4c Loam Final Hand Answer

Hand 10: (on the draw)

» Keep or Mulligan?

Keep I’m a little shocked by the number of people that thought this hand was a mulligan. Burning Wish represents both an answer to Chalice of the Void (assuming you draw another Mountain or fetchland) as well as an answer to Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. On top of that you’re only a Dark Ritual away from being able to cast Ad Nauseam! Now, I can see why some individuals are a little wary of the hand, it does have two most likely dead cards in Infernal Tutor. That said, you need to imprint one of them to Chrome Mox. Would you keep this as a six card hand without a dead card? I still would. I think it’s important to keep expectations reasonable on the draw, this hand has possible answers to their two biggest threats with the potential to win quickly. There’s not a whole lot more you can ask of the deck on the draw. I think this hand might’ve actually have been perfect if you swap one of the Infernal Tutors for a copy of Echoing Truth.

Turbo Depths

Pre-board

Hand 1: (on the draw)

» Keep or Mulligan?

Mulligan As a general rule of the “Depths” style deck match-ups is that discard isn’t very good. There’s a saying from years ago when Jund was popular in Modern, “You don’t want discard in Jund mirrors” as late-game you’ll be drawing Thoughtseize while your opponent is drawing live cards, instead, you want to be as threat-dense as possible. This comes up when sideboarding for post-board games. Another issue with discard against specifically Turbo Depths is their combo is entirely lands! Meaning, the cards you’re taking are going to be low-impact as is. With the non-discard spells in this hand being rather weak, I’d feel much more comfortable shipping this hand back for a fresh-look.

Hand 2: (on the play)

» Keep or Mulligan?

Hand 3: (on the draw)

» Keep or Mulligan?

Keep This hand is somewhat discard resistant as it contains two cantrips as well as two powerful accelerants in Dark Ritual. Hands such as these are more desirable as they allow you to form a game plan even through your opponents disruption, while not blazing-fast, they do have a lot of potential.

Hand 4: (on the play)

» Keep or Mulligan?

Mulligan “What does this hand do?” Certainly not anything very well. This hand is a bit clunky, outside of your Ponder finding exactly Lion’s Eye Diamond I can’t see it killing within the first three turns of the game. While being resilient to discard because of redundancy, this is an example of how too much of something can be bad. If you do keep a hand like this and find something you want off of the Ponder, you should keep it on top of your library to avoid a discard spell on the first turn. Then on the second turn you can most likely Infernal Tutor for a second copy of said card, even if it’s Dark Ritual, you’re still short of Ad Nauseam on turn three assuming your opponent is out of discard spells.

Hand 5: (on the draw)

» Keep or Mulligan?

Keep Not a popular opinion, but I keep hands like this more often than not against non-blue decks. The potential to win is very high in a deck with eight cantrips, eight “tutor effects”, and two high-impact cards like Ad Nauseam and Empty the Warrens. That’s 18/53 which is roughly 33% every turn for at least three turns to hit.

Post-board

Recommended sideboarding:

Hand 6: (on the play)

» Keep or Mulligan?

Keep Seems nuts, right? This hand is slow. But speed isn’t everything in post-board games due to bounce spells, that said, bounce spells don’t make you invincible. Your opponent could have Sejiri Steppe or Sylvan Safekeeper. Bounce spells are still good enough that the cons don’t outweigh the pros of having them against Turbo Depths. The secondary reason this hand is playable is that you have two different ways of sculpting your game-plan.

Hand 7: (on the draw)

» Keep or Mulligan?

Mulligan We’ve already covered that discard spells aren’t super effective in this match-up and the rest of this hand doesn’t do anything. The fear people have is mulliganing against discard decks will often lead to losses, so they keep subpar hands. This is an awful habit that I too am guilty of from time-to-time. You shouldn’t keep bad hands out of fear, I’d rather mulligan into a playable five that might get hit by discard than keep a hand I know that isn’t likely to win.

Hand 8: (on the play)

» Keep or Mulligan?

Hand 9: (on the draw)

» Keep or Mulligan?

Mulligan If you decided to keep this hand after reading the other examples, I probably can’t help you. This hand doesn’t do anything! It’s slow, it only makes a small amount of Goblins even if you draw Lion’s Eye Diamond, discard spells are particularly bad on the draw, and on top of that you can’t even cast the Echoing Truth!

Hand 10: (on the play)

» Keep or Mulligan?