Why mulligans mess with your brain

• You’re staring at seven cards, trying to predict the next twenty turns of your life.
• Your lizard brain screams “don’t go down a card,” while your rational brain whispers “this hand literally does nothing.”
• Mulligans aren’t just math—they’re psychology. Tilt, risk tolerance, and even ego play as much a role as card probabilities.
• Learning when to keep and when to ship is one of the biggest skill edges across all of Magic.

The old vs. new mulligan rules

If you’ve been around a while, you’ll remember the Paris mulligan: shuffle down and draw one fewer card each time. Painful. The London mulligan, used today, is more forgiving—you always draw seven, then put cards equal to the number of mulligans on the bottom. That small change made mulligans less about despair and more about sculpting a real plan.

Fear of being down a card

Most players keep too many bad hands because they’re scared of starting with fewer resources. But the truth is simple: a six-card hand with lands and spells is always better than a seven-card hand that literally does nothing. If your opening hand can’t interact, develop, or present a plan within two turns, it’s basically already a mulligan—even if you’re technically at seven.

Risk tolerance: spikes vs. casuals

• Competitive grinders lean toward aggressive mulligans. They want a hand that executes their plan as fast as possible.
• Casual players often keep looser hands because they’re more interested in “seeing what happens” than maximizing win rate.
• Neither approach is wrong—it depends on your goals. But if you’re tired of losing games you never played, start tossing bad sevens.

Pattern recognition beats gut instinct

Good mulliganing isn’t about “feel.” It’s about recognizing patterns. If you’ve played hundreds of games with a deck, you know what a keepable hand looks like. That’s why experienced tribal players can glance at an Elfball opener and know whether it’s explosive or dead, or why control pilots know whether two lands and four counterspells is secretly a trap.

The trap of the “almost good” hand

Here’s the hand: two lands, a bunch of midrange spells, no ramp, no card draw. You tell yourself, “If I just draw one land in the next two turns, this hand is fire.” That’s gambler’s fallacy disguised as logic. Sure, you could get there. But if your deck doesn’t reliably hit that third land on time, you just kept a hand that does literal nothing while your opponent curves out. This is how tilt is born.

Commander mulligans: politics and patience

Mulligan psychology shifts in multiplayer. In Commander, you’ve got more turns to hit land drops, and your opponents are often slower to kill you. That makes it tempting to keep greedy hands. But greedy hands also paint you into a corner. If your opener is “land, land, Sol Ring, nothing,” you look terrifying and immediately eat removal. Smarter keepers lean into consistency, not fireworks. If you want to see how this plays out in specific deck construction, our writeup on Zask, Skittering Swarmlord highlights why certain openers look amazing but can secretly trap you into slow starts.

Modern and Legacy: the high-stakes mulligan

In faster formats, mulligans are brutal but necessary. A single Chalice of the Void in your opener against Burn might win the whole match. A bad seven that doesn’t interact could mean you die before your third draw step. Pros mulligan aggressively here because they know one dead opener is worth less than a live six that hits the meta target.

The emotional side of shipping

• Fear of regret: “What if I had drawn out of it?”
• Loss aversion: Feeling bad about starting down a card, even when it’s the better play.
• Tilt prevention: Players who keep bad hands to avoid the “pain” of mulliganing end up more tilted when they lose without playing spells.

Recognize these biases in yourself, and mulligans become easier. You’re not losing a card—you’re gaining a real game.

The practice hack: play sample hands

One underrated way to get good at mulligans is to shuffle up and practice drawing hands without playing games. Ask yourself: keep or ship? Then simulate the first three turns. If the hand doesn’t do anything by turn three, you learn not to keep it. This is how grinders internalize what real openers look like for their decks.

Common mulligan mistakes

• Keeping one-landers “because I’m on the draw.” Spoiler: missing turn two is still game-losing.
• Overvaluing single haymakers. That one Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger doesn’t matter if you can’t cast it before turn ten.
• Panic-mulliganing decent sixes into worse fives. Don’t over-correct—know when “good enough” is actually good enough.

How tilt compounds mulligan errors

If you mull to five and lose, your brain says, “See, I shouldn’t have mulliganed.” That’s hindsight bias. The real question is: did you give yourself the best chance to win? Sometimes you did everything right and still lost. Magic has variance. Don’t let short-term results overwrite good long-term process.

Metagame knowledge makes mulligans easier

The more you know what you’re up against, the easier it is to mulligan correctly. If you expect graveyard decks, keep hands with interaction or sideboard hate like Leyline of the Void. If you’re facing control, prioritize threats and redundancy over reactive cards. This kind of adjustment is what separates casual keeps from pro-level sculpting. For a practical example of how metagame shifts affect deckbuilding, check out our guide on budget deck boxes and sleeves where protecting your build is as much about foresight as it is about style.

The “fun vs. win” decision

At the end of the day, mulligans are about your goal. If you’re jamming Commander with friends, keep that spicy seven with five lands and a silly enchantment just to see what happens. If you’re at a tournament, ship that hand instantly. Knowing when to let go isn’t just strategy—it’s part of enjoying Magic on your terms.

Final thought

Mulligans aren’t about perfection, they’re about percentages. Good players accept that shipping bad hands increases win rates long-term, even if it feels painful in the moment. Once you understand the psychology behind keeps and mulligans, you’ll stop fearing the minus one and start appreciating the plus-win percentage. Practice, know your deck, and remind yourself: every hand you ship is one step closer to a real game.