London Mulligan Rules

When you take a mulligan, you shuffle your hand into your library and draw a fresh seven cards. If you mulligan again, you do the same thing again. After you finally decide to keep, you put a number of cards from your hand on the bottom of your library equal to the number of mulligans you took.

That means if you keep your first hand, you keep all seven cards. If you mulligan once and then keep, you still looked at seven cards but you bottom one before the game begins, so you start with six. If you mulligan twice and then keep, you again look at seven cards and bottom two, ending with five in hand.

This is why the London mulligan feels better than older systems. Every mulligan gives you another full seven-card look. You are still paying with card quantity, but you are not forced to evaluate smaller and smaller random hands on the way down.

The key sequence is simple. Draw seven. Decide whether to keep. If you keep after mulliganing, bottom cards equal to mulligans taken.

Commander decks are singleton and usually 99 cards deep, so opening hands can be volatile. The London mulligan helps by giving you better odds of finding lands, ramp, or one early piece of your plan before the first turn starts. That is one reason Commander games are more playable now than they were under older mulligan systems.

But the London mulligan is not a free pass to be reckless. A six-card hand with lands, ramp, and interaction can be much stronger than a greedy seven with no early plays. The correct decision depends on what your deck actually needs to function. Some decks can keep a slow hand because they have card draw and resilient mana. Others must mulligan aggressively for early development.

If you want the numbers behind those decisions, use the mulligan calculator. If your question is really about the odds of finding one category of card in an opening hand, the hypergeometric calculator and mana base calculator help from different angles.

The first mistake is believing a mulligan means drawing fewer than seven immediately. That is not how London works. You always redraw seven first, then bottom cards after deciding to keep. The second mistake is assuming every Commander table gets an official free mulligan. Some groups still use that as a house rule, but official Commander follows the standard London mulligan instead.

The third mistake is evaluating hands only by raw card count. A functional six is often much better than a clumsy seven. For example, a six-card hand with three lands, one two-mana rock, one cheap interaction spell, and one card draw spell is usually stronger than a seven-card hand with two expensive cards, one land, and no acceleration. The mulligan decision is about playability, not pride.

Another mistake is bottoming the wrong cards. After deciding to keep, you usually bottom the cards least likely to matter in the first several turns. That may be the clunkiest spell, a duplicate effect, or a situational answer that does nothing early. Good bottom decisions are part of why the London mulligan rewards planning instead of just luck.

Ask one honest question: can this hand execute my deck's first useful turns? For some decks that means three lands and any spell. For others it means two lands, one ramp piece, and a payoff. Combo decks may need selection or protection. Stax decks may need a specific early piece. Your mulligan standard should match your deck's real plan, not a generic idea of what a good hand looks like.

If you consistently lose because you never curve out, your problem may be deck structure, not mulligan discipline. If you constantly go to six or five searching for a perfect hand, your problem may be expectations, not variance. The London mulligan helps you find functional sevens more often, but it does not eliminate bad deckbuilding or unrealistic keeps.

If your table also gets tripped up by format setup, this starting life totals guide helps before the first hand is drawn. Then you can return to the main MTG Commander tracker for live play.

Many Commander players improve faster by tightening mulligans than by changing a dozen cards at once. A deck can be powerful on paper and still underperform if it routinely keeps slow or awkward openers. On the other side, a solid but fair deck often feels stronger when the pilot consistently identifies which six-card hands are genuinely functional instead of chasing a perfect seven.

This is why experienced players talk about mulligans as part of deck identity. Fast combo decks, heavy ramp decks, creature curve decks, and reactive control decks do not keep the same hands. Learning those standards is part of piloting well, not just a pregame formality.

Over time, better mulligans also make testing more honest. If you keep hands you would never keep in a serious game, your deck may appear slower or clunkier than it really is. If you send back every hand that is merely average, your deck may appear more explosive than it really is. Consistent mulligan standards give you cleaner information when you decide whether the deck itself needs changes.

There is no single number that fits every Commander deck, but most keeps are really questions about function, not just land count. Three lands and a normal curve is often fine. Two lands can be fine if the hand has cheap ramp, selection, or a low enough curve to bridge the gap. One-land hands usually need exceptional help to be worth the risk. Five-land hands can still be playable if the spells are live and the deck expects longer games.

The better habit is to ask what your first three turns actually look like. Can you cast spells, advance mana, and interact if needed? If the answer is yes, the hand may be a keep even if it is not pretty. If the answer is no, the land count alone probably is not saving it.

A lot of Commander players lose value by treating every mulligan like a search for the dream opener. The London mulligan improves your chances of finding a functional seven, but it does not guarantee the exact mix of lands, ramp, and payoff you imagined. Once a hand clearly lets your deck play real Magic, the cost of shipping it often becomes larger than the possible upside of finding something prettier.

This matters even more in pods where games are interactive and players have time to recover from average starts. A solid six with mana and action usually wins more games than a string of speculative mulligans that end at five. Good mulligan discipline is really about respecting what your deck needs, not demanding the perfect draw every game.