Keep or Mulligan?! - Part I
Welcome to Keep or Mulligan, where I take a real hand from a real Universus game and ask you all the first question. Am I keeping this, or shipping it for new cards?
Today’s deck is Jester II on Water, a midrange list that leans into survivability and backswings. You’re not looking to blow your opponent out on turn two. You’re setting up to take hits early, then punishing them with heavy backswing lines. Cards like False Visage, Best Buddies, and Healing Spell keep you in the game until you can flip tempo in your favor.
For this Keep or Mulligan article, we are on the Play. To help further your decision making, we have posted the exact decklist below! So you may verify the curve, the checks and any number of quantities of cards.
Click here to see the decklist!
The Opening Hand
In case you can’t read the cards, they are as follows, from left to right.
Masho Concealment
Weapon Clash
Best Buddies
Horrifying Realization
Holy Mace Beam
False Visage
Lightning Blast
Keep or Mulligan?
Think about it before scrolling down.
Our Take
Click to Reveal the Answer!
This is a mulligan.
We’ve got four foundations, but two of them are difficulty 2. That alone makes this a fragile build on the play. Best Buddies and Horrifying Realization are fine at difficulty 1, but this mix doesn’t give us a reliable line to build three or more cards cleanly.
One thing in this hand’s favor is that we’re holding Lightning Blast, one of the few 2-checks in the list. Seeing it now means it’s one less chance to draw into it while building. That helps a little, but it doesn’t fix the curve.
The rest of the hand is stacked with attacks we can’t use yet, and we don’t need all that dead weight while trying to set up. We need a smoother foundation base to stabilize early so we can take hits and swing back with momentum later. This hand doesn’t get us there.
Want to know the result? I kept the hand.
Your Turn
Would you keep this and try to force the build, or mull it and look for a better line?
Drop your thoughts in the comments. Let’s talk about it and enjoy me dying on the inside.