Our Top 12 Cards for Jumpstart 2022
It’s been a long journey, but we’ve finally hit the home stretch after a busy year in Magic. Barring some surprise Universes Beyond Secret Lair product at the eleventh hour, it seems as though Jumpstart 2022 (J22) is the final release of 2022 that features new cards! If you’ve stuck with us this past year while we covered nearly every Magic release that hit store shelves, we salute you!
With a release date of December 2nd, this set will offer 46 new themes that are designed to be fun and accessible for new players. They even added a few exciting reprints, including some with new anime-inspired art. In this article, we (Chief, Hoping Jumpstart 2022 Includes Tokens and Exxaxl, the Little Devil on Your Shoulder) will round up our top 10 top 12 cards from this new Jumpstart set. That’s right—we’re adding a few bonus picks this time around. Okay, let’s get started!
Chief
Agrus Kos, Eternal Soldier
A clear reference to the radiance mechanic seen on Boros Legion cards from Ravnica: City of Guilds—but with an exciting new twist—this card can do some surprising things if you build around abilities that target your creatures. While some people seemed to be underwhelmed by the fact that he copies abilities instead of spells, I’m already seeing a lot of excitement from those who’ve cracked the code and figured out which abilities are just kinda broken when you copy them for all of your creatures.
Agrus Kos can copy both activated and triggered abilities, as long as he’s the only target. This opens the door to do a lot of crazy things with cards such as Jaxis, the Troublemaker or Sword of Hearth and Home. I’m really looking forward to all of the different ways that people are going to take advantage of the unique abilities of this commander.
Exxaxl: Delina, Wild Mage and Rionya, Fire Dancer come to mind. I’m sure nobody minds you copying your entire board several times over.
Chief: That’s absolutely disgusting. I love it! You can get even more value out of him if you pair him with a certain rabbit in a deck focused on enters-the-battlefield abilities. Read on to find out what I’m talking about!
Benevolent Hydra
It’s rare to see a hydra that looks so friendly, but you shouldn’t let that keep you from seeing the deadly potential that this card can bring to +1/+1 counters decks in Commander! My favorite thing about this card is that its replacement effect doubles its own activated ability, allowing you to get a lot of value out of the mana that you sink into it. Of course, you can always cast it for X=0 if you just want the extra counters since you’ll likely have plenty of other ways to put counters on your creatures.
Outside of the obvious hydra decks, there are still a lot of ways to capitalize on +1/+1 counters even just in mono-green. Fertilid can provide quite a bit of ramp when it enters the battlefield with an extra counter and recurring abilities such as that of Haruspex become even more valuable. I’m expecting this card to be another popular addition to green’s stable of excellent +1/+1 counter support cards and I hope that it sees a favorable reprint schedule to help keep the price reasonable down the line.
Ogre Battlecaster
I was surprised that I didn’t see much discussion around this card during the preview season. While you still have to pay mana to cast the spells, being able to reuse instants or sorceries from your graveyard is always a strong ability. The fact that she also has first strike means that stands a pretty good chance of surviving combat to do in again next turn, or maybe even during your next combat step if you’re casting extra combat spells out of the graveyard!
Neheb, the Eternal is one of my favorite mono-red commanders, so I’m naturally very excited about this card. Using his ability to produce tons of extra red mana, it seems like it will be pretty easy to take some huge turns and get a lot of value out of Ogre Battlecaster by utilizing additional combat steps. The fact that she exiles the spells after casting them doesn’t matter much, because you can probably generate enough mana to end the game all in one go with the proper set-up.
Preston, the Vanisher
It’s definitely unexpected to see the rabbit pulling things out of the hat. This card offers a unique way to capitalize on white flicker spells—and even reanimation. You can easily get a ton of value out of enters-the-battlefield abilities and creatures that sacrifice themselves to do things. That said, Preston has another trick up his sleeve. If you create enough illusions, he can also do a disappearing act with nonland permanents. Tying a strong ability and removal together on the same card is quite powerful.
Who could have predicted that we’d find another way to break Felidar Guardian? Any flicker effect will allow you to go infinite with Felidar Guardian, creating prime conditions to utilize any enters-the-battlefield ability again and again while also flickering your original Felidar Guardian. You can also use it to untap lands to generate infinite mana. While it shouldn’t be too difficult to win at this point, the efficacy of this combo might be hindered by a lack of good ways to tutor this card in mono-white. Even outside of this combo, there’s still a lot that you can do with Preston to build a fun and powerful deck.
Eidolon of Rhetoric
While I don’t really care for anime artwork, I find this reprint to be very enjoyable. This card is strong enough to even see play in cEDH, so I’m definitely looking forward to adding it to my Heliod, Sun-Crowned deck to replace the original printing of the card. There’s just something funny about stopping storm and turbo decks with an anime ghost girl. The new flavor text on this card is also very cool.
While it’s completely fair game to prefer the more serious Journey into Nyx original Eidolon of Rhetoric, I try to inject a bit of humor into the games that I play with stax in cEDH as a means to lighten the mood and bring more levity into my table politics. People sometimes remove effects like this at the wrong time, so I’m sure there will be plenty of jokes to be made about mistakes that were made involving killing the anime girl and letting another player win the game.
Exxaxl: It’s not like I’m trying to limit everyone to one spell a turn because I like them or anything…
Chief: Don’t.
Lyra Dawnbringer
Out of all of the normal reprints in this set, I was most excited about this one. Lyra Dawnbringer was definitely starting to creep up there in price, so I hope that this version of the card offers some relief for people who want to add her to their angel decks. I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed that she didn’t get a new card in Dominaria United, so this reprint will just have to do until we see her again. With any luck, she’ll manage to avoid being compleated in the meantime.
Exxaxl
Alandra, Sky Dreamer
Talrandra Alandra, Sky Dreamer is a new approach towards mono blue cantrip, a spot previously cornered quite hard by Talrand, Sky Summoner. I’m sure most people who play Talrand will put Alandra in the 99 and not the other way around. This card gives you a powerful Overrun type effect, which is currently quite lacking in blue, especially when we look at the abundance of cards like Akroma’s Will, Triumph of the Hordes, or Finale of Devastation in other colors.
Alandra will allow you to turn cards you probably already run like Distant Melody, Kindred Discovery or even Windfall into a finisher. I’d like to highlight Keep Watch, Flow of Knowledge, and Windreader Sphinx here as underplayed cards in the format, which immediately become way better when played in a deck with Alandra at the helm. The seas are vast, but the skies are even more so. Especially now.
Auntie Blyte, Bad Influence
The weird lines of play you can have with Auntie Blyte, Bad Influence are fantastic. Heartless Hidetsugu targeting yourself, and she probably already swings for lethal. Add in some more cards like Volcano Hellion or Fiendlash and enjoy shooting down the table for approximately too much damage.
You now gain a big benefit out of Manabarbs or Burning Earth, as they directly help your commander grow. I’m pretty sure the table will more closely consider the amount of life they bet on Wheel of Misfortune now too. I wonder if we’re going to get a ‘Good Influence’ counterpart on the same character's other shoulder in the near future.
Chief: Auntie Blyte is yet another commander that plays really well with Shadowspear. I can only hope for an accessible reprint in the near future. Please!
Exxaxl: I’m glad I was able to pick up Shadowspear when it was standard relevant, before I truly got into EDH. The same can be said for The Great Henge honestly.
Runadi, Behemoth Caller
Having a commander that gives mono green hydra players access to haste from the command zone sounds absolutely terrifying. It’s not too hard to double/triple +1/+1 counters in current day magic, and Runadi, Behemoth Caller is a mana dork on top.
According to Billy Christian’s tweet, we now have yet another real life pet turned into Magic card, just like Charmed Stray and the cards in the Every Dog Has Its Day Secret Lair.
If you’re not aiming to play Runadi as a hydra commander, Eldrazi come to mind. A 21/21 Flying, trample, protection from instants, haste Emrakul, the Promised End is not on my list of creatures I want to take damage from. Not even 15 squirrels can help you now!
Planar Atlas
Hey look, it’s the 2drop mana rock that I predicted would be in The Brothers’ War Commander decks. Yes, Planar Atlas enters tapped, but it also gives you an effect similar to Impulse on top. Ramp, look at your top 4, and guarantee yourself a land next turn - or don’t! You get to choose whether you reveal or not. You can also just bottom all 4 if you didn’t like what you saw.
While this won’t be a format staple, I’m pretty sure this card will see some play in decks such as God-Eternal Kefnet where top deck knowledge is power. It seems ideal for the slower power levels on our server like Battlecruiser and Low Power, and this is the type of mana rock I wish they made over the auto-include which Arcane Signet ended up being.
Whirler Rogue
If I had to pick my favorite anime art reprint, it’d be this one. It’s easy to see the similarities between this card and the ‘Lofi Girl’ from YouTube we’ve seen the past few years. Even if I’m wrong - or it was not the artist's vision to portray this - that’s how I see this card’s new art and I choose to believe I’m right. Whirler Rogue is a card that keeps showing up in precons, showing up 4 times since 2020. While it’s not a massively impactful card on the format as a whole, giving people the option to get brand new art of an uncommon they might have grown fond of due to seeing its use in several decks certainly feels nice.
The original art feels very distinctly Kaladesh, and so far this is the only non-standard art printing we’ve seen of this card. I quite often find myself a little bummed out when a card is clearly not from the faction or plane I’m trying to depict in my latest EDH deck, and having more options in those regards always feels good.
Rhystic Study
Let’s end with a regular reprint. Just like with Whirler Rogue, your choices in regards to art were quite limited here. I don’t care enough about the show Arcane to run the Unstable Harmonics variant, and I can put together several new decks for the price of the Judge Gift version. I really enjoyed Strixhaven as a plane, and seeing Zimone and Rootha teach each other new magic tricks is such a big flavor win in my book.
I’m one of those people that gave away their original 400-500 cards after getting into Magic slightly at a very young age and then moving on to another hobby, and Rhystic Study was one of the cards I owned back then. I’ve not bought the card as a single since then, but this time, I’m probably picking up this reprint.
Chief: At least now I know what to get you for Christmas! This is a pretty great reprint.
There you have it. Thanks for sticking with us through 2022’s hectic Magic release schedule. There are plenty of other cool new cards to be found in Jumpstart 2022, so we’ll be looking forward to seeing them at Commander tables in the near future. If you’d like to tell us about your favorite cards from the set, hit us up on Twitter! We’d love to hear from you. If you’d like to check out more PlayEDH content, you can find more articles here or tune into the PlayEDH Radio 903.1 podcast here.
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