Two-headed giant is a fairly popular format at Magic prereleases, among other times. So while some of you may play this quite often, some people only play it at prereleases, and may not be familiar with the mulligan rules. So today, we’re going to go over how mulligans and the opening turn works in two-headed giant.
In multiplayer games, you actually get a free mulligan. In a duel, when you take a mulligan, you get one less card than you had before (so you start with seven, then you mulligan down to six, then five, etc.). But in multiplayer games, you don’t go down right away. If you’re not content with your opening hand, with the first mulligan, you go back to seven cards. However, if you’re not happy with the second hand, you’ll start losing a card for each further mulligan (so you start with seven, and the first mulligan you stay at seven. Then you go down to six, then five, etc.). Since two-headed giant is a multiplayer game (while you have two sets of opponents facing off against each other, you still have multiple people involved), you get to use this free mulligan if you wish.
However, unlike other multiplayer games, the starting team does skip their draw step on their first turn. If you’re the starting team in a two-headed giant match, you won’t be drawing a card on your first turn.
This is why it’s more likely for the team who wins the die roll to choose to be on the draw, as the 2-card advantage can be greater than the tempo advantage of going first. This is much less common in regular duels, where going first is a larger advantage.
Hopefully, this helps you out during your next two-headed giant event (which is probably quite soon, since the prerelease for Dragons of Tarkir is now just weeks away).
Today’s Tournament Tip written by Nathan Long