According to the Wikipedia article of Magic: The Gathering, creator Dr. Richard Garfield has compared the evolution of the game from luck to skill as being similar to that of chess.
According to Dr. Garfield, Magic has and would likely continue decreasing its degree of luck as the game matured. The "Mulligan rule", as well as card design, past vs. present, are good examples of this trend. He feels that this is a universal trend for maturing games. Dr. Garfield explained using chess as an example, that unlike modern chess, in predecessors, players would use dice to determine which chess piece to move.
However, the article on Chess doesn't mention dice in its history. Did predecessors to modern chess indeed use dice? And if so, was it removed as part of a maturation of design to emphasize skill over luck, as Dr. Garfield suggests?