Beats and Skies

A love letter to Preconstructed Magic

25/06/2023

Theme Deck Review Compendium: Mirage “Jungle Jam”

Jungle Jam

A green and white deck with a tribal Griffin theme.

Wizards product information page (archived)

Constructed by Magic Online tournament winner Markus Pettersson, the “Jungle Jam” deck lets you truly unleash your animal instincts. This aggressive deck can accumulate an unstoppable Griffin air force, aided by an array of angry animals on the ground. Bare your claws, growl, and attack!

Decklist and card images via the mtg.wtf database.

Reviews

Beats and Skies

Beat and Skies does a bracket: Pool 1, Week 4. Round 1: decks 25 to 32.

Jungle is a green and white deck. And also a red deck. It does have two fetchlands – the not that great Mirage ones rather than the too expensive Onslaught ones – and three Rampant Growth to find its single Mountain. Which does make splashing for one card feasible enough. But using up those slots in the deck… not for that card, sorry. It’s decent enough, quite good even, but there’d have been better options. Especially at rare, and for the two uncommon fetches too. Fortunately the other rare, Zuberi, is solid given there is a small Griffin tribal theme in the deck. Griffins all having flying adds a bit of uniqueness, too, since having that “Skies” element isn’t seen all that often in GW decks.

Cubic Creativity

Budget Deckbuilding: Jungle Jam

When you see a deck like the one above, I would argue that it is not about being the most efficient, but rather following a theme the creator wanted to go with. In this case, the theme is Griffins, since the deck features a lot of them in form “Ekundu Griffin“, “Mtenda Griffin“, “Teremko Griffin“, “Unyaro Griffin” and “Zuberi, Golden Feather“.

Ertai’s Lament

Mirage: Jungle Jam Review (Part 1 of 2)

Despite the thematic variety that Pettersson aimed for, Jungle Jam still feels like a fairly generic Green/White combat deck. That said, the heavy Griffin contingent marks a departure from form, and we’ll see in the playtest if it is sufficient enough to make the deck something worth playing.

Mirage: Jungle Jam Review (Part 2 of 2)

Hits: Griffins well-positioned in environment, and heavy commitment to aerial presence in a removal-light environment makes the Griffin menace a difficult one to solve

Misses: Outwith the Griffin tribal theme, deck has little synergy or even identity (feels a bit generic)

OVERALL SCORE: 3.70/5.00

Comment:

That said–I actually ordered all the cards for these decks a year or two back. I loved Mirage as a kid and found it really fun to see the old cards again.

The decks themselves though are interesting to play against each other, but otherwise very slow feeling.
Robert Balthier Roosa

Articles

magicthegathering.com

Whoever Won That Mirage Precon Contest?

Well, I wanted to create a deck with Mythological Beats. Creature types like Knights, elephants and clerics were boring. I started playing Magic because I liked the fantasy feeling in the game. I would like to share that feeling with new players. I’d like things like griffins, atogs, centaurs, and elves in my deck.
Markus Pettersson

Zuberi, Golden Feather by Alan Rabinowitz

Have added a new page to collate these.

Edit 17/01/24: reformatting and adding in my review etc

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beatsandskies

4 responses to “Theme Deck Review Compendium: Mirage “Jungle Jam””

princeofgeists

June 25, 2023 at 12:52 pm

I appreciate Markus providing a spin on Green/White with a tribal subtheme. Zuberi looks rather quaint as a rare, but it was our first Griffin lord.

We do occasionally get additional Griffin support, such as M12’s Griffin Rider as well as Zeriam from the Dominaria United Commander decks (who packs quite a bit more punch than Zuberi). I’d love to see Griffin tribal be a major theme in an expansion one of these days.

As for the deck itself, it looks like a solid offering considering you only have one set to draw from. Would’ve liked a bit more removal, and it takes a bit of time to get going but you’ve got a good amount of ramp to help with that. The small amount of extra Auras go nicely with the Griffins, it almost reminds me of M12’s Sacred Assault in that regard.

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1. beatsandskies
  
  June 25, 2023 at 1:15 pm
  
  From what I’ve read about it I gather that Mirage limited was quite slow, and a common fireball variant was considered a first pick bomb that you’d take over everything except two or three rares. It was the first set where limited play was considered and naturally that would have a noticeable impact on how newer or casual players experienced it too.
  
  I think Jay might have been too harsh on it: while there’s certainly issues the creatures are a product of their time and GW is a combination which doesn’t have access to the strong removal.
  
  Though with the red splash this already had you could probably make the argument to add in a singleton Incinerate or even Lightning Reflexes.
  
  I’m definitely going to try hunt down more information about the background of this deck: I’ve found 3 or 4 other relevant articles through wayback and I feel there must be more from around the time this was all actually formally released onto the online client. Maybe I’ll pick up the remaining cards I need for it in paper and do something then?
  
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Beat and Skies does a bracket: Pool 1, Week 4. Round 1: decks 25 to 32. – Beats and Skies

November 27, 2023 at 12:26 pm

[…] Jungle is a green and white deck. And also a red deck. It does have two fetchlands – the not that great Mirage ones rather than the too expensive Onslaught ones – and three Rampant Growth to find its single Mountain. Which does make splashing for one card feasible enough. But using up those slots in the deck… not for that card, sorry. It’s decent enough, quite good even, but there’d have been better options. Especially at rare, and for the two uncommon fetches too. Fortunately the other rare, Zuberi, is solid given there is a small Griffin tribal theme in the deck. Griffins all having flying adds a bit of uniqueness, too, since having that “Skies” element isn’t seen all that often in GW decks. […]

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Beats and Skies does a bracket: Pool 1, Week 6. Round 2: decks 9 to 16. – Beats and Skies

December 11, 2023 at 1:22 pm

[…] reader — thanks for chipping in — reckons I put too much weight on Jungle Jam being able to loop Unyaro Griffin’s Pyroblast effect, etc, and that Flames of Rath was good […]

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