If you’re struggling to keep up with the sheer volume of MTG Foundations spoilers this week, you’re not alone. Main set spoilers are coming daily as you’d expect, but we also saw the entirety of Foundations Jumpstart spoiled on Monday. On top of that, the full card list for the MTG Foundations Starter Collection also dropped yesterday. This is basically a set in itself, with hundreds of reprints that will be legal in Standard for years to come.
The Starter Collection is fairly unique as far as MTG products go, so we figured a breakdown would be useful. Spoiler alert: there’s a ton of value packed into it, for Magic players of all stripes.
What Is The MTG Foundations Starter Collection?
Before we get into specifics, we should go over what exactly the MTG Foundations Starter Collection even is. This is a product unlike anything we’ve seen in a while. The closest points of comparison are the Deck Builder’s Toolkits we used to get regularly until 2020. These were products containing a lot of Standard-legal cards, (largely bulk) a few booster packs, and a storage box.
The Starter Collection takes this concept and ramps it up to 11. Rather than the 100-ish cards Toolkits used to contain, the Starter Collection contains an eye-watering 387 cards. As Wizards noted in the Weekly MTG episode discussing the Collection, the idea behind it is to simulate the experience of a new player being gifted a box of cards by a friend. With the sheer scale and variety on offer here, I’d say it achieves that goal and then some.
Another element that separates the Starter Collection from the Toolkits of the past is the cards involved. Where the latter typically only featured cards from other Standard sets, the Starter Collection includes cards you can’t open anywhere else in Standard. These cards are all perfectly Standard-legal and even have the same set symbol as the rest of Foundations, but you won’t find them in Foundations booster packs.
There are a few exceptions to this. The Starter Collection includes a few cards specifically aimed at new Commander players. These include classics like Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and Command Tower. These cards will come in a separate, clearly-marked packet in the Collection, and will not be Standard-legal. Other than that, everything in the Collection is fair game.
Value Overload
That’s an exciting prospect because there are a ton of powerful cards in the Starter Collection. Far, far more than we could possibly cover here. You can find a full list of included cards on the Wizards website. This huge influx of new cards will have a major impact on Standard, for better or worse. I foresee many players being confused about the legality, for one thing. I certainly was at first.
Standard shifting thanks to the Starter Collection isn’t particularly surprising. What is surprising is the monetary value contained within it. Past Deck Builder’s Toolkits have been a pretty rough deal for all but complete beginners to the game. This one actually offers a sizable return on investment, however, even for experienced players.
While the majority of the 387 cards in the Starter Collection are, as you’d expect, bulk, there are some standout rares and uncommons. I’m talking Aurelia, the Warleader at $10, Myojin of Night’s Reach at $9, and Darksteel Colossus at $8. That’s a very solid start, and when you factor in other rares you’re looking at approximately $90 in value. Factor in the cost of the three Foundations Play Boosters you also get, and we’re up at $111. Given the Starter Collection has an MSRP of $60, that’s a pretty staggering figure.
It’s also a figure that doesn’t take into account the extras the Collection offers. 26 of the 387 cards come in foil, for instance, and you also get 10 full-art basic lands, 14 tokens, and a click wheel. The fact that the Collection looks like a great deal even without all of that is very encouraging.
Something For Everyone?
Monetary value is one thing, but how does the MTG Foundations Starter Collection fare as a functional product? That’s a trickier question to answer. The biggest issue the Collection has is that it only includes one copy of most of its cards. That’s fine for true beginners, who don’t tend to care about maxing out on playsets when deckbuilding. For intermediate-advanced players, however, it’s a major logistics problem.
As mentioned above, most of the cards in the Starter Collection can only be found there, and not in Foundations boosters. This leaves two routes open to players who want to run these cards properly in Standard. Either they can buy multiple copies of the Starter Collection, or they can source older printings of the cards on the secondary market. Neither option is ideal, especially for what should be an entry-level Standard product.
On the other hand, the Starter Collection is absolutely ideal as an entry point into Commander. You only need one copy of each card in that format, after all. On top of that, the Collection is packed with format staples like Massacre Wurm and Reclamation Sage. When you consider the Commander-only cards included in the Collection, this almost feels like its intended purpose.
Unless you’re a genuine newcomer to MTG Standard I don’t think the Starter Collection is a great pickup, despite the excellent on-paper value. Picking up playsets of the relevant cards once the dust settles will serve you better in the long run. If you’re looking to start an all-purpose toolbox for Commander, however, then I can’t recommend it highly enough.