Cactus Game Design Message Boards

In my mind the mulligan would work like this: 1. Both players draw as normal. 2. The option to mulligan would go to the player with the most souls first but both players decide to mulligan or not before any action is taken. 3. Any player who has chosen to mulligan then returns all cards including souls to their draw pile, shuffles, and then draws again as normal. 4. Once each player who has mulliganed has completed their draw, putting Lost Souls in play, and replacing them; their opponent chooses two cards from their hand randomly and under decks them before play begins. 5. Now each player has the option to mulligan again starting with the person with the most lost souls. 6. Each time a player mulligans that player has two more cards under decked from their hands so that a player who has mulliganed twice would lose 4 cards; so on and so forth. 7. Play begins when both players choose to not mulligan.

Thoughts?

A couple ideas about lost souls staying or going after each draw.
1) If a player is playing a deck that works to tuck lost souls then having them all out would be an advantage assuming they have the means to tuck them quickly
2) Lost Soul production is such a huge part of the game now that even if my opponent draws no Lost Souls I can produce enough to win with my own deck.

I can tell you from 15 years of experience teaching Redemption to young players that Lost Soul Drought is the number one reason that they quit playing. The game is boring since they cannot win LSs, and they are frustrated that they have to keep discarding cards at the end of their turn. Thus, I will never support a mulligan plan that allows a player to redraw without keeping drawn LSs in play.

The underdecking idea would play right into the hands of demon defenses that take cards from the bottom of the deck, so I don't support that idea either.

I fear that the desire to make the game more favorable for seasoned players will drive new players away. If the mulligan is not being used to just help a player get a different starting hand, then it will ultimately ruin the game.

With that said, a mulligan plan that does keep LSs in play is something that I would very much like to see, since new players often have deck-building weaknesses that lead to bad draws.

Maybe we can have the following option:

1) Only can take it if you have at least one lost soul out.

2) If you decide to take a mulligan, you shuffle all but one of your lost souls into your deck.

3) Give opponent the lost soul

OR

1) Only can take it when you have two or more lost souls

2) Shuffle all but two lost souls into deck

3) The two lost souls that are out are restricted from entering sites for the first two rounds as well as protected from removal from play (edit: by holder) for those two turns (to stop burial/suffling/place underdeck).

I am with YMT.  Under no circumstances should the souls go back into the deck.

I am also opposed to being able to do multiple mulligans unless it becomes more costly (I prefer a "draw one less" rule for each successive mulligan).

Lastly, we have to deal with the issue that it is more advantageous in multi (and booster especially) to continue with mulligans until you have every soul in your deck out.  This makes sure you go first and will usually leave you with options to rescue with since people can come at you.

You would have the same statistical chance of drawing Lost Souls as you did with the first draw. I will admit that if I have no Lost Souls with my scenario, I would be more inclined to not take a mulligan for fear that I would draw Lost Souls on my secondary draw. I concede that doing it the way I have proposed will lead to more of the same that has been happening at Redemption tournaments for years with Lost Soul drought since it is a part of the game which has been addressed by Lost Soul production. I am not wanting to help players avoid drawing cards they don't want (i.e. Lost Souls) which is why I am not altering the statistical chance of them being drawn. I am wanting to help players draw cards they do want (i.e. their Heroes, evil characters, dominants, sites, artifacts, etc.) by giving them a second chance at it but with an increasing chance that their opponent may randomly underdeck the card(s) they were digging for.

@Gabe: The cost of one less card is adequate with a game like MTG where you only draw one card per turn but with Redemption, for it to even matter a little bit it needs to be more. We playtested up to losing three cards which seemed a bit much. Two seemed to be the sweet spot. Also...I am fine with leaving one Lost Soul out per mulligan but it needs to be chosen by the opponent from Lost Souls already on the table or if none are available then the opponent gets to choose from all available Lost Souls in their opponents deck.

I agree with Ironica's 1 and 2 comments about possibilities:

Maybe we can have the following option:

1) Only can take it if you have at least one lost soul out.

2) If you decide to take a mulligan, you shuffle all but one of your lost souls into your deck.

In my opinion these would be best combined, in that: Shuffle all but 1 lost soul into deck, and under deck one afterwords. If no lost souls out, then underdeck 2 cards, available to each player once, starting with the player with the most lost souls.

How so? If I mulligan to get a hand that I want and you Mayhem on the second turn (since it can't be played first turn) that is still pretty good or at least exactly the same as it is now.

You would have the same statistical chance of drawing Lost Souls as you did with the first draw.

If the chances were exactly the same, then the theoretically probability of drawing a LS would be 1/2. Therefore, if you did draw a LS on your first hand, then theoretical probability would suggest that you would not draw a LS if you drew a new hand. One success per 2 attempts.

You seem to be taking this personally, as evidenced by your sarcasm. Please understand that I am not opposed to your plan, but rather to the plan of having a mulligan rule that allows the retracting of LSs. This isn't personal. 

YMT...I am trying to understand where you are coming from. The secondary draw would come after a shuffle which means all probabilities would be reset. I am not a fan of my ideas more than yours and please hear that my ideas are not MY ideas but the ideas of a fairly good group of players and elders whom I have run them by. I have been working on this for more than the last few days. I just want to make sure that we get it right or as close to right at the onset as we can. I appreciate your input and don't want you to think I am taking it personally. If me asking the reasoning behind your statements is me taking it personally, then so be it.

You really are my math teacher. I did not know that. I stand...err...sit corrected. 

Just a thought- mandating that to mulligan you must leave a LS in territory would also prevent people from drawing exactly one LS and shuffling it with their hand instead of revealing it (whether intentionally or unintentionally). Or else maybe the revealing of your hand before mulliganing could be part of its cost...

Quote from: ChristianSoldier on March 21, 2015, 09:34:46 PM

However previous trials don't have any impact on later trials in situations like this.

They do in theory.

That's not true at all. What probability theory is stating is what the probability of each individual case is. That won't change based on what happens before or after it, it simply is. If you roll a 6 on a die you still have exactly the same probability of rolling the six the second time, whether you are dealing with real situations or theoretical probability. The only thing that is different is when you look at groups and can say that there is a 1 in 36 chance of rolling 2 6s in a row, but that doesn't change the fact that after you've already rolled a six there is a 1 in 6 chance of rolling another six.