Just over a month since we traversed the planes of Lorwyn and Shadowmoor, we’re back in good ‘ol New York City, but there’s not a Spider-Man in sight! Instead, there are ninjas swarming the place, and mutated turtles running rampant. That’s right, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are the next Universes Beyond set in Magic the Gathering, and while there’s been a bit of skepticism towards the set, we’re here to let you know if it’s a hit or a cowabummer.
From Lorwyn to the Sewers: TMNT Enters Magic: The Gathering
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set for Magic the Gathering has an admittedly steep hill to climb for its debut. Universes Beyond fatigue is definitely at its highest ever, and it being the second of three sets taking place in New York City in less than a year isn’t helping matters either. I myself am a huge TMNT fan, having grown up watching all the cartoons and absolutely wearing out the VHS tape of those live-action films, but even I was a bit hesitant about TMNT entering the realms of Magic. Those goofy turtles just felt like a step too far from what I expect out of Magic the Gathering. At the core of things, though, if the cards are interesting and fun to play with, then I’m in, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set did exactly that.
Mind you, there’s still a bit of New York fatigue here, as it shares a few similarities with the Spider-Man set from last year that I’m sure will continue with Marvel Super Heroes later this summer. Thankfully, you can ignore most of those cards for the ones that matter, like the insane amount of ninjas added to this set. I was introduced to Magic the Gathering with the 2004 Champions of Kamigawa set, a set filled with monsters from Japanese folklore and ninjas galore, and it’s where I immediately built a love for Magic. So, as you can expect, I was giddy at the thought of being able to make a viable modern ninja deck in Magic again.
New to the set are the abilities Sneak and Disappear, along with the new Mutagen token. A lot of this set seems focused on sneaking ninjas onto the field and souping them up with mutagen tokens, which add a +1/+1 counter to a creature if you sacrifice it. If you’re familiar with the old ability Ninjutsu, Sneak functions essentially the same: if you have an attacking creature that isn’t being blocked, you can pay a reduced mana cost to swap that creature out with one from your hand onto the battlefield. It’s a great mechanic that I’ve always loved, as it would put players on edge if your untapped mana was to prep for counterspells, or to whip out a surprise Ninjutsu card.
Synergizing with this is Disappear, which is similar to the old Revolt mechanic. When a card with disappear is on the field, at the beginning of your end step, if a card left the battlefield at any point before this during your turn, then it’ll trigger that card’s ability. Rat King, Verminister, for example, will let you create a 1/1 rat token and put a +1/+1 counter on Rat King if its Disappear is triggered. Pair this with Sneak, and you can pull off some quick little combos such as attacking with Slash, Reptile Rampager to create a 2/2 mutant token, only to sneak in Raphael, the Nightwatcher, which then triggers Lord Dregg, Insect Invader on your endstep to create a 1/1/ insect token. That’s two free creature tokens in one turn, thanks to utilizing both mechanics together.
Is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set the greatest one in the world? Probably not. But it’s a lot of fun and makes me excited to play with its cards, which, for me, is all that matters between what makes a set good or bad. Hell, Rat King alone is a must-have for any players running rat decks, and I cannot wait to make a ninja commander deck with Dark Leo and Shredder. (Diego)
The vibes are there for this set. I didn’t know it was somehow possible to capture the charm of Saturday morning cartoons into a TCG. Yet here we are with Magic’s latest collaboration featuring the Ninja Turtles. While looking through all of these cards, it’s hard not to smile and feel like a little kid. This is even more apparent if you were lucky enough to pull a full art card. One of my personal favorites is Michelangelo, Mutant BFF, and the New Generation’s Technique. Not only do both of these cards carry a nice punch, but they look absolutely adorable. If you’re someone like me who loves to just throw decks together purely based on aesthetics, you can easily do that with this set, while still making it somewhat useful in-game.
Another key aspect of this collaboration that I especially enjoyed is that Wizards of the Coast ensured that all aspects of the TMNT fandom were included. Of course, there’s a lot of what you’d expect, like the Turtles, April, and Shredder. But there’s also a lot of random characters that I didn’t even know about, like High-Flying Ace or the Squirrelanoids. Although this shouldn’t come as a surprise because of how popular it is, I was shocked to see how much of The Last Ronin was featured in this set.
With all the different stages this deck showcases Shredder in, it would be a slap in the face to Wizards of the Coast if I didn’t make a deck centered around him. The only thing I can’t decide is if I should go with Oroku Saki, Shredder Rising, or Shredder, Unrelenting as my commander for this deck.
But that’s the beauty of this set, there’s a lot of different playstyles and commanders you can make with it. Another thing that stood out to me was the combo cards with all the turtles. If you were undecided on how to pick, sometimes that decision was a bit easier because there was already a card that included two of your favorite characters. Personally, I feel that having stuff like that integrated into the set makes it extremely easy for newcomers to pick up the hobby and enjoy it. (Luis)
A Surprisingly Strong Precon Right Out of the Box
Turtle Power is the singular precon included in this set, and from first impressions, I was worried it was going to be trying to do too many things, considering it’s a five color deck with a staggering seven commanders. You’ve obviously got all four turtles, but Splinter and April also function as potential commanders along with the five color Heroes in a Half Shell that features all the turtles in one card. Most of these, except for Heroes in a Half Shell, also feature the ability Partner, which allows you to have two commanders instead of one; clearly indicating that they want you to combo two cards together. With seven commanders, it’s understandable that this deck might give the impression of not knowing what it wants, but quite the opposite; every card in this deck is focused entirely on making tokens or creating +1/+1 counters.
Leonardo, the Balance, feels like the card the deck wants you to have as its main commander. It’s four mana for a 3/3 that lets you put a +1/+1 counter on every creature you control whenever you create a token that turn. Considering the fact that half the deck is making tokens, you’re going to be triggering this a LOT. And if that wasn’t enough, if you manage to have all five mana colors available, you can activate its other ability, which grants all of your creatures menace, trample, and lifelink till the end of the turn. Leonardo feels like the card that gets the engine running, while your secondary commander is the fuel. What’s (in my opinion) probably the most synergistic partner commander with Leonardo is Michelangelo, the Heart. He’s a two mana 2/1 with trample with the Raid (the Fridge) ability: this states that if you attacked this turn, during your second main phase, you’ll be able to put a +1/+1 counter on a creature and make a food token, immediately triggering Leonardo to put more counters out.
The deck is ripe with moments like this, like with Big Mother Mouser that enters with two +1/+1 counters on it, that double every time it attacks, and when it dies, however many counters it had on it is how many token creatures you can create. Or if you’re playing in a big commander group, Endless Foot Assault is a great enchantment that makes it so whenever you attack, you’ll create a 1/1 ninja token for each opponent.
One particularly nasty game had me as Leonardo, my main commander, and Raphael, the Muscle, as the secondary. True to his character, Raphael makes it so that whenever creatures with counters attack, they double their damage. I also had Irma, Part-Time Mutant, on the field, who can copy another card that’s out, which happened to be Leonardo. This meant that anytime I triggered Leonardo’s ability to put a +1/+1 counter on everything anytime a token entered, if Irma was a copy of him this turn, then she would do the same. This snowballed pretty quickly, and when I eventually swung with my creatures, because I had Raphael out as well and everyone had stacks of counters on them, I dealt nearly 50 damage to my opponent.
I’m honestly super impressed with how well Turtle Power plays right out of the box. If I had to ding it for anything, it’d be that there aren’t really many cheap cards to play, and that there are a small handful of cards you could probably cut like Krang, the All-Powerful. It’s a “selfish” card that only puts a counter on itself, unlike most of the other cards in the deck that share in the wealth. Those are nitpicks, though, a deck I had a blast playing with that I wasn’t expecting to love as much as I did. (Diego)
I love Precon decks for one reason and one reason only. It removes a lot of the work when it comes to crafting a deck. It’s already there and ready to go right out of the box. What’s great about this one is that there’s so much variety around it, too. Admittedly, I wasn’t too sure how an all-color deck would work, but lo and behold, it does and plays surprisingly well.
The one thing that I really did enjoy about this deck, though, was the variety surrounding it. On top of the deck’s intended commander that features all of the turtles, it has one legendary creature card for each one, and even Master Splinter. This is important to mention because it feels almost as if you’re given a handful of half-built decks in one. So if you’re someone who wants to get a lot of bang for your buck, you can easily buy this commander deck and a handful of packs and make something entirely new with everything you have. (Luis)
Introducing Turtle Team-Up: Magic’s New Co-Op Mode
Magic the Gathering is no stranger to co-op formats, what with formats like Archenemy existing where three players play against a “villain” player who gets to use a secondary “scheme” deck with powerful modifiers to the game. The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set is looking to add another style of co-op game to Magic, with the introduction of Turtle Team-Up, with the spin being that it’s two-four players vs a “boss” deck that plays itself.
When you open the box, you’ll be greeted with a handful of cardboard life tracks, amusingly in the shape of turtle shells, a boss life counter, a booster pack, and five decks. One of those is the boss deck that gets split into a pile for boss cards and a pile for “events”. The other four are 60-card standard decks themed around each of the four ninja turtles. They all feature cards from both the standard set and the commander deck, but there are a handful of cards exclusive to this package. Each deck functions (mostly) the same, with an emphasis on creating tokens and +1/+1 counters; they just differ in very minimal ways, and each features a single card of your turtle as the sort of “face” card of the deck. So Mikey has a landfall ability, while Leo has double strike and can be brought in cheaper if you meet some requirements.
So the way the game functions is, after you’ve selected which turtle deck each player is going to use, you assign a player to be in charge of the boss deck. There are eleven bosses to play against and almost thirty event cards for the bosses to play. Turtle Team-Up is then played in three phases, where you’ll first play a single boss from that pile, and that boss will attack the player’s shared life total while you try to defend and defeat them to move on to the next phase. On a boss’s turn, they’ll draw from the event deck and play two cards, which will resolve one at a time. One might be a simple creature, like Foot Disciple, a 3/3 that can’t block. Creatures the boss controls always attack. Other event cards feature effects that must be resolved immediately. This can be something like Slash’s Smash, a devastating card that destroys all turtle cards on the field, or Krang’s Stratagem, where (as a team) you all need to discard a total of two cards. It’s cards like this where the cooperative play really comes into effect, as you’re free to share your hand with your teammates so you can strategize against the bosses.
It’s a simple process that’s made difficult by the modifiers the boss cards bring. You might have to deal with Baxter, Exzzperimental Zzientist that makes all Foot Disciple creatures the boss controls have flying; or you might have to deal with Rat King, the Chaosbringer, who gives all ninjas the boss controls deathtouch. Combine that with Karai, Shadow Warrior, whose modifier states that anytime a player’s creature dies, they lose one life, and the boss can set themselves up for a nasty combo. Once you’ve beaten the first phase, you’ll move on to the next, where you’ll fight against two bosses instead of one, and in the third phase, you’ll face off against three. This randomization of what boss combinations you get is what’s going to fuel the replay value of this game, because with eleven boss cards, there’s a good amount of variety to have here.
What I especially love about this package is that it’s perhaps the best way I’ve seen to teach someone to play Magic: The Gathering. Being able to cooperatively work with your friend who’s new to the game and discuss with them how their cards work, or how your cards might affect theirs, is effortless in this super casual format. I especially love how communication is wholly encouraged; so if a devastating event card gets played, you can stop to discuss what you each have in your hands to best counter it. They even include recommended modifiers to help ramp up the game’s difficulty if you’re finding it a bit too easy, and also encourage you to customize the turtle decks with other cards from the set. Most of my friends are longtime Magic veterans, but this was a fun way to still play Magic in a more casual format when we’re not in the mood for long commander games. I only hope Wizards sees the potential in this format and expands it in future sets. Unfortunately, Turtles Team-Up is pretty strictly limited to the TMNT set, but I’d love to see a future version of this game that features characters from the mainline Magic sets that can be played with any standard deck you build.
The Final Word
I’ll be honest, I already came into this set with New York fatigue after the middling Spider-Man set and an immediate eyebrow raised at the idea of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles being a Magic the Gathering set, but the more I played with those damn lovable turtles, the more they won me over. Disappear and Sneak are great new abilities, as is the new mutagen token. The commander deck is a blast to play with, and Turtle Team-Up is a fun spin on the format. For a Universes Beyond set that I know many people had low expectations for, I think this one is going to surprise a lot of you with how well done it is. (Diego)
Is this the strongest set? No. Is this the weakest set? Also no. But it’s one of the funnest to come out of the Universe Beyond run. Similar to the Spider-Man run, it did a good job at capturing a beloved IP in its purest form. On top of that, there’s a lot of creativity that went into this set, and I’m looking forward to my calendar clearing up so I can craft up a few decks themed around some of my Turtles and villains. (Luis)
