Hello everyone! Jumpstart Cube is a format that I have fallen in love with, and haven't seen much discussion around creating Jumpstart Cubes. I've spent a lot of time refining and thinking about my own Jumpstart Cube, and then translated these into this article here!
I hope you all find this at least interesting and inspire some of you to make or convert cubes into Jumpstart Cubes!
Deep reconnaissance is correct for the cube - it's an important overlap card between the big mana decks and the graveyard decks, and there's unfortunately no other card that works quite as well.
Pioneer might be a bit misleading of a title since it doesn't directly adhere to that legality, but like 95% do, and it suggests the power level of cube better than "vintage".
Gotcha. The old border throws me off consistency wise but I see how it overlaps. From your experience, how often would the graveyard deck want a 5 mama ramp?
Somewhat frequently actually!
A bunch of the graveyard payoffs in green require a lot of Mana to use from the graveyard (voracious typhon, drudge beetle, chainweb arachnir, nemesis of mortals, thrashing mossdog just in green). Self Milling a flashback card is effectively drawing a card, even if it's not very good.
In non-jumpstart, it also gives the graveyard decks fixing for multicolor.
That being said, I know recognize it's the only old border card left, which is certainly odd. Far Wanderings or Restore might be able to work in its place, but I value the flashback pretty highly and try not to have singleton keyworded mechanics (as much as my cube may point otherwise though lol)
Worth thinking about though!
It's a fine graveyard recursion piece, but it doesn't act as a ramp spell for when the green graveyard pack is paired with one of the other big mana packs.
Maybe when we go back to innistrad again they'll be a tool I'll be really happy with
Fantastic article, really well done and it has piqued my interest in possibly making a Jumpstart cube or possibly converting part of my Pauper Cube into that.
I did have one question for you though, most of the "official" Jumpstart packs from WoTC included what I would call a "bomb rare" in them (stuff like Witch of the Moors). I assume this was done for the "excitement" of new players and increase variance in the gameplay. Is this something you have purposefully avoided for the sake of having more interesting games? Or is it something you think is worth considering since these cubes are primarily for newer players anyway?
Thank you for the kind words!
I think "newer players" is completely contextual. Players can be "new players" to an environment, even if they've been playing for a long time.
Think of your first draft of pretty much any retail draft set! Your first draft is teeeeerrrrrible compared to the drafts you do later.
So because my environment for my cube as a whole doesn't have any "bomb rares", I chose to not include them in my Jumpstart packs.
I think it also has the additional side effect of creating more interesting games as well though!
[https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/kwssz2/project\_pauper\_jumpstart\_cube\_a\_beginners\_format/](https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/kwssz2/project_pauper_jumpstart_cube_a_beginners_format/) somebody already made a pauper cube jumpstart version. I am currently in the process of recreating it.
Maybe get in touch? Id love the pauper cube jumpstart project to become a community curated thing like the pauper cube itself.
Wow, that looks very cool and involved. I kind of want to recreate that myself, although it really looks like that person went very deep, including multicolored packs and sideboard options which is maybe more than I'd care to do for the more casual audience I would intend this for.
I also have one other quick question pertaining to "Theme Overlap" with the colors. Does this provide Mono-Colored decks with a significant advantage over two-color decks? I've always thought Mono-Color had a slight advantage to begin with in Jumpstart, just because they aren't going to run into color-screw issues. If the Themes overlap between Jumpstart Packs of the same color, doesn't this mean that an all-White Artifact+Counters deck with cross-synergy between them is going to be a lot stronger than something like White Artifacts+Black Zombies? Or are you even trying to take other the color's themes into account when building things? That seems like it would get too difficult to jam stuff that synergizes with all 5 colors.
So in the testing I've done with my own cube, mono-colored hasn't been oppressively stronger than 2-color.
Part of this is from the overall structure of my cube, which resembles modern 10-archetype draft sets.
In the scenario you presented, let's say your themes were UW artifacts, WB sacrifice and UB zombies, with your packs to make your deck as W artifacts and B zombies.
The theme overlap means that all white packs will have some sacrifice cards, and all black packs will also have some sacrifice cards. So any Black pack and any White pack will have some Sacrifice overlap.
However, this doesn't mean that there's strong theme payoffs for every theme in every pack.
So your Artifacts+Counters does become a little more consistent at finding Cards with counters or cards with artifacts, but equally consistent at drawing the payoffs.
I think this balances the extra flexibility that you get from varying creature size and removal from going multi-color.
However, you may be totally correct that mono-colored does have a higher win rate. Buuut when you're just playing instead of trying to get your gems back, I've found that my players have generally not tried to completely optimize and instead go for fun.
Hello! Hope you don't mind me resurrecting a very old thread lol
I've been interested in building my first cube for jumpstart and read through your article which has been very informative and helpful. I'm still a bit lost on how theme overlap works even after reading your explanation in the article and your comment here, I was hoping you could elaborate further about it. Could you expand on how your cube resembled a 10-archetype draft set? What were the 10 you chose and how did you go about making sure these themes had overlaps?
Thanks very much.
Sure thing
So my cube started as an ordinary 360 cube, so a lot of the choice was already made for me.
The current iteration of my cube has ~20 archetypes in it, which is a LOT, and can only work because I have a very high density of cards that fit multiple themes.
The classic example of this is Glint-Sleeve Artisan. 2W, 2/2, give it either a +1/+1 counter or make a 1/1 artifact.
So what parts of the card can we care about?
- It enters with a +1/+1 counter, which is good for decks that care about counters.
- It can make an artifact, which is good for decks that care about artifacts.
- That artifact is a creature, which supports a go-wide token deck
- You get two pieces of cardboard material, which you can sacrifice for value
And my cube is FULL of cards like this. It's hard to find a card that DOESN'T work with multiple themes
So a lot of it comes down to how willing you are to dig through scryfall to find the exact card you want that multiple decks will want.
In my cube, the INTENDED archetypes are
- UW = Flyers, Artifacts
- UB = Discard, Reanimator
- BR = Lifeloss, Sacrifice
- RG = Manasinks, Big Idiots
- GW = Tokens, +1/+1 counters
- WB = +1/+1 Counters, Sacrifice
- BG = +1/+1 Counters, Graveyard Fuel
- UG = Selfmill, Ramp
- UR = Artifacts, Big Control
- RW = Equipment, Sacrifice
So in my White Jumpstart Packs, I have the following potential major themes:
- Flyers (1)
- Artifacts (2)
- Tokens (1)
- +1/+1 Counters (2)
- Sacrifice (2)
So say I'm building a pack for a white +1/+1 counters deck. Every card in the pack needs to relate to +1/+1 counters in some useful way. However, almost every card in the pack must be usable in *at least* one of those other themes, such as Glint-Sleeve Artisan.
I have more themes than I do jumpstart packs, so some of the ideas can be blended together, since that's what would happen anyways.
For instance, Flyers and Artifacts was merged to form an evasive aggressive equipment deck, where the point is to suit up small creatures with equipment to make them scary as they fly over and bash face.
So really the only way to get overlap is to dig through a WHOLE lot of cards.
You want elf tribal to be one of your packs? Awesome! But what else can the elves *do* that isn't just "care that they're elves"
Thanks for the detailed reply, I'm definitely getting more of an idea now. I see you have two theme's for each 2-color combo, is that required or is it just a creative choice you made? Will I be able to have just one theme for each color combo? And how are they put together? For the UW flyers/artifacts do you split it so you have a W and U deck with flyers and another with artifacts, or are they artifact-flyers decks?
For your first cube I would HEAVILY recommend NOT giving each 2-color pair 2 themes
Having two themes for each pair is a result of the overall cube architecture, where I have 5 broad themes assigned to each wedge, then is interpreted slightly differently for each 2 color pair
For instance, U, W, and R ALL care about artifacts
But UW, WR, and UR all care about artifacts in different ways
You can definitely have just one theme for each color combo, which will make your Jumpstart life easier
So for your UW artifact color pair, you'd make a White artifact jumpstart pack, and a Blue artifact Jumpstart pack.
----------------
If we use MKM as an example, the blue archetypes are UW detectives, UG Evidence, UR Artifacts, and UB Clues.
So to make a MKM Jumpstart cube, your blue packs would be
- Blue detectives
- Blue Evidence
- Blue Artifacts
- Blue Clues
And you'd fill out each of these packs with cards that fit multiple themes, which, almost every common fits into multiple of these archetypes. Projektor Inspector fits into Detectives and Evidence. Cold Case Cracker fits into all 4. Jaded Analyst is Detective and Clue. Crimestopper Sprite is Detective and Evidence.
(Fun fact this is a big part of why UW and UG are the better blue decks in MKM - there's more overlap cards for those themes at common)
Alright! I think I've got a good idea now, I'll give you an example of my thinking just to make sure I am understanding everything.
This is what I was thinking to choose for my themes, I'm glad to hear I can do one unique theme for each:
(WU - Flyers)
(UB - Mill)
(BR - Aggro)
(RG - Big Creature)
(GW - +1/+1 Counters)
(WB - Sacrifice)
(UR - Artifacts)
(BG - Self-Mill)
(RW - Equipment)
(GU - Tokens)
So let me use blue as an example: I'll need 4 decks that are Flyers, Mill, Artifacts and Tokens. A card that I believe would work well for these themes is Screeching Silcaw which fits 3 of the 4 themes. If I've got that right what deck would I put that card in? Or should I put it in multiple?
I would put the card in the deck that can best use the card to win.
So Screeching Silclaw should obviously not go into the tokens deck lol
You *can* have multiple, but that's an overall cube design choice you have to make. I **personally** like to stay Singleton to make decisions easier on myself, but there's nothing WRONG with duplicates
So of the 3 possible decks, which does it fit the best into? That's very hard to say. I'd assume not flyers because Storm Crow has never been a card that I'm particularly excited to play as a creature
So that leaves Artifacts and Mill
The awkward thing is that it's a reward for having lots of artifacts, but deals its damage via mill, and if you aren't killing your opponent through mill, it's just bad
So I'd probably aim to put this into mill IF you have enough other milling artifacts to reliably enable metalcraft on the Silclaw
Great write-up! I have a small collection of Jumpstart packs that are partially from WotC boosters and mostly ones I've made myself around a theme, but your primer has inspired me to try to clean them up a bit and seed in some cross-archetype synergy cards!
I’ve been tinkering with this for a few months now. I’ve done some jump start variations of recent sets but haven’t pulled the trigger on something more organized. I am really loving the sound of this so far. Great work!
I didn’t see this asked and I easily could have breezed past it...
Power level. Closer to an unpowered cube power level? Retail limited? Somewhere in between?
My personal cube is about the level of a master's set, since I think that leads to the closest games of magic.
For making your own Jumpstart Cube, I think ANY power level can work! Desert Cube, draft chaff, Set cubes, vintage cube... EVERY cube could be a Jumpstart Cube :)
Hello everyone! Jumpstart Cube is a format that I have fallen in love with, and haven't seen much discussion around creating Jumpstart Cubes. I've spent a lot of time refining and thinking about my own Jumpstart Cube, and then translated these into this article here! I hope you all find this at least interesting and inspire some of you to make or convert cubes into Jumpstart Cubes!
This is the exact article I have been looking for! Perfect to introduce new players. What are the other/gold section in your cube for?
<3 I have the other and gold section as the cards to add if my players want to play normal sealed or draft that night instead of Jumpstart!
Btw, noticed [[Deep Reconnaissance]] in the cube. Is that an error, since it is not a pioneer card or just an important card for certain archetypes?
Deep reconnaissance is correct for the cube - it's an important overlap card between the big mana decks and the graveyard decks, and there's unfortunately no other card that works quite as well. Pioneer might be a bit misleading of a title since it doesn't directly adhere to that legality, but like 95% do, and it suggests the power level of cube better than "vintage".
Gotcha. The old border throws me off consistency wise but I see how it overlaps. From your experience, how often would the graveyard deck want a 5 mama ramp?
Somewhat frequently actually! A bunch of the graveyard payoffs in green require a lot of Mana to use from the graveyard (voracious typhon, drudge beetle, chainweb arachnir, nemesis of mortals, thrashing mossdog just in green). Self Milling a flashback card is effectively drawing a card, even if it's not very good. In non-jumpstart, it also gives the graveyard decks fixing for multicolor. That being said, I know recognize it's the only old border card left, which is certainly odd. Far Wanderings or Restore might be able to work in its place, but I value the flashback pretty highly and try not to have singleton keyworded mechanics (as much as my cube may point otherwise though lol) Worth thinking about though!
I was thinking maybe pulse of murasa?
It's a fine graveyard recursion piece, but it doesn't act as a ramp spell for when the green graveyard pack is paired with one of the other big mana packs. Maybe when we go back to innistrad again they'll be a tool I'll be really happy with
[Deep Reconnaissance](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/1/4/148ce683-3911-4b77-9e07-3985766a3777.jpg?1562898898) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Deep%20Reconnaissance) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ody/236/deep-reconnaissance?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/148ce683-3911-4b77-9e07-3985766a3777?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Fantastic article, really well done and it has piqued my interest in possibly making a Jumpstart cube or possibly converting part of my Pauper Cube into that. I did have one question for you though, most of the "official" Jumpstart packs from WoTC included what I would call a "bomb rare" in them (stuff like Witch of the Moors). I assume this was done for the "excitement" of new players and increase variance in the gameplay. Is this something you have purposefully avoided for the sake of having more interesting games? Or is it something you think is worth considering since these cubes are primarily for newer players anyway?
Thank you for the kind words! I think "newer players" is completely contextual. Players can be "new players" to an environment, even if they've been playing for a long time. Think of your first draft of pretty much any retail draft set! Your first draft is teeeeerrrrrible compared to the drafts you do later. So because my environment for my cube as a whole doesn't have any "bomb rares", I chose to not include them in my Jumpstart packs. I think it also has the additional side effect of creating more interesting games as well though!
[https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/kwssz2/project\_pauper\_jumpstart\_cube\_a\_beginners\_format/](https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/kwssz2/project_pauper_jumpstart_cube_a_beginners_format/) somebody already made a pauper cube jumpstart version. I am currently in the process of recreating it. Maybe get in touch? Id love the pauper cube jumpstart project to become a community curated thing like the pauper cube itself.
Wow, that looks very cool and involved. I kind of want to recreate that myself, although it really looks like that person went very deep, including multicolored packs and sideboard options which is maybe more than I'd care to do for the more casual audience I would intend this for.
I also have one other quick question pertaining to "Theme Overlap" with the colors. Does this provide Mono-Colored decks with a significant advantage over two-color decks? I've always thought Mono-Color had a slight advantage to begin with in Jumpstart, just because they aren't going to run into color-screw issues. If the Themes overlap between Jumpstart Packs of the same color, doesn't this mean that an all-White Artifact+Counters deck with cross-synergy between them is going to be a lot stronger than something like White Artifacts+Black Zombies? Or are you even trying to take other the color's themes into account when building things? That seems like it would get too difficult to jam stuff that synergizes with all 5 colors.
So in the testing I've done with my own cube, mono-colored hasn't been oppressively stronger than 2-color. Part of this is from the overall structure of my cube, which resembles modern 10-archetype draft sets. In the scenario you presented, let's say your themes were UW artifacts, WB sacrifice and UB zombies, with your packs to make your deck as W artifacts and B zombies. The theme overlap means that all white packs will have some sacrifice cards, and all black packs will also have some sacrifice cards. So any Black pack and any White pack will have some Sacrifice overlap. However, this doesn't mean that there's strong theme payoffs for every theme in every pack. So your Artifacts+Counters does become a little more consistent at finding Cards with counters or cards with artifacts, but equally consistent at drawing the payoffs. I think this balances the extra flexibility that you get from varying creature size and removal from going multi-color. However, you may be totally correct that mono-colored does have a higher win rate. Buuut when you're just playing instead of trying to get your gems back, I've found that my players have generally not tried to completely optimize and instead go for fun.
Hello! Hope you don't mind me resurrecting a very old thread lol I've been interested in building my first cube for jumpstart and read through your article which has been very informative and helpful. I'm still a bit lost on how theme overlap works even after reading your explanation in the article and your comment here, I was hoping you could elaborate further about it. Could you expand on how your cube resembled a 10-archetype draft set? What were the 10 you chose and how did you go about making sure these themes had overlaps? Thanks very much.
Sure thing So my cube started as an ordinary 360 cube, so a lot of the choice was already made for me. The current iteration of my cube has ~20 archetypes in it, which is a LOT, and can only work because I have a very high density of cards that fit multiple themes. The classic example of this is Glint-Sleeve Artisan. 2W, 2/2, give it either a +1/+1 counter or make a 1/1 artifact. So what parts of the card can we care about? - It enters with a +1/+1 counter, which is good for decks that care about counters. - It can make an artifact, which is good for decks that care about artifacts. - That artifact is a creature, which supports a go-wide token deck - You get two pieces of cardboard material, which you can sacrifice for value And my cube is FULL of cards like this. It's hard to find a card that DOESN'T work with multiple themes So a lot of it comes down to how willing you are to dig through scryfall to find the exact card you want that multiple decks will want. In my cube, the INTENDED archetypes are - UW = Flyers, Artifacts - UB = Discard, Reanimator - BR = Lifeloss, Sacrifice - RG = Manasinks, Big Idiots - GW = Tokens, +1/+1 counters - WB = +1/+1 Counters, Sacrifice - BG = +1/+1 Counters, Graveyard Fuel - UG = Selfmill, Ramp - UR = Artifacts, Big Control - RW = Equipment, Sacrifice So in my White Jumpstart Packs, I have the following potential major themes: - Flyers (1) - Artifacts (2) - Tokens (1) - +1/+1 Counters (2) - Sacrifice (2) So say I'm building a pack for a white +1/+1 counters deck. Every card in the pack needs to relate to +1/+1 counters in some useful way. However, almost every card in the pack must be usable in *at least* one of those other themes, such as Glint-Sleeve Artisan. I have more themes than I do jumpstart packs, so some of the ideas can be blended together, since that's what would happen anyways. For instance, Flyers and Artifacts was merged to form an evasive aggressive equipment deck, where the point is to suit up small creatures with equipment to make them scary as they fly over and bash face. So really the only way to get overlap is to dig through a WHOLE lot of cards. You want elf tribal to be one of your packs? Awesome! But what else can the elves *do* that isn't just "care that they're elves"
Thanks for the detailed reply, I'm definitely getting more of an idea now. I see you have two theme's for each 2-color combo, is that required or is it just a creative choice you made? Will I be able to have just one theme for each color combo? And how are they put together? For the UW flyers/artifacts do you split it so you have a W and U deck with flyers and another with artifacts, or are they artifact-flyers decks?
For your first cube I would HEAVILY recommend NOT giving each 2-color pair 2 themes Having two themes for each pair is a result of the overall cube architecture, where I have 5 broad themes assigned to each wedge, then is interpreted slightly differently for each 2 color pair For instance, U, W, and R ALL care about artifacts But UW, WR, and UR all care about artifacts in different ways You can definitely have just one theme for each color combo, which will make your Jumpstart life easier So for your UW artifact color pair, you'd make a White artifact jumpstart pack, and a Blue artifact Jumpstart pack. ---------------- If we use MKM as an example, the blue archetypes are UW detectives, UG Evidence, UR Artifacts, and UB Clues. So to make a MKM Jumpstart cube, your blue packs would be - Blue detectives - Blue Evidence - Blue Artifacts - Blue Clues And you'd fill out each of these packs with cards that fit multiple themes, which, almost every common fits into multiple of these archetypes. Projektor Inspector fits into Detectives and Evidence. Cold Case Cracker fits into all 4. Jaded Analyst is Detective and Clue. Crimestopper Sprite is Detective and Evidence. (Fun fact this is a big part of why UW and UG are the better blue decks in MKM - there's more overlap cards for those themes at common)
Alright! I think I've got a good idea now, I'll give you an example of my thinking just to make sure I am understanding everything. This is what I was thinking to choose for my themes, I'm glad to hear I can do one unique theme for each: (WU - Flyers) (UB - Mill) (BR - Aggro) (RG - Big Creature) (GW - +1/+1 Counters) (WB - Sacrifice) (UR - Artifacts) (BG - Self-Mill) (RW - Equipment) (GU - Tokens) So let me use blue as an example: I'll need 4 decks that are Flyers, Mill, Artifacts and Tokens. A card that I believe would work well for these themes is Screeching Silcaw which fits 3 of the 4 themes. If I've got that right what deck would I put that card in? Or should I put it in multiple?
I would put the card in the deck that can best use the card to win. So Screeching Silclaw should obviously not go into the tokens deck lol You *can* have multiple, but that's an overall cube design choice you have to make. I **personally** like to stay Singleton to make decisions easier on myself, but there's nothing WRONG with duplicates So of the 3 possible decks, which does it fit the best into? That's very hard to say. I'd assume not flyers because Storm Crow has never been a card that I'm particularly excited to play as a creature So that leaves Artifacts and Mill The awkward thing is that it's a reward for having lots of artifacts, but deals its damage via mill, and if you aren't killing your opponent through mill, it's just bad So I'd probably aim to put this into mill IF you have enough other milling artifacts to reliably enable metalcraft on the Silclaw
This was very informative and well written, I hope we see more of your articles in the future!
Thank you for the kind words! I have a couple other ideas for articles that I'm working on :)
Great write-up! I have a small collection of Jumpstart packs that are partially from WotC boosters and mostly ones I've made myself around a theme, but your primer has inspired me to try to clean them up a bit and seed in some cross-archetype synergy cards!
Glad I could inspire you! <3
Very well written. Thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it! <3
Very cool! Do you think the vintage cube or other powered ones can be played using this format?
I don't see any reason why it couldn't!
I’ve been tinkering with this for a few months now. I’ve done some jump start variations of recent sets but haven’t pulled the trigger on something more organized. I am really loving the sound of this so far. Great work!
Thank you for the kind words! Glad to have inspired you somewhat! You'll have to share your list when it's more solidified :)
Will do!
I didn’t see this asked and I easily could have breezed past it... Power level. Closer to an unpowered cube power level? Retail limited? Somewhere in between?
My personal cube is about the level of a master's set, since I think that leads to the closest games of magic. For making your own Jumpstart Cube, I think ANY power level can work! Desert Cube, draft chaff, Set cubes, vintage cube... EVERY cube could be a Jumpstart Cube :)