Most meta decks these days outside of one with a super specific singular game plan like Moonbeam Druid, have pretty much all the tools to equalise unfavourable matchups if you mulligan right.
This isn’t saying that you’ll win unfavourable matchups all the time, but you’ll certainly win more of them.
Remember. The top meta deck right now has a winrate of around 56%, that doesn’t mean your matchup will be at worst a 44% chance to win, as matchups vary, but you’ll have a way better chance if you know the deck you’re playing against and mulligan accordingly.
I’ve touched on another point there too. At least having a few games with every deck in the meta (if you can afford to) is super important in this process, if you can’t afford to, you need to concentrate on what your opponents are doing, the cards they play, what they do and what your opponents general game plan will be.
Mulligan WR% on data sites like HSReplay is handy, but honesty I stopped looking at it a while ago because in a lot of cases, it varies wildly vs the deck you’re facing.
It’s also the difference between winning or losing mirror games.
Tl;dr
Don’t take mulligans lightly. I reckon a massive % of my WR comes from them in ranked standard and the chances to “force” a card in your opening hand are a lot higher than you think.
Your statistics are totally wrong. Just because the top deck has a WR of 54 doesn’t mean you have 46 odds. One deck can have 1% WR. It doesn’t…geesh, must I explain this?
You’re seriously attributing WR of the top deck to the other decks muliganing poorly? Please think critically.
There’s a meta in every competitive game in existence, that’s how it works. There will ALWAYS be a most effective way to win, in every game. This also applies to real life.
I don’t want to bang the blizzard drum here either but HS is entirely possible to play F2P, I know that as I do it on my US account. I can buy almost every card in the next expansion with the gold I’ve earned the previous one.
There’s also the fact that generally, there’s one or 2 decks in T1 meta that are easy to acquire as a F2P player. It’s usually aggro decks but this season Hunter can do literally everything on a massively tight budget.
I think most players put almost zero thought into mulligans and have severe cognitive bias against recognizing that as an error. They don’t want to see skill opportunities there.
Something that I do, which I consider to be rather simple, is I pick out 14 to 16 cards out of the 30 card deck to identify as “top half.” Normally this means that there’s a core of 10-14 key cards that are “top half” in all matchups, plus a rotating group of a handful of cards that is matchup specific. If a card is top half, that’s a mulligan keep; if it’s not, then logically you’d on average get a better card by sending it back.
I definitely think that the “top half” strategy is mathematically unrefined. For example in some matchups it might come down entirely to a single card. But I’m still reasonably confident that this is orders of magnitude more thought than the typical Hearthstone player puts into the mulligan phase. I see way too many full mulligans on the other side for it to possibly be a mathematically grounded decision. So for most players, creating a basic, data driven mulligan strategy is the best way they can improve their skills in a way that produces real results.
There are far too many great points here and I’m replying on mobile so I can only quote one.
This quote though is so ridiculously valid. Even at high legend, the amount of games I play where I see a full hand mulligan is absolutely astounding, it’s even worse on the climb, it’s as if people just “auto-pilot”. Which is fine, but don’t expect to be “optimal” in that case.
I try to mulligan for my matchup, but even at full auto-pilot, not even looking at my opponents class, I have a good idea what cards will win me a game in the style of play that I feel most comfortable with, especially in a deck that has multiple win conditions.
I honestly do think the mulligan is most peoples weak point.
I saw stats on the mulligan years ago, I think it was Trump that did a video on it, the chances of hitting a card you want or need are incredibly high if you’re careful in your selection.
that idea had never occurred to me. But Im usually one of those that has to mulligan all 3 or 4, but I tend to get a worse hand lol. I’ll go from say (3x) [4-cost] cards and mulligan them all and draw my only [15], [7], and [5-cost] cards in my deck… never fails my mulligans will always give me something I’ll wish I’d kept the other card for instead despite not being playable til nearly dead anyways.
I still remember when I realized my mulligan-ing was terrible
It’s free draw of 3-4 cards. And, as you mention, you get to do it after seeing what kind of opponent you’re facing. Unless they are playing an off-meta deck, you more than likely can figure what to expect, which you then get to decide to keep or draw up to 3-4 new cards. It’s so huge the mulligan, and it’s crazy how for granted you can take it. I would know because I used to do it.
So that win rate is an average that includes players who aren’t good at the deck and mulligan incorrectly. If you, personally, mulligan better than the average person that plays a given deck, then your win rate is higher.
Many of your worst match ups with any deck get better if you know how to mulligan for the cards you’re going to need to win.
I get that people who play decks that are very tight and and just attempt to win first may not grasp this, but it used to be one of the most important parts of this game.
Proper Mulligan is CCG 101. If you put no thought into the matchup during your mulligan you have just forfeited a huge part of the game to the opponent.
If you see a player full hand mulligan, you can assume that either:
a) they don’t know how to mulligan
or
b) they didn’t have a single card in their initial hand that contributed to their early game plan (thus making it less likely that they will land a hand full of powerful cards at the start to explode out of the gates)
If they’re keeping cards, 1,2,3 - you can usually get an idea of how strong their opening is going to be (if they’re playing aggro for example) and start formulating a game plan around it. For example, if a Mech Rogue keeps all 3 cards, expect to face what you’d expect their ideal opening to be.
Obviously this varies from which deck you’re playing.
For example, they keep one card as Warrior, you could “guess” they have a turn 8 Odyn for example.
Obviously all this stuff isn’t solid proven info on opponents, it just gives you an “idea” of what could be coming. It gives you a bit more situational awareness and it’s good for you anyway to just be thinking about what the opponent could have in their hand, even if you’re wrong.
It’s not as important as your own mulligan in my opinion, but it will definitely make you a better player.
If I’m playing Plague DK against a Control Warrior, pretty much the only cards I want are my single copy of Rustrot Viper and Helya. I have 8+ turns before the Warrior actually becomes threatening, so I will gladly toss out a Distressed Kvaldir or Down With the Ship to find Helya and Viper.
Some decks are slow enough that you don’t need to play early game. I’m not “pressuring” Control Priest or Blood DK or Control Warrior with a turn 1 Staff of the Primus or turn 2 Distressed Kvaldir.
I’m not disagreeing with your take but there are several decks where I’m fine starting with a Sylvanas so that it gets infused. But if I’m against a Hunter or Shaman you can bet I will toss Helya back because the game will never be long.