When Should You Mulligan in MTG? A Practical Guide

Short answer: mulligan any hand that can't cast its spells or advance your game plan — that means fewer than two lands, more than five lands, missing colors, or no meaningful action in the first three turns. A focused six beats a dysfunctional seven almost every time.

Keeping loose hands is one of the most common leaks in every format, from Standard to Commander. The good news: a few simple checks catch most bad keeps before they cost you the game.

A mulligan lets you reject your opening hand and try again. Under the current rule — the London mulligan — you shuffle your hand back, draw a fresh seven, and then put one card from your hand on the bottom of your library for each mulligan you've taken. So on your first mulligan you see seven cards and keep six; on your second you see seven and keep five.

Because you always see a full seven before choosing what to bottom, mulligans are less punishing than they used to be. If you want the full history of how the rule evolved, we break it down in The Different Types of Mulligans in MTG, Explained.

Start with the simplest check: lands. For a typical seven-card hand:

• 0–1 lands: almost always a mulligan. You're betting the top of your deck bails you out, and it usually doesn't.
• 2–4 lands: the keepable zone. Now the question shifts from "can I play Magic" to "is this hand doing something."
• 5 lands: keepable only if the spells are strong and cheap.
• 6–7 lands: mulligan. Flooded hands lose slower than screwed hands, but they still lose.

Land count alone isn't enough, though. Two lands and five four-mana spells is a mulligan in most decks, even though it passes the land check.

Once the land count is reasonable, ask these three questions:

Check colors, not just land count. Two lands is fine — two Mountains in a hand full of blue spells is not. Count how many of your spells are actually castable by turn three or four with the mana in front of you.

A hand needs a plan: pressure if you're aggro, interaction if you're control, setup pieces if you're combo. Seven playable cards that don't add up to a game plan is still a mulligan. Ask yourself what the hand looks like on turn four — if the answer is "hopefully I drew well," ship it.

If you know your opponent — or your Commander pod — weigh the hand against it. A slow, grindy keep is fine against another midrange deck and a death sentence against turn-three aggro. In tournaments and league play, the same seven can be a snap keep in one pairing and an easy mulligan in the next.

Multiplayer Commander is more forgiving. In casual multiplayer games, your first mulligan is free — you draw a fresh seven and bottom nothing. That removes almost every excuse for keeping a bad hand, so use it. With 99 singleton cards, opening hands vary wildly, and the free mulligan exists precisely because of that variance.

In a 40-life, four-player game you can also afford slightly slower hands than in 1v1 — but "slow" and "nonfunctional" are different things. Two lands and no ramp is still a mulligan, even at a casual table.

If your Commander hands consistently feel unkeepable, the problem is usually the deck, not the shuffles. Check your land and ramp counts in the deck builder — most 99s want ramp pieces like Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and Cultivate specifically so more sevens are keepable.

Under the London mulligan, bottoming well is a skill of its own. General guidelines:

• Bottom your top-end first. At six cards, expensive spells are the least likely to matter.
• Keep interaction in unknown matchups. Cheap removal and counterspells are rarely dead.
• Bottom redundant copies. Two copies of the same effect is a luxury a six-card hand can't afford.
• Protect your plan. If you kept the hand for a specific card, don't bottom the pieces that support it.

The two biggest leaks run in opposite directions. Some players never mulligan, keeping any two-lander out of fear of going to six. Others tilt-mulligan decent hands hunting for a perfect seven that doesn't exist. Both cost real win percentage — and if you track your games in a Nerd Leagues League, you'll see it in your results.

The fix is the same for both: judge every hand against the three questions above, not against your feelings about the last game. Mulligan decisions are the first play of every game — treat them like it.