Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the next set on the horizon, with a release date of March 6th, and from what we’ve seen so far, the most prominent new mechanic in the set is Sneak.
It’s an alternating casting cost that you gain access to when you have a creature that is unblocked during the declare blockers step. You pay that cost and return an unblocked creature to your hand, while putting the Sneak creature onto the battlefield tapped and attacking.
It bears a very close resemblance to the already well-established Ninjutsu mechanic, but there are some key differences. In this article I’m going to discuss how Sneak works compared to Ninjutsu and whether or not I think the Sneak mechanic is a good idea.
SNEAK VS. NINJUTSU
Ninjutsu was originally introduced in 2005’s Betrayers of Kamigawa. Later, it showed up on a few cards in both 2009’s Planechase and Commander 2018. It was also heavily featured in 2019’s Modern Horizons and 2022’s return to Kamigawa – Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. It allows you to pay an alternate cost and return an unblocked creature you control to your hand from the battlefield, and put the Ninja on the battlefield tapped and attacking. It’s a great mechanic for communicating how sneaky Ninjas can be.
On the face of it, that sounds a lot like Sneak. But there is one major difference. Sneak is an alternate casting cost, while Ninjutsu is an ability. A Ninjutsu creature isn’t cast when you pay the Ninjutsu cost, it’s simply put on the battlefield.
There are both upsides and downsides to Sneak actually casting a card. The downside is that regular counterspells can stop them, and that will be particularly devastating since returning a creature to your hand can be such a big additional cost.
The upside is that cards that trigger off of you casting things, like Beast Whisperer, will trigger when you Sneak a creature, while they won’t trigger with Ninjutsu.
THE UPSIDE OF INTRODUCING A NEW MECHANIC
The biggest upside of using Sneak instead of Ninjutsu is that it opens some new design space. Because it’s a casting cost and doesn’t require you to put a creature on the battlefield as part of its effect, you can use it on cards that aren’t creatures. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has a cycle of Techniques that are all Instants and Sorceries, that become much cheaper when you can cast them for their Sneak cost. These are all really cool designs.
Sneak is also better for Commander. Ninjutsu is a relic of the past. It was designed long before Wizards of the Coast began its official support for the format, so the fact that ninjutsu specifically only lets you put a creature into play from your hand wasn’t much of a problem. However, if you want to use a Legendary Ninja as your Commander, they can’t use their ninjutsu ability unless you put them in your hand first. The one exception to this, of course, is Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow, who has the unique “Commander ninjutsu.”
Lastly, “Sneak” is a much more neutral word. You can really only give Ninjas ninjutsu, after all. Meanwhile, Sneak is a much more neutral word so it’s easier to bring back in the future in all kinds of different contexts. For instance, I can envision some sneaky kind of insect having sneak, while you can’t really slap ninjutsu on a non-ninja insect.
THE DOWNSIDE OF INTRODUCING A NEW MECHANIC
Of course, the flipside of “Sneak” being such a neutral word is that giving it to creatures who are Ninjas seems really silly when there’s already a very similar mechanic that could be used. While we haven’t seen the whole set yet, as of the time of this article’s publication, every creature with Sneak is a Ninja. It would bother me a lot less if Sneak was introduced in a set that didn’t have Ninjas, but the fact that this set is loaded with them and yet ninjutsu is nowhere to be found is kind of silly.
Things get especially bad when you consider cards that synergize with Ninjutsu. For example, Silver-Fur Master and Satoru Umezawa not being able to help you with Sneak is really frustrating. It leads to cards like those becoming parasitic, and only working with a very small subset of cards going forward, instead of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles introducing new cards that can work with these Ninjutsu payoffs.
Additionally, introducing a new mechanic that is almost identical to its predecessor is going to confuse some players. This is a pre-release where people aren’t really going to understand what the differences are because they are so similar.
I think it would have made more sense to just stick with ninjutsu for creatures in the set to both reduce complexity and preserve synergy with older cards that work with ninjutsu. This would still allow them to use Sneak on the noncreatures spells.
And if you’re worried about Commander, they could have just given all the legendary ninjas in the set “Commander ninjutsu,” they’ve already used it once before, after all.
END STEP
That’s my take. What’s yours? Do you prefer Sneak? Or should Ninjutsu have made a return? Let me know over on X or Bluesky.
Jacob has been playing Magic for the better part of 24 years, and he especially loves playing Magic’s Limited formats. He also holds a PhD in history from the University of Oklahoma. In 2015, he started his YouTube channel, “Nizzahon Magic,” where he combines his interests with many videos covering Magic’s competitive history. When he’s not playing Magic or making Magic content, he can be found teaching college-level history courses or caring for a menagerie of pets with his wife.