I wish this game had a mulligan system

[BEANS115]

I'm tired of losing because of God awful starting hands. I've always felt this way but I'm writing a post on this because I just had a game with UNMI and thorgate as my corp options, and no energy and no viable TR in hand.

Even in other games, you can have good corps a decent hand but then you draw 4 of the werst preludes known to man. I'm talking, eco experts and eccentric sponsor with no targets and so now you have to take loan and society support. Meanwhile your opponent opens up with business empire and metals company which is already better than your entire starting hand.

Or maybe your corp and preludes are fine, but your starting hand has no power cards or development.

Games like these happen, but they're really frustrating when they happen to you, and you're just completely lost because of your starting hand. Personally, I think the best way to fix this would be to draft everything from the opening hand, meaning corps, cards, and preludes. This would get rid of a lot of early game luck and give both players a lot of options for strategizing what kind of game plan they want.

I do understand that this will never get integrated on BGA because it's too big of a change to the rules and the Fryx brothers like to keep the game in it's original state. However, a mulligan system wouldn't change it too much.

What I propose and have been thinking for about a year now, is the option to mulligan in some way. I think each player should get 1 mulligan and they can use it how they see fit. If I have bad corps but the rest of my hand is fine, then I could use my mulligan to redraw new corps. Or if my corps/hand is fine, then I can use it to redraw my preludes. I should also be able to use it on 2 aspects of my hand (for example mulligan my corps and cards but keep the preludes) or even just mulligan into a completely new hand.

I would like some way to salvage a seemingly hopeless position rather than playing on to 50% and then conceding. I know this most definitely not be added to the game, but I think it would make this game better.

[FrankJones]

Interesting idea. I don't hate it.

I feel the frustration. Four of my favorite games are susceptible to situations that feel like an automatic loss from the start. Three of those games could have a mulligan system (Earth, Wingspan, Terraforming Mars). Maybe include Race for the Galaxy also.

[landus]

I think this issue concerns preludes the most. The prelude mulligan seems to be the only one that can be implemented in an acceptable way too. Cards/corps mulligan surely generates more issues than it solves.

[ft029]

Drafting starting cards would be quite interesting-- I also enjoy that aspect.

I find part of the fun is winning even with absolute garbage as an opener, but some games are definitely completely unwinnable, and I've just accepted that as part of any game involving cards or rng.

[FrankJones]

Wouldn't it be easier to just deal each player more preludes and corporations? When we play at home, we dealt out 3 corps and 6 preludes, but we could have taken it a step further and dealt out 5 corps and 8 preludes, or whatever.

And/or deal more project cards. 12 or 15, but cap the number that can be purchased at 10, or maybe 8. Not that I imagine people would often want to buy more than 10 cards anyway, but limiting it to 10 would be keeping things aligned with the current maximum. And would avoid weird planner grabs as the first action. Well, not avoid, since that can happen anyway, I think. Inventrix keep 10 cards, biolab prelude. But that would likely be a silly opening unless the cards were some crazy stuff like

Earth office
Media group
Investment loan
Indentured workers
Earth catapult
Business network
sponsors
Acquired Company
Cartel
Miranda resort

And donation as the other prelude to make the last couple of cards playable.

Anyway, I got way off topic.

[dessp7]

Its even worse, when its happening in tournament, when you have beaten stage 1, processing in stage 2 knockout and receive that in semi final
so unfair )))

[dizinovi]

I only support mulligan at a cost.
Mulligan corps: get only 1 corp and gotta pick it
Mulligan cards: get only 8 new cards and the 10 cards get shown to all and shuffled into the deck
Mulligan preludes: get only 2 preludes and pick 1, the other one's effect is Donation by default(without a no tag, if Sagitta ever gets introduced to the site)

[AbsoluteZeph]

Agree with the frustration - losing the game because you were dealt a losing hand from the start is a pain. It's even worse when your opponent makes sequencing/strategic blunders but still stomps you anyway because they had the nuts...

I try to tell myself it's part of the game (and it is), and that the reason I lost is not necessarily because I'm a worse player than my opponent, but sometimes it doesn't make me feel any better.

It would be interesting to see a mulligan concept come into fruition, but I agree with dizinovi that there should be some mechanics in place to mitigate it to avoid people being able to abuse it, for example having a decently strong hand and just using the mulligan to get rid of dead cards to make the hand potentially OP. Perhaps implementing a point-based restriction on the eligibility of the mulligan, by assessing the quantified value of the corp/preludes/cards in your opening hand - similar to how it's done in Bridge, where if your hand is <4 points, you can mulligan the round and everyone is dealt new hands. StrandedKnight's recent project on quantifying the value of Preludes can be used as a baseline, but of course this kind of thing can only be done in IRL games. Still interesting to think about.

[FrankJones]

Agree with the frustration - losing the game because you were dealt a losing hand from the start is a pain. It's even worse when your opponent makes sequencing/strategic blunders but still stomps you anyway because they had the nuts...

I try to tell myself it's part of the game (and it is), and that the reason I lost is not necessarily because I'm a worse player than my opponent, but sometimes it doesn't make me feel any better.

It would be interesting to see a mulligan concept come into fruition, but I agree with dizinovi that there should be some mechanics in place to mitigate it to avoid people being able to abuse it, for example having a decently strong hand and just using the mulligan to get rid of dead cards to make the hand potentially OP. Perhaps implementing a point-based restriction on the eligibility of the mulligan, by assessing the quantified value of the corp/preludes/cards in your opening hand - similar to how it's done in Bridge, where if your hand is <4 points, you can mulligan the round and everyone is dealt new hands. StrandedKnight's recent project on quantifying the value of Preludes can be used as a baseline, but of course this kind of thing can only be done in IRL games. Still interesting to think about.

Maybe.

I mean, yeah. TFM is a paradox. It's one of the most popular and highest selling games ever.

And yet there are endless ongoing posts about balance issues, suggested modifications, etc.

Listen. When you're playing a CARD game, sometimes your opponent will just get better cards.

We can either:

1) Fix it by some weird mechanism, in which case the outcome becomes deterministic, or

2) Just roll with it, and accept that the "best" player will not always win.


I go with number 2.

I'm top 10 in 2/3 of the games I play, even though some of those games involve "losing" hands from the start.

Any card game with random draws is going to have variance and randomness.

What is it people want exactly? No randomness, no luck? Then play an abstract strategy game with no randomness, strategy 5 luck 0.

But most or all of the TFM players would fail to win at these games.

Will they win 85% at TFM? Yes. And that's fine. Just don't expect to win 100% of the time, because TFM is not that kind of game.

[emgizy]

There is a variant rule in Prelude 2 where you get dealt 3 corps and 6 preludes (but still only pick 1 corp and 2 preludes), which I think is something that could be a real addition to this implementation of TfM, not only when playing with expansions, but also with Base + Preludes.