Even though I’ve never read a Marvel comic in my life, I’m pretty excited about Marvel Super Heroes (MSH) . Since returning to Arena, this is the first set I’ve been around for from day one, so I’m planning to play quite a few MSH Drafts during the July season.
This time, before jumping into my first Draft, I read the official Prerelease Guide, took a first look at the Limited Tier Lists from Untapped and Draftsim, and watched the usual pre-release episode of the Good Luck High Five podcast featuring Judge Rob, where they go over the new mechanics and some of the trickier card interactions in the set.
And of course, during these early-access days when content creators get to play the new set before the rest of us, I watched a few Drafts by Paul Cheon and NumotTheNummy.
Before starting my own Drafts, though, I decided to spend the Jump In! tokens I still had lying around.
You could think of Jump In! as Arena’s version of Jumpstart. In paper Magic, Jumpstart is a format designed to get you playing immediately. Instead of building a 60-card deck, each player opens two themed Jumpstart boosters, shuffles them together without making any changes, and has a ready-to-play 40-card deck. Each booster represents a theme (such as Vampires, Cats, Pirates or Spider-Man) and contains a curated selection of cards designed to work well with any other theme.
Jump In! follows exactly the same idea in MTG Arena. Instead of opening boosters, you choose from several themed packets that Arena offers you, it combines them automatically, and you’re ready to play.
My idea was that Jump In! would help me become familiar with the MSH cards before diving into Draft, and to some extent it did. However, I quickly realized that the format also includes cards from Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC) , which aren’t found in the Play Boosters used for Premier Drafts. So as Draft preparation, it’s only moderately useful. You can browse the full list of packets and their contents on MTGABuddy.
Even so, I played four Jump In! runs. Things couldn’t have started much worse: I opened with a painful 0-5 record. Fortunately, I managed to turn things around and eventually finished 6-6 overall—a perfectly respectable 50% win rate.
I especially enjoyed playing an Azorius Connive deck…
…and a Gruul Stompy deck that absolutely steamrolled a few opponents!
I’ll try to update this post with more detailed information about the decks I played once MTGABuddy finishes documenting all the available packets, since the list is still a work in progress.