Short answer: No. Long answer: Oh HECK no!
Unlimited mulligan? Skill?
Uhm, no. It means you'll get Machamp donked. NO MATTER WHAT.
"If players begin a game and a player does not have a basic pokemon as their active, they will lose that game. In the event that neither player begins with a basic pokemon as their active pokemon, they will begin the process of setting up the game again."
The rules state that you must mulligan if you don't have any basics at the beginning of the game. You can't start unless both players have at least one basic.
Now, I think the idea of ONE optional mulligan could work. I also like this idea that my PTO introduced to me: Picking your starting Pokemon.
Unlimited mulligans does not require skill. You will get the perfect hand you want, no matter what.
And what about time limits on the events? I can mulligan until 5 minutes remain in the mach, Machamp donk you, and boom! I win.
I'd rather sideboard... lol
Did you not understand the handicap? For each mulligan you take the opponent gets to draw another card, so no it would mean that in fact you would more than likely NEVER get Machamp donked ever, unless you intentionally started with one basic with no call...which would be your fault not the luck of the draws fault which is the only way Machamp gets those donks in the first place.
I know what the basic rules btw, I have the professor logo right there underneath my name, in case you didn't notice the whole intention of reinventing the mulligan system is to
replace the current rules, as in just that rule that says you must begin with a basic. I put that rule in place in order to discourage people from stupidly mulliganing into a hand with no basics, notice the penalties given for it.
What exactly do you mean by picking your starting Pokemon? Do you mean choosing beforehand? That sounds horrible.
Once again, the penalty for mulliganing until you have the perfect hand is that for each mulligan you take the opponent gets to draw a card. So yes, theoretically you could mulligan and mulligan until you have the perfect hand, and then your opponent will win because he has massive card advantage. The new system I described is so that you can get out of a terrible hand into an at least decent hand, but not for free either, you will have to give you opponent the opportunity to draw another card for each mulligan. The decision within mulligans greatly increases skill level, and it's not abusive because for each mulligan your opponent gets to draw a card (I feel the need to repeat this many times, since you did not read it the first time).
Also, this rule never amended stalling obviously if your opponent is taking too long to set up, you can call a judge over and call stalling. Besides with how tounaments work now people are set up before the match begins. You should've already assumed this and I can only take from this that you are trying to skew the new mulligan system into horrible scenarios aimed towards your own arguement. This thread is not to discuss impractical situations and inappropriate scenarios, please re-read the OP, and please have some sense when creating an example.
Have the Mulligan system like they do in Magic the Gathering
In Magic: The Gathering, a player may declare a mulligan after drawing his initial hand at the beginning of each game. If such a declaration is made, the player puts his cards back into his deck, shuffles, and draws a new hand with one fewer card. A common reason for declaring a mulligan would be getting a hand with no mana sources, that is, a hand that has no playable cards. The player may repeat this until they are satisfied, or the number of cards in their hand reaches zero.
This mulligan style is known as the Paris mulligan, although it was first used in 1997 at the L.A. Pro Tour tournament as a test for the new system. It was mistakenly left in the Paris Pro Tour player's packet and this is where it finally got its name. Before that, the mulligan functioned differently. If a player had either 0 or 7 lands in his starting hand, that player could show his or her hand to the opponent, shuffle, and draw a new hand of seven cards. This was only allowed once. The new rule removed the requirement of revealing the hand to the opponent and made the mulligan a much more strategic part of the game, creating trade-off and risk where before there was none.
A recent expansion to the rule in an online play allows a player in a multiplayer game to show his hand to the other players and replace it with a new hand if an opening hand has 0, 1 or 7 lands. If a player chooses to mulligan, any other player may chose to replace his hand as well without revealing the cards.
Unlike golf, mulligans in Magic are legal under game and tournament rules, and are more frequently associated with poor luck than lack of skill.
The magic mulligan system won't work for Pokemon, the idea is to get a basic, and drawing a smaller and smaller hand will only make things worse. Having the opponent draw extra cards after set up is the handicap necessary for Pokemon. Also the second method sounds a lot like the current mulligan system for Pokemon, other than mulliganing with one in hand.
I agree that the mulligan system needs to be reworked. The exact same thing happened to me in top cut at states.... twice in a row. You could say that my deck wasn't consistent or something, but I think the fact that I was 13-1 up to that point proves otherwise. Even the very best of decks get unplayable hands from time to time. I really don't think it's fair to players to have them lose on 1 bad hand after doing so well for the whole day. What skill is there in beating someone with a dead hand? I KNOW I would have won that matchup if I hadn't had to play down the lone basic I got stuck with. It bothers me that so much luck is allowed in such a key moment in the game. How well you set up often makes the difference between winning and losing. Considering our sad lack of "comeback" cards (such as scramble), it's near impossible to win with a bad start. I would much rather stop having to think "well, I should win as long as I get a good start", and start thinking "I think I should win if I play my game well". I'm sick and tired about having to worry about starting hands. Please... give us a new system, one that works would be nice.
@ Toxic, I think the best way to do it would be allow up to 2 optional mulligans. This makes it so you have better odds of getting one of them "right".
Twice? Man, that's heartbreaking, I actually went on a hiatus, because I felt that the mulligan system they had was made simple, so they wouldn't make the game too complicated for kids, but I believe I'm going to elaborate on that later down in this post.
Why do you feel the need for a limited amount of mulligans? Is the handicap of your opponent drawing an extra card, not enough?
That's such a bad idea. The only way you can get a mulligan is if you don't draw any basics. You don't keep shuffling your hand until you get what you like. That's complete and utter nonsense. You mulligan from not drawing any basics then you mulligan for not drawing and basics. Don't like your hand? Deal with it. It's the luck of the draw. That's how Pokemon cards is played. The skill part comes out of how well you play your cards. But where's the fun if there's no luck involved? And if your opponent gets more cards than you because u got mulligans, then it's just your luck. Like it or not, the rules for getting mulligans is NOT gonna change. Nor should it change.
The only rule change I like is the confusion rule. Back in the day when your Pokemon was confused, you had to flip a coin if you wanted to retreat. Now when your Pokemon is confused, you don't have to flip a coin to retreat. Other than that, all the current rules will stand as they are.
So despite how good of a player you are, you have to be taken down from time to time just because that's the way the ball rolls? This game is not about bending to the will of luck, and on a competitive level it's about skill level coming out on top above those with less skill level, because they worked hard. You didn't really explain why the muligan rules shouldn't change other than that luck should decide who wins and who doesn't. You just kinda rephrased the current rules. Also confusion has nothing to do with this, other than everybody's apparent lack of reading the handicap I implemented for mulligans.
I like the MTG mulligan system.
if you don't like your hand you can mulligan for a new one, but you draw 1 card less
In Pokemon, you need basics, smaller hands take away from getting basics. It's a downward spiral, what would happen if you get down to 4 cards? Then 3? Then 2? You need to draw 7 each time.
Build consistent decks, take out that "tech" that I see people trip over all the time. Everyone swears the only reason they only lost is because of the dead hand start. Suggestion, drop the tech, build consistency.
Hey, if you are a bit slower out of the gate, because you don't have claydol turn 2, but turn 3, then you start to cry about the dead hand start.
Build it consistent.
Both DarthPika and I have stated that it was not because our decks were inconsistent, which was well proven by us getting us making near top cut. So I don't understand what you're trying to say here, all Pokemon decks have bad starts, even the "consistent" ones, and they all allow for people of high skill level to lose to other players with lower, equal or higher skill level. Also, we're obviously not talking about a game that gets a t3 claydol, in fact we're talking about games that didn't get to turn 3.
It wouldn't work, because player A could keep getting a mulli and deck player B even if it would take a long time.
]If Player B mulliganed that many times to ensure that hand, then with the mulligan count system I described Player A would be able to mulligan, with no penalty of giving the opponent more cards, but merely cutting down on Player B allowed him to draw from the mulligans he took.
Even the most consistent deck can start with 6 Energy, a basic, and a top decked Energy. While the 7 Energy hand is much rarer, the idea is common. How about 4 Energy, a Basic, 2 NM, and a VS Seeker? All solid cards to have in a deck, and all useless to begin the game. Implying that every time someone lost to a bad hand was because they overteched their deck is, quite frankly, pretty rude.....
As for those Mulligan rules, its not really fair. Player B could Mulligan as often as needed to get Horsea-Candy-Kingdra-Energy-Belt, and ever if Player A was able to draw into 3 basics, starting from that far behind (A 150 HP S2 hitting for 80 out of the gate) is death. Also, its a pretty complicated system, and would be pretty tough to teach to many Juniors.
It is a complicated system, and it is not intended for the younger audiences, back when I first thought of it, a year ago at last regionals (after I lost), I came to the realization that Pokemon has many things implemented in it in order to keep the game at a certain level of complexity easy enough for children to play. It wasn't just mulligan's I saw this in, but in format developments as well, power spray to my knowledge, is the first trainer you play on your opponents turn. In magic they call those
instants, so common that it's a completely different card from something you can only play on your turn, and they've had these for over 15 years, it's not like this was something the developers of Pokemon didn't know about, but something they couldn't do because of the complexity. So I accepted the simple, but luck based, mulligan system of Pokemon, until now when I reread the sideboard thread, and saw my answer.
Age groups, limit the mulligan system to age groups, as you get older the more skill level impacts the game, and the more complex the game can become for you. Even now with the exact same rules, and the exact same format, there is a huge difference in the decks being played in the age groups. I think everyone here can agree that playing in Masters demands much more skill level than in Juinors. Why not apply that to the game? Who likes losing, because that's how lady luck felt like today? Why not let the people who worked hard in order to play well have a fighting chance in the game they worked so hard for?
EDIT:
Pokemon is like...the only game with this weird mulligan rule. Pretty sure every other card game I've played has at least 1 optional mulligan. HOWEVER. This is the only card game where almost 1/3 of any deck has cards that begin with, "Search your deck for..." This MORE than compensates for bad opening draws because your deck should be built around having complete access to the cards in your deck. JMO.
The mulligan rule is not what needs to be changed. It's the donk (run out of bench you lose) rule. It ticks me off that I can win or lose a game that usually takes a good 20 minutes to play in under a minute.
This may be what the creators had in mind when making the game but IMO it is unfair. My top 16 match last year at Regionals went like this: Game 1 he donks. Game 2 I donk. Game 3 goes to ~6 turns each because I slip up on a Warp Point decision and he wins 5 prizes to 3. And then it's over. In 10 minutes, maybe 15. After 8+ hours of driving, 1.5 hours of sleep, what seems like 12ish hours of Swiss--it got a little hazy in the middle cuz food was scarce, thanks SS Queen Mary *coughNOTcough*--and going 8-0 beating the 5th place finisher in round 8 (admittedly on a donk, sry Hatter), the donk rule ended my day.
It's easy to fix too, all you really need to do is say that the opponent has to take half of their prizes in order to win. Major changes to the game would have to come to accommodate that so I doubt a new donk/mulligan rule will see the light of day. Just more sour grapes in Pokegym's whine cellar I guess :nonono:
But changing the mulligan system would fix the problem, and replace what was once luck based with skill. Also what would happen to the game when you had no more basics, that's a core rule I dont think should be messed with.
I seem to remember people bringing this up time and time again as far back as I can remember.
WotC wouldn't implement such a drastic change, Pokemon USA wouldn't implement the change either.
I'm not about to say that you shouldn't discuss the advantages/disadvantages of the current system vs. a possible new system, but it seems to be a little like talking to a tree(you might say what you want, but not much will change).
Bad starts have always been around(even back to the days of getting tyrogue'd in the very first modified format).
Then again, those two cents are coming from somebody who has been out of the game for a while. lol
WotC also dropped Pokemon when it didn't sell anymore, they didn't treat the game like their gilded Magic, which by the way has a decision making mulligan system.
