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How to Play Mulligan

Introduction

Mulligan is a card game that blends strategy with social negotiation as each player tries to navigate a series of trades and auctions to try and get the best hand possible by the end of the game, without accidentally giving an opponent exactly what they need to beat you. The game is best played with three to six people, but it works with any number greater than one.

Mulligan is a game I created myself when I was bored one day and couldn’t find any fun card games. I’m sure it has a lot of glaring flaws, but it was made in under 24 hours, and so far I’ve found it pretty fun, and I’m very open to feedback to improve it.

Setup

At the start of the game, each player is drawn a hand of 5 cards. You never reveal your hand to the other players. The remaining cards are placed face-down in the middle of the table in the deck pile. Next to the deck pile is the discard pile. This will start empty.

In a circle around the deck and discard piles is the trade ring. The trade ring begins empty as well. Each player has a single slot on the trade ring, where they will place their auctioned card, or their offers for somebody else’s card.

Once the hands have been dealt and the remaining cards placed in the deck pile, pick somebody to take the first turn.

The Game Loop

On each turn, whoever’s turn it is (the ‘auctioneer’) gets the choice of three actions. They may Skip, Auction, or Fold. Skip is fairly self-explanatory. If the auctioneer chooses to Skip, then their turn immediately ends, and the active player to their left (clockwise) becomes the new auctioneer.

To begin with, all players are ‘active’. Inactive players are explained later.

Auction

Auctions are at the centre of this game, and are how players are able to improve their hands. When the auctioneer chooses to auction, they select a card from their hand, and place it face-up on the trade ring. This card is called the auctioned card. At this point the auctioneer can no longer choose to skip their turn. If they have auctioned a card on the trade ring, they will not have that card at the end of the turn.

After the auctioned card is presented, every other active player must make an offer for the auctioned card; They place their offer face down on the trade ring. After all active players have a card on the trade ring, all of the offers are switched to face-up position.

At this point, the auctioneer has two choices. They can choose to Swap the auctioned card with one of the offers, or they can choose to Mulligan.

Swap

If the auctioneer chooses to Swap, Then they take one of the offers from the trade ring, and place it in their hand. The player they swapped with, takes the auctioned card and adds it to their hand. All other active players retrieve their original offer from the trade ring and return it their hand.

Mulligan

If the auctioneer decides none of the offers will help them, then they may choose to Mulligan. In a Mulligan, all cards in the trade ring are sent face-up to the discard pile, and each of the players are drawn a new card from the deck pile. Cards in the discard pile are dead; They will never circulate in the game again.

Fold

A Fold is an action the auctioneer takes once they are happy with their hand; They do not think they can get a better hand, and do not want to risk being forced to lose a card. When the auctioneer folds, as though they had chosen to skip their turn, their turn ends immediately. After folding, a player becomes innactive. This means that they no longer participate in auctions, they no longer have a turn, and their hand becomes frozen for the rest of the game.

End States

There are two ways for the game to end. If there are only two active players, and one of them chooses to fold, then the game ends. Alternatively, if there are no longer sufficient cards in the deck pile to draw a new card for each active player (immediately following a Mulligan), then the game must also end.

2 Players Remain

When there are only two active players remaining, the game still functions as normal. The trade ring will just have a single offer. Once either of these players fold, the game ends, and the other player is also forced to fold.

The Deck Nears Empty

Immediately after dealing cards following a mulligan, if there are no longer enough cards in the deck pile to deal for every player, then the game ends. Any left-over cards are revealed and then sent to the discard pile.

Win Condition

Once the game has ended, all players reveal their hands. The winner is the player with the most valuable hand, just like in poker and many other card games. Similarly, most of the hand evaluations are very similar to poker.

Hand Evaluation

The possible types of hands are as follows, in order of least valuable to most valuable, with an example in brackets:

The of cards that determine the value of your hand are called your ‘value hand’. If you have a three-of-a-kind, then the three cards making it up, are your value hand, and the rest of the cards in your hand are ignored.

High Ace and Low Ace

As usual, an Ace can count as both as the lowest card, and as the highest card. However it can only serve one of these rolls at once. By default, it is a high ace, meaning it wins against any other high cards. It only serves as a low ace in straights, where it may be adjacent to a two. However, as it can only be low or high (and never both), you cannot have a straight that goes from king, to ace, to two.

Card Value

If two players have the same type of hand, whoever’s value hand has the single highest valued card wins.

Suit Value

On the very rare occasion that two value hands are of the same type and have the same highest card, i.e. A low straight where both players have a straight from three to six, then the suit of each highest card is compared. This is rarely important but it does mean that some suits are very slightly more valuable with others. In the example, whichever of these two players has the six in the straight with the most valuable suit wins

The suits values are as follows:

Spades > Hearts > Clubs > Diamonds

Making Spades the most valuable suit, and Diamonds the least valuable.

Assertions

These are just statements about the game that should always be true. If, during a game, one of these is not true, then you’ve probably misread the rules at some point.

Notes

Communication is allowed at all points in the game. Deals made between players are not enforced. If you promise to make a trade with someone, there are no consequences for not doing so.

Additions

Theses are a few extra rules you may add to change up the game a little:

Secret Offers

In this variation, offers are made face-down and never revealed. The auctioneer must trust that each player has offered what they’ve said they’ve offered. The cards are only ever revealed to everybody upon being sent to the discard pile.

High Risk

In this variation, at the beginning of the game, 13 cards from the deck pile are sent face-down to the discard pile, meaning that 13 unknown cards will never appear in the game, making it faster and riskier.

Open Hands

In this variation, your hand is visible to all players. This mode doesn’t work with ‘secret offers’ but allows players to make more informed deals and bribes, and increases the tension when you can see what potential value hands an opponent could make, allowing you to make strateigic offers and auctions. This tends to cause games to last longer.

I don’t know if it actually causes games to be longer, but in play-testing, the games with this mode were noticably longer.

Playing For Chips

I don’t like gambling, but playing card games with fake chips can be a lot of fun, so I’ve tried to come up with a system that allows you to play for chips in Mulligan. This system actually involves much less gambling than a game like poker, as you’re not using the chips to place bets, but instead using them to aid negotiations.

When playing for chips, I’d highly recommend playing with High Risk mode, and Open Hands mode. It makes the game feel much more intense and high-stakes.

When auctioning a card, you must place some amount of chips on top of the auctioned card. Players making offers for the auctioned card may choose to place chips with their offers, but they do not have to. If the auctioneer chooses to Swap, then the chips on top of the cards are swapped, just as the cards are. If the auctioneer chooses to Mulligan, Then the chips on top of every card in the trade ring are placed in a pot. The contents of the pot is awarded to the winner of the game.

If you have no chips. Once you become the auctioneer, you are forced to Fold.