As this was a bit of news to me, I thought I would pass this along to you my fellow Gods Unchained players on the chance that you like me did not know this. And what I am talking about is how the mechanisms of the mulligan work.

The mechanics of the mulligan

First of all the mulligan is just the name of the sequence of play that determines your starting hand. To be more exact, if you can change cards in your starting hand, one or all of them. The action of changing a card is called a mulligan. The term comes originally from the game of golf. Where if you make a bad stroke, you can take a mulligan. Pay 1 stoke penalty and retake the shot.

In this game I am going first, and my priority is to swap Swift Pox and see what card I can get instead. A 5 mana card is not a god card to start with in hand.

Now let's take a look at the mulligan in Gods Unchained. Depending on if you go first or second the number of cards you can swap out is different. If you go first you have 3 swaps available to you. But if you go second you have 4 swaps available to you.

Now we come to the part you might not know about. If you have a duplicate of a card in your deck. If you chose to mulligan that card, you will not get it back or the second copy of it. This means that if you have a deck that consists of 15 different cards, two of each card. You can severely increase your odds of getting the cards you want in your starting hand.

If you want the exact math of it, the odds of getting a specific card in your starting hand are either 6/15 or 7/15. That is 40% or 46.7% if you prefer % over fraction. Depending on if you go first or second. This is 3/15 for your first three cards and 3 or 4/15 for the number of swaps you have.

If you compare those odds with the odds of having 30 unique cards in your deck, they become 6 or 7/30. And if we compare this the odds of getting a specific card here is 20% to 23.3%. Or half for you math-savvy people out there. =)

Of course, the odds will fluctuate between these extremes depending on how many pairs you have in your deck.

What to look for in your starting hand

There are basically two things you want to look for in your starting hand. These are in general your 1- or 2-mana-cost creatures. This is so you can play them from the start and not have to pass your turn with nothing to play to board. And if you can you want to find cards that can combo or synergize with each other. This all of course depends on how your deck is constructed.

The second thing you want to look for in your starting hand is cards that are key cards either for the matchup you're playing against. Or cards that are vital for your deck. This of course can vary from deck to deck.

As an example, if you are playing a magic control deck you might want to look for early removal spells as well as cards that let you ramp your mana. They are usually included in these types of decks. 

Of course, there is a difference between going first and going seconds. This is the amount of "Small bags of tricks" you start with, 1 compared to 3 for the second. While going first you most likely would prefer to have a hand with cards that cost 1 or 2 mana. Going second can afford you the luxury to skill the 1 mana card and instead go for a 2, 3, and 4 mana card start.

Hopefully, you have found this information useful and something you now can start to take advantage of in your future games. And while building your decks. 

If you think that this sounds like an interesting game that you would like to check out yourself, and maybe participate in an upcoming tournament. I would greatly appreciate it if you would consider signing up using my referral code.

https://godsunchained.com/account/register?referral=UMNIcMwQdC

If you do, we both get 10 $GODS when you reach rank 6 and have verified your wallet.

As always if you find any errors or mistakes I have made please let me know so I can correct them. And if you have any future topics you want me to cover, feel free to drop a comment about that also. And of course, the comment section is always open to everyone. If you would like to support me and the content I make, please consider following me, reading my other posts, or why not do both instead.

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Picture provided by: Screenshots by me