MTG Jumpstart Booster Explained

MTG Jumpstart is a new booster product which offers a new way to play Magic the Gathering. Each booster features a different theme. You need two boosters, you mash them together and – boom, here’s your weird new deck.

Today we’ll take a look at some of the most frequently asked questions about Jumpstart boosters and answer them as best as we can. More information become available since we first published the article, so we updated it.

What is in the Jumpstart Booster?

Jumpstart booster includes 20 cards. Each of them is centered around a special theme. You won’t know which theme you’ll get until you open the booster pack.

Even when you open a booster and get a cat theme, for example, it won’t necessarily be the same as other cat themed booster. Each theme has different variations. The exception is the Mythic booster, a hard to get booster which features predetermined deck list. Because there’s only one true Unicorn deck.

Each booster contains at least one rare and has 33.3% chance for an extra rare.

Jumpstart set has more than 500 different cards:

• 500+ reprinted cards
• 37 new cards

You can check its price on Amazon.

Best Jumpstart Spoilers

Here are just some example of what you can get in your Jumpstart booster. If you’re looking for best cards for your Commander decks, check Top 10 Best Jumpstart Cards for Commander.

Basic Lands

As we said, the main attraction of Jumpstart boosters is to mash two together and have a deck. Of course you’ll need basic lands for that. That’s why 7-8 cards in every booster are basic lands. However they’re not just your ordinary basics.

One basic land par pack will feature art that matches the pack’s theme. Here’s an example of a Forest for the Predatory theme.

Most of the other lands will use a brand-new art created specifically for the Jumpstart set. Some basic land will be thematically appropriate ones from Core Set 2021.

You can find all Jumpstart Basic Lands here.

Jumpstart Legality

Reprinted cards are legal in formats where they were legal before the reprint. Let’s say there’s a Lightning Bolt in the pack. (We don’t know if there is one, since the contents weren’t spoiled yet.) The card would be legal in Modern, since it’s already legal there, but wouldn’t become legal in Standard because Jumpstart isn’t a regular MTG set.

New cards will be legal in the following formats:

• Commander
• Legacy
• Vintage
• Historic (with few exceptions)

Which Themes are in MTG Jumpstart Booster?

There are 46 themes in the Jumpstart booster. They are split into common, rare and mythic themes as mentioned before. Mythic themes have one exact decklist, rare themes have two variations and common ones have four different variations.

As you can see you can get some weird combinations. Did you ever wanted to play with Goblin Pyrexians? Well, now you can.

Is Jumpstart Coming to Arena?

Yes, most Jumpstart cards will come to MTG Arena. However, you won’t be able to play them in Standard – they will be playable only in Historic.

You can find more info about Jumpstart on Arena here.

Some cards in Jumpstart are either too powerful or too complicated to program on MTGA. That’s why some of the cards won’t be coming to Arena. For example, here are some of the cards we won’t get:

• Exhume
• Reanimate
• Scourge of Nel Toth
• Time to Feed

You can find the official announcement and full list of unavailable cards on Wizards’ site.

MTG Jumpstart – Important Dates

Jumpstart booster Release was planned for June. However, due to the recent pandemic, it was moved to July. You can find the official announcement here.

Although Jumpstart releases in July, you can already preorder it on Amazon, to get is as fast as possible.

Should you Buy MTG Jumpstart Set?

Jumpstart looks like a great product for players who just want to have fun playing Magic the Gathering. It’s pretty unique way to play the game and it will certainly contain plenty of cool cards.

Even for more experienced players – it can take you back to a time, when you didn’t have all your deck optimized, when you just played with whatever cards you had laying around. So it looks like like a great product for anyone who want to have a fresh and fun Magic experience.

If you want, you can already preorder a Jumpstart Booster Box on Amazon.

If you’re a Standard-only player, this is probably not the product for you. Just buy regular editions, like Ikoria Liar of Behemoths or Core Set 2021.

Jumpfinish

That’s all we know about Jumpstart so far. Because the set releases in the early July, we can expect more news and spoilers around May or June.

We’ll update the article when more information will be available. Make sure to follow us on Facebook or Instagram, so you won’t miss it. If you want to find more about new Magic products, you can check all Core Set 2021 products here.

Until next time, may you open the mythic Jumpstart booster in your first try.