Greetings everyone,

one situation came to my mind and I would like to know what would happen both in Competitive REL and Regular REL.

Situation:

Game 1 of the match, both players draw their starting hands, Player A keeps his starting 7, Player N mulligans to 6, then to 5 and finally to 4. Knowing he can't win with 3 cards, he wants to mulligan to 0 so he would not reveal information what he is playing and would see what his opponent is piloting.

So, the question is can he skip mulligans to 3,2 and 1 so he could save time?

Of course. There is absolutely no need to perform actions that are irrelevant. Actually, that's the whole point of shortcuts. So, he just shuffles away his 4 cards, scries, and the game can begin.

I would also add that keeping a hand of 4 and not playing any cards would be less suspicious to his opponent than shortcutting a mulligan to 0, unless I'm missing something.

Keeping a hand of 4 means that you will have to discard (and reveal information about your deck) after 4 draw steps. So if you plan on doing nothing, but just wanting to see a few cards of your opponent's deck, mulligan to 0 is the way to go!

And, of course, immediately upon posting, I see that what I'm missing is that the opponent has to win anyway, and mulliganning to 0 gives the opponent more turns before you're forced to discard.

However, I still think that the opponent will wise up soon enough and wait for you to reveal something, so the wisest thing would be to mulligan to 4 or 3, fake not drawing land, and see your opponent's first few turns before conceding. Fun thought experiment, if a bit corner-case.

Originally posted by Dominik Chłobowski:

And, of course, immediately upon posting, I see that what I'm missing is that the opponent has to win anyway

Keep in mind that N can simply concede at the point where he'd reveal anything. The strategy isn't something to debate here in my eyes.

I see no reason to not allow this, he's proposing a simple shortcut, and otherwise he could shuffle for 5 seconds, let opp cut, draw 3, shuffle 5 seconds, let opp cut, draw 2…. The only purpose forcing him through the mulls serves is to slow down the match, when the end result is the exact same either way.

otherwise he could shuffle for 5 seconds, let opp cut, draw 3, shuffle 5 seconds, let opp cut

Actually, that's something he can't do, otherwise he'll get insufficient shuffling warnings. That's one more reason why not allowing the shortcut would be ludicrous.

I was moreso trying to point out “He does the same thing but it takes more time” than accurately represent shuffling times friend :P