Why Isn't It Worth It To Buy A Brothers' War JumpStart Box? Magic: The Gathering Mediocrity 

As more wizards stuff comes out i keep realizing id rather buy precon decks/sets instead of random booster boxes/packs

You put 2023 on the Blake Rasmussen clip.

Which plate?

Wish more magic artists used displate, they're such a cool product

Do they have one of me?

Now imagine trying to bulk purchase for a store.

Yeah that exactly me. Part time player for 18 years. Usually keep up to date with what's coming out. Now I over it

100% finally someone else on board with this. I've always said when I complain I "can't keep up" it's not that I'm complaining I can't afford every product - of course I can't. Not even the super whales are buying *everything*. It's that I don't even have the time to even figure out what to buy. I'm blessed with a good career that lets me afford this game but that leaves me with less time to invest into it. Coupled with, you know, just life in general I can't be part of a game only made for people who can sit online 12 hours a day consuming every spoiler.

Quite a few commander decks are good quality

@@Homernity420 With that same money you can just build a better deck. 40 dollars for a precon that could be done better for the same price

They've literally told you not to buy their product if it's not for you. So you're just taking their advice.

@@justinb2824 all of their products aren't for us nowadays

I’m at the point where singles aren’t even worth it. I bumped down from a collection of cards, to just a single commander deck.

IMO his response misses the mark. It effectiely boils down to "Don't like it? Don't buy it". I mean, yeah I think we've been doing that for awhile now and obviously no one is buying every release. I think the players complaining they "can't keep up" or are feeling "fatigue" though isn't cause they're trying to buy everything but because there is an substantial cognitive load in ever trying to figure out _what to buy_ in the first place. I don't sit on the MTG reddit every day (or ever). I don't watch WotC's youtube. I don't follow spoilers - and the reason is because I'm very busy. I'm blessed to work a good job that lets me afford this ridiculous game but that comes at the expense of having much less free time to actually even try and mentally track all the crap they're pumping out.

@@Weaver_Games This exactly. If I have to put a ton of effort into seeing which of your products are crap (which has been a lot of them lately) jsut to see what to buy, then I am just going to not buy anything but singles from game stores.

Holy sh*t!! That's a steller idea. I haven't made a cube yet but it's been on my mind for a while. But doing individual theme packs and doing it like jumpstart cube would be awesome! I've got the day off I think I'm a look into starting this today

I have a friend who’s building one each with a partner commander

top tier idea

Already did, it’s my little jumpstart cube. It was fun to put together and just used the first jumpstart decklists to get an idea of what themes to use. Just buy all black sleeves and bam

I'm doing this, because I want to make a "mini cube" which would serve to teach people how to play magic and get them into the game in real life. But I'm a teacher so I have lots of students to show the game to. Will definitely keep an eye out for people's ideas. Maybe there's a subreddit?

How long was I asleep??

Lol I noticed only because you said something.

That would require them to think about the products they put out. Also, so many artifacts have the Unearth mechanic which requires colored mana, which would just make the colorless themes samey.

A theme too far.

He's been like this since day 1 lol Love it

That threw me off haha

That’s because he is trying to keep up with everything that is happening in Magic ;)

At 6:15 it seems that the left pack doesn't have a foil basic.

What absolute misers. It doesnt cost them anything to be generous with it, and it might drive sales if they were actually "generous" with product instead of bastards.

yeah, this always is what fucks me up. Magic used to move at a pace where you Wanted AND Needed to play with each new set for one reason of another. Then on top, Blocks generated interest in sets already past. Gatecrash feeds into RtR, Journey into Nyx fed into Theros and Born of the Gods, and most blocks manage to be at least good, besides for some infamous exceptions. Today, a dud set might as well be dooming the plane to obscurity. and duds are way more common. I can only assume the design teams are being pushed too hard to jam everything in, and it's really damaging the drafting stage. I mean, look at crimson vow. we have a completely fleshed out plane, and the set still fucking sucked.

Yes! Ah so great to hear this coming from another source. People vastly underestimate the degree to which they bias data investigation. How they bin it, how they define thresholds, etc. It's just crazy to me that certain sectors have become so data-driven it actively undermines the trends those patterns were reliant upon through repeated exploitation.

Yeah I remember going to prerelease events every chance I got, and it was not too hard because there were generally maybe what, 3 a year? Now they're dropping new sets every other week, it's exhausting. I just stopped paying attention or buying anything.

We noticed this with Dominaria. My husband and I decided to dip into the pre-release on Saturday because we didn't want to deal with the crowd of Friday Night. . .and with us there ended up being 6 players. . .us, another couple just getting started, the store clerk and a regular that the clerk called in to try and make numbers enough for us to play. We were still grateful they ran the event for us. . .but it was disappointing not to even have a full table

There is no chance I'm doing prerelease every 8 weeks. 12 weeks was a good sweet spot. 2012 me would never have thought it would happen but I have a life beyond my hobbies now.

@@danlorett2184 I remember the super pre releases SCG hosted that had attendees on par with a GP. I actually flew from South Africa to the US to attend a pre release with over 1K worth of people playing. It was amazing.

@@hallaloth3112 exactly, I went to pre of Dominaria United on Saturday and the store owner had promo foil Dark Confidant as additional price if there would be more then 8 players. We had problems with getting 6 players... btw DomU great set for sealed, playing 5 colors in sealed was fun.

He'll be repeating that each year, every year, as his overlords demand.

Oh it's definitely by design. Same reason why companies like Micro$oft sell things in their store with "xbox points" rather than dollars. Always leftovers that a person will feel an annoying itch to balance out by spending more money.

Rumors of embezzlement have been going around for years now, they seem more real every year.

Mystery boxes are bad too

You mean those unbranded Wallmart-boxex with random packs? Because if you are talking about mystery boosters, youre kinda wrong

@user-qk4qh6vw2b ya I mean those MJ holdings mystery cubes that usually have 2 of the worst selling products of the year and an etali primal storm, and beast whisperer single.

You have a good lgs.

​@@volosguidetomonsters3440 I'll let them know the internet thinks so next time I swing by :)

Peasant cube is great fun. Built my 720 card peasant cube for 250 bucks and 100 bucks of that was just the frigging sleeves.

@@corriedebeer799 Peasant commander is my favorite way to play commander. I just made my sister a Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion pauper commander deck that's just a mixture of evasive creatures, efficient removal, lifesteal, and cards that return Nashi from your graveyard to your hand to keep the Ninjutsu working. Because my FLGS is amazing all it cost was 2$ for Nashi, plus the price of a box and sleeves; the rest of the 99 was free.

@@ObsidianKnight90 yep enjoyment of a card has no bearing on how much it cost. People complain about the price of mtg, but mtg cost the same now than ever before. Exactly as cheap or expensive as you want it to be.

Wow dat was savage bruh 😂 Definitely not picking up this trash. Thanks Prof!

in a week the new jumpstart comes out! which has lots of very different and fun archetypes, that one will be pretty good i think

Wait for 2022, Dominaria United Jumpstart was dissapointint too. I think the themed set ones are bad because they're limited, the core JS sets should have much more variety

@@williamriven brain dead take

@@williamriven The product is definitely bad value compared to its predecessor. If your product gets worse over time, your customers get angry. Anything else you want to say is cope.

This isn’t “Jumpstart Jumpstart”, it’s the replacement for Theme boosters (a fantastic upgrade imo). I just wished they emphasized that this is “Standard-legal Jumpstart”.

Finally proof the The Professor is actually The Doctor!

Time Spiral

Is the idea of these expansions not to simply add them to the existing jump-start pool?

@@williamriven I got 6 Tree-Hugging and 8 Heavily Armored in single box. I admit I never calculated the odds of it happening, but as I got it in my first and only box it was very easy feat to accomplish for me. I bought mine hoping to open it and build "jump-start cube", and it failed horribly for me. Fortunately there was a lot of re-use between themes so I used some of the bulk in my collection, and purchased some missing cheap cards and I managed to convert those themes into other white/green themes. It makes sense that the commons and uncommons are reused between themes, so when you run into Basri and Heavily Armored you're getting quite coherent deck. Similarly Trees could be converted quite fast and cheap (sub-one-dollar) into other themes, so it was not a total catastrophe. Well, all in all, maybe most people won't get 8 and it's not so easy, I'm just the luckiest person on the planet, lol. Well, buy singles!

@@Banterbear Not likely. They wouldn't make good addition. The original JumpStart was very well thought out. The commons/uncommons were... common between different themes of the same color. The rare multicolored decks used some of the card used in other half-decks. By mashing the two together you usually got quite coherent deck due to many small tweaks like that. Put 5 new half-decks that don't operate on similar template and when you run into them you get decks that work worse. You CAN do it, but you just lesser the experience. Also, the power level is just not the same for the new half-decks If you take everything into consideration, the theory that prof has, that those just replace Theme Boosters, is very likely. The big Jumpstart that comes next week might be good, but it also won't make for a great addition to existing pool. For the best experience you should play cards from only one set.

@@Areinu And I thought I got it bad when I had 4 copies of Feathered Friends in my box. Although the biggest thing I was upset with was that I got about an even split of WUBR, but only 2 green packs.

@@darwinsfolly2117 Yeah, having even split is good. I built some half-decks for colors that were under-represented in mine (hello black and blue) based on the card lists available online. I choose the ones with cheapest rares :D

That's awesome! I hope y'all have a great time.

I have a 720 card cube that cost me 250 dollars and almost half of that was the friggin sleeves. Why anyone would proxy a cube is beyond me. If you want to proxy a powered cube play it on mtgo. The whole mtgo experience is basically one of playing sanctioned proxies.

Wait a week for the good Jumpstart

WOTC firmly believes in Skullclamping all of its workers :P LOL

better , imagine the team that made jumpstart going: ok so here is going to be the base, then as we add new sets it's just going to give more theme mixing. then as the expansion products release and are treated as standalone products they look on in horror as no one understands at all that you were never supposed to make a deck with 2 brother's war packs.

I haven't bought any of the dominaria or brothers JS decks. Are they even comparable in quality to the original half decks?

On the description of the DMU Jumpstart and BRO Jumpstart, they claim these packs are "compatible with other Jumpstart products." So perhaps you're right, that the intent was to add more variety to the 'base' jumpstart (or to Jumpstart 22). This is how I'll be using this product: buy 2-4 packs of each set jumpstart to mix into the others for an added bunch of themes.

I found flesh and blood players oddly bitter when talking to them, if they're not trying to get me into the game why should I support the sale of product to get other people into the game? The bubble or let's go with egg of competition and tournament environments, while golden, appears to me to be at the detrimental overall health of the goose which laid it. What I'm saying is that current players have created this shrewd environment that to me fosters a particular mindset that I really don't want to see expanding to new players, who are often children or adolescents. And when what I see concerns me I decide that it's best the product doesn't get bought. Magic's sales environment may not be healthy but I can reasonably rely on players knowing what the expectations are for each other when they sit down and play. That's healthy, flesh and blood's not so much.

@@KarmaSpaz12 I’m new to FaB. It’s fun. I play a cheap non meta hero and it’s just goofy to slap people with a rock. Still play magic more as of now but I’m done buying magic. At the very least I know buying a $60 booster box will give me fun cards that aren’t ruined out of the pack. Same goes to Digimon tbh. I’ve been trying to jump the mtg ship for a minute tbh.

so many

Same. I bought a prerelease just for fun, and I may buy draft or set boosters here or there for fun. But aside from that I'm only really buying singles when I need them for a new deck. But nothing really over that.

@@smolshay yeah man, if they won't slow down, we will

getting 24$ of lands on a $55 box is decent. But even then I got $80 a box on 2022 preorders and it has packs with rhystic study, 7 snow lands+ new snow commander, vendillion clique, Lyra Dawnbringer and weird reprints we havent seen for decades of some $5-10 rares

@@82ndmi i think I also sold a bunch of the rares for 40 bucks too, so, eh. worth it enough. but are you saying you already received preorders on JS22?

Only jumpstart 2022 is worth it

But really is it worth the cost still?? Just save your money and if you have to buy singles from it like the prof suggests

@@TheChadarad yeah, that's what i mean. They're soo poor that they're already on the sale shelves. I found literally nothing exciting in this box. The new jumpstart incoming, however :)

Although, even if the products were better designed and more fairly prices (that would be a massive step up already), it still would be too much to keep up, especially for more casual players whose life does not revolve around MtG and have less time and/or budget available.

Why not both?

SCF is a bitch. Or better, human condition is.

@@williamriven That's a low bar to surpass, but yes, they are better than themed boosters.

Why would you not just buy a 2 or 3 packs of the expansion's (of different themes) to add into your existing jump start pool?

@@Banterbear Not a bad idea. But my line of thinking was buying a fresh box of a new and exciting Jumpstart, not just an extra pack or two.

@@MBurgland Oh, they got that covered as well ...👍