What is the London Mulligan in MTG?

Last updated on June 11, 2024

Hand of Honor | Illustration by Kev Walker

So, you wanna know about the mulligan? The mulligan is both a piece of art and a strategic game piece. It can be the difference between winning the finals of the Pro Tour or crashing out.

It means a lot to the game’s functionality. Mulligans are a key part of its systems, and the game would be nigh unplayable without them. So, what is the mulligan? Join me on this journey to investigate the deepest parts of this rule, and what makes it so important!

What is a London Mulligan?

Dark Ritual | | Illustration by Clint Langley

The London Mulligan lets you draw a new hand of seven as a mulligan each time, and then on a keep, put back a number of cards on the bottom of your library equal to the number of mulligans taken.

This is the current mulligan rule in every format.

Why Do We Need the London Mulligan?

Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath | Illustration by Vincent Proce

To work out why Magic has had so many iterations of the mulligan rule and why the rule is so divisive within the community, we need to look at non-games and consistency. A lot of people have come around to the London Mulligan now, but this wasn’t the case at its release.

Non-Games

This is a very strong argument for the London mulligan’s existence in Magic. Without it, there would be a lot of these games where you don’t draw a land or you draw too many lands. This removes the strategy from the game, in a sense. It makes it a lot more RNG (random number generator) based than being able to strategically mulligan.

Magic also has a robust resource system that the game is balanced around, so it’s important to have some control over what resources you start with, without making decks too consistent. Speaking of…

Consistency

Nobody disagrees with the rule existing, but certain mulligan rules are more consistent than others in Magic. Of course, I’ll explain more in a bit, but how often you can have a “perfect” or “near perfect” opener is often the determining factor of a mulligan rule’s strength. This is where the debate over the London mulligan happens.

With all this being said, finding the right mulligan for the game has been a huge job for the game rule designers!

History of the London Mulligan

Pondering Mage | Illustration by Tommy Arnold

The London Mulligan, debuted at Mythic Championship London 2019, was a complete overhaul to the mulligan system, so it came with a lot of controversy. The current mulligan rule helps the consistency of certain decks greatly.

With this mulligan rule, you draw seven cards each time and then put a number of cards on the bottom of your library equal to how many mulligans you’ve taken after choosing to keep.

This has quite a few effects on the game. It increases consistency as it allows you to see more cards. Instead of drawing (and seeing) only five cards if you mulligan twice, you see a full seven and get to decide which of those you keep. It also drastically decreases the number of non-games. The thing is, this makes combo decks such as Tron and Neoform stronger in Modern because they’re able to mulligan to pieces of their combo.

The rule was heavily disliked at first because of this, but a lot of people came around to it as they realized it improves all decks. Sure, it’s very powerful, but it’s just as powerful for you as it is for your opponent. However, many people thought it contributed to a “silver bullet” metagame.

Silver Bullets and Sideboarding With the London Mulligan

Mulligan-ing and sideboarding go together like Bonnie and Clyde. The stronger the mulligan, the easier it is to find your specific hate cards from the sideboard. The London Mulligan increases this dramatically. You get to see seven cards each time, keeping the odds at a total of, let’s say for a single sideboard hate card, 1 in 60 for each mulligan, which is not true!

Math and magic, you see, is super complicated. Even more so than you may think. There’s a complex art behind Magic probability, which Game Theory did a video on way better than I could ever explain:

So, mulligan-ing with the London Mulligan increases these odds, as you have the same chance of finding the card you need each time.

The Impact of the London Mulligan

The London Mulligan had a lot of impact on a lot of different formats, especially formats where card selection matters more.

Standard

Of course, the sideboard probabilities apply as with every Constructed format, but the rule only made it more effective in that decks became a bit better. There was no egregious combo or card that became more consistent because of it, and all of Standard’s issues would’ve honestly been the same if we stuck with a previous version of the mulligan.

Modern, Legacy, and Vintage

All three of these formats felt a similar impact with the London Mulligan’s inclusion. Combo decks got stronger and a bit harder to deal with. This, however, was neutered by the many design mistakes made anyway, so nobody really felt the effects of this other than some fringe decks becoming playable. And Tron becoming even more consistent.

Reid Duke has a whole module on mulliganing in his Modern course for Spikes Academy if you want to learn more about this in depth.

Limited

The London Mulligan is huge for Limited formats like booster draft, sealed, and Cube, as it helps dig for specific cards and bombs that you might want in your hand at the start of the game. It also makes mana inconsistencies more consistent. However, this didn’t have a sizable impact either, or at least not as horrific as was thought in the infancy of the rule’s creation.

Commander

Commander has always tried to stay unique because of its unusual restrictions, so Commander has some weird mulligan rules.

The London Mulligan is currently in use in Commander, and you get a free mulligan at the start of each game (a free redraw) because of the amount of variance in a Commander deck, with it being 100-card singleton.

However, Commander used to have completely different mulligan rules from 60-card Constructed. Nevertheless, Commander’s status as a casual, house-rule format means many players have adjusted this rule to their own liking.

Serum Powder

This is a card that essentially lets you have an extra opening hand. You reveal it, then exile your hand, and then draw cards equal to the number of cards in your hand instead of taking a mulligan. It's used in decks like Modern Serum Eldrazi, which was huge at the inception of the London Mulligan.

The way the rule works is pretty interesting, though. If you exile it with a mulligan, you have to put a card back, allowing you to save a card in your hand from eternal banishment and then draw six cards instead. It’s an interesting interaction that can be used for some minor gameplay advantages like putting away singular combo pieces.

Will the London Mulligan Stick Around?

Cabal Therapy | Illustration by Ron Spencer

Do I think that the London Mulligan will stick around?

Yes.

It’s a really intuitive mulligan, letting people enjoy the game and play with a better chance to play the cards they want. It works really nicely in competitive play, too, reducing the amount of shuffling and speeding up games quite a bit.

Of course, I’m open to new experimentation, but for me the London Mulligan is the perfect mulligan. I don’t think that the consistency boost is a huge issue, especially with the amount of hate pieces keeping unfair decks in check.

The London Mulligan is also representative of an era of Magic that’s bittersweet for most players, though. With Wizards continues to shift, so who knows what Wizards will do in the next few years. I know that some people strongly dislike this mulligan, and to those people: more power to you! I can see the reasons, while I don’t agree, respectful criticism is healthy for the game.

As they say, change is sometimes a good thing, so hopefully whatever does come next will match this or even beat it. If something does come next. The London Mulligan is here to stay for now.

Become an Expert

If you want to get the perspective of possibly the greatest player of all time — Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa — he covers mulliganing in depth in his course on Magic strategy:

If you want to learn from a pro how to mulligan the right way, I highly recommend checking it out.

Wrap Up

Final Death | Illustration by Johann Bodin

That’s it from me for today! What do you think of the London Mulligan? Do you have any mulligan ideas? If you do, let me know in the comments or tweet us with your thoughts.

If you enjoyed this, please check out our other content. We really enjoy what we do, and love writing about a game you love. That’s all from me, Draftsim’s resident tea-drinker. Honestly, they’ve bought way too much tea for me to make jokes about, please help me I can’t drink anymore. Please!

Seriously, though, as always, have a good one!