Welcome to the first of our ten guides on the mini-events that make up the 2023 Magic Arena Decathlon. The event doesn’t kick off until Sunday, but we generally don’t publish content on weekends so we’re firing off this guide for Jump In, as well as Part 2 for Pauper, later today! That will give you a couple days to save up your coins anyways, since entry to each mini-event will cost you 2,000 coins.
For more information on how this event works, and the overall schedule and rewards, make sure you read our complete guide to what the Decathlon is, and then come back here.
Kicking off the decathlon this year is Jump In! This is an introductory format where you build your deck from two different packets. It’s hard to describe exactly what’s in the packets except to say that they generally contain 12 cards but could contain a few more. You’ll be given the option to pick your first packet from three different choices at random with the caveats that one pack will be mono-color, one pack will be multi-color, and at least one of the three packs will be a pack you’ve never picked before unless you’ve played the event enough to have picked every possible pack.
You’ll be given three more packs from which to pick your second packet. The variance here will be based on what you picked for your first packet. Here’s the guide for what your options will be for the second packet:
- If you picked a mono-color packet first:
- 1x mono-color packet
- 1x multi-color packet
- 1x mono or multi-color packet
- All multi-color packets will have the color chosen for the first packet as one of the colors included
- If you picked a two-color packet first:
- 1x mono-color packet of color choice #1
- 1x mono-color packet of color choice #2
- 1x mono-color or multi-color packet
- All mono-color packets will be one of the two colors chosen in the first packet
- All multi-color packets will contain at least all of the colors chosen in the first packet
- If you picked a three-color packet first:
- 1x mono-color packet of color choice #1
- 1x mono-color packet of color choice #2
- 1x mono-color or multi-color packet
- All mono-color packets will be one of the three colors chosen in the first packet
- All multi-color packets will contain colors from the first packet
Jump In! is a format that you can test out even ahead of the Decathlon. You can find it under Limited Events. You need to cough up 1,000 coins and the only prize you’ll get is a single Uncommon or better ICR for your first win. If you’re curious about which cards are in which packs, you can start with this link to the latest pack contents from Wizards. Packs should be available from all sets that are Alchemy legal which includes all of the currently Standard-legal sets plus Alchemy Horizon’s Baldur’s Gate, the Arena Base Set, Rebalanced, and the Alchemy additions to each Standard-legal set.
Rich Stein (he/him) has been playing Magic since 1995 when he and his brother opened their first packs of Ice Age and thought Jester’s Cap was the coolest thing ever. Since then his greatest accomplishments in Magic have been the one time he beat Darwin Kastle at a Time Spiral sealed Grand Prix and the time Jon Finkel blocked him on Twitter.