Art by Andreas RochaThis is not a cube. This is a box of Jumpstart booster packs!
I use this gauntlet as entertainment for board game nights in my local community. I also bring this to casual events with local playgroups where there is an open invitation to strangers and new players.
There are many merits to this limited environment. Read on if this interests you!
GoalsHere are the goals of this environment. Take a look to see if these are things you are interested in:
Games of Magic should be quick, as evidenced by...
- Best-of-3 matches between 2 players should have an average duration of 20 minutes.
- Each round within a best-of-3 should have an average duration of 10 minutes.
Getting into games and cleaning up games should be simple, as evidenced by...
- All players should be able to pick 2 packs at random within 1 minute.
- All players should be able to separate cards and place packs back in under 3 minutes.
The environment should be open to new players, as evidenced by...
- Qualitative feedback from new players should be favourable.
- Oracle text for Keywords on cards should be defined in
>=50%of printings.
Roughly half of the box is sourced from Jumpstart 2020. The other half of the box is from Jumpstart 2022. I have other themes from both Jumpstarts, but only so much space to carry them.
RequirementsThe environment should be able to support 2-20 players with an average of 4 players. The environment including tokens, dice and 2 playmats must fit within a 20 Litre dry sack. (It rains a lot here.)
LogisticsI keep all of my cards single sleeved in Dragon Shield Cube Shells. All packs are carried in an Ultimate Guard Arkhive 800+. The Arkhive can hold 21 Cube Shells per column. I typically use less themes than that (as listed below). I use the spare room to carry single sleeved tokens for the benefit of players.
- There are the same number of themes per colour.
- Each included theme is represented at most
1time. - There are no variations of any included theme.
- There is
1multicoloured theme.
If a future Jumpstart includes hybrid or gold themes such as 
or 
. Then, I may consider their inclusion.
- Basri
- Blink
- Feathered Friends
- Heavily Armoured
- Holy
- Teamwork +
- Unicorns +
- Above the Clouds +
- Archaeology
- Detective
- Faeries
- Scrying +
- Well-Read
- Wizards
- Cruel
- Minions
- Reanimated
- Rogues +
- Vampires
- Witchcraft
- Zombies
- Dragons
- Goblins
- Minotaurs +
- Raid
- Smashing
- Spellcasting
- Treasure
- Dinosaurs
- Elves
- Ferocious
- Insects +
- Lands
- Predatory +
- Primates +
- Rainbow
I met a bunch of strangers who were down to play some Jumpstart.
Commander is the most popular format today and we agreed to try a multiplayer Jumpstart game.
I know what some of you are thinking. Jumpstart is not designed for multiplayer games. I agree and the experience was rather unexciting for multiplayer dynamics.
The game was fairly slow but here is how it broke down.
1st)
2nd)
3rd)
4th)
Feathered Friends & Wizards came in first. However, it was dead last for most of the game. In fact Reanimated Insects became the biggest threat very early and was most likely to win for most of the game.
The winning cards from Feathered Friends were Angel of the Dire Hour and Gale Swooper.
From my observation Emiel the Blessed was the easiest to misplay.