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Redemption is also more fun when there isn't a soul drought.

Here's another idea.  What if there was a mandatory mulligan at no cost if you drew an initial hand without any LSs in it?  That way every game would at least start with one LS on the table for each player to go for.   

Quote from: YourMathTeacher on July 29, 2013, 11:44:38 AM

Redemption is also more fun when there isn't a soul drought.

Here's another idea.  What if there was a mandatory mulligan at no cost if you drew an initial hand without any LSs in it?  That way every game would at least start with one LS on the table for each player to go for.   

Don't like it. Just gives people more incentive to play offense-heavy decks as opposed to more balanced decks.

Mulligans are inherently going to be abused when there isn't something forcing you to mulligan. There is not such condition to force mulligans in Redemption (unless, apparently, you are Mark Underwood and want to mulligan to draw more souls for the opponent to rescue, but I think we all know that was a joke) and therefore I am opposed to them.

Which begs another question entirely. Does anyone sort their deck after each game? If so, how would that person's draw compare to someone who did not sort their cards between games? Just food for thought.

I sure hope they don't cheat like that.

Quote from: EmJayBee83 on July 29, 2013, 07:49:44 PM

This past weekend I was playing a 51-card deck containing seven ECs and seven EEs. On my opening draw I pulled three lost souls, all seven evil enhancements, and Christian Martyr. I am open to your suggestions on how precisely to improve my deck-building skills to alleviate such draws in the future.

Out of curiosity, what shuffling method did you use, and during what round did it happen? I ask about the round to determine the proximity of the EEs before shuffling. What you have described is not a likely random draw. Now, mathematically speaking, this will have to occur with somebody at some point (or Nobody as the case may be) in the history of the game. But if cards are randomized effectively, this is too improbable. I would argue that the problem was with the shuffling, rather than the deck.

This was the first round--so the deck started sorted.  I did two pile shuffles--one with seven piles, the second with five (which are relatively prime). I followed this by six or seven "smoosh"
shuffles where you take your deck, split it in half, and "smoosh" the two halves together. In other words, my normal T1 shuffling procedure. So, yes, there could be a shuffling error of some sort, but I have no idea what it wouyld be and it has not manifested itself previously. I would attribute it to some bizarre subconscious double-nickeling except that the three souls were scattered among the seven ECs, and my first draw brought three cards whose card types were separated in the original sorted deck (a covenant, a fortress, and an artifact).

Mulligans are inherently going to be abused when there isn't something forcing you to mulligan.

As this does *not* appear to be the case in the one CCG I am familiar with that allows unpenalized no-fault mulligans (i.e., Android: Netrunner) I do not understand this statement. Would you please explain?

Quote from: EmJayBee83 on July 29, 2013, 09:44:18 PM

As this does *not* appear to be the case in the one CCG I am familiar with that allows unpenalized no-fault mulligans (i.e., Android: Netrunner) I do not understand this statement. Would you please explain?

I would mulligan for numerous reasons such as:

-I don't a hero
-I don't have a dominant
-I have a hero with no support
-My opponent has no soul and I have no soul gen
-My hand is bad in general
-I don't have a way to search for my AUTO

I thought of those in about 10 seconds and I would consider mulligans in each situation. Mulliganing with souls drawn actually increases my deck speed potentially so that seems good too.

And you think that any of these reasons are abusing mulligans? I think they are perfectly legitimate reasons.

I have only heard of Mulligan abuse in 2 cases, in MtG with Elf decks when you could only Mulligan based on lands in your hand (the trick here was that you had no lands in your deck so you could mulligan as many times as you wanted until you got the right cards) and the old Mewtwo mill decks in Pokemon, (in Pokemon you can mulligan when you don't have a basic Pokemon, but caused your opponent to draw a card, so you would have 59 basic energies and 1 Mewtwo, if you drew all energies, mulligan,, your opponent draws a card, if you draw Mewtwo, you had Mewtwo). In both games the Mulligan rules changed to make those abuses not work.

I would suggest that a single, no penalty mulligan for any reason could very likely be good for the game.

If we follow the guidelines of Battletech (where you can only mulligan under a particular circumstance (which, as mentioned before, was lack of resources)), then there will be close to zero abuse.  What the requirements would be for Redemption is up to debate as Redemption is much different than Battletech.  I suggested that if you have a hero and an EC, then you can't mulligan (I later realized, though, that offense/defense heavy decks can mulligan almost every game).

If we follow the guidelines of Battletech (where you can only mulligan under a particular circumstance (which, as mentioned before, was lack of resources)), then there will be close to zero abuse.  What the requirements would be for Redemption is up to debate as Redemption is much different than Battletech.  I suggested that if you have a hero and an EC, then you can't mulligan (I later realized, though, that offense/defense heavy decks can mulligan almost every game).

That type of restriction has never come up because it's literally impossible to define anything in redemption like that.

I still think it would just have to have a penalty of some sort.

Maybe a non-game play related penalty. For example, we could require any player who takes a mulligan to wear a large crimson M for the remainder of the tournament. Then the other players players could whisper behind his/her back that "Old so-and-so is a lousy deck builder."

I wish we could just come to the obvious conclusion that mulligans are just going to be abused and the same people who want mulligans are going to hate them because it don't be fun when I mulligan a hand with good cards to get better cards.

Quote from: EmJayBee83 on July 30, 2013, 07:10:07 PM

Quote from: YourMathTeacher on July 30, 2013, 05:47:33 PM

I still think it would just have to have a penalty of some sort.

Maybe a non-game play related penalty. For example, we could require any player who takes a mulligan to wear a large crimson M for the remainder of the tournament. Then the other players players could whisper behind his/her back that "Old so-and-so is a lousy deck builder."

I propose Big Red shots.

Remember the root beer tablets Matt brought to MN state last year.  They were even worse...... I didn't think that was possible at the time.

And both players have the option of doing that. Opening the nuts already exists in this game without mulligans. So what's the problem?