The advent of Jumpstart in Magic: The Gathering is something a lot of players both old and new will love. It introduces a good way to start out with the game while also spicing things up for veteran players who are looking for a midpoint between constructed and draft.

Jumpstart gives players more than forty 20-card theme packs where a combination of two theme packs can form a deck. As always with MTG, certain card combinations are more effective at ensuring victory while others are suboptimal or just lack synergy. So, here are five effective Jumpstart theme combinations and another five to avoid.

10 SPIRITS + VAMPIRES

Dimir-themed decks are always formidable and frustrating. Such is the case for Spirits and Vampires in Jumpstart. Spirits’ strong card draw and evasive flying creatures pair well with Vampire’s control and removal spells.

The result is a solid deck with a low mana curve filled with evasive creatures that also snowball into big threats later on in the game. With the right timing and tempo checks, this deck can be unbeatable.

9 TEFERI + TREE-HUGGING

For those who are tired of playing aggro and winning through beatdowns, they might want to try the notorious Teferi + Tree-Hugging combination. This is a deck that aims to win with card advantage and value rather than brute force.

Both decks are specialized for drawing cards and players will never have an empty hand if they pick this theme combo. It does tend to be slow but the win conditions are varied enough; players can either mill out their opponents, control them, or resort to the good old-fashioned beatdown.

8 DEVILISH + LILIANA

Oh look, Liliana and devils together again; what could go wrong? For the opponent? Everything. This deck is cruel and aggressive with tons of removal and oppressive black control.

The Liliana theme benefits a lot from having a full graveyard while the Devilish theme thrives on sacrificing its own creatures. It’s Rakdos at its full glory and madness though definitely one of the most fun combinations in Jumpstart.

7 GOBLINS + GOBLINS

Magic: The Gathering Arena’s Historic format is a red dumpster fire right now due to broken aggro combinations like goblins. That same strategy of amassing goblins with Muxus and overwhelming enemies is also available in Jumpstart.

All players have to do is select two Goblins decks and voila! It’s one of the most annoying goblin tribal decks to exist in a 40-card format and works just as well as its 60-card counterpart. Pretty much double the goblins, double the win rate.

6 ANGELS + TREE-HUGGING

What happens when players pair big shiny game-winning white angels with green’s ramping and card draw? A deluge of wings unleashing their fury on the opponent, that’s what. Angels + Tree-Hugging makes this possible.

Angels has quality flying creatures like Baneslayer Angel and creatures with vigilance or lifelink. Tree-Hugging makes them appear on the battlefield every game thanks to the card draw and the mana-ramp. It’s Selesnya at its best.

5 WALLS + DISCARDING

A green and black deck respectively, Walls and Discard can make for a deceptively effective Golgari control deck. While Walls offers several defensive creature cards that are able to protect their controller, Discarding is a mono black control deck that aims to strip an opponent of their resources.

When paired, these decks can effectively set up strong defenses, taking out threats an opponent plays and preventing them from being played at all.

4 ELVES + GARRUK

Elves and Garruk are each mono-green decks, with elves sporting a low mana curve and mana ramp while Garruk provides beefy creatures and a strong offense. This allows this combination to function quite well as a traditional mono-green stompy experience, overwhelming foes with impressive board states.

While there are two variants of the elf deck, each offers an incredible finisher, either in the form of a Craterhoof Behemoth or an Allosaurus Shepherd.

3 LILIANA + PHYREXIAN

Two black decks, Rogues and Phyrexian are a reanimator and aristocrats deck respectively, pairing in an incredibly effective manner. While Liliana offers several zombie cards and means or recurring them from one’s graveyard, Phyrexian offers several creatures that offer effects upon dying and creatures that function as effective sacrifice outlets, converting creatures into other forms of value.

Pairing these two decks, it’s quite easy to reliably get repeatable value through the combination of recursion and sacrifice outlets.

2 BASRI + HEAVILY ARMORED

Basri and Heavily Armored are two mono-white decks that go together like peanut butter and jelly. Named after the Planeswalker, Basri Ket, the Basri deck features an aggressive creature-focused strategy that is able to make great use out of +1/+1 counters, putting them on evasive and powerful creatures.

On the other hand, all four variations of Heavily Armored are decks that revolve entirely around putting +1/+1 counters on one’s creatures, creating an incredibly reliable +1/+1 counter strategy when paired with Basri.

1 MILLING + MILLING

While it is incredibly unlikely that a player would be able to pull two Milling decks from Jumpstart packs, the power of the combination of two of these decks can’t be debated. A mono-blue deck, as the name would suggest, the Milling deck is filled with several cards that can mill one’s opponent, putting cards from the top of their library into their graveyard. As a player loses the game if they attempt to draw without any remaining cards in their library, this is a reliable alternative win condition.

Due to the fact that Jumpstart decks are only forty cards, if a player is able to have an entire deck filled with nothing but mill cards, there’s little an opponent can do as their already small deck is quickly shoved into the graveyard.

NEXT: MTG: Cards No One Will Miss After Fall Rotation