Taylor: 0:10

What's up wizards. It's time for rule zero, the show that helps you prepare for the best game of commander. I'm Taylor.

Shawn: 0:15

And I'm Sean. It is our hope that through our combined 20 plus years experience of playing EDH and cultivating a great play group, tons of great decks, and also trying a lot of outside the box variants and homebrew rules that we can pass that golden knowledge on to you.

Taylor: 0:29

Sean, what's something in the world of magic that has you excited right now?

Shawn: 0:33

Coming up soon ish, or maybe out already by the time this podcast airs, our local shop may be getting a shout out on the biggest magic YouTube channel around, the Professor's Tolarian Community College. It is my understanding that Gamers Haunt in Asheville, North Carolina, which is also the home shop of Chase, AKA Manicurves Online, supplied all the cards for an episode of Shuffle Up and Play that was recently previewed on the last Shuffle Up and Miss Play. A pretty funny episode. You should check out. The new episode will feature Princess Weeks, Krim, AKA the Asian Avenger, and Chase as they battle the professor. Now, not only am I excited to see all of those personalities, as I love each of them individually, but I'm hopeful, and had a little birdie mentioned in my ear, that the Haunt gets some love for doing the hard work of providing those decks.

Taylor: 1:27

Yeah, we talked about this, our game shop and one of our first episodes and I cannot give them enough love. They put up with us, they give us a place to play. And when I send them deck lists about every other day, they are so nice, but they're also great people. So they definitely deserve a shout out like that.

Shawn: 1:46

Shoutout to Charlie, he works behind the desk. just because I've never seen anybody flip through card boxes faster and it's truly like a wonder of the world type of thing. It's, it's exciting. If you ever get a chance to stop by Asheville, ask Charlie just flip through some boxes, fetch you a random card. Sure. He'll love it. Pay for it too, by the way.

Taylor: 2:04

I think I mentioned that every time I go in and he's pulling cards, the speed with which his fingers go through those long row boxes is impressive. And I think it would put some formula one racers to shame. So on this episode today, we're looking at. A divisive topic. You mentioned this in our last episode. This might not be the thing for everyone, but today we're talking about the 12 card mulligan. This came about by a Twitter user by the name of magical hacker. If you check them out on Twitter, we'll include a link in our show notes. We both really appreciate in his bio, his approach to commander gameplay. He says that the three tenants of his commander approach are number one, at first be weak, but later be explosive. Number two, be patient, not defeatist. And number three, when in a way. That gets you invited back that lines up with how we feel about commander almost to a tee. And so Sean, tell us a little bit more about this 12 card mulligan that magical hacker proposed and that we've been using for a while now.

Shawn: 3:06

So the genesis of this was on January 28th, 2023. He made a lengthy post, which we included in the notes. saying that quote, he had found a system that would approve magic in three different ways. End quote so they say that this system would a slightly decrease how many opening hands lead to a non game B makes digging for a combo 40 percent less effective. And C, greatly speeds up starting game time. I am always on the lookout for something brand new. And I saw this hit the Reddit threads, and it was divisive there, which is the only reason I mentioned it might be divisive in your own playgroup, or your own world. A lot of people have a hard time trying something new, but that is not me. I am always looking for a way to freshen things up after 10 some odd years, maybe 13, 14 at this point, to be honest, of playing EDH. And uh, honestly, I don't love lots of mulliganing and shuffling. So even though this is called the 12 card mulligan, it's really just one draw of 12 cards. And once you shuffle, you draw 12, you shuffle five back in after you've kind of picked what you wanted. And we just wanted to discuss with you how this has affected us over the past year and some changed three, four months. I think it's greatly improved our experience.

Taylor: 4:24

It absolutely has. I think when we look at. Some of the different iterations of mulliganing that has come around in magic. This is probably most similar to the partial Paris. And that was the way that mulliganing was done for a long time where you got to sculpt your hand after you mulliganed. This type of mulliganing allows us to have games start a lot faster because instead of trying to draw seven, see if it works or not, Oh, it doesn't. Let me shuffle, draw seven more. Oh, that still doesn't work. It stops all that from happening. We're going to talk about some of our kind of house rules that we've adopted from this and how this works, but it really does speed up the start of the game. I'm a big fan of it. I was a little skeptical at first. We'll talk a little bit more throughout the episode of where this does and doesn't work, but it's been a great idea. After you hear what we have to say about it, you should take it to your play group and see if they're willing to give it a shot. Sean, when it Comes to this mulliganing, what do you think works so well about this?

Shawn: 5:23

So as was mentioned in the three things that Magical Hacker said that happened, one thing it does very well, in my opinion, is that we have almost no non games or hands without action in our group. No. when you draw 12 cards. And I did the math on this. I'm skipping down the notes a little bit, but I did the math on this through a hyper geometric calculator through stat trek. com real nerdy stuff for all of you. I am not a statistician, but I believe in the people who are, and they have made this tool that is a hyper geometric calculator and allows you to find out how many lands am I going to draw on my opening hand with the way my deck is built. So if you have 38 lands in your deck, which is kind of a baseline for us and You draw seven cards, which is your typical draw You will draw three or more lands in that hand 54. 8 percent of the time not bad and that's why we do recommend to play more lands often Because you will have a better chance of having every land on your first three turns, which is super important However, with 12 cards drawn, you will pull three or more lands in that opening hand. 91. 2 percent of the time, nine out of 10 games, you're going to have at least three lands in your opening hand and not have the bad experiences that can come. One of which I think Taylor experienced just last night, uh, from that.

Taylor: 6:55

Yeah. So when we think about how games go, especially in EDH, the first turns are often spent ramping, right? I mentioned the Frank Karsten article in our last episode. I'll put the link to that as well in this episode show notes, but the best pieces of ramp come in at two mana. So that could be your rampant growths, green and one, go get a basic land, put it onto the battlefield tap. It can also be your arcane signets. We also see a lot of people playing three mana rocks. They're maybe not as ideal on that statistical curve, but they're still really good. Things like your commander's sphere that helped to fix you for any color. And so if you can get to three lands, you're pretty set to be able to hit any of the ramping that you want to do in a game of magic. So I'll talk more about this a little bit later on, but in a game that I played last night, a player sat down, To our pod, we were doing the 12 card mulligan and other games because this person was new. I tried to explain what the 12 card mulligan was. They said, no, I think I'd rather just stick to the normal way of playing. That player was stuck on two lands for almost six turns. The only reason that player got ahead is because another player in that pod was playing Zedru and was able to donate some of their lands to that player. The way that this mulligan works is that you're able to get going earlier. You don't have to sit tight and just hope you draw that third land. The numbers back it up and Sean, I'm so glad that you did the hard math behind the scenes for us.

Shawn: 8:28

I will take 100 percent of the credit. So what I will say too, is when we talk about non games or like having those opening rampant growths or maybe a cultivate or a, three mana, mana rock, drawing 12 cards allows you to also pick spells that are like two or three mana. Whereas you may draw a seven card hand that has three lands, but it also has like seven drops in it. I think the sculpting allows for a much, much smoother start to the game in which you have action way earlier than you do in an average, so to speak, EDH game.

Taylor: 9:07

Yeah. The number of times that any player could reflect back on their games and say, man, that would have been great. If I had X, Y, Z, that game would have been great. If I had enough lands, that game would have been great. If I had a turn for play. So when we're building our decks now that we have these numbers in mind, it helps to guide a lot of our deck building. So we're not playing with fewer lands. We're not trying to cut corners and optimize this. Like we're playing competitively. It allows us to have an actual game of magic because for the longest time, we had kind of a standing rule. If you got stuck on lands, we would just let you go and fetch a land. But that never feels good. It feels like the group is taking pity on you and they are, but not in a way that's supposed to belittle somebody. It's supposed to let you play the game because we all want to have fun. At the end of the day, the 12 card Mulligan allows you to get to that point without experiencing that. Just feel bad of having to sit there while everyone else is doing something. And you're just waiting to try and get to a land.

Shawn: 10:12

Absolutely. So let's jump to the second goal of this Mulligan. It's weird to call it a mulligan because it's just a 12 card draw, but that's what Magical Hacker called it So that's what I'll call it You might be afraid like many people were on the reddit thread and some on the Twitter feed that Follows that thing will post What if this increases combo players ability to combo off 12 card sounds like a lot Initially But here's the math behind it and this was worked out by Magical Hacker Remember with the 12 card draw you're only doing it once There's a couple minor exceptions, maybe one or two percent of the time that we will talk about but The rule is you draw 12 Sculpt a hand shuffle five back. That's it However with a seven card draw and commander, you get to Mulligan back to a seven card draw without any kind of penalty. Then you get to do another seven card draw, put one piece back. Then you get to do another seven card draw, put two pieces back. So if you're just searching for a two card combo, the percentage chance of you to do it in the traditional way is far higher. The way he mapped it out, was with a seven card draw seven card free draw seven card put one back system. It will net you a two piece combo that you have 10 sort of redundant pieces in. So like, Kiki Jiki plus splinter twin plus deceiver XR plus whatever, any of these kind of two card combos, you'll draw that two piece combo or two pieces of the combo 26. 51 percent of the time with your traditional Mulligan, because you're, at that point you're seeing 21 cards, and that's just with 7, 7, 6. You can go even further if you want. And the percentage goes up for you to try and find that combo. The 12 card mulligan, however, will net you that combo only 15. 1 percent of the time. And that's only because you're seeing 12 instead of 21, or 28, or 35 cards. I just want to allay some fears. It actually may be counterintuitively for some limits your ability to combo off.

Taylor: 12:22

I'm glad you mentioned that because when I. Put in our show notes. Uh, what doesn't work well is, and I would still argue this in CEDH, we're not talking about using this in the CEDH play space because those decks are hyper tuned to have all the tutors they need. And so that combo piece might not be as required, but now you have the opportunity to see all the lands you need. Your combo pieces and your tutors in CEDH, I think, but for most of us in the casual play space for commander, you might have an infinite combo. You might have a couple of interactions like that in your deck. You know, we've talked about having multiple ways to win in your deck, but. I really like the math behind this because in the casual space, your deck probably isn't tuned to the degree that a CEDH deck is. So you might have a really good opening hand, but I think that's kind of the takeaway, right? Is we want to have hands that you can do something with. We just spent a few minutes talking about how bad it feels to not play the game when other people are doing it. And so that I think is really what the goal is when we talk about having a non game experience, it's where you don't actually get to take game actions. And that's what the 12 card mulligan wants to do, is to promote game actions. And it's not crazy game actions like winning on turn 3, it's like ramping appropriately on turn 3. So I really like this approach, I like that Magical Hacker did the math for us, and I trust them. I'm not the math guru, you just counted by 7 faster than I could have counted by 7 out loud. I was an English teacher for 10 years. I'm going to stick to my fancy words.

Shawn: 14:02

Fantastic. Well, the third and final piece that magical hacker reference was you just have faster games. It speeds up starting time. Which, if you're used to being in a group where at least one out of the four or five people has to mulligan, shuffle, mulligan, shuffle, Oh, can I go to seven? Can I keep, or should I keep six out of guilt? You know, it just, this process that can take, I think, realistically five, 10 minutes. You tried to shuffle a hundred card decks. That takes at least a couple of minutes on its own to do an adequate job. If you start doing that multiple times, you might as well go get a snack.

Taylor: 14:47

You know, Mike and our play group talks about how difficult it is to shuffle a hundred cards. And I know that seems like such a small thing, but he's got a really good point. When we try to shuffle a hundred cards, it's difficult. It's why I don't run so many tutors because I hate the idea of having to pick that up, shuffle it appropriately. After I've demonic tutored or whatever. Yeah. I love playing demonic tutor, but I hate shuffling. So I play fewer demonic tutors in my decks. It's such a thing, such a small thing that adds up. And when you've got the potential for four people doing that at the start of the game, it really does add up as a play group. We just understand that we're doing the draw 12. And we're are ready to play a game in less than three minutes tops, maybe. And it just helps you get into the action a lot faster because a lot of us have other things we're doing and we only have a limited amount of time to play a game. And so it makes it really easy to jump into a game versus mulliganing, like you mentioned, three, four times, whatever it is.

Shawn: 15:49

And it's purely anecdotal evidence from, from my part. Besides the numbers that we gave you that say, Hey, you're going to get three lands 91 percent of the time, but anecdotal evidence and how it speeds up the game. But when I look back over the past year because we've been playing this Almost I think I think there's very few games where I've actually done the seven card Draw since this was introduced Because most people are open to it and I cannot even really remember Any games within the past few months where someone's had to? Mulligan and that goes to like one of our exceptions or You Something that every once in a while and some one of these hard and fast type of rules where you're like This is 12 cards and this is it. Well, we're playing casual too. So What if RNG gods strike? And the RNG God says you only get one land and you're 12 You as a play group then have to decide are we going to give blood for the blood RNG God and say, no, you must stay at that one die by the sword. Or do you just kind of say, show us your hand one land. Great. Shovel up, do it again, because that's where I would rest on it. It's a casual game. We're not competing for trophies. Now, granted, if you introduce this to a new person and they try to do that, I would, I would say, yeah, sure. Show the hand first, not just allow them to be like, I definitely don't have any lands in this hand while they're digging for combo type of thing.

Taylor: 17:16

We are so fast about it. You know, I think about the times where we've had to do this again. It doesn't happen very often, but we'll just drop our hands. Oh, I didn't get in lands. And every single person at the table is like, yeah, grab 12 new ones. It's a very quick thing. Right. What this does for us is it does two things. One speeds up the gameplay, like we've mentioned, but two, I think it also reiterates all of the deck building nuances that we've talked about. If you draw 12 cards and you don't have some semblance of a curve that might not. Be a bad note to take back and say, Oh, let me work on my mana curve. Let me plug in my deck into something like moxfield or architect to actually look at it. And when you do that and you start to look at how your deck's built and you realize, Oh, I have way too many five drops. That's a good lesson to learn to say, Oh, let me scale that back. Some, let me eat my veggies. Let me plug in some good ramp sources to make sure that I can actually get to the five drops I want to play. And the 12 card Mulligan, I think helps you curve out better. And that does some things for all of the players, the table, not only does it let you be involved in the game, but I think it also lets you interact in a different level. Whereas before you might not have a good piece of removal or interaction or whatever else. I think when we have the 12 card Mulligan allows you to make choices. For that game that you want to play. Oh, I need a disenchant effect in my hand, or, oh, I would like to have a counterspell or whatever the case might be, it allows you to kind of eat your veggies there too. And it, it checks you a little bit. You know, we, we talked about the math and how it holds you back from getting those two piece combos, but it allows you also to be a better player. And it forces you to make choices. Am I going to go the super greedy route where I have the most aggressive opening possible, or am I going to take the more responsible route where I have a piece of interaction, a piece of ramp, a piece of car, whatever, and Getting to make those choices will dictate the type of game you're about to play. So maybe you do want to have a super greedy game, but be prepared because other people might've kept that piece of interaction and they might destroy that enchantment that's allowing you to go crazy. So those are my two cents on what I think this does really well for us as deck builders is it allows us to look at our game plan and solidify what we want to do.

Shawn: 19:34

I'm glad you brought that up because I'm thinking back to a lot of the hands that I keep and I almost always now with the 12 card draw instead of with a seven where you just have to shoot and you just keep it, right? It's just like, well, I'm stuck with this. I have lands. I have a couple of spells. Great. Let's see how it plays out. But with the 12 card draw, you do get to sculpt what you're playing as well. Let's say you have, you know, 20 percent of your deck is two drops or something like that. You can, you can kind of know your curve. Well, you can use the hyper geometric calculator or something like that to figure out how many hands of 12 am I going to pull a two drop in, you know? But I remember looking back, like there's plenty of times where I've had an opening hand. I get my three lands out and then I'm like looking at the other four cards I want to keep. And I'm like, let me keep a card draw. Let me keep a source to plow share. Let me keep one big spell that I can kind of work towards and then one ramp piece And then I feel like I'm set at that point. Like I have something to do Gets me more cards. I can interact on some level. It just feels good And I think that's what this 12 card draw gives you is agency

Taylor: 20:43

Because as much as we might joke about the RNG gods, the random number generators, And how that affects us, it feels bad to play a game where you're not doing what it is that you want to do. You know, we spend all of this time building our decks and we want to see them pop off. We want to see them be explosive. We want to see them do their thing. But if you don't get the opportunity to do that, it makes it not so fun. And, Maybe we are nerds about this, looking at the math. No, we are nerds about this, looking at the math, looking at the stats on this. But I think that that's a really interesting, uh, kind of task maybe to take about it. So if you're playing a deck and it might not be operating the way you want it to, or it might be struggling and it's not necessarily doing the thing you thought it would be able to do. This kind of tells us go back and check it look at the stats behind it See, did you have enough ramp to get to it? Did you play it the right way goldfish it at home meaning play against yourself? Just play out the cards on your desk on a table, whatever And see how this deck operates. And if you actually take all that and you go back to the drawing board and you reevaluate your deck, I think you'll find a lot of success. So there's 12 card Mulligan, not only speeds up gameplay from the sense of it helps us to accelerate, uh, the Mulligan process. It also speeds up gameplay in the sense of my deck is going to operate better. If I take that knowledge I gain about my deck. Back to the drawing board. If I take it back to my deck building website of choice, and I start to fine tune my deck, you know, in a lot of episodes, I've talked about when more cards do we need to have something that triples my tokens when something that doubles my tokens is enough, do I need something that's going to double the damage I've done or triple the damage or. Is that not necessary? And if we think about that, a lot of those win more cards are at the higher end of the curve and it takes away from the low end of the curve where we need to be focusing too often, people cut a land when they really should cut something that's on that high end. I think the 12 guard mulligan gives us the opportunity to examine our decks in a way we otherwise wouldn't examine them.

Shawn: 22:57

In the interest of fairness Let's try to highlight some of the possible traps or issues that you might experience if you bring a 12 card draw or 12 card mulligan to your own play group. One of the things that we have listed here is trying to convince other people or how do you feel about that, Taylor?

Taylor: 23:17

Yeah. You know, convincing other people to try something new is always a challenge. I think as humans were resistance to change. We have rules. We like to follow them. And I mentioned this previously, but last night I tried to introduce it to somebody and they were kind of bit by the RNG God, so to speak the very next game, they. Tried the 12 card Mulligan with us. And they said, I was afraid I wasn't going to draw any lands. And then within the last five cards, they drew three lands. And I think that as anecdotes go, that's the best anecdote I can find to back up the math. So you, you know, Proposing that, showing us a math. It came really true in this scenario, but you're the one who introduced us to this idea. Can you recall how we reacted to it in the beginning?

Shawn: 24:05

So our most competitive and, Most veteran player, Mike, immediately grokked on to it. I think he probably tested it at home. Who knows? He's a very meticulous sort of player. He's the one that only plays Perforos and plays Vintage and has actually done very well at Vintage play in the past. But for him, time is always of the essence. Getting more games in. having a smoother hand. Like he saw it right from the get go. So he jumped in immediately. And I think that most of the players in the group, and I can't speak for you Taylor, but like I think most of the players were like totally down to try it. Maybe a little more skeptical in parts. Maybe just like, oh, we'll try it once in novelty, but I think it wound up sticking and we've had random strangers Sometimes or people that we know a little bit or acquaintances at the shop are like Oh, this is the group that does the 12 card draw somehow. It's been passing on which is great

Taylor: 25:00

Yeah. Jude and I will play at FNM and we try and spread the gospel of the 12 card draw to every group. And for the most part, people are really open to it. And at first they seem skeptical, but when they see how you get to sculpt your hand a little bit and have a smoother start, they latch onto it. And so now when I sit down with those same people, again, they'll say, Hey, are we doing the 12 card draw? And I'll say, yes, we are. One person that I play with, uh, at FNM kind of regularly mentioned that it can cause a little bit of decision paralysis. And I totally get that. And I think us talking to that is a good thing because it can be difficult. I think this is where the 12 card Mulligan can kind of slow things down. And this might belong in the, what doesn't work well section is you draw 12 cards and you've got 12 amazing cards. You've got great land choices. You've got great spell choices. How do you know what to pick? Sean, you spoke to it a little bit. You are choosing some card draw, maybe a piece of interaction. What do you think? When we draw 12 amazing cards, what's your advice to maybe combat that decision paralysis?

Shawn: 26:05

Absolutely, I'm so glad that you brought this up in playing 1v1 with my wife I've noticed this quite a bit. She's less familiar with magic. She doesn't build the decks She's happy to play them with me, but she does have a little bit of this decisional paralysis of like, oh, what am I picking? She's totally fine with it. He's happy with it. But for your, for your practice at home, when you're doing this 12 card draw, I say, first you look at what does my commander want to do? If you're looking at something like Judith, which we just introduced, you probably want to have a piece of mana ramp. You want to have, maybe one top end burn spell or something, or something that might clear the board because you know that Judith is going to be slower. and she needs to get out. So the board might be clogged up by the time she even presents herself. So maybe an electricary or something like that, could help clear the board once by the time you get to the point where you're casting her, I would say, always have a piece of manor ramp, a piece of card, draw a piece of interaction and one killer spell, one spell that you really want to play that you look forward to playing. So that's how I would run it. And the interaction could be removal, counterspell, whatever type of deck you're running. And I think this is why the eight by eight method that we talked about so long ago is really great because the percentage chance of you pulling one of each of those eight categories is a lot higher in a 12 card hand. So you can kind of pick and choose instead of getting two card draw spells. Now you can pick which one you want to keep, which one's a little bit more efficient, whatever. And it just makes for a more fun experience overall. So that would be my advice. What about you? What do you think?

Taylor: 27:44

Yeah. I like that. You said that you needed to figure out what your commander is doing. What does your commander ask you to do as a player? And I think that's my two cents right there. It's really tempting to go towards those awesome top end spells, like you mentioned. And I think that's the problem is that too often when we draw those 12 and we want to live in this most perfect of all worlds and get to play all of those really cool spells. That's where the decision paralysis sets in, Oh, which one of these great things do I want to do? My friend, if you have built your deck as you should, and you've got good card draw in there, you're going to get to one of those spells. So I think I would be more likely to push back into my deck. One of those top end spells to hold an extra piece of ramp to hold an extra card draw spell. That's my. Thought when it comes to sculpting, your hand is it's okay to wait and be patient. So like magical hacker tells us to be, be patient, not defeatist. You'll get to those cool spells. You'll get the opportunity to see your deck, do its thing. If you've spent the time building it correctly. And I think personally, as a member of my play group, you know, this, I build new decks constantly, and it's a problem because I annoy the group with links to moxfield pages or whatever. Where I'm like, Oh, look at this new thing I'm working on. And if I step back and I think about the 12 card Mulligan and how I can take that thought process that we've talked about, how it can change our deck building, it might slow me down a little bit and really fine tune some of these decks. I really want to play. I. Build a lot of new decks. I play a lot of new decks and I take them apart pretty quickly. I like that. My A DHD brain loves the novelty of a new deck to get to play, but as a deck builder and now a content creator, I think I owe it to myself to do the fine tuning You shouldn't have decision paralysis if you've built your deck and you're patient with how it should operate.

Shawn: 29:39

Yeah, this goes back to that thing we talked about, in an earlier episode about it's a deck building is a longterm process. The better you get to know your deck, the more comfortable you will feel in that initial 12 card draw of being like I know the chances are pretty high that I hit the pieces I need if I put it back in my deck now. I have redundancy built in. And it allows you to work towards your game plan. Always having an idea of like, what are my outs? And you know, the more time you spend with it, it's like a relationship. It just, the newness wears off, but within the, uh, the old tried and true is just a sense of familiarity and feeling really confident in what you can do. And I think that's pretty amazing to have with your deck.

Taylor: 30:29

I think as good EDH players, we owe it to our play groups. Be them the consistent groups we meet with once a week, be it a new pod that we join at FNM, whatever the case might be. You should be able to describe your deck in a rule zero conversation, where you're able to give a two sentence summary of what your deck is supposed to do. And that can also help you shape your hand. Oh, okay. This deck wants to combo off or, oh, that deck wants to flood the board with creatures. It allows you to get to interact with that game. And you've said this before, you want people to try and wipe the board. You want people to try and destroy your best thing because it creates an interaction. And I think that's what we really crave in these games is that sense of interaction. Now I can feel bad sometimes to have your board wiped after you've done a really good job of deploying it. But again, as a good deck builder, maybe you can find a way to recuperate and regenerate, make sure that your board is good to play. But I think that. Nobody wants to sit on the receiving end of that, where it's not been interacted with, where one player ramps out, floods the board, swings out and wipes the table all at once. What we would much rather have is a go between these players where we're able to back and forth, interact, attack, get in there, clear the board, rebuild. And we crave, I think those dynamic games where a lot happens. Nobody wants to say, man, that was a game where I did nothing for 40 minutes and I just received a whooping. That's not fun. So to the 12 card Mulligan, make sure you're able to describe what your deck is and what it does to other people. So they can also prepare. I think

Shawn: 32:07

Absolutely. So the rule zero talk that we're going to start introducing in a lot of these episodes about how do I introduce this deck? What's an example of what the rules zero intro conversation might be? Well, for the idea of a 12 card draw when you introduce that to your group, this may be a way to do it. I've come across a different way of handling mulligans, and I think it speeds the game up and it gives you a better opening hand. We draw 12, we shuffle back 5, there's no other mulligans unless you draw only lands or you draw no lands, you don't have to force it on people, but maybe try to make it so that like, are you willing to try this out? One time see how it works for you because I think when people do they get turned on to it. It feels good 99 percent of the time

Taylor: 32:57

it does. And I think that, you know, the story I gave of FNM last night, where at first the player didn't want to do it, and then they did, they'll learn, maybe they'll learn that they don't like it. And maybe this doesn't work for your play group. That's okay. We're not going to force it on you, the listener either, but maybe be open to it and give it a shot. I think that we owe it to our audience here to look at some other alternative play styles in the future. And we can talk about some of those other things that we've tried. Some things I just don't want to do anymore. And I learned that by at least giving it a shot. I have recently heard of the first pancake rule. So. The first pancake that you make is oftentimes the worst pancake because the pan's not hot enough or your batter's not the right consistency or whatever. My final thought when it comes to trying new things is to do it twice. Give it a shot the first time. It might be that first pancake that's not the right one, but if you try it that second time where you have a better concept of what's going on, it might go a lot smoother and you'll end up with that perfect pancake.

Shawn: 33:58

Love that rule. That sounds great. It reminds us of the IHOP EDH competition we all had a few few weeks back or a few months back rather

Taylor: 34:08

Which was put on by Chase, who we mentioned at the beginning of the episode. Thanks Chase.

Shawn: 34:14

I think I think they may have some, uh, pictures of the I hop a thon on their Twitter as well. So check those out if you, if you're interested. But now moving on, I hope that you all have enjoyed this episode and maybe take some of it to heart and try it out and let us know how it feels on the back end. But for next week we're going to try and tackle another deck tech and I'm excited about this one. This is Nadar's astral slide into the dungeon. A deck that's tailor made to make a rather innocuous mono white dragon that doesn't fly, by the way, into a card drawing blinking machine. You can follow us on Twitter at Rule Zero Podcast or email us at Rule zero podcast@gmail.com to let us know how the 12 card draw worked for you

Taylor: 35:03

If you enjoyed this episode and you want to check out any of our deck techs, be sure to check it out on our moxfield page, where we link all the decks we talk about. And if you would like for us to highlight one of your decks in the future, we'd love to just reach out to us if you regularly listen to us on YouTube, you can check out our podcast that comes out a day ahead. That's on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever else you can get your podcasts from, and don't forget.

Shawn: 35:28

in magic. There's no problem that a Rule zero conversation cannot solve.