Overall, despite the anime-art-only cards that compromise the set’s visual identity, Foundations Jumpstart is a pretty great MTG expansion. There are lots of powerful new cards here, some of which are worth serious money. While it’s too early to tell, it’s likely a great self-contained Limited environment too.
That said, no set is without its problems. MTG Foundations Jumpstart features a number of cards that produce new tokens, but these tokens don’t actually show up in physical packs. This is a decidedly odd decision, and, interestingly, one we’ve seen before.
The Problem With The MTG Foundations Jumpstart Tokens
Looking through MTG Foundations Jumpstart, you’ll quickly notice a few cards that produce tokens. Some of these already exist in physical form such as Shroofus’ Saprolings. Others are brand new, and this is where the problem begins.
Cynette, Jelly Drover, for example, is the first card to ever produce its token, a 1/1 Jellyfish. The same is true for Psemilla’s Nymphs, and Ozox’s legendary Jumblebones. This is half-true for the 1/1 Hasty Soldiers produced by Frontline Heroism as well. While some cards from Theros produced the same tokens, they were printed without Haste back in the day.
As these are first-time tokens, Foundations Jumpstart is also the first chance for them to see a physical printing. Unfortunately, Wizards has opted to include no tokens at all in Foundations Jumpstart packs. This means that players who want to run these cards will need to come up with their own solutions, in lieu of official printings.
Interestingly, this isn’t an artwork issue. Art for these tokens does exist, and you can see it right now on MTG Arena if you happen to play with the new Jumpstart cards. A recent Imgur post has shared these tokens with the community online, and you can see three of them above. With the exception of Psemilla’s Nymph, which is in a drastically different style, these tokens are by the same artist as their related cards. Clearly, both pieces were commissioned and created in each case, yet the tokens are being held as Arena exclusives.
This truly baffles the mind. The designers at Wizards put effort into creating token characters with widespread appeal, Jumblebones in particular, then offered players no means of opening said tokens in physical packs. This isn’t the first time they’ve done this, either.
Repeat Offender
Those who remember Jumpstart 2022 will know it suffered from the same problem. Several of the new cards, including big mythics like Kibo and Lita, produced new tokens. Just like in MTG Foundations Jumpstart, these tokens never made it into packs. Players who wanted to run a Banana-focused Kibo Commander deck would have to find their own solutions. Some of these were wonderfully creative like a player bringing small banana toys to serve as tokens. Cool as that is, players shouldn’t have been in that position to begin with.
Token distribution is already a well-known issue in Magic. Players have been unhappy at the frequency with which they show up in packs for a while, especially in light of new token-centric mechanics like Offspring. At least regular sets have tokens, however. Jumpstart’s determination not to include any is a strange running joke, at the playerbase’s expense.
The reasoning behind this likely comes down to the nature of Jumpstart itself. These packs are meant to be opened and immediately shuffled together, with little to no delay. Throwing tokens into the mix complicates this. Newer players, Jumpstart’s primary audience, might not notice or remove them, leading to awkward gameplay situations. Given that this problem has persisted through multiple Jumpstart sets, it doesn’t look like Wizards is interested in addressing it any time soon.
That said, there are some options here. Perhaps the archetype cards in each pack could be made double-sided, with a token on the reverse. These could feature exclusively in packs with token generators, to minimize player confusion. I’m skeptical that a change like this will happen, but a physical Jumblebones token is more than enough incentive to hold out hope.
