How to Build Your Own Jumpstart Magic Environment

What’s up, gamers? If you’re here for Cube content, I feel I should let you know that we’re doing something a little bit different here today. Today’s topic serves as a great supplement to a Cube night, but is a different way to play Magic altogether. Today I’ll be breaking down how to build your own Jumpstart environment, and next week I’ll be going over my own Party-themed Jumpstart Cube. Let’s dig in!

Shuffling Up

It should come as no surprise that Cube is my favorite way to play Magic. Like many Magic players, I occasionally find myself pondering why and how other players’ format preferences differ. Cube has gained a lot of popularity over the years, but it has not experienced nearly the growth of Commander. I think that a lot of this has to do with the ease of building your own Commander deck relative to building an entire Cube as a form of self-expression. Ultimately, I think that the “shuffle up and play” nature of Commander is the hurdle that Cube realistically can’t overcome, with building decks being a barrier to actually playing games of Magic once you open your Cube box.

That said, Cube does have the advantage of one player providing the experience for a group of other players. If I have a deck, I can play with other players who have decks, but if I have a Cube, I can play with anybody who knows how or is willing to learn. This is part of the reason that some players maintain what is called a Battle Box, which is a way to play where players play a generally lower-powered game of Magic, drawing from the same deck that can easily be shuffled and played. Battle Box has never been my scene, but when the original Jumpstart set was announced, it immediately had my attention as another form of “shuffle up and play” Magic.

What Is Jumpstart?

There’s so much happening with Magic these days that I don’t expect everybody to know everything that’s going on. The full truth is that I’ve realized I expected people to know more than they realistically would back when a lot less was happening with the game, but I digress.

Jumpstart is a way to play Magic where players shuffle two twenty-card packets together to play games of Magic with 40-card decks. There are two official Jumpstart sets, Jumpstart and Jumpstart 2022, with Standard legal sets also getting their own Jumpstart boosters these days. I don’t have much experience playing with these official products, but they’ve always struck me as a great introductory product, given how easy it is to just crack some packs and play, yet it can scale to more entrenched players with compelling enough designs.

The Packets

Each packet is a selection of mono-color spells that sticks to some kind of theme. Some of the themes explored in the official release are specific planeswalkers, creature types, or mechanics. Some are a bit more abstract, but the thematic nature is a big part of what makes the experience resonant. For example, who wouldn’t be delighted to open the Dogs packet from the original Jumpstart set?

For those counting, that’s twelve spells. Each Jumpstart pack includes that as well as seven basic lands of the appropriate color, and one Thriving land.

Thriving Lands: The Secret Sauce

I love Thriving lands for Cube, and they’re the glue that really makes retail Jumpstart functional.

With each packet being mono-color, Thriving lands serve as a two-color tapland for whichever combination of colors you open. They do have some downside if you happen to open two packets of the same color, but that really just helps to balance how much more castable your spells will be on average. Eight lands in each packet mean that Jumpstart decks feature sixteen total lands, which is slightly light but definitely functional, especially given that their mana curves tend to be on the low side.

A workaround for this that I’ve devised is to keep two copies of every basic land in the box with my Jumpstart packets. If you really want to play seventeen lands, you can swap one in, which also helps if somebody takes issue with a spell in one of their packets. I haven’t actually had anybody take me up on this yet. I imagine this has to do with just shuffling up and playing being a significant feature of Jumpstart, but it’s something to consider and is easy to implement.