I don't know what there is to be done with the Mulligan system in this game. Paris Mulligan, in my opinion, is the best system we have so far. I would say that we should do a single Paris Mulligan if the player has a pokemon but does not like his or her hand, and have our current mulligan system minus the part where the opponent draws a card. I have always had a heavy distaste for the card-drawing mechanic. I dislike giving people rewards for their opponents' luck. Even so, I can see how removing it would be a terrible idea. People would be encouraged to run 1 Sableye and a bunch of other stuff... especially under the BW rules. Not giving the opponent a reward would make the Sableye player at a very big advantage due to their heavy use of metagaming (go look up the game theory term if you don't understand). That just cannot be done. The problem with mulligans in our game is that turn 1 donks are possible and there is a required state of the game before we begin. Paris Mulliganning works in magic because the beginning state is decided by the players. There are no requirements to begin... only shuffle and draw. After that, the players can decide if they have a good or a bad hand. Because of this, we would need one or more mulligan systems in place to deal with our game. The one in place right now works fine... but it allows for some really bad hands that players are forced to keep. The way games play out, there are two types of opening hands: playable ones, and Horsee + 6 water energy ones. Playable ones will, within a turn, allow players to basically draw a whole new set of cards and continue the game. The second kind of hand... not much to say. The big difference between our game and games that are successful with this mulligan style is that our opening hand isn't as important as theirs. With Magic, the opening hand sets the tempo of the game. A player who opens well will dominate. A person who opens okay will be in the game. A person who opens garbage will not have a game to play. Pokemon doesn't work that way. Our hands are either playable or garbage. There is very little inbetween. Our opening hands do not set the tempo of the game... they only decide if you play the game, or if you lose the game. Because of this, Paris Mulligans would only be useful to stop those garbage hands. Decks can abuse it heavily, such as Uxie donk post-BW. Uxie Donk will be able to get very picky with its hands. That deck barely has bad starts, so it will be able to get the best hands it can find. What I'm basically saying is that enacting a Paris Mulligan system will give some decks advantages over others. Other games need this mulligan style more because the opening hand is one of the most important thing in the game. Yugioh (which to this day, I feel should have a Paris Mulligan system) is basically decided when the players draw their opening hands. We just don't have that as Pokemon players. Once again, we have good and bad opening hands... other games have amazing, great, good, eh, bleh, and ick hands. Big difference
Now then, something that we used to do a lot here in Vegas was a format where we got to pick our starter pokemon and then draw 6 cards to start the game. This system worked somewhat well, but seemed to favor set-up decks. Aggressive decks (SP) couldn't survive that format.
The system we have right now is imperfect, but it is one of the best systems that I have seen. As for Paris Mulligans, they wouldn't hurt the game too much... and they'd definetly cut down on those painful moments where you start with Unown Q and a hand full of pointless cards. Even so, I think it may not be a very good idea in the longterm.
