Jumpstart Release Delayed

Wizards has announced a delay to the new Jumpstart set. Originally slated to release on June 26th, Jumpstart is now releasing on July 17th. Jumpstart will also be releasing on Magic Arena on July 16th and Magic Online via Treasure Chests on June 25th. You can read the original announcement here.

Jumpstart Preleases were originally slated for the June 20-21st weekend, but the announcement did not mention whether or not this date has changed.

How Does Jumpstart Work

Jumpstart is a supplemental MTG product where each player grabs two Jumpstart boosters, opens them up, shuffles them together, and starts playing together. It's reminscient of the free Intro decks you can get from LGS's in that each Intro deck had one 30-card main color deck and one random 30-card secondary color deck and you could shuffle up both "mini" decks to create a full 60-card deck. Jumpstart is designed for two-player gameplay, but it is always possible to play it for multiplayer.

Each Jumpstart booster contains 20 cards that follow a single theme. The theme is randomized from booster to booster, and there are "121 possible card-lists inside any given pack". The themes are not limited just to Tribal themes as Wizards has listed some possible themes which include "Garruk" and "Doctor." Tribes will be present such as Elves, Goblins, Pirates, and even Eldrazi. In addition, one in three boosters will contain an extra rare card. Most themes will have multiple card-lists associated with it, but there are some Mythic Rare themes that only feature one card-list. Phyrexians, Unicorns, and Walls are among the Mythic Rare themes. Most boosters will be singleton, but some card-lists will have two of a same named card.

Booster boxes of this set will contain 24 boosters, and each 20-card booster will have seven or eight lands, with one land that will feature art that matches the booster's theme. The set of cards inside the booster will be wrapped in plastic and will come with a face-card which lists the theme for that booster pack.

There are 37 new cards that will be introduced to help fill the themes, but these cards will only be legal in Eternal formats. There will be about 120 cards from Core Set 2021 and more than 400 reprints; all of these cards will only be legal in whichever format they were already legal in. None of the cards will be foil. All Jumpstart cards will be legal in Magic Arena's Historic format.

While Jumpstart was originally slated to release close to Core Set 2021, that is no longer the case. Jumpstart does share a lot of content with Core Set 2021, with some of Core Set 2021's basic lands featured in Jumpstart, but it is a standalone release. You can read the original Jumpstart Introduction announcement here