Overview
Remember the board game Clue? Do you know Magic: Jumpstart? This game basically mixes the two.
- As in Clue, your goal is to figure out "whodunnit" by correctly guessing the suspect, room, and weapon that was secretly chosen and placed in the case file at the game's start. There are 21 cards (6 suspects, 10 locations, and 5 weapons). Examples:
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- As in Jumpstart, you will open two 20-card themed packs (eight are included in the box; each is a two-color theme aligned to Ravnica guilds), shuffle them together to make your deck, set your life counter to 20, and play a normal game of Magic.
You can win one of two ways:
1) you reduce all opponents' life to zero (as in normal Magic)
2) you correctly guess the person, room, and weapon
For the second, your opponents each hold some people, rooms, and weapons (they were dealt randomly at the game's start). On a turn when you do damage to your opponent, you make guess one of each, and if that opponent has one of the guessed cards, they must reveal it to you. That opponent then creates a clue token (which can help them draw cards).
Review
I enjoyed this variation of Magic. Its fun that the 21 "Clue" cards are actual Magic cards (I've since built a Commander deck with one). Jumpstart is a great concept, too, so that is satisfying. And they did a good job of mixing reprints from Ravnica sets with brand new cards.
Here's what I did not enjoy: this comes with eight randomized boosters (there are 20 possible, two for each guild; see the official page for all of them). It is possible to get more than one copy of the same pack, and since there are ten Ravnica guilds (which equate to color combinations), there is no possible way you can get all ten guilds in one box. You must buy two (or more, if your luck is poor) to collect at least one of each guild, and purchase more still to have any hope of getting all 20 possible packs. Does that matter for gameplay? No. Would it have been nice to include ten boosters, for one of each guild? Yes.
The price was another downer; initially listed at $80, it wasn't worth near that, even with the included randomized shock land (I picked up one for $50, when they went on clearance).
Overall, this is a decent product that could have been great.
Rating: B
