds good enough?
My solution for dealing with mana screw would be to once per game, if a player has 3 or more cards in hand, they may reveal their hand with 0 lands in it, to search their deck for a basic land and add it to their hand. Adding a cost to it means that a player won't do it unless they need to.
This is only addressing half of the issue, both mana screw and mana flood are "the lands problem".
A fun way I like to play with friends, build a 60 card deck, no lands, max of 2 colors, you draw your seven, then for lands, you can play any card face down in the land area, and it stays there, add's a fun bit of strategy trying to decide which cards in your hand to turn into land.
A real simple solution is to completely change the way decks are made and how untap/draw phases work. This would completely warp the format but would all but solve mana screw. Instead of a 60 card deck 15 card side it would change to a 40 card main deck, 20 card land deck, and 15 card side. Opening hand you would draw 5 cards from your main deck and just one from your land deck. Then on your draw phase you can draw from only one deck, so you can draw from main or draw from land. Any cards that search for lands only search the land deck. Now the problem comes for cards that search either or and in that case you'd search only one deck.
There is a command zone in standard, it the zone were emblem end up in. For consistency sake, allow either a partial mulligan that you can reveal and keep up too 2 basic and draw the rest of your hand, or a free mulligan without the scry.
would you keep a one lander with four one drops and two two drops
ben. hax I would. It reminds me of my Goblins deck. As long as I can play a spell every turn, I keep
For what its worth, get a basic once per game on hand size discard seems great. Unsure how exploitable it would be, but seems like a good boost to screw and limited in its application. Once per game seems key though
My solution is to have a separate 'land deck' and you draw one card from your land library and one from your normal library each turn. OR you can choose to draw a land or a non-land card.
I like your "if you discarted a card you may fetch for a basic" rule, I would just tune it so people don't take advantage of it, for example your oponent can choose if they want that discarted card to go to the graveyard or to be exiled, you don't draw a card your next turn...etc.
I've talked about this with a friend before. My idea was if they did a separate deck for lands and you can choose at your draw step weather you draw a land or a playable card
I use two house rules: the first one is if you missed a land drop you can exile two cards from your hand put a basic land from your deck onto the battlefield untapped you can only do this 3 times, or if you missed a land drop for 2 turns and you don't want to exile two cards from your hand you can shuffle your library and then your opponent cuts it.
Richard Garfield fixed many of these Magic issues when he designed his second Deckmaster game-Jyhad/Vampire: The Eternal Struggle (VTES). Read that rulebook and you'll see the fix. Only thing was that it's a multi-player game with longer games. Otherwise it was/is the best CCG when it came to always being able to play your deck.
Force of Will uses a seperate 10-20 card land deck. Tap your commander to get a land. If it's tapped can't cast it. If it's on the field cant tap it for land. It basically means if you get mana screwed it's your fault for casting your commander too early. You still have the issue of colors in decks that have more than one though.
They should just give us more consistent cards that fit into the draftable archetypes of a deck. Basically, the key is to print more cards that can be either a valuable spell, or a land, or both, without having it so far bellow the curve where playing it makes you lose _unless_ the other person gets mana screwed / flooded.
Here's a couple example of cards and effects that improve consistency without ramping you or making it too easy to play your top-of-the-curve win-cons:
- Anything with cycle: Can't play it? Don't need the land? Just draw another card instead.
- Any scry effect
- Any loot effect
- Any one mana deck thinning instant or sorcery whose effect is: "pitch this in the graveyard and chose another card instead" (opt, adventurous impulse, etc.). Extra points if this card has synergy with draft archetypes; e.g. it only picks up a land or [insert archetype].
- All the effects that allow you to put a land in your hand rather than in play (e.g. skittering surveyor).
Basically, more cards that do not ramp, and do not give card advantage, but give us the choice between X and a land, at a reasonable opportunity cost. These one mana "consistency cards" should exist in all colors for all archetypes.
They should add a "Any time you could mulligan, you may reveal your hand. If you have less than 4 lands in your hand, then you may shuffle your hand into your deck and draw that many cards" rule. Or maybe 3 lands. This would guarantee you a 4(or 3) land hand, and allow decently built decks to work most of the time. Maybe restrict this to twice or maybe 3 times, to make it harder to abuse.
We’ll keep an eye out for our TCG and you may be surprised on how we try and balance that!
2 decks one land deck on spell deck you draw 7 cards 3 from land 4 from spells then on draw you pick what deck you draw from
Begin with one basic land in the command zone. Draw 6, look at them, then decide to draw a 7th or add the land to your land
I really liked how a game called duel masters had their mana system set up. Almost every card would produce mana with stronger cards producing more. So you constantly had to make choices about putting your big game winning creature into the mana zone and getting a boat load early, or if keeping it would be worth it to try and ramp up to.
But ya trying to fix the entire core mechanic of the game this late would just break it. Anything making it easier to constantly get land would make the game entirly about mathmatics and there would be decks that no matter what would always win unless you specifically make a deck to shut it down and get owned by everything els.
How about a land draw pile and a spell draw pile? You can still only draw one card at the beginning of your turn.
I think a good compromisso wold be to have a segunda deck only for básic lands, and during your draw step, foi may chose to draw from it instead.
Nasci land searxhes from it , but especial lands still goe on the main deck
Force of will has a land deck and non-land cards deck that you choose which to draw from.
Any time you would discard a card due to 7 cards in hand, if you did not play a land this turn you may discard a card and search your library for a basic land and put it into your hand? Might still be too bad, but I could see it being helpful.
How about this?
At the beginning of the game everyone should choose to reveal to their opponents the amount of basic lands they are going to put in their hands.
Then the players shuffle their decks and draw cards until they reach 7 cards, makes sense?
That still wouldn't fix the mana flood though but it's a good for mana screw.
Doesn't pokemon have energy in the deck?
maybe wotc could split the decks like old L5R, left deck "mana pool/resources", right deck "spellbook" Starting hand is 4 from the spellbook and every turn u draw 1 from resources and 1 from spellbook. max hand would still be 7.
edit: oh a lot of people suggested something like this already
I believe Garfield addressed the issue, luck is not mutually exclusive to skill and it serve a function in facilitating fun or at least addiction. Consider the Monty hall problem if you were given a choice of three door one containing a prize the other losers, then one door is removed that you did not choose, if given the choice to switch will give you double the odds of winning if you do. Correctly managing luck does reward you in life and does punished you for doing it wrong. Not just poker proves this but casino as a whole is a logically puzzle of profiting off of luck.
Consider the following if you're counting cards and you have a slower but more accurate system or a faster system that will nonetheless make you money. Which is better? The one that makes you the most money in the shortest amount of time or perhaps the one that provides the better quality of life.
A match or even a round of MTG is not the game, the game is trading the card, building the deck, speculating on the cards, its talking about the cards, its making money off the game, and sometimes its playing the game. Getting mana screwed or flooded is a price of this system. Would getting rid of the system be profitable for WoTC? Well no, because this game is basically legal gambling.
Also, I like the idea of spell lands and utility land.
Have you seen Richard Garfield talk about how lands and mana add an element of chance? We need chance to be in the game for new people to enjoy and have a chance of winning. Its an interesting video everyone should check out
Last I knew Force of Will had a separate deck for the mana base, which is actually a great idea if MTG took this idea then you wouldn't get Mana screwed
But then it wouldn't be mtg it would be shitty force of will.
how about being able to play as many basic lands as you want, but only being able to play one advanced land per turn?
Thats actually 2 really good ideas never heard them before and I like them I think ima implament them in my house games to see how they do
There an online tcg called Spellweaver that does it nicely: it lets players return a card to their deck to search for a resource (land equivalent), could work in mtg, but dayum if that wouldn't be a lot more shuffling (my least favorite part of paper tcgs)
Dragon Ball super did it so that cards make "Mana" of their color but are played like lands. However multi-colored cards would become a problem, as they would be able to produce 1 of any color. Maybe have 1-color cards come in as basic lands, 2-color cards come in tapped, and 3-color cards come in tapped and lose 1 life, 4-color cards come in tapped and lose 2 life, and 5 color cards come in tapped and lose 4 life (to give a bigger disadvantage to 5 color decks).
Also, lands could still be a thing, just basic lands would only be used for draft.
So kinda like in big deck, a made up format? Look it up, by Gamrplays by Clonehead.
Sometimes me and my little sister pull out 3 basic lands b4 we shuffle and then draw 4.
Stephen Newman no... the land would be in your hand... not on the feild. You grab 3 basic lands from your deck, shuffle, then draw the remaining 4 to have a hand of 7
Maybe the pledge sistem where you can reveal a permanente and out it in play face down as a básica land of the colour of the card,(only one color) , during the initial turns.
Maybe from hand or maybe from top of deck idk
If wizards ever makes another in set, they should make a mechanic where cards get a bonus if you are mana screwed. Example: A 2/2 for 2 that gets +1+1 as long as you have 2 or fewer lands. All the cards with the mechanic could have flavor text complaining about getting mana screwed
I know this is 2+ years old. Simple solutions is for MTG. To add something like a mana stone. A card that start in play. That can store mana max of 2, pull land if land less than 3 and you discard a card, and some other abilities.
do mulligan like hearthstone.
draw 7, choose what you keep
replace ones returned....
you stuck with the 7 you now have....still adds luck, but better mulligan system.
I like the “you have to discard because you have 8 cards in hand, go get a land” but I think deck builders could technically abuse this: you could run fewer lands and have more “tools” available in your deck because you could only run say 7 lands and 53 bombs, knowing, you can go get a land if you’re land screwed.
In shadow era you don't have specific land cards so when you want to play a land you sacrifice one of your cards and place it facedown as a land.
In modern , legacy, vintage etc the probability of being mana screw is very low instead of standard, due to great variety of mana fixers and great card drawings ( one of the main reasons why these formats are kinda broken). Of course this doesn't mean that lands as cards are not a problem of the game . Sorry for my poor english
You should look into an online game called Eternal. I think you'd like their concept for "lands" but keep in mind that it would only be possible as an E-game (E = Electronic for those of you who didn't know).
Hi, I agree 100%, lands in the deck is the worst mechanic of mtg. Thanks for the great fixes mathematically speaking, though a bit clunky in game mechanics terms, but again it's mtg we are talking about so streamlined game mechanics are not the greatest asset of the game.
So this was the exact reason I loved hecatomb. Yeah hecatomb remember that short lived gem with with the weird 5 sided plastic cards where you were bringing about the apocalypse? I utterly loved that games answer to mana. You still had mana but mana was any card in your deck it just went into the mana pool tapped as mana of its color but was no longer a viable spell.
The randomness is something enjoyable of the game. How to build around it is also a fun part of deck building. If something had to change, I'd say Mull to 5 = Tutor a basic to hand. Mull to 4 = Tutor a basic to hand, randomly discard a card from opponent's hand because LOLOLOLOL (cuz srsly a mull to 4 is a loss).
I think what it should do is if your mana screwed for 3 turns you get to draw a land card instead of drawing any card but then you have to shuffle your library ear
I like lands but it is a bad mechanic. I think a solution would be to expand on that idea of a separate deck that is just basic lands that you can choose to pull from Either deck to form the initial 7 and at each draw step choose either. Its much easier to track and the existing land placement mechanics apply. But if you want to use nonbasic lands they have to be in the main deck. Though it still suffers from being more formulaic...but because you have to choose Id think its slower.
FoW does a separate mana deck, you tap your leader and you call a stone from your stone deck, thought oh starting to play commander with my friends like that
A slight problem would be people exploiting the system to get to search for the exact color they need and build a 4/5 color deck.
I have a idea if you have 8 and need to discard within the first 4 turns then you may Mill yourself till you find a basic land. Then you must exile those cards you put into the graveyard
Ok so what if you draw 6 cards to start the game, but don't have any lands in your deck. You have a separate land-deck, you draw 1 from it and one from library per turn.
I like the get a land after discarding idea
Change the mulligan rule. If you mulligan to 6 and don't have 2 lands in your opening hand and your scry doesn't give you a land you may search your library for a land and put that card into your hand. With 5 you do that twice. Also I hate the games where you don't get more than 3 spells in 6 turns and all you have is land...
Mathematically you want the consistency to play whatever you want on the corresponding turn.
The "last" way is if you play a game and you get mana screwed (too many lands or not enough lands) and can verify it then the game is a draw and move on to the next game.
The best fix would be to make all cards count as lands and not use "LANDS" at all. For example you could be like OK I have 3 cards left in hand should I drop one as a land so I can cast X or should I hold them and wait another turn for something else.
i had a deck with 20 lands, first hand, no lands, second hand, no lands, okay... third hand, no fuckin lands, i literally got down to one card, there were a total of zero lands in all the 28 cards i drew. i dont know what the odds of that are, im pretty sure theyre really fucking low, but if it can happen, it will happen.
Nug Humper Dez would say if you’re shuffling correctly, mana weaving is 100% pointless.
20 lands isnt very reliable
I had a game where i lost because the other dude mulled to five. we were both playing abzan stall decks, and I decked myself. He only won because he had two more cards in his library.
Wouldn't getting rid of mana screw just help the Netdeckers by decreasing variance. Without that variance magic basically becomes chess. Also the only "real" format that doesn't have best 2/3 is commander which usually uses different mulligan rules which help reduce mana screw/flood.
So, assuming you won't keep a 1 land or less hand, make a rule that has "(2): search your library for a basic land of a type that you already have in play and put it into your hand. Activate once per turn." Some variation of that would eliminate much of the luck, but leave enough fairness to avoid a super consistent deck. But it does have the issue where putting cards/lands into your hand directly makes very specific decks go from neat to degenerate
Kelthane youd probably also have to make it only able to use it on your turn or at your upkeep
Sgt. Nukem01 Thank you, in my head I had only ever thought of it being used on upkeep or drawstep but I see how problematic not defining that explicitly is.
It's still broken in October 2020 ... been playing mtg all day ... to count and experiment how manytimes I get mana flooded (drawing 4-6 lands straight) or not drawing any lands at all (usually stuck on two lands for 5 to 8 turns) using the same deck with optimized land to mana casting ratio. Out of 15 games, I got flooded 7 times and 5 games where I'm Mana Starved. I went another 15 rounds with the same deck, but this time I Mulligan more than half the time and it seems to help a tiny bit with the Land issue but with Mulliganing I tend to be more Land starved than being Flooded. Also when I play against Millers, I tend to see alot of Lands just being Bunched up. MTGA is no longer fun anymore as it's becoming more annoying and frustrating ... I think I'm going back to paper Magic.
Make it Like Poker Where You Draw 7 and Each of You Can Trade in 2 Cards for 2 New Cards off The Top!
We could have a system like eternal, where you are guaranteed 2-4 lands in every hand
Getting mana screwed with 24 lands in the deck and flooding with 19 lands in the deck... and that's after thorough shuffling... ...
Reveal your hand to show no lands then either scry or fetch
If you'd have to add that many lands for one library then make your library smaller, so you don't have a 200 card library + all the lands you want, balancing your library is part of the game
"Mana"? Excuse me, we prefer to say "persona," to be more inclusive.
Zing! Take that Trudeau!
What if instead of the traditional mulligan you could discard a card faced down then draw and reveal a card faced up from your library for each card in your hand (seven times). Then put the faced down cards at the bottom of your library and put the faced up cards into your hand. That way if you have a terrible starting hand you can work toward making it better card by card. The current method is a lot more unforgiving so instead of changing the lands why not change the mulligan?
Or even just go full five-card draw with it, and have it so you set aside any number of cards face-down, draw that many cards, and then shuffle the set aside cards into your library. Works for Hearthstone, so why wouldn't it work for Magic?
Menoshe
That works too but I’d still say putting the faced down cards on the bottom is better. I’m not a fan of shuffling too much before the game even starts. Which is why I’d like to see a better alternative to the current mulligan.
Menoshe
I should probably also point out that while your method is simple and easy to learn. My method allows for you to chose whether to continue discarding or not based on what card you revealed rather than setting any number of cards aside and not knowing what you’ll get in return. My idea has less luck involved.
It does, but is that a good thing? Giving your opponent knowledge of your hand is a small price to pay to effectively loot *7* times before the game even starts. I think that's going to give FAR too much consistency. The method I suggested doesn't help as much if fishing for a certain card in your deck, but it DOES help if, given a 2-land opening hand, you just want to mulligan into a third land. I actually ran the numbers and, assuming you keep your best spell and your 2 lands and mulligan the others in your 24 land deck, you have about an 89% chance of finding at least one more land- pretty good odds to be able to play a decent game of Magic.
Menoshe
You’re right, after some consideration (and consulting my pals that I play MTG with) I realized that my method goes too far. The Hearthstone method as you suggested is definitely better, and would also be better than the current mulligan method for MTG.
Generally the idea behind this is still that the mulligan should improved upon rather than changing anything about the lands.
The "if you must discard a card the first time in a game, you may instead discard down to 6 and search your deck for a basic land" would be awesome... as long as Dredge is banned.
My solution is that you can reveal your hand and skip your draw step if you have no lands in hand to search your library for a basic land
My brother-in-law quit Magic because of the land issue. He like the VS model of being able to use one of your cards as resources. You could choose to play it, or make it a resource. I thought that was kinda ingenious. I know it makes for a more streamlined game, but you never could use the excuse "well I got mana screwed, that's why you won" after the game comment.
bumb scry 1 to scry 2 or if its turn 4 and you have only to lands in play you can scry 3 before draw (must also not have the 3rd land in hand
so if you wanted this land thing to be fixed there are a couple ways In my opinion make cycling a evergreen because when cycling is legal decks are almost always more consistent or do the hearthstone system where you get one land per turn.
Pokemon runs on the land system but it is called energy same concept different way its played.
Yugioh runs on a power system so it starts at you can play a 4 star creature and you can't play one more than 4 stars without sacrificing your other creatures (don't ram me if this changed I stoped playing 5 years ago).
Hearthstone plays a you get one mana a turn but there's only one mulligan so you can end up with a hand of 3 cards with 5+ cost and die to zoo and hunter.