MTG Mulligan Rules: The London Mulligan Explained

Magic uses the London mulligan, the standard mulligan rule in modern play. At the start of the game you draw seven cards, and if you don't like your hand you may choose to mulligan. To do so, you shuffle your hand back into your library and draw a fresh seven cards. You can repeat this process as many times as you like, drawing seven new cards each time you mulligan.

The catch is that each mulligan costs you a card. After you decide to keep a hand, you must put a number of cards on the bottom of your library equal to the number of times you mulliganed. So if you mulligan once, you keep but bottom one card, ending with six. Mulligan twice and you bottom two, ending with five. This 'draw seven, then bottom' system lets you see a full hand each time while still paying a price for digging deeper.

The most common reason to mulligan is a problem with your lands. A hand with zero or one land, or a hand flooded with too many lands and no action, often can't function, and keeping it can lose you the game before it really starts. As a rule of thumb, hands with two to four lands and a reasonable mix of spells are usually keepable, while extreme land counts are strong candidates for a mulligan.

Beyond lands, consider whether the hand actually does something on the early turns of the game. A hand full of expensive cards you can't cast for many turns, or one with no clear plan against your opponent's likely strategy, may be worth shipping back. Because each mulligan costs a card, it's a balance: you want to fix a genuinely bad hand without crippling yourself by mulliganing too aggressively into a smaller hand.

A good way to judge an opening hand is to imagine your first few turns. Ask yourself whether you can hit your land drops, whether you have plays to make on the early turns, and whether the hand has a path to winning or at least staying alive. A hand that can cast spells on curve and develop a board is usually worth keeping, even if it isn't perfect.

It helps to know your deck and the format you're playing, since fast aggressive decks need cheap early plays while slower control decks can keep hands that act later. Also remember that being on the play (going first) versus the draw (going second, with an extra card) can change a borderline decision. With practice, evaluating hands becomes intuitive, and learning when to mulligan is one of the biggest skill gains a new player can make.