In folklore, changelings are fey children who replace human babies in a Crib Swap. Their mortal parents would grieve at their inhuman mannerisms and otherworldly temperament. In Magic, it's a little different. A changeling is all upside. Far from grieving, anyone who opens a changeling in a pack will smile with parental pride.

Changelings are the creature glue that holds tribal synergies together. In the casual Limited format of Jumpstart when you shuffle two random packs together, one may revolve around Elves, and the other may instead focus on a Green Planeswalker. If the second pack contains an incidental elf, you'll gain a bonus bit of synergy. Better yet, if it contains a changeling, it will combine well with any tribal bonuses from your other pack. What, you may ask, could those benefits entail?

Savage Synergy | Jumpstart | AE Marling

• Creatures (10)
• 1 Ayula, Queen Among Bears
• 1 Changeling Titan
• 1 Game-Trail Changeling
• 1 Hungry Lynx
• 1 Masked Vandal
• 1 Springing Tiger
• 1 Striped Bears
• 1 Woodland Changeling
• 2 Gladewalker Ritualist

• Instants (1)
• 1 Giant Growth

• Sorceries (1)
• 1 Hunter's Edge

• Land (8)
• 1 Thriving Grove
• 7 Forest

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Tribal synergies extend far beyond simple +1/+1 lord effects, and changelings can drink in all of them. In fact, early changelings resemble nothing more than a sponge saturated with bonuses. Take a look at Game-Trail Changeling. Disgusting. Disgustingly synergistic, that is.

In this first pack, I found the most wild lords. I upped the rare count to two, reducing the uncommon count by one, which is permissible in Jumpstart. A dream curve might be Ayula, Queen Among Bears into Gladewalker Ritualist into Gladewalker Ritualist again. Two of the same card is again acceptable in these packs, and here it's delightful.

Kaldheim gave us new (and less sponge-like) changelings in Green and Blue. We'll be taking advantage of them in building four packs this week to supplement our Jumpstart play experience. Ideally, all our non-lords would be changelings. For curve considerations in this first pack, that wasn't possible. So, I picked Striped Bears and Springing Tiger to pair with our respective lords. Among others, I chose the tiger because the art reminded me of Hobbes pouncing on Calvin from my favorite comics.

Though, I like to include changelings in all of these packs, here we are using them to build synergies so niche they may have never been before seen on the battlefield, only dreamed of in our most embarrassing Magic fantasies. I know as a child I opened Ice Age packs and stared at the card Aurochs, wondering how it could be possible to build a deck of them. It wasn't at the time, but twenty years later thanks to changelings, it just might be.

Curious Aurochs | Jumpstart | AE Marling

• Creatures (10)
• 1 Aurochs
• 1 Aurochs Herd
• 1 Bloodline Pretender
• 1 Game-Trail Changeling
• 1 Guardian Gladewalker
• 1 Littjara Glade-Warden
• 1 Realmwalker
• 1 Rimehorn Aurochs
• 2 Bull Aurochs

• Instants (1)
• 1 Ram Through

• Sorceries (1)
• 1 Savage Stomp

• Land (8)
• 1 Shimmerdrift Vale
• 7 Forest

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Bloodline Pretender is pretty good at pretending it fits in among the shaggy Aurochs Herd. The 6-drop can search up any changeling you want or, I suppose, another aurochs. Despite being unplayable in their first set, Aurochs must have captivated more than just me. They returned as a very reasonable 2-drop in Coldsnap as Bull Aurochs.

I try to include a few remove cards in every pack of Jumpstart. Ram Through is perfectly suited to our herds of horned tramplers. Even more apt is Savage Stomp because, as it turns out, our pack is also full of dinosaurs. Our rare dinosaur can even help power out more aurochs.

There's always the temptation in Jumpstart to wish for two matching packs, for instance, pairing our first Green changeling pack with our second one. However, power isn't the only consideration, and it may be even more fun for you to match your Aurochs pack with, say, Knights and be delighted to see your changelings gain one piece of knightly synergy.

Now, if you thought the tribal synergy of the first two packs was far out, with the next two Blue ones I hope to make it downright weird. And I'm not simply talking about the jiggling grossness of Amoeboid Changeling.

Blue Changelings | Jumpstart | AE Marling

• Creatures (9)
• 1 Amoeboid Changeling
• 1 Belltoll Dragon
• 1 Littjara Kinseekers
• 1 Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator
• 1 Mothdust Changeling
• 1 Psionic Sliver
• 1 Turtleshell Changeling
• 2 Mistwalker

• Instants (2)
• 1 Censor
• 1 Siren's Ruse

• Artifacts (1)
• 1 Maskwood Nexus

• Land (8)
• 1 Thriving Isle
• 7 Island

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Again, I'm skipping past expected merfolk lords and straight onto the back of Belltoll Dragon. It's a perfectly reasonable card as a 6-drop, but if you morph it, remember that every changeling is also a dragon. Yes, between our earlier Green pack and this one, it's a case of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Changeling packs allow for a treasure trove of crazy synergy. And to get the seven mana needed to morph, we can use booty gained from our shapeshifter pirates and Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator. And thanks to our flying pirate dragons, the two copies of Mistwalker, we can enable something truly mind blowing.

Psionic Sliver would cause most slivers to kill themselves, unleashing a Psionic Blast. Luckily, many of our slivers are also have 4 toughness. They're dragons too, after all. If you want more sliver packs for Jumpstart, then do find the full hive here.

You may worry about your littlest sliver, Mothdust Changeling. What if you need to tap it to deal two damage? Then it too would die. Unless, of course, you hold priority with the ability on the stack and cast Siren's Ruse. Then your changeling would live, as it's not the same object when it returns to the battlefield, and you would draw a card, because your sliver is also a pirate. This shouldn't be a surprise, though, as all slivers have a hook. Arrrr!

Again, this craziness is only made possible by changelings. Before them, we had to make do with cards like Mistform Seaswift. These illusions are not as exciting, but they can reform themselves to fit in needed creature types and missing points in our curve.

Wizards and Friends | Jumpstart | AE Marling

• Creatures (10)
• 1 Callow Jushi
• 1 Crookclaw Elder
• 1 Keeper of the Nine Gales
• 1 Littjara Kinseekers
• 1 Mistform Seaswift
• 1 Mothdust Changeling
• 1 Seascape Aerialist
• 1 Waterspout Weavers
• 2 Mistwalker

• Instants (2)
• 1 Mana Leak
• 1 Stream of Unconsciousness

• Land (8)
• 1 Thriving Isle
• 7 Island

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Here all our tribal payoffs are wizards. Some of them are also birds like Crookclaw Elder and Keeper of the Nine Gales. Some are humans who like spirits, like Callow Jushi. Some are merfolk, like Waterspout Weavers. And some are allies, like Seascape Aerialist. Luckily, it all works out because our changelings are wizard bird human spirit merfolk allies and more besides.

Earlier in the article I mentioned that changelings are all upside. That's not entirely true because they die instantly to cards like Eye Gouge, but that sort of effect isn't nearly so common in Jumpstart. (Note to self: include more anti-changeling tech in future packs, alongside additional changelings - never enough changelings!)

Again, these tribal fests wouldn't be possible without the new changelings like Mistwalker. They enable cards I've always loved, like Stream of Unconsciousness, but have had precious few chances to actually play. That's the joy of customizable formats like Jumpstart. You can design the Limited experience you've always wanted.