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Writer's pictureAstrodar

The Art of the Mulligan

Updated: Oct 9, 2023

*pssst* If you see an acronym or term you don't recognize, check out our glossary.


When you’re looking at which cards to keep and which to mulligan, the primary factor in your decision will be… You know what. Let me start with something else.


The mulligan is essentially the first in-game decision that you will make, and it can be a really impactful one. The key to a strong start is leveraging the mulligan. This article dives into some basic principles, the reasons behind them, and when to ignore them. At the end is a list of some heroes denoting which cards are important for their mulligan.


Basic Principles of the Mulligan:

  • Dig for keystone/build cards.

  • Good isn’t good enough.

  • Utilize your full hand.

  • Evaluate the scenario.


Know Your Deck

Before we get into the principles, it is worth noting that you should have a rough idea of what your deck is doing and what the important cards are. At the end of this article, you’ll find a run-through of some heroes highlighting pieces from their kit that are important. There are also some aspect cards/combos listed that can be relevant for multiple heroes. The big thing here is knowing your hero and/or deck at least enough to know your mulligan targets. If you're grabbing a deck from MarvelCDB, check for a write-up. Most of the time the author will note cards to look for in a mulligan. With that said, let's get into the meat of digging into your deck.



The Mulligan Primer

Let’s kick things off by doing a quick rundown of the mulligan’s reach and some numbers to support it. I swear this isn’t a math lecture, so bear with me. To establish a baseline, we’ll use 6 as the standard alter-ego hand size and 40 as the standard deck size. There’s a reason 40 is really common, but we’ll get into it another time. With 6 cards on your opening draw and up to 6 more from the mulligan, most heroes can see more than a quarter of their deck before anyone takes a turn. This is huge. If you're looking for a particular unique card, you have a 15% chance of getting it in your opening hand, but a 30% chance of getting it once you include your mulligan. An important piece of the mulligan puzzle is knowing when you should do a hard mulligan by discarding most (if not all) of your opening hand so that you can dig this deep.


You keep diggin'!
 

Dig for Keystone/Build Cards


Keystone Cards

On the heels of how deep you can dig into your deck, we should talk about keystone heroes. Keystone heroes have a single piece in their kit that significantly changes their gameplay. The rest of their kit or playstyle may hinge on this one card. Some examples would be Dwi Theet Mastery for Drax or Friction Resistance for Quicksilver. Heroes with these upgrades will want to see them as soon as possible, meaning that a hard mulligan is crucial if you don’t see your keystone in the opening hand. Don't worry if you don’t see the keystone card even after a hard mulligan. You’re still a quarter of the way through your deck, and even closer to the card you need. Player side schemes have added a layer of consistency to these heroes, so it is worth considering holding onto something like Super Power Training that will help you “cheat” your keystone card into play. We’ll cover this a little more under Exceptions.


Keystone Examples


Build Cards

Build heroes tend to have a large difference in gameplay between their opening turn and the final turn. These are heroes that have a number of upgrades, supports, and other factors that will increase their power without having a singular piece upon which their kit relies. Some examples would be Iron Man with all his tech and Black Panther with his upgrades. Because some of the cards in our opening hand will be tossed as resources, you’ll have to consider the risk of getting too many of these important pieces at the same time. These heroes are more likely to have a smaller or non-existent mulligan, as you’ll learn to judge if you have a “good enough” hand to avoid losing too many build pieces all at once.



Resource generators are a key type here, as they ramp up your spending power right off the bat. Getting resource generators out early can dramatically impact the game, as they snowball the ability to get set up. I'll note that by resource generator I mean cards with a Resource ability (Quincarrier), a discount ability (Helicarrier), or card draw (Avenger's Mansion, Dwi Theet Mastery).


Setup Abilities

Many heroes come with a setup ability that grabs a card important to their game play. As an example, Black Panther can grab one of his upgrades, while Star-Lord and Venom grab their guns. Other heroes have an alter-ego action that will function the same way: Nova getting his helmet, Thor getting Mjolnir, and Hawkeye getting his bow for example. With these heroes you run less of a risk of having nothing to do after a hard mulligan, because you know you have important pieces coming. However, you may risk losing out on the ability if you draw that setup/action card from your mulligan. If you get the setup piece in hand during the opening draw, you should absolutely discard it, assuming your ability can grab from your discard. You’ll be getting it right back, and it lets you see farther into your deck. If you don’t have these cards in hand, but have a “good enough” hand, it may be worth skipping or reducing your mulligan in order to avoid missing out on the bonus card.


Good Isn’t Good Enough

If you’re coming from a game like Magic the Gathering, it will seem like someone is stealing cards out of your deck. You will absolutely burn through your deck in a game of Marvel Champions. I mention this, because many times players will get caught up on a really strong card in their opening hand that won’t help them ramp their hero or solve an immediate problem. Smashing face with Hammer Throw is great, but you should almost always chuck it or make it a resource on the opening draw. There are more important things to fish for, and you will see it again sooner than you think. This is a reminder that there is nothing wrong with discarding most or all of your hand for your mulligan.


If it isn't good enough, Keep Fishin'.

Utilize Your Full Hand

One of the considerations that you should have when evaluating your opening hand is whether or not you can fully utilize all the cards. If you find that you would be one resource short, it is worth digging further into the deck to chase a double resource. However, this points us back to our build heroes. You do not want to end up with too many of your important pieces at once, so if you don’t need to mulligan, don’t. Alongside this, you will want to weigh the possibility that you may hard mulligan into nothing. If you have a satisfactory card like an ally, it can be good to hold that as insurance against an unlucky mulligan. You reduce your odds of finding what you want slightly, but you reduce the risk of having nothing to play.


Evaluate the Scenario

Sometimes the cadence of the scenario is not a slow build, but rather something that requires you to put out fires immediately. In scenarios that give a lot of early pressure, you may want to put more priority into events. In multiplayer games, teamwork is crucial and starts with the opening hands. If one player can forgo setup to manage the board, it can give the other players the time they need to set up quickly.


Another thing to consider here are villains that have high attacks or scenarios where you start the game with facedown encounter cards. Allies gain a lot of value here (which is saying something, since they are so valuable already), because they are primed to block an extra attack or flex into what you need to deal with the following turn. Allies are a prime target to hold on to from an opening hand if you’re concerned about having something to play after your mulligan.


Exceptions

There are two main exceptions to the principles above. First is having a different overall strategy for approaching the scenario by using a rush strategy. Second is the availability of player side schemes, which give you a different path to your same goal (getting the important cards).


Rush Strategies

Named after the band, Rush strategies focus on delivering sick beats and face-melting riffs.

While I have been largely basing this mulligan discussion around a control strategy, you often have the first principle flipped when running a rush strategy. In a control style game, you are looking to manage enemy fires while building your board. Once built, you can move toward defeating the villain. In a rush style game, your goal is to ignore all the fires and just defeat the villain as fast as possible.


If your goal is to burn down the villain as quickly as possible, you don’t want to waste time playing cards that won’t return their value. Let’s take Quincarrier as an example. This resource generator costs 4 effective resources, or ER (3 cost + the card itself) while granting a wild resource each use. This means that you aren’t fully refunded until the fourth time you use Quincarrier. While anything above the fourth time is pure value, anything less is questionable. It may help you gain the final resource you need for a single explosive turn, or it may be wasting resources since the game will be over before it pays out. It’s an interesting discussion regarding tempo of play. The Enhanced resource upgrades (Enhanced Awareness, Enhanced Physique, Enhanced Reflexes) offer a worse efficiency of 3 ER for 3 resources compared to Quincarrier's 4 ER for infinite resources. However, they have a much smaller impact on your hand and pay out faster. While I am not wholly condoning loading your decks with Enhanced resource upgrades, this example works well to highlight how value considerations are impacted by strategy.


When playing rush, events will hold greater import due to the immediacy of their payout. However, you may still be looking at getting high impact pieces (similar to keystone heroes) or combination pieces. This pushes back to "know your deck."


Player Side Schemes

Player side schemes are a new card in the game that can fundamentally change how some heroes play. If you or a teammate has a player side scheme that can pull an important card from your deck, it is worth considering that scheme as a faux-copy of your keystone or build card. Mentioned earlier was Superpower Training, a player side scheme that allows each player to find an identity-specific upgrade and put it into play. If this card is in someone’s opening hand, you may want to put a higher priority on threat removal, because it will achieve the same goal (get your card) just with a different path. On the deck-building side, player side schemes are a great way to fix the consistency issues that come with having a keystone card.



Conclusion

Before we conclude by diving into the individual heroes, I want to reiterate that mulligans are an art. While there are some guiding principles that I outlined above, there are a multitude of factors that will impact how you actually go about your mulligan. Some of the skill comes from experience with a hero or deck. Hopefully this writeup has given you some direction and confidence for pursuing bigger mulligans and stronger starts.



 

Keystone Hero Priorities



Here I will be looking at the keystone heroes and their mulligan priorities. I'll also note if there are alternative cards or strategies to watch for during the mulligan.


Ant-Man

  • Keystone: Ant-Man's Helmet

  • Ant-Man does a whole lot of form changing, and while he still can do work without his helmet, the card draw and healing are game changing.

Colossus

  • Keystone: Iron Will

  • Alternates: Titanium Muscles, Piotr's Studio

  • Iron Will draws you a card each time you lose a Tough status card. This is the central piece to boosting Colossus's abilities. Titanium Muscles can do work, but it isn't nearly as central to the kit. Piotr's Studio is noted here, because it can help you dig for Iron Will.

Drax

  • Keystone: Dwi Theet Mastery

  • Alternate: Mantis

  • Dwi Theet Mastery is a huge economy card for Drax, and with his reduced hand size, Drax needs all the card draw he can get. Mantis is a good alternate for the mulligan, because she can provide necessary early healing while Drax builds counters.

Hawkeye

  • AE Action: Hawkeye's Bow

  • Keystone: Hawkeye's Quiver

  • Alternates: Mockingbird

  • Hawkeye has a fairly independent hero kit where once built, he can fire a free arrow each turn while still having his whole hand to do other things. His arrow kit functions as a problem solving toolkit. However, the usefulness of this toolbox hinges on building up a stockpile of arrows with Hawkeye's Quiver. The disparity between having and not having the quiver is strong enough that Hawkeye lands here instead of in the Build Hero category. Mockingbird is a good alternate card to increase Hawkeye's survivability while he builds.

Quicksilver

  • Keystone: Friction Resistance

  • Friction Resistance is the sole source of economy in Quicksilver's kit. It's huge, because it can be leveraged to produce a lot of resources for a hero with pretty inexpensive hero cards.

Star Lord

  • Setup: Element Gun

  • Keystone: Star-Lord's Helmet

  • The legendary outlaw makes this list due to his helmet. Counteracting the extra encounter cards you may get by having an increased hand size is huge. The difference between having the helmet and not is game changing.

Groot

  • Keystone: Fertile Grounds

  • While this card may not seem like much at first glance, it has a huge impact on Groot's ability to replenish growth counters. 2 extra counters and 2 extra cards each time Groot changes to alter-ego is a big uptick in tempo.


Build Hero Priorities



Here I am going to highlight some of the build heroes and their mulligan priorities. While this list is not exhaustive of all build heroes, the heroes below have a number of high priority targets that help bring their power online. There are other build heroes that are not listed here that may have generic build like resource generators or that pull the majority of their focus from their aspect cards and deck design.


Adam Warlock

  • Build Cards: Mystic Senses, Sorcerer Supreme, Karmic Staff

  • While Karmic Staff and Sorcerer Supreme are pretty straightforward ramp cards, the copies of Mystic Senses are what really turn Warlock's economy and power on. Each will draw a card when Warlock uses his Battle Mage ability, meaning you can take your least useful card each turn and turn it into two other options.

  • Note: Take a look at the Spiritual Mediation entry for Mystics below.

Black Panther

  • Setup: one Black Panther upgrade from deck

  • Build Cards: The Golden City, Black Panther upgrades, Shuri

  • While many players are looking to build the suit as fast as possible, The value of The Golden City cannot be stressed enough. An early draw will absolutely snowball your ability to set up. Something crucial to note for Black Panther is that his Setup ability (and Shuri) doesn't reach into the discard pile. That means if you have an upgrade you want, don't discard it during the mulligan.

Iron Man

  • Build Cards: tech upgrades, Pepper Potts, Stark Tower

  • Tech upgrades are the primary card you should be looking for during your mulligan. You should be aiming to land at least two upgrades on your first turn. Pepper Potts and Stark Tower are both helpful, but rarely should either be taking precedence over playing more tech cards.

Ms. Marvel

  • Build Cards: Aamir Khan, Nakia Bahadir, Embiggen!, Shrink, Biokinetic Polymer Suit

  • Ms. Marvel has some of the strongest alter-ego support in the game. This means she has a lot of solid options for kicking off the game. The above are pretty self-explanatory, but I will note that if you're leaning into a role (thwarter / damage dealer), then feel free to chuck Embiggen! or Shrink during your opening hand. Their value largely depends on your role.

She-Hulk

  • Build Cards: Focused Rage x2, Superhuman Law Division

  • Focused Rage is the big economy card for She-Hulk, and they help for setting up massive damage turns for Gamma Slam. These are expensive upgrades, so the sooner you get them out, the more likely they are to pay themselves off. Superhuman Law Division is a solid early card as well, as it is essentially the only efficient thwarting in her kit beyond Hellcat.

SP//dr

  • Build Cards: Interface cards, All Systems Go!, Aunt May & Uncle Ben, SP//dr Command

  • SP//dr is a hero that I could do an entire write up on just her mulligan and opening hand. Suffice it to say that while she has a lot of setup, she can do it fast. You have a 90% chance of hitting at least one interface upgrade in your opening sequence. You have roughly 30% chance to hit two or more interfaces in your opening sequence. While your mulligan may be small with only 4 cards, you can then draw an additional 2 cards with the SP//dr Suit support. Then you have Aunt May & Uncle Ben that give you further reach into your deck. Despite the small hand size, SP//dr can reach just as far into her deck as most heroes.

Thor

  • Action: Mjolnir

  • Build: Asgard, For Asgard!, God of Thunder

  • Thor's biggest limiting factor is his economy. Once set up, it's plenty strong. However, you have a lot of cards to grab, and they aren't particularly cheap. Asgard is the big one, as it will increase Thor's hand size in both hero and alter-ego. For Asgard! is a decent draw in your opening hand if it is drawn alongside a double resource. If you have both, you can grab Asgard and play it while also playing Mjolnir. God of Thunder is generally useful, but they also power Lightning Strike to help manage the minions Thor may produce.

War Machine

  • Build cards: Shoulder Cannon, Gauntlet Gun, Munitions Bunker, Missile Launcher

  • War Machine has some powerful cards, but they are dependent on his ammo counters. For this reason, his Gauntlet Guns are helpful for powering his events, and they can help you do more with your ammo ration from flipping. Shoulder Cannon is a fantastic upgrade that will help you drain your ammo counters before flipping, and Munitions Bunker is essential for building up more explosive turns.

Venom

  • Setup: one weapon from deck

  • Build cards: Multigun, Spider-Sense, Venom’s Pistols, Project Rebirth 2.0

  • You'll be getting a weapon from your deck during setup, but Venom is a hero where I think digging for Multigun is worth the risk of losing out on your Setup ability. The rest are pretty straight forward economy and build cards.


Ebb-and-Flow Hero Priorities



These are build heroes that I colloquially call Ebb-and-Flow Heroes. They tend to have a lot of setup, but it is with cards that will be discarded through play. You end up with this ebb and flow feel as you build toward big turns, then fall back to rebuild after that big turn. Essentially you'll want to grab at least one of their focus cards during your mulligan and then the rest will be dependent on what deck you run. I'm not going to go into these heroes at this point beyond just listing who they are. I'll also note there are other Ebb-and-Flow heroes that derive the feel from building counters or the like, but they'll be addressed another time.

  • Black Widow (preparations)

  • Nebula (techniques)

  • Rocket Raccoon (tech)

    • The reason I bother mentioning Rocket here is that you can use his alter-ego action to ditch an early tech and dig deeper into his deck.


Everyone Else

The rest of the heroes have minimal setup. Most of them will just want resource generators given either by their kit or aspect cards. One that I will call out is Ironheart. She seems like a build hero at first glance, but initially you're looking to upgrade your suit. This is an event focused path for the most part. Her build pieces largely come later.


Aspects

I wanted to pick out two aspect suites that can really change how a hero builds.

  • X-Men: The X-Men have a really strong suite of cards that can turn any X-Men or Mutant hero into a build hero. Some combination of Cerebro, Danger Room, Utopia, X-Jet, and X-Mansion can all make for a solid deck and be strong choices for mulligans. These will be deck dependent, so again... Know Your Deck.

  • Mystics: All the mystics will want to take Sorcerer Supreme, and it will be one of your important mulligan pieces. However, mystics can also take Spiritual Meditation. I wanted to highlight this card regarding the mulligan, because it can be a little unintuitive. You want to keep Spiritual Meditation during your mulligan so you can reach farther into your deck. If you discard Spiritual Meditation during the mulligan, you will only see 12 cards in your deck. If you hold Spiritual Meditation, you see 11 cards and then see 2 more when you play it. You'll be resource neutral (no gain or loss), but you will have dug deeper into your deck.



Thanks

Thank you again to everyone who chatted with me about this topic. In particular, thank you to Journeyman2, Jossero, and MegiDolaDyne.


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