this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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Hey guys, been out of the game for a good while now and I just learned about JumpStart from another post. Basically it's 20 card precons, each player picks two, shuffles them together, and that's your deck. This sounds like an amazing party game as well as a great teaching tool! I would totally put together a pseudo cube of like, 50 packs in a box and run a small tourney over drinks.

More importantly, this sounds like a fantastic way to teach my little family! 40 card games are fast, I can keep the mechanics simple and slowly add in more variety as they get good, and I can make reminder cards for each pack to help them get the hang of each mechanic.

I'd love some suggestions for themes and packs to make myself. Rules are:

  • 7 creatures
  • 4 spells
  • 1 mana fixer
  • 8 basic or common lands
  • a maximum of 3 rares
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[–] jambarama@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Years ago, I built a series of 40 card constructed decks to gradually teach my boys how to play magic, basic archetypes, and metagame considerations. I don't have lists up online, but this is what I used:

  • 1st mono-green stompy: creatures + giant growth. It runs llanowar elves, leatherback baloth, kalonian tusker, and a bunch of other vanilla green beaters that curve out at 4cmc. They learn how to play generally, but especially how to beat down, and time instants like giant growth

  • 2nd suicide black: carnophage, sarcomancy, and other undercosted 2/Xs with downsides, plus removal, and card advantage like necropotence to teach about life as a resource and learn at true aggro deck and how much faster it can be than stompy

  • 3rd sligh: aggro undercosted or hasty red dudes like jackal pup, fire imp, FTK, rakdos cackler, etc - plus lightning bolt and fireblast to learn about hitting to the face v. board control, punish decks getting greedy with their life, and get a feel for playing tempo-y type deck

  • 4th tinker: tinker out blightsteel using lotus petals and mana rocks to teach all-in combo and how it beats aggro every single time

  • 5th UW control with counters, card draw, and sweepers with serra angel and morphling as finishers to teach multicolored cards, control as a playstyle, inevitability, and how true control beats all-in combo every time

  • The 6th step was whatever constructed decks I have.

I tried to use iconic archetypes my kids can learn with powerful iconic cards they can familiarize themselves with. Each deck is designed to beat the immediately preceding deck, but not every deck in the series.

I thought about throwing in a tribal deck, but I never figured out what it teaches better than what I've got.

It worked pretty well. They're better than average at understanding the meta game clock. I'm not sure it still holds nowadays and both of my boys drifted away from the game, which is fine..

[–] Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This really gets the juices going! I can probably make a match for those easy enough.

Back when I was teaching others regularly I used tribal to teach synergy in deck building. 9 out of 10 elves can go in an elf deck and have things that help elves. Walking through a tribe helps the subtypes make more sense and once you havea handle on those you have a better understanding of how things work together.

You should rangle them into a game, if anything it gives you guys a little bonding time.

[–] jambarama@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

They know I'm always up for a game, if they're interested. I never want to force my hobbies on them, they've found their own.

I can see how a tribal deck would be good at teaching synergy. Maybe I should've swapped the suicide black deck for a tribal one. Ah well.

[–] Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

As a side thing, what cards would you pick to represent your personal style?

Personally, I'd havev

  • 1 of each colored myr mana dork
  • myr enforcer
  • myr battle sphere
  • myr galvanizer
  • door to nothingness
  • thought cast
  • master's call
  • go for the throat
  • 2 islands, plains, and swamps
  • 1 mountain and forest