Let's talk about Mulligan Charges!

[rrc]

The logic to assign mulligan charges to leader should be based on how the leader as a single entity can turn the tide of the war. So,

1 Charge : The Leader has a very strong innate abilities and powers which can potentially win the entire game based on an archetype. The leader synergies with a lot of cards. So, with 1 mulligan charges, it would be hard to use cards like Roach and even harder to use WitcherTrio
2 Charges: The Leader has a strong ability with which a single round can be won easily. Cards like Roach or WitcherTrio should be a little riskier, but they can pull it off if planning carefully.
3 Charges: The Leader is strong. Even though a round can not be won just with his/her abilities, it can greatly help with appropriate hand. Three mulligans is necessary for them to pull their 'trump card (and the assisting cards)' to win a round.
4 Charges: The Leader is weak. Just with his ability alone he/she can't win a single round. He/She would need elaborate setup required to win a round and the game. So, four mulligan charges are absolute necessary.
0 Charges: The Leader is rather devastating such that he/she doesn't deserve any charges.

So, with this rough definition: Lets go through the leaders and see how many mulligan charges they should have:
ST:
Franchesca: NO Change. She can win a round with her ability easily with good deck building.
DwarfKing: With just 3 usages and an impact of 6 point swing, he will need good amount of mulligans to get a good deck. He can be strong with weather and counters units that are row locked. 3 seems OK, but may be 4 will make him too strong? I am fine with 3 or 4.
Filandravel: He can't win a single round just with his ability. Due to his ability, he may need to avoid special cards which is kind of weakening him? 4 is apt for him
Eithnè: She is strong. Even if artifacts are nerfed, with so many SC units which can do damage in many flexible way, she can align the units for Epidemi or Scorch or Regis. I was thinking once artifacts are nerfed, she will become weak, but after careful thinking, she seems to be strongest SC leader: 1 or 2 mulligans only for her.

SK: [I have never played a single SK game, so I may be wrong here. Expert SK players can pitch in.]
Eist: His current ability is underwhelming. Is there any really powerful warrior who returns to the war and win a round? But nonetheless, it is like playing 2 units in a round and may win you the round. 3 seems a little less. 4 is OK (but if new powerful warriors are added, then it should be moved to 2 mulligan charges).
Harald: He can do 8 damage and can work well with GS or blood third archetype and his ability can win a round easily. If he goes last, it is a guaranteed win. Because his last play can swing 19 points. 2 mulligan charges.
Crach an Craite: He is a weak flavor of Eithnè. He can greatly support blood thirst archetype. He can align for G:I or Epidemic or Scorch (even if not as efficient as Eithnè). He should have 3. He is not very weak to give 4 charges.
Bran: Ideally he doesn't care about mulligan at all. He can thin the deck to 0. So, even if he get 0, it is OK.

NG:
Usurper: Perfect 0
Calveit: With playing 2 cards in a turn round, can give him significant advantages and can get him a round win. 2 Charges.
Emhyr: Playing a gold card twice is an incredible ability. It can easily win a round. 2 Charges.
Voorhis: He can get +3 or +4 boost per round. It is not overwhelming. The reveal cards are over powered and can be used by any leader, but Voorhis's ability is not a game or round changer. 4 Charges.

MO:
Eredin: With an immune Gaeles or Sabbath or Ciri he can gain significant advantage and win a round easily. Immediate Immune is super cool. He should have 2 charges.
AQ: Very strong with consume archetype and can easily overpower and win an entire game with the right cards in hand. 1 Charge.
UE: Trigerring the DW of a unit is a good power. A decent DW can get +5 points. +5 points per round is a very good boost. But doesn't mean it is like an insta round win. 3 Charges.
WS: +8 can usually win a round. 2 Charges

NR:
Foltest: With 3 order abilities available immediately, he can disrupt any strategy and kill 3 important units without any way to stop it. With more mulligan charges he can always get the strongest Golds and W3Trio and can potentially win a game. He should have 1 mulligan charges if he is to retain his current ability.
Demavand: Is very strong and can have effect throughout the game, but at least gives the chances to lock the units. 2 Charges.
Henslet: I am not sure if there is any combo he can pull it off for winning a round. He can max play a bronze card? I don't know how people use it since I haven't faced him till now. So, in the current form I think he is the weakest NR leader? 4 Charges
Adda: +8 points is good enough that it can win a round. With no synergy with any other cards, she may have 3 charges.

This is my take. An honest neutral take on leaders and the mulligan charges.

 

[partci]

Leaders that do something every round vs. Leaders that can use their ability once and the mulligans between them is making no sense. Let's look at few:

Eithne has 3 mulligans and shoots for 3x3 with tons of synergy for tons of mass damage, Morvran buss 3x3 with 3 mulligans, while Jan Calveit plays a card from the 3 top cards of your deck once = 2 mulligans, WTF? You know what would be fair? Leave Calveit's mulligans at 1 an make him use his ability two times (3 might be overkill, though it needs to be tested (what a surprise). Maybe remove his mulligans altogether in that case and make him chose between the top two cards). Also - see Bran.

Than maybe add Emhyr at least 1 more mulligan. Why does he have 2 like Henselt, Demavend (with 3!?!) or Foltest, who has 4 (!!?) and their abilities are WAY more powerful and swingie than Emhyr's?

You get what I mean. I don't play the game that much but every time I try I see this and it drives me nuts. And I speak of the NG Leaders cause it's the main faction I usually play. For me it's a mess all around.

Edit:
sorry, just saw there is a familiar topic already. Please merge.

 

[Charles5pencer]

Usurper: Perfect 0

It is the shortest reasoning of all reasonings presented in your post, while Usurper does not even fulfil your own defined condition for leaders with 1 mulligan. I would like to hear more reasoning on that, because Usurper's ability is not winning you game on its own at all and it even has no contribution to any archetype of your deck. I personally find 0 mullingans to be unfair. If it is such strong ability, that stands above abilities of all other leaders, then he should have not been designed at all, instead of presenting him as severally crippled leader without any choice. Metaphorically, person without any power of choice is in fact no leader. Instead he is rather muppet, who is executing orders of somebody else in background.

 

[FG15-ISH7EG]

If the enemy build a combo around his leader, Urusurper breaks his deck and likely wins the game. So, 0 mulligans is justified in my opinion.

What I wonder is, what you think about the free mulligan for the starting player. While it doesn't has much impact for 4 mulligan leaders, it heavily impacts leaders with only a really small amount of mulligans. That honestly doesn't seem that balanced to me.

As a Demvend player I want to talk about Crach an Craite and Demavend, as I find both of them really similar, but having different mulligans.
Crach can deal 1 damage, while Demavend gives 1 charge every second turn. My point is that Crach is pretty unconditional, (as long as the enemy has units on the board, but only artifact decks destroy Demavend completly). Demavend on the other hand needs an engine with Charges, which can be the problem. Those engines all have rather small points and are therefore easily removed, such that the invested Charges will easily be waisted and against heavy removal there is often no engine left to give charges to. Also, with a couple of cards that are necessary in an engine charge deck as setup (Reynard, Dandelion, Lyrian Knight, Thunderbolt), the player usually has to wait a couple of turns before he can use the first charge on an engine. Additonally, there are quite a lot of other supportive units like (Priscilla, Aretuza, Ban Aard, Bloody Baron), plus necessary counters against enemy decks , such that the number of real charge engines is less than half of all the cards, and if two or three are removed in a round, there is no engine left to give charges too.
Of course at the other hand there are also engines which not only deal 1 damage/boost, but 2. Nonetheless, there is only one of them beneath 8 provisions and the total amount is rather low too. And with them being low point units, they are often and easily removed too.
To sum this up, I think Demavend is a lot less reliable at triggering his effect than Crach, but can sometimes deal 2 damage per turn. From my experience this makes im on average really similar to Crach, such that Crach should also have only 3 mulligans.

 

[partci]

I think Usurper should be reworked a bit too. Give him 3 Mulligans and if he uses his ability you took one per round used. I think Homecoming needs more of this ability for ability trading-like cards.

Like, why the hell was the Effort tag removed in a first place? Cause they needed to strip the game to the bone, I guess.

 

[kAiSeR007]

I don't agree in many of your suggestions, but just want to point out 3 of them.

1. But by your definition of 0 mulligans, it is contradictory with Usurper. He is not devastating, it only prevents the enemy leader to not use its ability in exchange of no mulligans. If the leader strength is based on ability + mulligans, if you withdraw ability and retain mulligans, Usurper will allways be weaker than any other leader.
2. Foltest has 3 charges for giving zeal and 1 boost to any unit for 4 mulligans. The reason behind this is because NR is strongly based in orders, leaving the unit vulnerable for 1 turn if no zeal has been granted to them. Order units are ment to be based in risk vs reward. I think it's a fine compromise to give 3 of your units the chance to not be countered in the very first moment you play it. That's the difference between deploy and orders, you have no means to counter a deploy, while you do have with orders. I think it's fine the way it is.
3. Eithne is a very strong leader. The problem is that Scoliatel is haeavily based in control. Remove control and it is a weak faction in my opinion. If she is to be nerfed, then Scoliatel should be tweaked as a whole.

 

[Restlessdingo32]

Point 1: The extra mulligan for blue coin arguably shouldn't exist. Tactical Advantage is fine by itself, particularly for certain decks/leaders.

Point 2: I don't think any leader should have below 3 mulligans. Rework the leader abilities to balance them.

Point 3: I'm not sure balancing leaders around mulligans is necessarily a good thing to begin with. I'd rather see mulligans standardized and leader abilities as the sole tuning dial.

Point 4: Deactivating leader abilities is lame. Rework Usurper to do something else.

 

[Charles5pencer]

If the enemy build a combo around his leader, Urusurper breaks his deck and likely wins the game.

I disagree with this statement. Usurper only prevents Leaders ability to happen, but it does not break deck at all. No deck is unplayable without leader. Also not all decks have same dependence on leader. For some decks, Leader is more important than for other deck. If you take extreme point on scale as your basic measuring value, it will not give reasonable results. In other words, you can not approach evaluation of Usurper as if all opposing decks would have been combo decks relying on the Leader the heaviest possible way.

About second part of your statement, it is related to the first part, so "likely win" is not guaranteed at all. Deck typically has some synergies inside, which are working regardless of the Leader. Taking away ability of Leader does not automatically mean, that Usurper deck has higher chance to win than opponents deck. It only means, that Usurper deck has higher chance to win, than it would have, if opposing Leader could use his ability and that is big difference in meaning.

I really find Usurper 0 mulligan to be unfair.

 

[Cipher90]

The arachas Queen is unplayable without it s leaderability

And usurper's archetype is locking enemies. Just look at all the annoying synergies x. X