An MTG mulligan guide should start with one uncomfortable truth. A lot of games are lost before turn one because players keep hands that never had a chance. They keep because the hand has their favorite card, or because going to six feels bad, or because they convince themselves they are “probably” drawing the land they need next turn. Then the game starts, and the hand never actually plays Magic.
The opposite mistake is real too. Some players throw back perfectly functional hands because they are chasing the ideal opener. That loses games as well. A mulligan is there to find a playable hand, not a museum-quality hand. If your opener makes mana, lines up with your deck, and gives you a real plan for the first few turns, it is often good enough.
Know the Rule Before You Try To Get Clever
The current mulligan system is the London mulligan. You draw a fresh seven every time you mulligan. Once you decide to keep, you put a number of cards equal to the number of mulligans you took on the bottom of your library in any order.
That matters more than people think. Older mulligan rules punished you immediately by making you draw fewer cards first. London lets you look at a full seven every time, which means your decision is not just “do i have lands?” It is “what is the best functional hand i can reasonably keep?”
Commander adds the wrinkle everyone should know cold. In multiplayer Commander, your first mulligan does not count. So yes, you effectively get one free mulligan before you start putting cards back. That is great. It helps prevent non-games. But it does not mean every messy two-land hand is secretly fine now.
What a Keepable Hand Actually Needs
A keepable hand needs mana first. That sounds basic, but people still keep one-land hands with no real backup because they are afraid of six cards. Unless your hand has strong cheap selection or an unusually good reason to gamble, one-land keeps are usually just you volunteering for a rough game.
It also needs colors. Two lands is not enough if your early plays need green and black and you have Island plus Mountain. Fixing counts. Treasures count. A cheap cantrip that smooths the hand can count. But there has to be a real path to casting your early spells, not just a hopeful one.
And then there is the part players forget. The hand needs a plan.
A decent opening hand should tell you something about your first two or three turns. Maybe you are curving out with cheap creatures. Maybe you are setting up land, rock, commander. Maybe you are keeping a reactive hand because the matchup or pod makes that correct. The exact cards change, but the hand should be doing something on purpose.
A hand full of powerful cards is not automatically good if the first few turns are basically “draw well or sit there.”
The Best Mulligan Question You Can Ask
Forget “Is this hand good?”
Ask, “What does this hand do by turn three?”
That question cleans up a lot of bad decisions.
If the answer is clear, useful, and matches your deck’s plan, you are often in business. If the answer sounds like a wish, the hand is probably bad. “Well, if i draw a green source, and then one more land, and nobody removes my dork, and the table stays slow” is not a plan. It is a little speech you give yourself before making a bad keep.
For aggressive decks, turn three should mean pressure.
For midrange decks, it should mean mana development plus board presence.
For control decks, it should mean stable mana and at least some ability to interact.
For Commander value decks, it should usually mean ramp, fixing, or a clean bridge into the commander.
Not every good hand is explosive. But good hands do something.
Commander and 60-Card Mulligans Feel Different
This is where a lot of advice gets blurred together.
In multiplayer Commander, you can usually keep slightly slower hands if they make mana, fix colors, and lead into your commander or engine. The format is slower, you get that free first mulligan, and the table is often less punishing in the early turns than a tuned 60-card format.
But Commander players also talk themselves into loose keeps because the format feels forgiving. A two-land hand that only functions if your mana rock survives and your next draw is perfect is still shaky. The free mulligan is there to save you from that, not to encourage it.
In 60-card formats, the keep gets stricter in a different way. Your deck is more consistent because you can run playsets, but the games are usually faster and more punishing. Matchups matter more. On the draw, a reactive deck may keep a two-land hand with removal and a cantrip. On the play, an aggressive deck may send back a slow but stable hand because it cannot apply pressure fast enough. Same rule. Different threshold.
So yes, any MTG mulligan guide has to say the annoying thing here. Context matters.
Hands You Should Usually Throw Back
One-land hands with no selection are the classic trap. Players remember the time it worked and quietly forget the pile of games where it did not.
Hands with the wrong colors and no fixing are also easy mulligans. If the hand is not casting your early plays, the technical existence of mana does not save it.
Hands with all payoff and no setup are another common mistake, especially in Commander. If your opener is full of strong cards that start at four or five mana, you may just be doing nothing while the table moves on without you.
Hands with too much air deserve more discipline too. Six lands and one spell can technically be functional in some very specific shells, but most decks do not want that opener. If your first reaction is “well, at least i can make land drops,” you probably already know the hand is bad.
And if your keep depends on one exact card surviving, be careful. “Turn one dork, please nobody have it” is not the stable setup people pretend it is.
Hands Players Throw Away Too Often
Two lands, a cheap cantrip, and something real to do is often fine. Not amazing. Fine. Fine wins plenty of games.
Three lands, one ramp spell, and a clean turn-four play is also fine. This hand never gets applause, but it quietly does its job.
Hands that are a little clunky but clearly on-plan are often worth keeping too. If you are a control deck and your opener has lands, colors, removal, and a draw spell, you do not need the perfect finisher in hand. If you are a synergy deck and your opener leads cleanly into your engine, you do not need every card to be live by turn two.
This is where players leak value. They throw back solid, functional hands because the hand is not flashy enough. Then they go to six and keep something way worse because now they are pot-committed to the mulligan.
Common Mulligan Mistakes
The first mistake is falling in love with one card. A hand is not a keep because it has your best card. It is a keep because the whole hand works.
The second is overrating ramp while underrating lands. This shows up all the time in Commander. Two lands plus Cultivate can be workable. Two lands plus only a three-mana rock is a lot shakier than people act like.
The third is ignoring matchup, seat, or table context. Being on the play or draw matters. Knowing the pod matters. Blind keeps are weaker than informed keeps.
The fourth is using house rules to cover up bad deck building. Unlimited free mulligans can make weak mana bases look smarter than they are. Then the deck sits at a stricter table and suddenly it forgets how to function.
The fifth is going too far the other way and mulliganing serviceable hands into disaster. Six good cards beat seven hopeful cards more often than people want to admit. Sometimes the boring keep is the winning keep.
The Fastest Way To Improve
Goldfish opening hands.
Seriously. Shuffle up, draw seven, and say out loud what your first three turns are. Then do it again. Ten or fifteen reps will show you a lot. You will notice whether your land count is too low. You will notice whether your colors line up. You will notice whether your deck keeps asking you to believe in miracles.
That matters because mulligans are not separate from deck building. They are a mirror. If your opening hands keep looking weak, the problem may not be your choices. The problem may be the list.
A good MTG mulligan guide is really about one habit. Keep hands that let you play the game your deck is built to play, not the game you hope to topdeck into. Do that, and your openers get cleaner, your sequencing gets easier, and a lot of those “unlucky” starts stop happening.