General Jumpstarting your cube drafts

B

blacksmithy

The new “Jumpstart” product is an inspiration to me as a cube architect.
Often I see my players struggling over a draft pick, deep in the tank for minutes at a time, multiple times per pack. The same stressed expression clouds their face through the deckbuilding stage, but finally they throw some cards together and start the matches. The play itself is a good time, but when I sort through their lists at the end of the night, I see poor curves, poor manabases, and outright nonbos.
Does this describe anyone in your group?
Some players love to draft and build; others just want to pick up and play! If you’re also trying to serve players like this, I believe the Jumpstart model can also be helpful to you. For my own group, i’m building 20-card “Jumpstarts” and allowing players to pick 2 at the start of the night. Building these is definitely not the same as building a cube, and i think my lists are FAR from optimal, but for the sake of discussion, here are some of them:

Boros Mentors

Simic Saboteurs

Black Devotees

So far I have built 1 Jumpstarter per guild pair, 1 per mono color, and a goofy Mardu list built around Lark and Alesha. I usually draft with 2-4 total players (right now it’s just my poor wife who has to put up with my cube addiction), and i think it’s good to have about twice as many available as will actually be used that night. The best part is, converting from Jumpstarters back to a traditional cube is as easy as sorting the Jumpstarters back into the cube box and lands box!
I hope this provides inspiration to any other architects out there who are looking to try something new with their online or IRL groups. Thank you all for making this community excellent!
 
Brad

Brad

You HAVE to add Wilds or Vivids or Thrivings to the land sections. All basics in a mana base that's likely to end up 3c isn't gonna fly. I'd suggest several multicolor lands per pack, as you don't want color screw to define what you're doing.

I might even build this like it's a cube. How can my GU pack connect to my UR or mono G pack? Let's make sure that's a deck, just like we'd want archetypes to overlap.

Further, what are some narrow themes people wouldn't be able to draft? Can we give them that experience here? Like GU topdeck or UR converted mana cost matters.
 
B

blacksmithy

I didn’t use nonbasics in the examples, but you’re correct that having a cool manabase will be a big improvement. For example, in the WU blink jumpstart pack, i’m giving them a bounceland, a scryland, and a gainland. I also sharpie the heck out of Guildgates if there’s a dual land i want for X deck but don’t have.
And every jumpstart pack gets an Evolving Wilds so that you can grab your third (or fourth!) color after putting two decks together. Vivid is a good idea too but i feel that the Wilds has more play outside the proliferate deck.

Also agree about cool but hard to draft archetypes!
I haven’t gone very deep with the concept yet, but there are definitely a lot of possibilities with the format. I do fee that, if you stick mostly to cards you would cube with, you will get a lot of nice combinations as you pair up colors.
EDIT: play testing my White/X jumpstarts tomorrow with my wife, will let you know how it goes.
 
Peter LaCara

Peter LaCara

This is fun! You can build all the parasitic archetypes that would rarely come together in a regular cube draft. I have no idea if they will combine with each other at all, but that's where playtesting comes in.
 
Brad

Brad


SIKE it's Warp World loop! It gets better in 3c, but I'm not sure if that's smart here.
 
B

blacksmithy

It is fun!
And it’s so challenging to try to express the concept in just 12 spells.
I agonized over this really goofy one for way too long:

Mardu Larks
 
B

blacksmithy

First play report!

My wife chose Boros Mentors and Orzhov Stax for her jumpstart.
I went with Azorius Blink and Selesnya Revolt. Lists (not including lands, basically everyone had a good fixing base and an Innistrad utility land) under spoilers:

Boros

Orzhov

Azorius

Selesnya

Game 1
Mardu put on a ton of early pressure with Seasoned Hallowblade, forcing Bant to make some bad blocks. Bant was a turn away from stabilizing with Thragtusk when a well-timed Hokori shut down the mana, forcing more bad blocks and finally sealing the win with a hasty Bloodghast landfall trigger.

Game 2
Bant put down a decent board early, trading Countless Gears Renegade with Mardu’s Fencing Ace. Mardu got some good chunks in with Thalia and was able to threaten the classic Lingering Souls + Vault of the Archangel combo against Brago, but Bant achieved a board lock with Gavony Township and Kitchen Finks for checkmate.

We called it off at 1-1 with a good time had by all and a lot of tough decisions on the combat step. Definitely looking forward to doing more of these!
 
B

blacksmithy

Another play report!

This time we had UG saboteurs + UB reanimator vs WB stax + BR sac.

Lists (minus lands):

Simic Saboteurs


Dimir Gifts


Orzhov Stax

Rakdos Aristocrats
NOTE: Pyrewild Shaman has its mana cost for returning to hand sharpied out.


Game 1: slow start for Mardu. Sultai checked with a Menacing, Flying Syr Elenora after making a lovely Gifts pile: Champion of Wit, Wonder, Reassembling Skeleton, Forbidden Alchemy.

Game 2: Mardu applied some early pressure, but it was under control until they were able to drop a bunch of sac value dudes followed by Braids. Sultai couldn’t keep enough blockers on the board. Another 1-1 match!
 
shamizy

shamizy

I had initially brushed off Jumpstart as I won't be able to play the set in person anytime soon, but the concept of it is interesting enough to be worth exploring based off the packs you guys have been coming up with. Seems like a great way to get a quick game or two going between a few people. Marking packs should be easy enough with stickers on the inner sleeve + some indicator on the outside of something like a Cubeamajig pack. Honestly, seems like a good way to test out the more narrow archetypes and any fledgling ideas before opening up slots and porting over to cube.
 
B

blacksmithy

It has been great to have a pick up and play cube-like experience for me and my wife to play while the kids are asleep!
So far i’ve just been separating out manually with no stickers needed, but in the long run i’ll definitely need either a list to refer to or some kind of visual marker.

I think i will try to start a cube blog about these, but i have no idea how to post this on, say, CubeTutor. Maybe if i get really creative with the custom draft feature on Cube Cobra...
 
shamizy

shamizy

blacksmithy said:
It has been great to have a pick up and play cube-like experience for me and my wife to play while the kids are asleep!
So far i’ve just been separating out manually with no stickers needed, but in the long run i’ll definitely need either a list to refer to or some kind of visual marker.

I think i will try to start a cube blog about these, but i have no idea how to post this on, say, CubeTutor. Maybe if i get really creative with the custom draft feature on Cube Cobra...
Click to expand...

I think in the long run it'll be easy enough to sort with just stickers in the bottom left corner (just easier to parse with how most of us fan out a hand of cards). You can even double dip on colors by marking with numbers to denote which pack they came from (i.e. Red I, Blue II, etc.). There's a lot of room for innovation here, coming up with themed packs with every new set seems like a fun ongoing project. Like if you wanted to explore something like GB Constellation, just putting together a pack of Theros cards you like seems like a good way to get it going. I wonder if there's a cool way to integrate a full on draft environment for this once you've built up enough of a backlog. Instead of drafting cards, you just draft whole themes and mix and match between games. Swap out whole modules or just pick and choose from your pool. Seems like it could be fun!

Funnily enough a buddy of mine was chatting with one of the devs for CubeCobra and a Jumpstart like sorting feature is something that's been heavily requested recently. It's on their backlog for implementation in a future update so that should be handy. Until then, CubeCobra's tagging feature is a good stopgap to label the individual cards but I'm not quite sure how to set up a custom draft that would work currently.
 
Brad

Brad

You could pass out random commanders to people and then they take decks to support the commander. Gives a bit of decision making while still being really quick to get going.
 
Humpty_Dumpty

Humpty_Dumpty

shamizy said:
I think in the long run it'll be easy enough to sort with just stickers in the bottom left corner (just easier to parse with how most of us fan out a hand of cards). You can even double dip on colors by marking with numbers to denote which pack they came from (i.e. Red I, Blue II, etc.). There's a lot of room for innovation here, coming up with themed packs with every new set seems like a fun ongoing project. Like if you wanted to explore something like GB Constellation, just putting together a pack of Theros cards you like seems like a good way to get it going. I wonder if there's a cool way to integrate a full on draft environment for this once you've built up enough of a backlog. Instead of drafting cards, you just draft whole themes and mix and match between games. Swap out whole modules or just pick and choose from your pool. Seems like it could be fun!

Funnily enough a buddy of mine was chatting with one of the devs for CubeCobra and a Jumpstart like sorting feature is something that's been heavily requested recently. It's on their backlog for implementation in a future update so that should be handy. Until then, CubeCobra's tagging feature is a good stopgap to label the individual cards but I'm not quite sure how to set up a custom draft that would work currently.
Click to expand...

On CubeCobra you can tag each pack and then sort by tag. Until a specific function comes along, this can help organise your jumpstart cube. I’m using .Packname to separate from other tags. Here is my (very early) example https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/5ef12eb2aa92c05fea5dbf39


I’m planning on linear/parasitic mechanical themes for the individual packs, ideally with consistent flavour theme as well. For example my .Food pack is based in Throne of Eldraine, with a focus on wicked witches.


Overlying this there will be mechanical archetypes across 3 or more colours. .Food pack will support Lifegain, Artifact and Sacrifice, for example. Hopefully this will throw up enough interactions to allow a modicum of synergy between any two packs.

I notice that most of the suggestions above are two-colour, unlike the WoTC Jumpstart packs which are mostly mono colour. Obviously WoTC don’t want to give us too much value by filling the packs with even common mana fixing, but unless the packs have lots of good fixing lands the mana will still be pretty awkward. It looks as if some are picking packs rather than randomising, to get one main colour and two secondary colours.
 
Brad

Brad

You know, if you gave every deck its own XY fetch and XY shock (or dual), then you could make sure then fetch is tri-fixing, assuming you pair the deck with either YZ or XZ, which would also have its own fetch/shock.

Obviously, that adds up monetarily unless you wanted to proxy. I also think there's some charm to ETB tapped lands. Maybe they're a bit nostalgic from being a newb getting by with what I had.



Side note, the ease of starting a game with this idea is really tempting me now that I've brainstormed some decks, but I'd REALLY miss the chance to draft something silly or amazing. I'm also worried that the decks will begin to feel too familiar once you've played this a dozen times unless you made 2-3 per guild and mono color setup or something.
 
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