Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - A deep dive into the new set

I am a very straightforward person. Lying or hiding my thoughts does not come easy to me, and neither does mincing words.

I am not a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan. I don't really care about the franchise. I am a Spider-Man fan. I love Spider-Man. Spider-Man is in my top 5 worst sets of all time. My love for a franchise does not extend to what I think about a particular Universes Beyond set. I do not care about Warhammer at all, and I believe those Commander decks are UB at its absolute best.

So when I say Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is absolute, hot garbage, I don't want you to think I hate the franchise. I don't. I just hate the design decisions that seem to permeate these sets, the fact that none of these cards feel unique or even particularly representative of the characters they depict, how even the commons and uncommons I thought were interesting are downgrades from already existing cards that I didn't know existed.

The technical reprints and downgrades

I legitimately thought Death in the Family was an interesting card for black midrange decks to deal with Dark Depths, until I remembered Anoint with Affliction already exists.

I also thought Stomped by the Foot could see play in decks that are interested in Deadly Dispute, and then someone told me about Vanye's Treachery. Not only that, as I'm writing this article, I just found Final Flourish.

Manhole Missile is just Fire Prophecy. The set dedicates a full 5 slots to common enemy lands that enter the battlefield tapped and gain you a life when you play them. Wind-scarred Crag? Nah, Dimension X.

There's also Frog Butler, which is just a slightly different Poison Dart Frog. If you're a Commander player who has a Frog deck, you probably are happy about this development. Otherwise, eh.

Most of these are understandable. You want your new set to feel like you're in the magical, distant realm of New York. You don't want these cards to break anything. So you print a bunch of commanders, a bunch of reprints that aren't really reprints or even downgrades to already existing cards and devote 5 slots in your 187 card set to the basic lands.

The cards we're not getting

The first two would be pretty decent midrange threats. The third is an interesting riff on Collected Company, but it's more expensive and I don't think CoCo is playable in VV. Krang is just a powerful Tinker target, but it is also one of those cards that never dips below $20.

The cards I actually think could make it into a serious Value Vintage deck

This is unexciting but it's a Hogaak card. It's second triggered ability is worse than Undead Butler's, but it has an extra point of power, and it's not like that ability is THAT important in the grand scheme of things.

I don't think this is an unreasonable card to try in the monoblack versions of Hogaak, but I do believe this is a serious downgrade to Ninja of the Deep Hours, just like Sneak is a downgrade to Ninjitsu.

This could end up in a Monoblue Spirits shell. If Spellstutter Sprite was legal I would be way more excited about this.

The honorable mentions

There is not much for me to dissect when it comes to Value Vintage! The cards not only feel uninspired but also not very powerful. Will we see a go wide white weenie strategy using Leonardo, Big Brother as a finisher? It is a kinda sweet card, for sure. It's also way too slow to make an impact on our format. So probably not.

Karai, Future of the Foot feels like a payoff to a strategy that does not exist. We don't have an Orzhov reanimator deck that also plays cheap evasive creatures, and even if we did, I struggle to think of a reason why a 4 mana reanimation spell that also requires you to connect with a creature AND go through the stack is a more interesting proposition than just casting Life//Death or Persist on your preferred fatty. At that point, Makeshift Mannequin is a better proposition than a Zombify that requires you to bounce an unblocked creature.

Improvised Arsenal is a riff on Cranial Plating, but the upside is hard to get to in Affinity, and the downside is you have to have access to red mana to actually cast it and equip it.

What about the commander decks?

We're getting an Assassin's Trophy reprint. If that makes it go below $1, we might start seeing it in Jund and/or Golgari Initiative.

Don't even dream about it.