TMNT Takes the Crown as Magic’s Top Universes Beyond Set Since Final Fantasy

Magic: The Gathering’s Universes Beyond sets are crafted not just by skilled designers but also by passionate fans. Wizards of the Coast has emphasized that these crossover projects are designed for fans, by fans. When Magic ventured into the world of Final Fantasy, the outcome was a set infused with shared passions and nostalgia, as developers exchanged favorite moments to ensure every card resonated with the community.

After witnessing the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover during an extensive video preview, it’s evident that this fan-driven philosophy thrives in the gritty underbelly of New York City. The set is a love letter to the Turtles, celebrating over 40 years of comics, cartoons, video games, and live-action films. Instead of focusing on a single iteration of the Turtles, the team collaborated with Nickelodeon to draw inspiration from the entire franchise, creating a distinctive vision for the set. It’s packed with clever design choices that could make it the standout Universes Beyond set since Final Fantasy. Here are some highlights.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have always called New York home, but this portrayal diverges significantly from the vibrant city depicted in last year’s Spider-Man set. Crystal Frasier, the narrative design lead for the TMNT set, noted the team was mindful of this contrast. “We envisioned different versions of New York: the one you visit, the one you come from, and the one you live in,” Frasier explained. “Spider-Man and our superhero sets are iconic and visually stunning, while our TMNT set presents a more lived-in, cozy version of the city.”

This set showcases a grittier NYC, complete with neon rooftops, sewer hideouts, and glowing green ooze. “It’s a darker, more neon aesthetic,” said set design lead Eric Engelhard. “Watching the art come in was a joy. Much of the set unfolds at night, giving it a unique atmosphere.”

The art direction emphasizes nighttime scenes and practical lighting: “We were intentional about the light sources and their colors, as New York is a city that never sleeps,” Frasier remarked. “At night, it’s all about streetlights, traffic signals, car headlights, and neon signs, creating a surreal version of the city.”

Basic lands can often feel uninspired, especially when full-art versions exist. However, the TMNT set introduces a creative twist by hinting at a classic Turtles gimmick. Picture this: you turn a corner, hear a clatter, and see a manhole cover snap shut. “These lands depict various NYC locations where the Turtles were just hanging out, vanishing into the night as you approach,” Frasier shared. Most of them feature half-eaten pizzas left behind in a hurry.

The full-art “Rooftop Lands” illustrate the Turtles racing across city rooftops. To highlight the different mana colors, they’ve incorporated thematic elements: a sunrise for Plains, a rainstorm for Islands, and a lush rooftop garden for Forest.

The Pizza Bundle lands take it a step further: five cheesy pizza slices where the mana color is represented by the toppings—broccoli for Forest, anchovies for Islands, and pepperoni for Mountains. Delicious!

Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo are highly trained mutant turtles, but at their core, they’re still teenagers.

“Cowabunga is one of my favorite cards,” Frasier confessed. “We aimed to capture the essence of these teenagers who embark on wild adventures but also enjoy hanging out, teasing each other, and sharing meals.”

Cowabunga is a one-cost green card that allows you to look at the top four cards of your library and reveal a Mutant, Ninja, Turtle, or land card to add to your hand. It’s a classic mechanic that works exceptionally well in this set. The art features the four brothers sewer surfing, with Mikey, of course, holding a slice of pizza.

When discussing the Final Fantasy set, Magic’s principal game designer Gavin Verhey described the snapshot method used for adapting crossover characters. This approach captures a character at a specific moment in time to design a card around that. For TMNT, Frasier confirmed that each Turtle—Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo—has four different versions across common, uncommon, rare, and mythic rarities, showcasing their growth and different facets of their identities. “This reflects their personalities across the four alignment trackers: Teenage, Mutant, Ninja, and Turtle,” Frasier explained. “The common versions depict them at home, training in the lair, then evolving into adventurous teens and formidable ninjas, culminating in their bizarre lives as mutants.”

“Team-Up” cards were a significant focus in 2023’s March of the Machine, and they’re an underutilized design element in Universes Beyond so far. The concept is straightforward: combine two legendary creatures on one card to merge their powers. TMNT fully embraces team-ups. “Each Turtle has a team-up card with each of their brothers, allowing us to explore their relationships,” Frasier noted. “Capturing the vibe of the set meant emphasizing their bond as brothers and family.” She described Donatello and Leonardo as the more serious, studious siblings, while Raph and Mikey are the mischievous ones.

Don & Leo, Problem Solvers is a 5-cost 4/6 with vigilance that can blink an artifact and a creature you control back to your hand at the beginning of your end step. Vigilance allows them to attack while still being able to defend during your opponent’s turn, and the blink effect is a clever way to protect your cards. Raph & Mikey, Troublemakers is a powerful 7-cost 7/7 with trample and haste. When it attacks, you reveal cards until you find a creature, putting that creature onto the battlefield tapped and attacking, which can create significant challenges for your opponents.

Numerous villainous pairs also receive team-up cards, such as Krang & Shredder and Bebop & Rocksteady. This approach keeps the set cohesive while representing many characters and dynamics that TMNT fans crave.

Wizards of the Coast could have easily slapped the existing ninjutsu ability onto several TMNT cards, but instead, the team created a new mechanic called sneak.

“We relied on Crystal and the creative team to capture that youthful energy and vibrancy in the art and flavor text,” Engelhard said, noting that sneak embodies the ninja aspect and utilizes the turtle creature subtype to encompass the full TMNT experience.

Sneak operates as a streamlined evolution of ninjutsu: during the declare blockers step, you can return an unblocked attacker to your hand to cast a sneak spell for an alternate cost. Unlike ninjutsu, sneak can appear on instants and sorceries as well as creatures, making combat more unpredictable. “Anything can happen during combat in this set,” Engelhard remarked.

Cards like Michelangelo, Improviser use sneak to enter combat tapped and attacking, while spells like Shredder’s Technique and The Last Ronin’s Technique can be played mid-combat for reduced costs, turning a seemingly safe block into a game-changing moment. Sneak was also designed to work smoothly from the command zone, addressing some of the limitations that ninjutsu faced in Commander.

To capture the mutant essence of TMNT, the team introduced Mutagen tokens as artifact tokens that can be sacrificed to place a +1/+1 counter on a creature. “You crack open a canister of ooze, get exposed to that glowing green mutagen, and mutate into something stronger,” Engelhard explained. Mechanically, this means the ooze serves a purpose beyond flavor; it’s a repeatable way to enhance your board over time.

Mutagen tokens also activate one of the set’s renamed mechanics. Disappear—TMNT’s version of revolt—triggers an effect if a permanent you controlled left the battlefield during your turn. This works when you bounce an attacker with sneak or lose something in combat. It’s a simple yet elegant loop: the ooze boosts your creatures, and sacrificing it triggers disappear, rewarding the scrappy, hit-and-run style that defines the Turtles.

Instead of multiple Commander precons, TMNT features a single deck with 43 new cards, significantly more than most Universes Beyond Commander releases. It emphasizes arcade and video game nostalgia, aptly named “Turtle Power!” The strategy highlighted on the box art is “partner with allies” and “buff your team.”

“We know many fans discovered TMNT through arcade games, and we only touched on that slightly in the main set,” Engelhard said. “So we wanted a deck dedicated to that.” This deck’s new take on the Partner mechanic allows for two Commanders if both possess the Partner ability. In this case, the four Turtles, Splinter, and another yet-to-be-revealed potential Commander (likely a version of April O’Neill) each have a single color. The deck also includes Heroes in the Half Shell as a five-color backup Commander.

Engelhard explained that the deck heavily incorporates video game tropes and mechanics with cards like Level Up, Arcade Cabinet, High Score, and even Game Over. Frasier mentioned that the team’s brainstorming sessions were filled with shared memories of arcade cabinets and Turtles in Time.

The most innovative product in the lineup is Turtle Team-Up, a new cooperative Magic experience. Recent Universes Beyond sets have included starter kits that are ready to play right out of the box, and this one feels even more experimental than the previous offerings. Designed for two to four players, Turtle Team-Up features four 60-card decks and a 38-card boss deck. Instead of competing against each other, players collaborate to take down villains in escalating difficulty. There are also cards that allow players to assist each other by providing rewards. It shares some similarities with Two-Headed Giant, and it will be intriguing to see how the collaborative cards function in that format or even in Commander, where helping an opponent might be beneficial to defeat a common foe.

Engelhard confirmed that each Turtle Team-Up deck is also playable as a standard 60-card Magic deck, including the 29 brand-new, Legacy-legal cards. He noted that Wizards R&D has wanted to create a product like this for years, and the brotherly spirit of TMNT provided the perfect opportunity.

Magic: The Gathering – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles prerelease events kick off on February 27, with a global launch set for March 6.