100 plants will give you more selection, exponentially. a 1-to-1 pairing of any f1s where one parent was a mutant should mean that all of the f1s will carry the mutant genome. it’s just a matter of taking your favorite f1s to f2, for traits OTHER than the leaf type. in f1 is where you select for the traits you want to see in the line. to give an example i will use an ultra short flowering strain (~40 days flowering) vs a long flower which goes for 120+ days. let’s say the long flower is a mom and the fast one was the father. in the f1 generation you could choose 2 faster flowering individuals, or 2 longer flowering individuals. the resulting f2 generation will be night-and-day different from each other. you may find phenotypes within both sets of f2s which look like each other, but they will have entirely different genetic composition. it’s quite fascinating just how vast the potential pool is, the problem is most of us can’t germinate 10,000 seeds to pheno hunt.
the thing with freaks compared to the other mutants is that the freakshow lines seem to be xx-linked. so if you take any f1 bred by a freak male, you have no way of knowing if the f1 progeny will carry the freak genome. it’s a luck of the draw to use f1s from freakshow males. if you use a female freak by an auto male, the f1 generation should be 100% carriers since the trait is xx-linked. there’s an entire thread discussing this phenomena here on overgrow. i have heard people find the mutation through males but expect a ‘hit rate’ of 5% [1 in 20] in the f2 generation instead of 25% [1 in 4].
if you have any questions i’m sure i can explain this more thoroughly 1-on-1.