For much of the past year Wizards of the Coast has both internally and externally tested what they dubbed the “London Mulligan,” named for its initial adoption at the Mythic Championship II in London earlier this year.
This testing was potentially a replacement for the existing mulligan rules (aka the “Vancouver Mulligan,” which has been around since mid-2015, which utilized Scrying before the game began if a player chose to mulligan). On Monday of this week WotC formally adopted the London Mulligan for use in official sanctioned tournaments going forward, starting on July 2, 2019.
The new/current London Mulligan works as follows:
103.4. Each player draws a number of cards equal to their starting hand size, which is normally seven. (Some effects can modify a player’s starting hand size.) A player who is dissatisfied with their initial hand may take a mulligan. First, the starting player declares whether they will take a mulligan. Then each other player in turn order does the same. Once each player has made a declaration, all players who decided to take mulligans do so at the same time. To take a mulligan, a player shuffles the cards in their hand back into their library, draws a new hand of cards equal to their starting hand size, then puts a number of those cards equal to the number of times that player has taken a mulligan on the bottom of their library in any order. Once a player chooses not to take a mulligan, the remaining cards become that player’s opening hand, and that player may not take any further mulligans. This process is then repeated until no player takes a mulligan. A player can take mulligans until their opening hand would be zero cards.
While there remains some concern among the player base regarding the adoption of the London Mulligan rule for “deep pool” non-rotating formats such as Vintage and Legacy, there has been little issue with using the rules in testing elsewhere, including Old School and Middle School variants. Eternal Central-sponsored events will also adopt the London Mulligan rule for all formats going forward, effective immediately (June 4, 2019).
This includes all Old School game variants, as well as Middle School. Those formats used the existing mulligan rules without problem, and the rules pages here on Eternal Central have been updated to reflect this change accordingly. As usual, if anything related to this change becomes a noteworthy problem worthy of examination we will circle back to address it again and let you all know.
See you on the battlefield.