In a recent announcement made by Wizards of the Coast, the mulligan system for all Magic: The Gathering tournaments (paper Magic, Magic Arena, Magic Online) has changed to a new rule, called the “London mulligan” (cause it was tested at Mythic Championship II in London, a few months ago).

In short, the new mulligan system has players draw the starting number of cards every time, put one card on the bottom of their library for each mulligan taken this game, and removes the final “Scry 1” effect from the Vancouver mulligan that was in the previous rule since September 2015.

Wizards of the Coast set this change to become effective between July 2 and July 12, 2019 depending on the context. You can read more regarding the reasons of this change in the article published by Wizards of the Coast.

First of all, the Duel Commander Rules Committee’s opinion and thoughts were widely based on this awesome analysis by Zwi Mowshowitz. We also read very carefully Wizards of the Coast announcement and other relevant analysis.

Like most game analysts/strategists do, we do think that this new rule is good for formats like Standard and Limited and bad for stronger formats like Modern, Legacy or… Duel Commander. The rule is clearly not the best on one hand, but getting too many differences in rulings from other formats is even worse on the other hand. So we unwillingly chose to move to the London mulligan rule for Duel Commander as well.

This change will apply on July 5, 2019. Until then, we strongly recommend the tournament organizers absolutely not to early adopt this change. It would be a very bad surprise for a player outside a community to join a tournament with an inappropriate decklist as a result of a one-sided decision to apply the London mulligan by then.

This major rule change will unfortunately most likely imply the need to ban cards powering decks that are already very stable (some commanders already gaining more fuel with Modern Horizons, for instance).

Changes:

👉 Rules changes:

• Duel Commander rules now follow the Magic The Gathering generic comprehensive rules regarding mulligan and adopts the “London Mulligan”, as every other format does.

👉 Individual card changes:

• No changes.

👉 Other changes:

• No changes.

👉 Don’t forget to check out our Current Lists page for a recap of all the currently banned cards.

This change applies on July 5, 2019. Of course, you can still contact us via our Facebook page.
The next announcements will be published on August 26, 2019 (applying on August 31, 2019).

Until then, we wish you all many good games! :)

London mulligan exact wording :

This new mulligan mechanic will state as follows (as included in the Magic the Gathering comprehensive rules, effective July 20, and as stated in the announcement mentioned above):

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.