With Noah in exams until the Thursday before Christmas, we did not have an opportunity this year to play any Magic before the start of the break. The boys found some JumpStart 2022 packs in their stockings on Christmas morning and that was our first game of the holiday season.

Christian’s two packs were Ferocious Detective (B). Noah ended up with Snow Law (WU) and I got Cruel Gigantic (BG). No big money cards in any of them. My best draw was Runadi, Behemoth Caller, a card I like (I like big green things) but not sure where it might go just yet.

We decided to do our usual round robin tournament. Noah easily beat Christian 2-0 due to a couple of mana floods and early signs that the two packs were not very synergistic. I played Noah next and went down 1-2. My best performer was Creeping Bloodsucker, a common that pings your opponent for one and gives you one at the same time. Slow and steady but it was not enough to withstand the bruising attacks from Noah’s deck. Christian and I played for the spoils and the lack of synergy in his deck was clearly in evidence as he went down 1-2.

I like the Jumpstart concept – It’s great to simply get two packs, slam them together and be ready to play. But it is frustrating when they don’t work well together. And gameplay is not particularly complex, a good thing for new players but a bit of a let down for more experienced ones (yes, I’m talking about Christian and Noah).

I will split mine out and add them to the small collection of Jumpstart packs to use when we’re looking for an easy game or when we look to introduce someone to the game.

From there, it was time for some more serious action. Noah bought Christian and I each six draft booster packs of Kamigawa as our Christmas present. Or in my case five and one Kaldheim pack as the store apparently ran out. The idea was that the two of us would build a sealed deck and over the next few weeks, Noah will add a new pack for us to enhance our decks (or build something new) in a mini-league.

Unfortunately, that left him out of the play. Fortunately, I had some Kaldheim set boosters that I had bought some time back for a rainy day. We decided to use those and to get Noah in on the action. We each gave him two of our Kamigawa packs and then complemented that with 4 Kaldheim set boosters and 2 for Christian and I to cover the two we had just given him. Think of this as some weird version of chaos sealed.

It all made for some rather odd games with no one really standing out over the others with our first builds. We’ll have to see if we continue down this path and add new packs to the mix. It definitely shows though that set boosters don’t work very well for sealed. You’d think that it would be easier with less randomness but it all felt forced – almost like playing Jumpstart but with even less synergy.

Finally, it was time for some Commander. Out came the Warhammer 40K decks. Christian and I are still running them unmodified but Noah has switched out seven cards, adding both his Mana Crypt as well as a Mox Amber pulled from the recent The Brothers’ War set among a few other cards.

Noah started slowly but both Christian and I know that the Necrons can go off quite quickly and explosively. I concentrated my first few turns on him, given that he did not have any creatures out. Christian did not attack but was progressively adding creatures and building his board state.

I was feeling quite optimistic when I played my Space Marine Devastator and cranked out three copies with my extra mana. Along with Marneus Calgar as my Commander, I was starting to amass a good number of tokens. It was time to deal with Christian. I risked it all. And ran into a wall of removal and instant speed tricks on top of the monstrous creatures he had on the battlefield. It was not my finest move by a long stretch and I ended with more losses than I had expected. The attack got through but left me wide open and reeling.

Next turn, Christian proceeded to pump up his creatures, including a couple of 12/12s, gave them all flying and swung in for 39 points of damage. That was it for me.

Noah managed to last another turn but the writing was on the wall and a further turn was enough to seal his fate. The Tyranids rule the Warhammer universe… For now.

And so ended another season of Christmas Magic.