Jumpstart Deck Discussion

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Guardman
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Post by Guardman » 3 years ago

I figured with Jumpstart out on Arena it would be cool to create a thread discussing decks that you are able to put together, cool synergy, etc.

My first Jumpstart deck that I played last night was Spellcasting Minotaurs.


Spellcasting Minotaurs
Approximate Total Cost:

Notes about the deck.
  • I snapped picked Minotaurs as soon as I saw it. It is one of my top packs, right up their with Devils for the pack I most wanted to play. For my second pack it was between Spellcasting, Minions, and Pirates. I dismissed Pirates right away due to it looking like one of the weaker decks in my opinion (cool Island though). I went back forth between Minions and Spellcasting before finally deciding on Spellcasting due to getting an additional Minotaur out of it and the synergy if I got a Warfire Javelineer.
  • The deck performed well, but it was more that Minotaurs is strong in general and has some synergy with Spellcasting. Sethron, Hurloon General and Herald's Horn both over-performed. And having two Lightning Visionary were great.
  • Spellcasting on the other hand I was disappointed in. All of the creatures are too focused on having instants and sorceries to cast. And eight instants and sorceries are just too few to get the value you want out of the creatures when most other decks have creatures that are just as good or better when you do have a payoff. Also I found it funny that the best instant and sorcery creature in the deck was Warfire Javelineer, and she is from the Minotaur deck.
  • Also I want to do a point about Kinetic Augur. From playing with and against her in Jumpstart and Core Set 2021 draft, I feel she is probably one of the most overrated uncommons in the set. Every one seems to rate her so highly, but outside of a deck with a tons of instants or sorceries, she is just okay. Now I am not saying she is bad, more like she is not Crackling Drake or Enigma Drake. Flying > Trample after all. Her only big advantage is late game where you are holding onto lands and are able to rummage them thanks to her ETB.
  • Double Vision is cute, but I don't feel should've been in any of the Jumpstart decks. Unless you play it on-curve it is just bad. And late game top-deck it is pretty much useless. Plus it just doubles down on the biggest problem with Spellcasting, which is the deck is so focused on instants and sorceries that most of it's cards are below average for a Jumpstart deck without an instant or sorcery in hand. Most games I would've rather had Doublecast (or usually any other non-land card).
A few notes about Jumpstart in general that I found.
  • The Planeswalker decks are extremely powerful. The only one I beat was a Witchcraft Chandra deck that was missing black mana for about half of the game. The most degenerate was an Angel Garruk that had both Baneslayer Angel and Garruk, Unleashed. I actually almost beat that deck (it was the only time I was able to play Double Vision on curve), but I had to spend so many resources taking out the two mythics he was able to kill me with a Beast token I couldn't answer.
  • There is a big power difference between most rares/mythics and other cards. Bigger than in your usual draft environment. And unless answered right away, most rares can just run away with the game.
  • For the most part, combined decks have around three to six forms of removal, meaning that all decks do have the opportunity to answer problematic creatures to some extent, which is nice.

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