What it does
Jump-start lets you cast an instant or sorcery from your graveyard for its mana cost, but with an added cost: discard a card. After the spell resolves (or otherwise leaves the stack), it's exiled instead of going back to the graveyard, so you only get one extra use.
The nuance people miss is that jump-start is an alternative casting permission, not a cost reduction—you still pay the full mana cost, plus discard a card on top. Also, the discard happens as an additional cost when you cast it, so you must discard before anything resolves, and effects that care about you discarding will trigger.
In Commander, jump-start effectively doubles a spell's value, which is great in spellslinger and graveyard-recursion decks. Cards like Chemister's Insight provide card advantage twice, and discarding fuels reanimation or madness strategies as a bonus.
Iconic cards with Jump-start
See all 12 →
