Cube Cobra Overview: 1v1 Jumpstart EDH

My other cube designs:
Into the North - Winter-Themed Set cube ft. only custom-designed cards
Terraforming - Legacy, all about land-synergies, draft all lands for your deck
Spectrum - Pauper ft. Discard, Madness, Graveyard, Artifacts, Enchantments
Enter The Battlefield - Pauper ft. Blink, Sacrifice, Tokens

My remastered set cubes:
🐲⛩️Tarkir Restored NEW
🚂🕌Kaladesh Reinvented
💀👻Shadows Over Innistrad Revived
🗡️🏞️Dominaria (2018) Reimagined
❄️🏔️Kaldheim Reclaimed
🦅🔥Core M19 Realigned
🏜️🧟‍♂️Amonkhet Recovered

Last updated: June 9th, 2024

How to Deck-Draft

Each player receives 20 boosters. The boosters are aligned face-up and the player chooses three out of them.
The three chosen packs of each 20 cards, including lands, make up a 60 card deck that's ready to play.
Each player then chooses a legendary creature from their cardpool as their commander. Commanders can be changed between rounds.
All set! Shuffle up and start playing
TIP: When drafting, focus less on the boosters' colors and more on archetypes and synergies. 2-, 3- and 4-color boosters can easily support a 4- or 5-color deck.

Team Draft

Up to 12 players can play 1v1 Jumpstart EDH in two groups, playing games of 1v1 against each player from the other team. Match results are added up at the end to decide which team won.
How to draft: each team receives half of the entire set of boosters. 8-12 total players would receive 43 boosters per team. As a team they study and combine the boosters into synergistic decks. Each team should have at least one deck per player.
Cards cannot be traded between players.

Rules

Starting life total for 1v1: 30
Commander damage is omitted.
Commander color identity rule does not apply. This is necessary because your deck is made up of three differently colored boosters but you only choose one (or two partner-)commander.
Gods lose indestructible. The Scarab God and The locust god do not get returned from the graveyard after dying. This is due to the unreliability of exile-based removal in your deck. Also included is Ormendahl, profane prince. Indestructible is entirely avoided in my design, as is hexproof. Ward is fair game.
No companions.
Most legendary creatures have partner added as a custom ruling in this environment. At the bottom of this page you can find a list of the exclusions. (Over 200 have partner added, ~40 don't)
(Optional) Each player begins a game of 1v1 with an emblem that says: "Whenever you cast a legendary permanent from the command zone, it gains Ward X until the end of your next turn, where X is the amount of times it has been cast from the command zone."

Design goals

the cube is and remains singleton (except thriving lands)
main goal is fun and balanced 1v1 gameplay
deck assembly is quick and easy. Choose only your boosters and your commander.
Value is the name of the game. It's about your gameplan, not just about interrupting your opponents'.
Booster themes aren't too specific. Promote synergy and overlap between many boosters.
No 'I win' cards. Your commander can be powerful in the right deck but individual cards shouldn't be game-ending no matter what deck they're in. See River's Rebuke.
Multiplayer and political cards are not included for obvious reasons.
Accessibility for casual players. No infinite or obscure combos.
No tutors. This stops gameplay from stalling too much because players are fetching from a mostly unknown deck.
Few and appropriate Universes Beyond cards. No minigame cards like dungeon or day/night. No regenerate or other outdated abilities.
Support up to 12 player Jumpstart. See "Team Draft" further below for more info.
Unlike most of my other projects, this cube is designed top-down to be played as jumpstart boosters. Draft and sealed are not considered in my design.

Quick assembly guide for two players

Here is a selection of 30 boosters available for an easy start into this format. Simply copy-paste all of these tags into the filter menu.

Updated 05/2024

tag:"Alharu Counters Token" or
tag:"Anhelo Casualty Spells" or
tag:"Alela Ench Art Tokens" or
tag:"Atraxa Counters" or
tag:"Brago Blink Evasion" or
tag:"Breya Artifact Sacrifice" or
tag:"Chulane Creature Value" or
tag:"Djeru Planeswalker" or
tag:"Dihada Legends" or
tag:"Feldon Unearth" or
tag:"Garth Untap Ability" or
tag:"Hamza Proliferate" or
tag:"Jetmir Token Legends" or
tag:"Jhoira Artifact Legends" or
tag:"Jodah Legends" or
tag:"Kasla Convoke" or
tag:"Kels+Gix Kamikaze" or
tag:"Korvold Aristocrats" or
tag:"Meren Creature Graveyard" or
tag:"Omnath Lands Legends" or
tag:"Osgir Artifact Graveyard" or
tag:"Prosper Exile Treasures" or
tag:"Vannifar Sacrif. ETB" or
tag:"Raggadragga Mana-dorks" or
tag:"Riku Spells Copies" or
tag:"Selvala Big Power" or
tag:"Scarab Creature Graveyard" or
tag:"Tayam +1/+1 Small Reanimator" or
tag:"Urza Artifacts" or
tag:"Volrath -1/-1Prolifirate"

These boosters make up about 500 cards (excluding thriving lands and basics). They include one booster of each color and color-pair.
This way you can easily try out this format and later add more boosters to your collection.

Both players can see 20 boosters each if player one chooses three out of 20 and player two takes 10 of the remaining boosters from player one at random and together with the left over 10 boosters can choose from a set of 20 as well.

Deck Themes

Go Wide
Aristocrats
Blink
Graveyard
Reanimator
Prowess
Evasion
Artifacts
Lands
Legendary
Untap
Activated Abilities
Proliferate
Planeswalker

Jumpstart booster template

20 Cards Total
• 8 x Land
• 12 Nonland (>=1 legend)
-> 3 x Ramp
-> 2+ x Interaction
-> 7 misc.

Booster Color Identity

1 x
3 x
3 x
3 x
3 x
3 x
4 x
3 x
3 x
3 x
3 x
3 x
3 x
3 x
3 x
3 x
3 x
4 x
3 x
3 x
3 x
4 x
3 x
3 x
3 x
3 x
1 x
1 x
1 x
1 x
4 x
87 TOTAL

Legendary creatures that don't gain partner

Esika, god of the tree can't be used as commander.

commander cmd cmdr edh 1v1 twobert two player jumpstart no draft 8 player 12 player 16 player team draft

Partner - Updated

Longnaps posted to 1v1 Jumpstart EDH - 9 months ago

Over 25 commanders have had partner removed. Here's why:

I recently tried to push the boundaries of what partner combinations could do by themselves and in the right deck. I learned that the most overpowered partners are either mostly unconditional ramp like Runadi, behemoth caller or cheap card advantage like reki, the history of kamigawa. In combination, some of these have you play the exact same turn three and four every match because your two commanders are the best options on those turns.
That's not what I intended with this design. Partners should be cards that are good to play but shouldn't be the only relevant option on any turn before you have played at least your starting 7. With good draws, one or both partners should remain in the command zone for most of the game.

Non-partner commander can be build-arounds that let you pop off with the rest of your cards but the inherent card advantage that two cards in the command zone provide needs to be balanced by not affecting your board and upcoming plays so drastically.

As a result I have changed lots of mostly mono- and two-colored commanders to no longer have partner. I believe more partner rebalancing will follow suit.

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