General [TMT] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

[MilesOfficial]

Wingnut, Bat on the Belfry

I think this might be good enough for my Cube, actually, and a nice booster for token/go-wide strategies. I like the Alliance ability here, and you'll mostly choose flying but the flexibility is no slouch, especially the haste to make for a surprise attack that doubles the damage from your 1/1s.

I saw someone on Reddit say she has "BATtle cry" and I liked that so I'm sharing it here.




Leonardo, Leader in Blue might be the best Savannah Lion to-date?

He's like Kytheon, Hero of Akros in that he can protect his attack in most cases, but the threat of activation is much more real since it only costs 2, and you should have that by the time he's able to attack. An opposing 1/3 will still ruin his day, but that's normal for 1-drops.

The sneak ability adds a huge amount of late-game equity, even if it's only to re-use an ETB. Giving your team a surprise Goblin War Cry is a great way for this card to not feel like a miserable top-deck, and he'll hit for 4 minimum if you sneak him in.

Of course, he's legendary too, so my Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful/Mox Amber/Flowering of the White Tree decks are going to be stoked. The art isn't terrible either, as much as I don't prefer Ninja Turtles.

Real champions will play with this version:






Skateboard is a better Lavaspur Boots. I'd happily trade the Ward ability to get in a free attack on the turn I cast it in most cases. Radical, dudes.

Don't want to put a skateboard in my Cube, but maybe I will. I don't know if it's actually much more offensive to my sensibilities than cowboy boots, but I think cowboy boots are cool.

 

[Velrun]

Are they playing Magic: the Gathering?

I can’t..

 

[StrionicAdventurer]

I have to admit I like the pizzas. Maybe I'm just hungry...

 

[MilesOfficial]

Full card gallery is now up! Some interesting cards:



I think I prefer this to Long Goodbye since there's so few walkers at 3 and exiling often more relevant than counterspells. [[Insert joke about Batman UB here.]]



Extremely cool card. That's a lot of flexibility, value, and complexity on an uncommon.


These hybrid artifact creatures that play so well into multiple established archetypes are almost annoying at how flexible they are!!



I can't believe they put my bedroom on a Magic card


A decade ago, I would've thought this was the coolest Magic card ever printed, especially at common. Face is kind of messed up though.



I think I generally prefer Bake into a Pie for giving me an actual token but there's practical uses in some Cubes for this. It's often easier to recur and it's much easier to blink.


Speaking of Bake into a Pie! Actually seems pretty good, but I'm not all that jazzed to have my gold cards be removal these days unless it's really interesting.



This feels pretty appropriate at common for what a Legendary Creature would look like. This set has the most common legendaries -- twice as many as Spider-Man -- but I'm not mad about most of them (until I start playing sealed with them, I guess).


Seriously impressive value engine for rarity-restricted Cubes. Ran out of space, but Venus, Torn Between Worlds and Pizza Face, Gastromancer both also fit in this space. Seems the Gx decks are going to be absurd in retail, especially sealed.

Nothing here is going to make my own Cube, but there are interesting play pieces I'll be putting aside for other Cube projects.

EDIT:

Somehow missed this guy, and it looks like the whole thing is already connected on Scryfall:



I don't like the art but I do like the effect. Siren Stormtamer has always been a marginal but totally fine Cube card, and this seems like it's generally going to be about as good. Missing abilities is a serious drawback, but I've never seen a Stormtamer sac'd to counter a Thoughtseize, so I'd probably prefer to protect my artifacts than myself. Occasional unblockable is reasonably equivalent to flying, but the biggest upside is simply that he's a little artifact dude! Blue decks increasingly value just having artifacts on the board, and he's one of them that helps protect your stuff. He's a serious consideration for my Cube.

Now time to update my Cube with my planned changes!

 

[KeithCubes]

I'm upset how much I'm liking some of these cards. I'm committed to making UW versions of a few, but I think it's a losing battle.

One more that excites mechanically:

3 mana clone is isn't bad. Being able to change your target every turn is cool. Growing every turn is awesome (even if there's nothing to clone).

Most importantly, getting around the legend rule almost feels like a necessity, since as much as I like the cheaper clones like Phantasmal Image or Flesh Duplicate there are so many legends nowadays that cloning your own creatures is becoming a liability, and if the idea is to always just copy your opponents creatures, then you're in good-stuff territory if they have better targets than your own.

More +1/+1 counter support is always welcome in U too!

 

[Mown]

I think these two cards are kind of neat. I doubt I will play anything from this set though. That said, I like Sneak, I might import it for my custom set project.

 

[MilesOfficial]

Pre-release was fun. Both of these pizzas were surprisingly good, too!

I think this set is much better designed than Spider-Man, but still has most of the issues that made that set a miss for limited. The biggest issues are still 1) how small the set feels with the same cards everywhere, 2) only having five color combos supported for a second set in a row, 3) high power-level variance for sealed, and 4) of course, the vibes. The huge amount of removal at common really helps tolerate the bomb-y rares and mythics, but it still sucked if you didn't get any bomb-y rares and mythics and your opponent was flush with them.

It feels like cards had much less text on them than usual. It was easy to understand the board states, but that didn't make it any less complex in terms of making good gameplay decisions. Mind Transfer Protocol got cast a TON. Bespoke Bō was obnoxious; blue shouldn't get such a big power bonus plus vigilance. Blue was cool because you could just draw a ton of cards.

And re: point 4, gross pizza is much more tolerable than Mary Jane Watson and the art. The full-art lands looked cool and people were eager to collect them. Unlike Spider-Man, each individual turtle's different variation made it pretty easy to immediately clock the difference between Michelangelo, Game Master and Michelangelo, Mutant BFF, for example.

All the artifact stuff was rad. Sneak was extremely fun to play. I played WUb sneak with some artifacts, and while I definitely felt like I was taking a hit on synergies to do an unsupported color combo, the bomb density of sealed made up for it. Some key cards I've changed my mind on:



Guac & Marshmallow Pizza was a card I spotted during spoilers as a begrudging playable, and I was right to. Arachnoid Adaptation and Pillar Launch are both serviceable enough that even a medium-powered Cube can play them, and even cards that don't give that key second power like Gift of the Viper, Light the Way, Stony Strength have been on my mind lately. The pizza, leaving a full permanent behind of a relevant type, is almost there. Not quite, but almost.

I stand by the notion that Giant Growth is still wholly playable in most Cubes, and I think I'd rather have Guac Pizza...from a gameplay perspective. Go Forth is probably still my pick, though.



Donatello, Gadget Master was great (for my opponents). I think it's absolutely worth trying to squeeze in with all my artifact synergies. Getting the first hit for "free" is really meaningful. Two mana? That just goes crazy. If you can get him in more than once, he's absurd. I think he forces some interesting gameplay from artifact-centric decks, and that's enough for me to look past the negatives of the snowball-y nature of the card. Going to find room for this one.



I feel if Madame Null, Power Broker was from a non-Turtle related set, she would've gotten a lot more attention. I don't think power-motivated Cubes want her still, but she's such a mechanically interesting card that presents recurring meaningful decision points for the player that are mostly situationally complex (thinking several turns ahead rather than looking at a dozen interactions on the current board state) that I think she merits consideration for a lot of Cubes.



Cryogen Relic has made appearances in almost 5000 Cubes on Cube Cobra, and for good reason. I like this better. Not getting a card right away does massively impact the viability of Sewer-veillance Cam, but having flash and immediately having an impact on combat is really incredible for just one mana. I'm reminded of Witching Well, which many powerful Cubes ran for years (and many still do!).

Getting the twiddle effect on both enter and leaving is really cool. It's surprisingly flexible, and I saw it used to fix mana/ramp with Mona Lisa, Science Geek, clear blockers, slow down attackers, and everything in between. I'm going to try to make room for it.



Krang did work!

I'm currently running Thought Monitor, but I may be interested in changing that to Krang, Master Mind. I think the second blue pip is a big cost, but both the bigger body and the (likely) bigger card draw effect are both enticing enough to make up for it. The aesthetic downgrade is a serious consideration, but since I won't play the retro border Thought Monitor due to it not looking even a little like an artifact, I guess it's not the worst downgrade in the world.