Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – or TMNT – is the latest Magic release. But what cards are worth a look if you’re not the biggest fan of the franchise? Let’s take a look.
The set releases March 6, with prereleases running the week of February 27. Alongside prerelease kits, bundles, and boosters (both Collector and Play), you’ll be able to pick up the Turtle Team-Up 2-4 player co-op game mode, and the Turtle Power! Commander deck.
TMC cards – legal in Commander and all Eternal formats – can found in the Commander deck, in the Team-Up box, and in Collector Boosters. It’s those TMC cards we’re going to look at today.
THE BEST NEW CARDS FROM THE TMNT TURTLE POWER COMMANDER DECK
First up, cards you can find in the Commander deck, Turtle Power!.
Coin of Mastery is one that immediately drew my interest. Your creatures enter with additional counters for each mana spent to cast it from an artifact source. So, if you tap a Thran Dynamo and two treasures to cast a Terror of the Peaks, that thing’s coming in with five +1/+1 counters as a massive 10/10. That’s pretty scary.
Coin of Mastery is colorless, so it can fit in any deck, but some immediately spring to mind. Bellow, Bard of the Brambles; Syr Gynger, Meal Ender; Marchesa, the Black Rose…While there are plenty of +1/+1 counters decks out there that can use this, I’m seeing more like a colorless way to have your creatures enter bigger. If you run a bunch of mana rocks and make treasures, you just need to throw in some artifact lands and you’re cooking.
Electric Seaweed is oddly familiar, right? Well, beyond being the age-old environmental hazard in many videogames, it’s also red’s version of Massacre Girl, right? Now that you see it, you can’t unsee it. This kind of card is sweet, and it’s so cool to see red get more of these. If you want to break it, you run it with cards like Iroas, God of Victory and Dolmen Gate, and you try and get it going during combat. Hell, you can even use cards like Inferno Titan and Glorybringer to help it keep going.
Continue? Don’t mind if I do. It’s kinda annoying to me just how phenomenal this card is, because I’m really agnostic about the Turtles IP. For two mana, you get to bring up four bodies back that went to yard from the battlefield this turn. I’ve raved about the Boros Advantage Engine enough times that you already know this is cracked. It’s like Brought Back and Faith’s Reward met in the middle. I can’t wait to cast this one.
Here Comes a New Hero! Is a draw spell that can also net you a clone. Sorcery speed is worth it here, as it’s the perfect kind of smoothing card, or card that lets you take advantage of someone else’s engine piece while refilling your hand. I can see this being in useful in plenty of decks, and getting a copy of a three-drop while drawing three for six mana seems like a pretty good deal.
Ray Fillet, Wave Warrior. What a name. I do quite like this fishy fella though, as it gives team-wide card draw at a pretty low barrier to entry. He also has Evolve, which turns him into either a great blocker or a sizeable threat depending on your velocity.
Tempestra, Dame of Games is the latest iteration on red’s ephemeral and speedy cloning tech. This one has you sacrificing fodder artifacts in order to copy a creature you control, and crucially, not having it take legendary typing. This is great news for decks that run heavy on legends and want to chain copy effects. Three mana to do this is a reasonable rate. Maybe Feldon has a new love interest?
Arguably one of the most exciting and strong cards in the Commander deck, Shredder, Shadow Master is a hell of a clock. It basically has Myriad, with a rider about being able to sustain extra copies of itself because it’s legendary.
Once they connect, they lose half their life, rounded up. Any deck that has haste – so Rakdos or Jund or Esper – is gonna love this one. I’m less sold for Dimir, so be cautious.
TEAM-UPS AND COLLECTOR BOOSTERS HAVE MORE TMC CARDS
The Team-Up Box has some solid cards too.
Michelangelo, On the Scene, is a really sweet pickup for decks that care about sacrificing large creatures. If you’re running Shadowheart or The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride? Well, Michelangelo is a creature you can dependably exchange for more and more value as the game goes on.
Splinter, Aging Champion is a removal body in White, and one that leaves play to give you a little more value. Replacing itself on death is one thing, sure, but when so many white decks now love to bandy around an Ephemerate and rely on good old Sun Titan for reusing great mana value 3 or less permanents? Cards like Splinter start to look more and more attractive.
Finishing up with April O’Neil, Human Element, we’re looking at a crazy token producer. It rarely matters what the artifact token is if you can make a lot of it, and in blue-based Artifact builds, being able to make extra artifacts for casting three different types of spells adds up quickly. This one has serious potential.
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While I’m not the biggest fan of this individual Universes Beyond, it’s still Magic, and I do like Magic. I also like powerful and interesting cards, and this set does indeed have them. If you look at anything from TMC, look at these.
Kristen is Card Kingdom’s Head Writer and a member of the Commander Format Panel. Formerly a competitive Pokémon TCG grinder, she has been playing Magic since Shadows Over Innistrad, which in her opinion, was a great set to start with. When she’s not taking names with Equipment and Aggro strategies in Commander, she loves to play any form of Limited.