10 best cards from Magic: The Gathering's TMNT set

If you rip some packs and find these cards, you have to say 'cowabunga'

Magic: The Gathering’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover set is almost here, celebrating more than 40 years of turtle history across movies, cartoons, comics, and games with 190 new cards in the core release. Like most Universes Beyond products, it’s packed with legendary creatures — at least four versions of each Turtle — alongside deep-cut villains, mutagen-fueled mechanics, and plenty of pizza.

Looking beyond the nostalgia, there are already a number of cards that stand out as potential staples. It goes without saying that all the Ninja Turtle cards are fairly strong, particularly those in the Turtles Power! preconstructed Commander deck, but here are just a few of the best cards from the set that are begging to have a deck built around them.

10 Donatello’s Technique

The set is full of useful cards like this featuring various characters. Donatello’s Technique isn’t flashy by any means, but it’s extremely useful when played correctly. You want to set up for the Sneak here, but if you can do so, paying only one mana to draw two cards is bonkers value. In the right deck, this becomes one of the most efficient card draw spells printed in years. If you have a lot of bodies on the field, that shouldn’t be a problem. Expect this to become a staple in most competitive formats.

9 Rat King, Verminister

This absolute creeper feels like an exciting new Commander option for rat decks, which always focus on generating and sacrificing tiny rats to make even more rats so that your opponents are quite literally drowning in rats. Verminister comes with the TMNT set’s new mechanic, Disappear, which triggers an effect at your end step if a permanent leaves the battlefield during your turn. In this case, he picks up a +1/+1 counter and makes a new rat. To help with triggering disappear, he can tap to sacrifice three rats to then return all creatures with the same name from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped. That means you can basically make a Commander deck with dozens of copies of Relentless Rats and/or Rat Colony to give your opponents nightmares.

8 Krang, Utrom Warlord

Expensive? Yes. Completely overwhelming if you get it on the board? Also yes. Krang, Utrom Warlord doesn’t really need flying AND trample if he’s got indestructible. Also giving him haste is just brutal. He also gives all four of those abilities to the rest of your creatures as well, making them all very hard to remove. Your deck doesn’t even really have to focus on artifacts to make him your endgame bomb. And if you work in some cards that can cheat him into play early, you’re almost certain to win the match — and do it quickly.

7 Weather Maker

This three-cost mana rock does more than just fix your colors. Weather Maker generates charge counters whenever lands enter the battlefield under your control and lets you spend them for extra mana — or to deal 3 damage to any target. That flexibility is huge for all sorts of builds, but it’ll thrive best in landfall decks that focus on getting lands onto the battlefield early and often.

6 Krang, Master Mind

If you’re playing artifacts in blue, you’re playing this. Krang, Master Mind’s overall value scales with the number of artifacts you already have on the board. With six artifacts already in play, he becomes a 7/4 that only costs two blue mana to play. But you also get a decent draw effect depending on the size of your hand when you play it.

5 Splinter’s Technique

Splinter’s Technique is a four-cost tutor that lets you search through your deck for any card you want and put that into your hand. Need more mana? Done. Is it time for your deck’s big finisher? Done. This alone makes it decent, but not great. But with Sneak, you can return an unblocked attacker to your hand and instead pay two mana.

4 Super Shredder

A 1/1 that costs two mana with menace, Super Shredder is already a decent early-game creature. But its core ability lets you pick up a +1/+1 counter every time another permanent leaves the battlefield — that includes those owned and controlled by your opponents. Sacrificing Mutagen tokens also trigger that effect as well, as does returning cards to your hand with something like Sneak. That pushes Super Shredder from a solid early threat to a total monster that most opponents will try and remove on sight. If aristocrat (sacrificing things to trigger effects) is your strategy, he’d make a great Commander. Super Shredder likely functions best in TMNT decks, but will find a place in almost any black deck.

3 Ravenous Robots

Blue and white are far more commonly associated with artifacts, but if your artifact deck dips into red, then Ravenous Robots is an absolute must. Whenever you cast an artifact spell, Ravenous Robots creates a 1/1 colorless Robot token. It can also give your creature tokens haste for a burst of damage (not your artifact creatures, but that isn’t a big deal since a lot of artifact strategies focus on tokens anyway). Combine that with classic artifact recursion loops with Myr Retriever, Junk Diver, and Krark-Clan Ironworks, and you’re suddenly looking at an infinite swarm of robot mousers. Even without going infinite, this card snowballs fast enough to make a ton of artifact tokens your win condition.

2 Ninja Teen

Sneak and blink decks just got a new toy. Every class enchantment in the TMNT set boasts some powerful effects. Ninja Teen’s first level pings each opponent for one damage every time one of your creatures leaves the battlefield, so that includes death and also blink effects like the new Sneak mechanic (you return an unblocked attacker to your hand and pay a Sneak cost to cast a spell). Level 2 feels a bit out-of-place here, just offering menace and a small boost to your creatures’ power. But level 3 drastically shifts the game in your favor, giving every creature in your graveyard a sneak cost of four. In theory, you could even use that to dodge a Commander tax by letting your Commander die. Then you can just sneak them back into play.

1 Dark Leo & Shredder

Expect this one to emerge as one of the most popular Commanders from the TMNT set. It’s a top-tier option for ninja swarm decks. Even if you ignore the other abilities, giving all of your ninjas deathtouch is powerful. Every time Dark Leo & Shredder deal damage to a player, you create a ninja token. With five ninjas on the board, the player you just hit loses half their life. Sneak on this card is where things get nasty. Say you attack with four 1/1 ninjas and none of them get blocked. You can pay one white and one black mana to return one to your hand and sneak this card into play, tapped and attacking. It hits the opponent and creates a fifth ninja. Then that player loses half their life. That effect obviously can’t ever knock anybody out of the game, but the faster you can execute it, the more explosive it will be.