Which player determines whether or not to mulligan first?

~Andrew

The rules don't specify. Perhaps it will be specified in a future tournament rules document.

If it really matters (how often is it truly important whether or not the other guy took a mulligan in deciding to take one yourself?), go in initiative order since that will have already been determined.

To answer the question you posed - out of the 100-ish games I've played, it's been important 10-ish times. So, a significant number.

~Andrew

Common sense says initiative order, if it's important to one or the other.

To answer the question you posed - out of the 100-ish games I've played, it's been important 10-ish times. So, a significant number.

I'm curious: what made the order player's decide to mulligan significant in those 10? You don't get to see what was in your opponent's opening hand or anything, so I would have thought that choosing to mulligan or not would be pretty much a personal decision based on whether you got an acceptable spread of cards to make your deck work.

+1.

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around:

Thinking to myself: "I'm not sure whether to keep this hand or not...."

Opponent: "I'm keeping/exchanging mine."

Thinking to myself: "Oh, well that decides it."

Me: "I will/will not mulligan."

+1.

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around:

Thinking to myself: "I'm not sure whether to keep this hand or not...."

Opponent: "I'm keeping/exchanging mine."

Thinking to myself: "Oh, well that decides it."

Me: "I will/will not mulligan."

I've been there in Netrunner.

"This hand is passable, but I'd like something better."

Corp mulligans.

"Well, he didn't have what he wanted; I'll hold onto this and try and exploit what I hope is still a sub-optimal hand on his part. After all, my hand could be a lot worse."

"This hand is passable, but I'd like something better."

Corp mulligans.

"Well, he didn't have what he wanted; I'll hold onto this and try and exploit what I hope is still a sub-optimal hand on his part. After all, my hand could be a lot worse."

Ok the corp didn't have what he want, but after mulligan, information have change and your passable hand could be not effective.

You have no information before mulligan and no information after mulligan.

I make mulligan only with the information from the match-up and my hand. Nothing else.

"This hand is passable, but I'd like something better."

Corp mulligans.

"Well, he didn't have what he wanted; I'll hold onto this and try and exploit what I hope is still a sub-optimal hand on his part. After all, my hand could be a lot worse."

Ok the corp didn't have what he want, but after mulligan, information have change and your passable hand could be not effective.

You have no information before mulligan and no information after mulligan.

I make mulligan only with the information from the match-up and my hand. Nothing else.

Of course things have changed, and I know nothing about what's in his hand now - but I know whatever it is, he's stuck with it, so if he did draw poorly again I can attempt to capitalise. Maybe he didn't and I'm in for a struggle, but it still influences my decision making.

I'm curious: what made the order player's decide to mulligan significant in those 10? You don't get to see what was in your opponent's opening hand or anything, so I would have thought that choosing to mulligan or not would be pretty much a personal decision based on whether you got an acceptable spread of cards to make your deck work.

+1.

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around:

Thinking to myself: "I'm not sure whether to keep this hand or not...."

Opponent: "I'm keeping/exchanging mine."

Thinking to myself: "Oh, well that decides it."

Me: "I will/will not mulligan."

In both of the below examples, my opponent has the initiative, and therefore has to mulligan first.

Example 1:

I am playing a matchup where I'm the heavy favorite. I draw a barely passable hand. My opponent thinks about mulliganing his hand for a good while. If I believe my read that my opponent has a below-average hand, I will keep mine. Without that information, I would mulligan mine.

Example 2:

I am playing a matchup where I'm the heavy underdog. I draw a slightly-above-average hand. My opponent immediately and confidently says "I keep". If I believe my read that my opponent has an above average hand, I will mulligan mine. Without that information, I would keep mine.

~Andrew

But you could have just as easily been bluffed both times.

Your opponent knows his deck well and can assess his hand with speed::

Counter-example to 1: He draws a strong hand, but deliberates lengthily. He bluffs you into thinking it's below average, and therefore he's bluffed you into keeping a barely passable hand.

Counter-example to 2: Your opponent draws a barely passable hand but very quickly says "I keep", Now you've been bluffed into mulliganing even though you have an above-average hand.

Given that both examples work both ways, it follows that it's impossible to gain any information on what you should do based on what your opponent does. Everything you need to know that should influence your mulligan decision is known before the mulligan step - how strong the opponent is, how well you know your deck, what you've drawn. What your opponent does adds no information given he could be bluffing or not, or has different interpretations on what's a passable hand than what you might have.

As an example, I make it a point never to mulligan. I just play what I get. But you won't know that, and if we met in a tournament, you're going to get a mislead when you play me. Which implies it might actually be sub-optimal play to take your opponent's mulligan into consideration at all!! :-)

The point is that mulliganing is a potentially helpful piece of operation. Whether or not it's a bluff or it's true/false doesn't matter, it's the fact that it affects your own decision to mulligan. It would be advantageous to choose second because you gain a piece of information your opponent lacked when they made their choice: Did my opponent keep or mulligan? There are different implications you can draw and different responses depending on different variables.

Yeah... I just still think that knowing whether or not my opponent kept or mulliganed is about as useful and reliable a piece of information in deciding whether or not to mulligan myself as knowing if Mars is retrograde in the sun sign of my opponent that day.

But, other people make their decisions differently and give different weight to different bits of information, so initiative order still makes the most sense.

The player with initiative mulligans first.

Whether or not that matters is a whole different debate.

The player with initiative mulligans first.

Is that a common sense conclusion, a conversation with FFG, or a rules reference that I missed?

But you could have just as easily been bluffed both times.

Your opponent knows his deck well and can assess his hand with speed::

Counter-example to 1: He draws a strong hand, but deliberates lengthily. He bluffs you into thinking it's below average, and therefore he's bluffed you into keeping a barely passable hand.

Counter-example to 2: Your opponent draws a barely passable hand but very quickly says "I keep", Now you've been bluffed into mulliganing even though you have an above-average hand.

Given that both examples work both ways, it follows that it's impossible to gain any information on what you should do based on what your opponent does. Everything you need to know that should influence your mulligan decision is known before the mulligan step - how strong the opponent is, how well you know your deck, what you've drawn. What your opponent does adds no information given he could be bluffing or not, or has different interpretations on what's a passable hand than what you might have.

As an example, I make it a point never to mulligan. I just play what I get. But you won't know that, and if we met in a tournament, you're going to get a mislead when you play me. Which implies it might actually be sub-optimal play to take your opponent's mulligan into consideration at all!! :-)

Indeed, I could have been bluffed. It's up to me to decide whether or not I believe my reads, and the game's framework should support me making those decisions, especially when it comes to something as simple as specifying which player performs a common game operation first.

The statement "what your opponent does adds no information" completely discounts one of the biggest tools of card games with hidden information - being able to read your opponent. What my opponent does adds a wealth of information, in this game, and others (such as poker). Do you, personally, really not know any people among your friends who "wear their heart on their sleeve"?

As for your example - if we played, and I didn't know you, and we were in a situation where you successfully bluffed me - then my calculated risk would have not paid off. But that goes for any risk, not just the example you described. That doesn't mean it's the wrong risk to take, it just means this is one of the instances where it doesn't pay off. As long as most of the people who play this game are not stone-cold bluffers who could clean up Vegas tables, I have a feeling that useful information can be gleaned from observing one's opponent.

~Andrew

Yeah... I just still think that knowing whether or not my opponent kept or mulliganed is about as useful and reliable a piece of information in deciding whether or not to mulligan myself as knowing if Mars is retrograde in the sun sign of my opponent that day.

But, other people make their decisions differently and give different weight to different bits of information, so initiative order still makes the most sense.

And that's cool too. Some people just play the cards, which is a perfectly valid approach.

I just would like the rules to specify who does what first.

~Andrew

P.S. Had to look up what Mars retrograde is...

As for your example - if we played, and I didn't know you, and we were in a situation where you successfully bluffed me - then my calculated risk would have not paid off. But that goes for any risk, not just the example you described. That doesn't mean it's the wrong risk to take, it just means this is one of the instances where it doesn't pay off. As long as most of the people who play this game are not stone-cold bluffers who could clean up Vegas tables, I have a feeling that useful information can be gleaned from observing one's opponent.

This also assumes that you are as accurate an observer as this approach needs you to be. And maybe you are. And maybe most players aren't good enough to really bluff like this or won't even try. Or maybe none of this is true. That's a lot of maybes. I just find that this is too unreliable against players you are not familiar with because it is just a guess. A good question to ask here is have you done this often and with what results?

Whether or not your opponent mulligans is a piece of information. How your opponent acts before deciding to/not to mulligan is a piece of information. Whether your opponent deploys a unit to the first planet is a piece of information. Whether your opponent passes his deploy phase with resources still in hand is a piece of information.

Any or all of these could be a bluff. Different players will attach different weights and importance to certain pieces of information, but in a game where a large portion of the interactions are going to rely on accurately bluffing or reading your opponent, no piece of information is "useless".

[...] A good question to ask here is have you done this often and with what results?

Over 20-ish years of playing my CCG of choice - Legend of the Five Rings - I've won World Champs, National Champs, and around 30-ish Regional Tournaments.

So, to answer your question - Yes, I've done this often; I use "soft" information in every tournament I attend for every card game I play. My results are "It seems that I am right more than I am wrong", which is all I really need.

~Andrew

Personnally, if i have a average or better hand, ikeep, if not, i mulligan...

I think (and perhaps i'm wrong) that opponent do the same.

So if i'm the second, no impact for me. If i'm first, you can use this information but i really don't think it's relevant.

It's like you roll a hidden dice and must make the better result. So if you make 4+, it's better to keep and 3-, it's better to reroll.

If you have 4 and your opponent reroll, do you reroll too?

Cause your opponent with his reroll have just 1/3 chance to win with his reroll. And you have 1/2 chance to make a worst reroll..

Yeah... I just still think that knowing whether or not my opponent kept or mulliganed is about as useful and reliable a piece of information in deciding whether or not to mulligan myself as knowing if Mars is retrograde in the sun sign of my opponent that day.

But, other people make their decisions differently and give different weight to different bits of information, so initiative order still makes the most sense.

Have you never played Magic?

Have you never played Magic?

Not for an exceedingly long time. But I'd call the situations completely different because there is a cost - or "consequence," whatever you want to call it - to using a mulligan in that game (drawing fewer cards), so the question of whether or not to pay that cost is always there.

But here, there is no cost; the mulligan is a "do over" with no consequences. So there is never a question of whether or not taking the mulligan will put you at an objective disadvantage relative to your opponent.

Have you never played Magic?

Not for an exceedingly long time. But I'd call the situations completely different because there is a cost - or "consequence," whatever you want to call it - to using a mulligan in that game (drawing fewer cards), so the question of whether or not to pay that cost is always there.

But here, there is no cost; the mulligan is a "do over" with no consequences. So there is never a question of whether or not taking the mulligan will put you at an objective disadvantage relative to your opponent.

Sure there's a cost. It's throwing away your 40% optimal hand (for example). If your opponent keeps his hand, and is a solid player, you know he has at least a 50% hand (in normal decks) or has the components to his combo (in trick decks, if they exist). If your opponent does not keep, you know he had a lousy hand and lose all information (other than reading his face, potentially -- which would require you wait until he draw his hand, which is probably borderline stalling) to his hand. But if you know he has at least a 50% hand and you know you can get completely screwed by mulliganing, perhaps you keep your suboptimal hand so you don't just get stomped off the bat.

To be fair to everyone, we're talking about a level of play akin to MTG. I don't think the competitive scene of a not-money-prize game will go this far in the metagame (although a select few will likely dive into it, and regardless, it must be defined for competitive play either way.)

Have you never played Magic?

Not for an exceedingly long time. But I'd call the situations completely different because there is a cost - or "consequence," whatever you want to call it - to using a mulligan in that game (drawing fewer cards), so the question of whether or not to pay that cost is always there.

But here, there is no cost; the mulligan is a "do over" with no consequences. So there is never a question of whether or not taking the mulligan will put you at an objective disadvantage relative to your opponent.

The cost of both players mulliganing is exactly the same in both games - card parity. If your opponent chooses to mulligan first and you have a barely passable hand, you have just as much to gain or lose as he does. You might both get better hands, or you might get worse ones. Your own choice ultimately hinges on how strong you feel your initial hand is, as well as your knowledge of how your deck will interact with your opponent's. You should ask yourself, what kind of deck is my opponent playing? If he gets a better hand, will the cards in my current hand trump the ones he might get? With a passable hand of your own, the risk of mulliganing might be fairly equal, or it might put you at a disadvantage. You'll never know if you mulligan first. If, however, your opponent keeps his hand and yours is only passable, pitching it could be a much bigger gamble. You know that your opponent's is either good or passable as well, so only you risk getting a worse hand.

So, let me ask you this. If you have to mulligan first, and your hand is barely passable, what do you do? Do you keep it or pitch it?