MTG Jumpstart Cube: Black Spotlight
By Serena L.
Hey, guys! It’s Serena!
It’s time for the third color on our list for the Jumpstart cube. This time, we’re covering black, my personal favorite. To go over the basics, we’re doing 20 card packs, each with three rares, at least one piece of removal, six basic lands, and an Evolving Wilds. We’ve previously covered white and blue.
We’re going to start with an Aristocrats theme. Our rares are Open the Graves, Oversold Cemetery, and Vraan, Executioner Thane. Open the Graves is a simple but powerful token generator that gives us a zombie every time a non-token creature we control dies. Oversold Cemetery lets us get a creature back from our graveyard every turn. Vraan drains our opponent for two life the first time one of our creatures dies each turn. Viscera Seer is our main sacrifice outlet, letting us drop creatures to scry one at instant speed. The removal in this pack is a personal favorite of mine, Tragic Slip, which gives a creature 1/-1 until the end of turn at instant speed. Why is it a favorite of mine? Because if a creature dies this turn, you give a creature 13/-13 instead! We also have Vat of Rebirth for bringing things back, while Zulaport Cutthroat and Popular Egotist both drain our opponents when we do our aristocrat thing. You can find the list for this one here.
Moving on, we have an artifact theme, centered on blood tokens. Chronomancer, Glass-Cast Heart, and Kamber, the Plunderer are going to be our rares. Chronomancer lets us sacrifice an artifact to draw a card, and it’s also a 1/1 flyer for two mana with Unearth. Kamber, meanwhile, is a lifelinking 3/4 with Partner for Laurinel, the Diversion, but the real reason she’s around is to make us a blood and gain us a life every time an opponent’s creature dies. Glass-Cast Heart gives us a blood token every time we attack with a vampire, which means most of the creatures in here. It also generates 1/1 vampire tokens with lifelink. You can spend two black mana, tap, and sacrifice it along with 13 blood tokens to drain 13 life from your opponent and gain 13 life yourself! We also have some other creatures, like the Gluttonous Guest, Bloodcrazed Socialite, and Wedding Security, to keep the blood flowing. You can find this whole list at Moxfield.
Speaking of vampires, they are our third theme – specifically, aggressive vampires draining the life from our opponents. The rares to help us with that are Crossway Troublemakers, Sanctum Seeker, and Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose. The Troublemakers are a massive six mana 5/5 that gives our attacking vampires deathtouch and lifelink, plus lets us pay two life to draw a card when a vampire we control dies. Sanctum Seeker says whenever a vampire you control attacks, your opponent will lose a life, and you gain a life. Vito is a three mana legend that says whenever we gain life, our opponent loses that much life, plus we can pay three colorless and two black to give our team lifelink for the turn. That means we can drain our opponent even when they’re attacking us. The removal spell here is a very flavorful Go for the Throat. We also have some friends like Creeping Bloodsucker, Bloodthirsty Aerialist, Scourge of the Undercity, and the classic Vampire Nighthawk rounding things out. You can find the list for this one here.
The final pack, and my personal favorite, is Zombies! Our rares here are Rot Hulk, Gravecrawler, and Endless Ranks of the Dead. Gravecrawler is a one mana 2/1 that can’t block, that’s been abused in many a combo, as once it’s killed, you can cast it from your graveyard if you control a zombie. Rot Hulk might be seven mana, but it’s a 5/5 menace that brings another zombie back from the dead for each of our opponents (one in this format). Endless Ranks of the Dead is a potent enchantment that gives us an exponentially growing army of 2/2 zombies, letting us get half the number of zombies we already have during upkeep. Lord of the Accursed is a solid three mana lord for the type, Undead Augur draws us cards when our zombies die, and we can Cycle our Gempalm Polluter to finish someone off. If you wanna see this graveyard smash, you can find the list on Moxfield as usual.
It’s time for me to head back into my coffin. I’ll be back soon for part four in our five-part series to paint the town red! Until the next time, Serena, signing out!