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He lost to a totally newby RLK first round at the 2008 T2 only tournament in T2-2p.

In your second post, yes. The way I interpret your first post...

Wow. Hobbit and SirNobody, you guys are made for each other. The arrogance is almost stifling.

Don't forget to tell your victims about how poor their deck-building skills are before they leave.

...It seems that you did, indeed, call them both arrogant, and that is what I am referring to as 'distasteful'. Whether in jest or not, I do not find calling someone arrogant appropriate.

~Britta

Is there really anything wrong with the best players winning all the time?

Hey, why is everyone saying that a mulligan would only be for new players?  Our playgroup has been advocating this idea of a mulligan for a long time, and it would only benefit the game.  Sir Nobody makes a good point with saying that there are many decks who draw fast, but that really doesn't help you if you draw a bunch of lost souls and no ECs to protect them.  It wouldn't hurt to have a mulligan, if it could only be used once.  It helps to prevent bad luck and gives players a better chance to win, both old and new players.  My youth pastor and I always come home discouraged because of our opening draws, a bunch of lost souls, and no ECs, or a bunch of heroes, but your opponent draws no Lost Souls for the beginning turns.  You get shafted by draws like this, and having a mulligan improves your chances of at least having a chance against your opponent.  In Redemption, the outcome of the game game mostly depends on your first draw regardless of what everyone else says.  You get a bad draw, you most likely lose.  You get a good draw, and your opponent gets a good draw, now it is just a battle of which deck is better.  My playgroup would like at least a trial version of the mulligan to be put into place, it wouldn't hurt anything to try this out.  Thanks for your consideration.

It's a rule of life that one will get some terrible hands and some amazing hands.  I still remember the game where I drew two LS's and SoG/NJ in my starting hand.  Now, there will also be games where I draw three LS's and no EC's.  No amount of deck building will completely prevent this, lady luck is finicky.

That's not exactly true. I don't think I've ever been without an evil character in my first hand with my current deck. Of course, I have 15-20 of them in a 50 card deck...

This was my point from a previous post. The mulligan is more often going to help newer players than experienced players.

I understand where you are coming from, YMT, but having thought about it a bit I would tend to disagree with this point.

There are obvious draws (e.g., five LS and a hand filled only with enhancements) that scream for a mulligan.  Newer players are going to benefit from a mulligan in these cases, but so would experienced players. The difference arises in what to do in the not-so-obvious cases.  Learning when it makes sense--from a strategic standpoint--to mulligan on these cases is going to require experience with more experienced players being more likely to make the correct call here. In the end you will turn one thing which can really benefit younger players (the luck of the draw) into yet another area of advantage for the more experienced players.

Anyway, just my $.02.

Quote from: YourMathTeacher on July 03, 2010, 08:20:19 AM

This was my point from a previous post. The mulligan is more often going to help newer players than experienced players.

I understand where you are coming from, YMT, but having thought about it a bit I would tend to disagree with this point.

There are obvious draws (e.g., five LS and a hand filled only with enhancements) that scream for a mulligan.  Newer players are going to benefit from a mulligan in these cases, but so would experienced players. The difference arises in what to do in the not-so-obvious cases.  Learning when it makes sense--from a strategic standpoint--to mulligan on these cases is going to require experience with more experienced players being more likely to make the correct call here. In the end you will turn one thing which can really benefit younger players (the luck of the draw) into yet another area of advantage for the more experienced players.

Anyway, just my $.02.

Who said that the more experienced players even get to use the mulligan? I would say that Cactus has made a card that allows the more "experienced" players to mulligan (Mayhem), but newer players might not know about or have or understand this card. Mulligans would definitely help these new players who probably aren't able to play Redemption in it's entirety quite yet.

Don't know if its been mentioned but we could but a restriction on when you can mulligan.

Previous discussions about mulligans have all inlcuded clauses. I don't play MTG, so I don't know about how mulligans are restricted there, but in Pokemon you are allowed to re-draw if you do not have a Basic Pokemon. This is a necessary requirement, so it is a bit different than Redemption, but the idea is the same. In Pokemon, if you do not have the Basic, then you show your hand, re-draw, and your opponent draws a card. Drawing one card in Pokemon is huge, since you only draw one card per turn. In Redemption, that would be equivalent to drawing three cards.

I would agree that if a mulligan in Redemption is considered, that there would have to be four main components:

1. The player using the mulligan would have to not have specific types of cards (like Ironica's idea of no characters).
2. Any Lost Souls would have to be put into play and remain.
3. The player would have to reveal their hand.
4. The opponent should be able to draw up to three additional cards (perhaps "may draw").

The fourth component would be awkward in multiplayer, especially if more than one player mulligans. However, I'm sure we can come up with some sort of "penalty" for taking a mulligan.

Quote from: Ironica on July 03, 2010, 11:09:42 AM

Don't know if its been mentioned but we could but a restriction on when you can mulligan.

Previous discussions about mulligans have all inlcuded clauses. I don't play MTG, so I don't know about how mulligans are restricted there, but in Pokemon you are allowed to re-draw if you do not have a Basic Pokemon. This is a necessary requirement, so it is a bit different than Redemption, but the idea is the same. In Pokemon, if you do not have the Basic, then you show your hand, re-draw, and your opponent draws a card. Drawing one card in Pokemon is huge, since you only draw one card per turn. In Redemption, that would be equivalent to drawing three cards.

I would agree that if a mulligan in Redemption is considered, that there would have to be four main components:

1. The player using the mulligan would have to not have specific types of cards (like Ironica's idea of no characters).
2. Any Lost Souls would have to be put into play and remain.
3. The player would have to reveal their hand.
4. The opponent should be able to draw up to three additional cards (perhaps "may draw").

The fourth component would be awkward in multiplayer, especially if more than one player mulligans. However, I'm sure we can come up with some sort of "penalty" for taking a mulligan.

I used to play MTG for many years. In MTG there were 2 types of Mulligans. There was a "mulligan" where you could redraw 7 cards only under the condition if you either have "all lands or no lands". In pokemon an energy card might be equal to MTG's land cards.

Then there was something called a paris which was tournament legal. Simply you just shuffle the hand into the deck and draw 1 card less and the player could keep doing that as often as they like but each time they do it they get addtional card less. Make sense?

Thank you for agreeing to the exact point I (and Hobbit13) was trying to make to YMT. Mulligans will (in general) hurt newer players more than it will help them.

actually, i didnt. im saying mulligans help everyone out. its designed to cut the bad luck out of every opening hand situation, despite the players skill. the players calibur at redemption is really besides the point. if we wanted everything to be fair, we would be shipping full sets of the main 11 doms to all redemption n00bs in the world. however, ymt is correct. mulligans would help beginners more than experienced players: beginners are more apt to build decks 'incorrectly', per se, so the chance to redraw benefits them greatly. most experienced players design their decks to be playable with virtually any opening hand, so in very few cases will a mulligan be necessary.

a brief history of mulligans:

the first mulligan was the mtg mulligan. if a player had 0 or 7 lands, they could reveal their hand, shuffle hand into deck, and redraw their hand. this could only be done once though. however, this mulligan is no longer employed. the current official mtg mulligan is the 'paris mulligan'. for whatever reason and as many times as desired at the beginning of the game, a player may shuffle their hand into deck and redraw their hand minus one card.

the pokemon mulligan is as ymt described. however, its a necessary function, as the mechanics of the game rely on both players to have a basic pokemon in play.

universal fighting system ccg uses a mulligan where if a player does not want their opening hand, they are allowed to remove all cards in hand from the game and redraw their hand.

personally im split on either the 'no resource (mtg style)' mulligan or the 'paris mulligan'. the paris mulligan would be ideal, but to equate each hand to less a draw for redemption, that would be less 3 cards every mulligan, and perhaps that is too much. i would probably make it 2 every time it is utilized. i also like where if you have no resource (character for redemption) in hand, you may reveal, shuffle, and redraw. however, there is no cost associated with it, which a mulligan should have to be fair.

Who said that the more experienced players even get to use the mulligan?

I wasn't aware we were talking about rules that would only apply to one player in a game. That strikes me as a horrible road to start going down.

Mulligans would definitely help these new players who probably aren't able to play Redemption in it's entirety quite yet.

I agree that if you only allows one player in a game to mulligan, than mulligans would help that player. If you have the rule apply to everyone, however, I stand by the claim I made earlier that mulligans would preferentially benefit more experienced players.

Oh well, I am off on vacation.  I will see all y'all in a week.
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I should have made myself more clear, I meant that the more experienced player would be less likely to need to mulligan, but it would be more beneficial to the newer players to be able to at least start out somewhat decently. I became quite frustrated when I would have a terrible draw and end up losing becuase the cards I needed were in the next draw. If the new players have a better starting hand, they will be more likely to keep playing than if they draw a crap hand and think from the beginning "Aw great, I'm playing a good opponent and I drew a bad hand. I'm probably gonna lose this match."

I do, however, agree on a penalty. I don't really want to make a decision on whawt that should be until I am presented with clear-cut choices.