Ah the classic conundrum: keeping a one land hand when on the draw. Oppo is also playing an aggressive deck and this is game three. Each previous game whoever was on the play was the winner, just through front-foot aggression (god bless you SNC). So, what do we do here?

  • Baseline heuristics: keep any hand that only needs one land over the next two draw steps to work. However, always mull if it needs a particular kind of land. This hand clearly needs a mountain, so mull.
  • Oppo has already mulled. Even if it doesn’t matter, that always makes it feel safe to mull.
  • I do have one of those family fixers. So if I draw a second land but it’s a swamp, I can still turn on my hand by casting it.
  • I also have sweet sweet one mana removal that can help me catch up.
  • This hand is straight gas if it gets going (double Body Droppers with sacrifice fodder in the Magician).

What’s the play?

I ended up keeping. The family fixer makes this feel more like “any land makes this hand work” even if it takes turn 2 off. And the single mana Strangle allows for a quick double-spell to catch up on turn 3 or 4. I kept, drew my land and won pretty easily.

One thought on “Keep or Mull: solitary land

  1. i’m glad it worked. i have no trouble believing in the matchup your win percentage was higher if you kept than mulled. can you share the 17 lands file, would love to see the decklist and game play

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