Jumpstart, Magic: the Gathering’s newest and (arguably) most unique product, kicked off its preview season today with some sweet new dual lands and awesome new legendary creatures.
What is Jumpstart?
Jumpstart is a new supplementary product that melds the combinatorial deckbuilding of draft and sealed deck with the “shuffle up and play” speed of constructed. It releases on July 17, 2020, which is two weeks after its originally announced release date of July 3.
The set is made up of 600 cards—none of which are foil—including 37 brand-new cards that were designed to help fill out some of the themes, 120 or so cards from Core Set 2021 (whose preview season just ended), and more than 400 reprints from other sets. Those cards are split into 20-card packs that focus on one of 46 themes, from Dogs to Phyrexians to a specific Planeswalker.
Players will open two packs and shuffle them together to make a hybrid 40-card deck combining the two themes. The packs contain their own lands so you won’t have to find extra lands to start playing.
New Dual Lands
One of the most exciting reveals of Jumpstart’s first day of previews were the new cycle of common dual lands: the “Thriving” lands.
Jumpstart’s cycle of common dual lands
Like most dual lands, Thriving Health, Thriving Isle, Thriving Moor, Thriving Bluff, and Thriving Grove all enter the battlefield tapped. However, unlike most dual lands, their text box only contains one color of mana. The second color of mana is chosen when you play the land—and you can choose any of the other four colors for your Thriving land to produce!
New Legendary Creatures
Today’s previews also showed off some sweet new Legendary creatures—could one of these be your next Commander?
Kels, Fight Fixer was previewed as part of the Minions theme alongside plenty of sacrifice fodder like Nocturnal Feeder and Shambling Goblin. The Minions theme will be one of the more common decks you will find in packs of Jumpstart.
Neyith of the Dire Hunt is a legend you can find in the Predatory theme packs, which features prey (like Trufflesnout) and ways to hunt them (Marauder’s Axe). Like Minions, Predatory is a common theme and will have four variations.
Isamaru, Hound of Konda returns with the new Legendary frame and the new Dog creature type! He will lead the pack as part of the Dogs theme, with other Dog spells like Release the Dogs and Trusty Retriever.
Be still my beating heart! Tinybones, Trinket Thief—the cutest little skeleton thief you’ve ever seen—is featured in the reanimator theme deck, alongside powerful spells like Reanimate.
What Formats are Jumpstart Cards Legal In?
The beginning of Jumpstart’s preview season has been marked with confusion over the set’s legality in various formats.
When the product was initially announced, Wizards of the Coast said that the new cards will have similar legality as Commander-specific cards, meaning they will be legal in Vintage, Legacy, and Commander, but will not be legal in Standard, Pioneer, or Modern. However, they also said that they would be bringing the set to MTG Arena and that the “Jumpstart cards on MTG Arena will be legal in Historic.”
The confusion began early this morning with the revealation that Reanimate, one of the most powerful reanimation spells in Magic, would be in Jumpstart. It would be extremely strong in MTG Arena’s Historic format so it made sense when, later in the day, Wizards announced that twenty of the cards in Jumpstart would not be making it into MTG Arena (and therefore wouldn’t be in Historic). As of this writing, we know four of those cards that won’t make it to MTG Arena: Reanimate, Exhume, Scourge of Nel Toth, and Time to Feed.