6 Questions to Ask Yourself During Mulligan Phase in LoR

6 Questions to Ask Yourself During Mulligan Phase in LoR

Hi everyone, Bones here.

You might be wondering why we’re having so many of us Runeterra players writing about mulligans.

After all, almost everyone on the Mobalytics team has now written a piece on it.

The short answer is that it’s the single most important skill that directly impacts your win rate in the game.

So the question is, how do we mulligan correctly and what are the things that we need to consider?

Here are the 6 questions to ask yourself:

1. Who has the attack token?
2. What’s our opponent’s deck trying to do?
3. What are our opponent’s ideal first few turns?
4. What kind of cards can we expect in their deck?
5. What synergies exist in our current hand?
6. What is our win condition?

To convey the message effectively, we’ll select one of our trusty decks on Mobalytics and utilize the hand simulator function.

Deck Code: CECAOAYJBFKFOXDAMTOQCAYDAADAQDQBAEABUAICAAAQCAQDBFKVMAA

[See Zoe/Sol deck details]

To utilize the hand simulator function, you can click on the hand button found at the top right of any deck’s page:

Voila! We get the following hand:

So let’s do a deep dive on the key elements that were brought up earlier.

1. Who has the attack token?

This matters a lot because having Zoe vs a lot of decks with the attack token is just outright insane.

Beyond that, knowing the turns we get to capitalize on cards like Screeching dragon or Eclipse Dragon becomes quite important.

2. What’s our opponent’s deck trying to do?

Generally, this comes in a few flavors.

Ask yourself: Are they going to beat us down with aggro? Are they playing the long game? Do they have a combo deck and ways to stall? Are they playing the same deck? And so on…

 If our opponent is playing aggro, we want cards like Dragonguard and Screeching Dragon.

• • We can choose the trades we want to take and also try and stabilize the board state.
  • We’re also looking for cards like Single Combat, Zoe, and The Fangs.
  • If our opponent is playing the long game, we would want to just keep Priestess and Eclipse.
  • Assuming we get ASol by turn 8 (which is a very high probability), we’re Gucci.
  • If our opponent has a combo deck, there are other considerations and we’ll discuss this further in the upcoming sections.
  • If our opponent is playing the same deck, there are other considerations and we’ll discuss this further in the upcoming sections.

3. What are our opponent’s ideal first few turns?

This comes with understanding our opponent’s decklist.

Our only real indicators are the champions & regions that they are playing.

To that end, the more we play and practice, the better we get at this.

For example, if we see a Draven/Ezreal deck.

• We know that they are always opting for House Spider and/or Bot on turn 2 and Draven on 3.

• Knowing this, we would opt to keep Dragonguard and Screeching dragon.
• The only that’s now left is, is Eclipse Dragon and Solari Priestess going to have enough impact in the match-up.

4. What kind of cards can we expect in their deck?

Again, this comes from experience or simply reviewing our articles/statistics page on Mobalytics.

All in all, if you know the 1, 2, 3, and 4 drop units/champions that your opponent is playing.

Identifying what they are mulliganing for gives you the information you need to counteract/react.

5. What synergies exist in our current hand?

I lucked out with the hand I got on the Hand Simulator. After all, I got Dragonguard, which is the perfect example!

For Dragongaurd to be effective, we need another dragon.

6. What is our win condition?

With the deck that we have, against the slow decks, we want the Eclipse Dragon into ASol. So where possible, we want to mulligan hard for that win condition.

Against the aggro decks, we want the early units and The Fangs so we can stabilize.

Now the combo decks are where it may get tricky!

Example #1: Vs. Combo (Lee)

Against Lee, we want as many big removals as we can get!

After all, they only have 2-3 Denies!

Being able to secure Comets and Concerted Strikes is a sure way to win the game.

That being said, we also want to make sure that we’re mindful of cards like Zoe and Sparklefly in conjunction with Mentor of the Stones.

We would therefore keep cards like Dragonguard, Solari Priestess, and Screeching dragon.

Example #2: Vs. Combo (Lissandra/Trundle)

Against Lissandra/Trundle, we really should be trying to win by utilizing Zoe, Solari Priestess, and The Fangs, to get Equinox, Crescent strikes, and comet.

The key here is to ensure that we don’t die to watchers or big swings.

We also have to be mindful of their removals so having a Sharpsight handy in conjunction with Zoe will go a long way.

Keep practicing while recalling these key points. Your mulligan game is sure to improve and I’ll see you in Masters sooner or later :).

LFM

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Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, feel free to ask Rattlingbones during his streams (every weeknight @9PM EST).

Bones streams at twitch.tv/rattlingbones_ every weeknight @9PM EST