Mulligan Rules
Asked by Rustria 13 years ago
If a player has Serum Powder in their opening hand and he/she mulligans, he/she now has 13 cards in his/her hand. If he/she decides to mulligan again, does he/she draw 12 cards or 6 cards? I am not sure how to interpret the rules.
Here is the mulligan ruling:
103.4. A player who is dissatisfied with his or her initial hand may take a mulligan. First, the starting player declares whether or not he or she will take a mulligan. Then each other player in turn order does the same. Once each player has made a declaration, all players who decided to take mulligans do so at the same time. To take a mulligan, a player shuffles his or her hand back into his or her library, then draws a new hand of one fewer cards than he or she had before. If a player kept his or her hand of cards, those cards become the player's opening hand, and that player may not take any further mulligans. This process is then repeated until no player takes a mulligan. (Note that if a player's hand size reaches zero cards, that player must keep that hand.)
BrightGreenLine says... #2
No, you can't wind up with more than 7 cards in hand with Serum Powder .
What Serum Powder lets you do instead of shuffling those 7 cards and drawing 6, is to permanently exile those 7 cards (or 6, 5, 4, whatever the size of your hand was when you used it) and then draw that many. It's a 'free' mulligan.
If you take a regular mulligan, you won't be able to use Serum Powder simultaneously because it will no longer be in your hand; there is no 'stack' for pregame procedures so you can't 'respond' to either the Serum or the act of mulligan by doing the other. The "Any time you could mulligan and Serum Powder is in your hand" works to keep it consistent with the rules for mulliganing: It is so you can't keep your opening hand of 7 and decline to mulligan, and then use Serum Powder to 'mulligan' after your opponent starts mulliganing. It also doesn't let you use it as a pseudo-Memory Jar in the middle of the game either.
August 26, 2011 5:35 p.m.
I probably should have read the Gatherer rulings on the card first. Thanks all!
Jewrummer says... Accepted answer #1
I'm pretty sure that the way Serum Powder works is this:
You have 7 cards in your opening hand along with Serum Powder . You can either mulligan, or use Serum Powder 's second ability. Using this, you exile your hand. They are gone from the game forever, you don't draw anything additional, you just get a new hand of 7 while your old hand is exiled. Then, you can mulligan again, this time down to 6.
August 26, 2011 5:30 p.m.