The new Marvel Jumpstart product has a ton of special things about it. Lots of unique cards just for these packs, some nice fixing and card flow elements, plus a ton of exciting themes that hook into each other. We catch everyone up on Jumpstart, breakdown strengths and weaknesses, then go pack by pack to get some specific lessons from the designs.
The deck lists so you can follow along:
Topics and Tidbits
- Marvel Jumpstart… best Jumpstart ever?
- jumpstart is great as a custom design exercise
- before jumpstart was Smash Up
- js is a specifically non-competitive format… perfect for chillouts on Arena
- without synergy, early jumpstart was more like early draft formats… heavy stratafication between rarities leading to heavy bombs
- “is the rare in my pack even good?”
- arena “jump in” with packs made from retail sets, mixed across several sets
- two wins before three losses… the mellowest stakes possible
- the stakes of arena draft are really demoralizing to newer players
- our experiences with marvel
- js packs should be mechanically consistent, not just same flavor
- the capstone cards of a pack should pay off that theme
- arena’s jumpstart lets you pick from 3 themes, then pick from another 3… more agency, a little more spiky, more customizable
- connive is the glue for marvel jumpstart… discard, draw2, counters all in one
- connive is also the way to dig through your deck to find the cool cards!
- between more scry, surveil, connive and hobbit’s recruit, we’re seeing card flow get spread to more colors
- an extra cycle of basic landcycling cards on “bad” removal spells
- basically every marvel js pack has some sort of fixing or card flow effect
- try to have two cards in a pack that can be a low-key engine
- marvel jumpstart has a lot of sick cards designed specifically for this format
- power-up mechanic was a synergy flop in the main set but has cool support in JS
- different from draft… each pack has to contain a fun thing to do by itself
- is js too complicated now? it’s still well below commander precon level
- the way to hook new players is showing them a cool thing to do in magic and showing how different decks can be
- commander has a ton of issues with new players getting overwhelmed by corner cases
- tim’s newbie coworkers picked classic jumpstart packs over avatar/marvel
- tim’s favorite deck: runaways + mayhem
- does power creep make the average js draw smoother?
- bugged fantastic 4 missing mountain on arena
- also bugged fantastic 4 shows up constantly!
- if the cards are just good enough, you don’t need huge cross-pack synergy to have fun
- city pigeon mentioned
- the addition of funny theming (like lawyers all like +1/+1 counters because of “counterargument” pun) is an extra boost in these marvel packs
- marvel has been bumper crop of bad legends to be your commander
- if a js pack has a lot of A+B stuff, those payoffs have to be extra strong if they’re going to carry their weight
Some cool packs
- Kang (flashback, digging, and the rare casts timetwister)
- Armed (black equipment deck. Solid creatures, and equipment works nice with most other packs)
- Doom (Dark Ritual and Doomsday in a pack… maybe not powerful but very funny)
- Masters of Evil (Villains-matter, and enough other pick-from-3 choices have villains)
- Runaways (Super themed/custom with a discard and exile theme)
- Great lakes avengers (nuttiest two card combo? Unblockable 10 power)
- Fantastic (4c Nuts Combo)
- Counterargument (lawyers)
- Returned (Loved some leave the graveyard shenanigans)
Some flop packs
- Precise (sorta heroic… requires A+B that other packs won’t contribute to)
- Returned (reanimate-y but nothing good to reanimate and takes a while to get online)
- Scarlet (a couple thematic cards mixed with some storm cards (grapeshot??)
- Uncanny (the xmen pack! Weird cards that don’t make much sense for the characters)
- Fantastic (NO BASIC MOUNTAIN!!!)
- Geniuses (Holy card draw batman)