Magic: The Gathering's new Turtle Power precon is a tricky beast. It's full of valuable reprints, comes with lots of exciting new TMNT cards, and yet it's undeniably messy, packed with card inclusions that make you scratch your head as you try to figure out how they fit the theme.
If you're wanting to work out how to make this powerful but ungainly monster of a Commander precon deck dance for you at the table, we're your friend. This guide will suggest 11 cards to cut and 11 to add to make the TMNT precon a better deck.
As a Universes Beyond deck, Turtle Power hasn't got the usual 10 new cards, but 43, so that Wizards could pack it with in-universe references. With such a thematic product, it makes sense that many Magic: The Gathering players like to keep their UB decks in one piece. If so, look away now, because we're going to be slicing and dicing, in an effort to craft a more consistent deck.
Which Commander should you use?
Before we get onto the upgrade guide proper, there's a rather unusual question to consider. That's because Turtle Power doesn't come with a choice of two commanders like most decks, but seven.
We can either play Heroes in a Half Shell, a five-color creature, or two of six different Turtles characters with the Character Select ability (a variant of Partner). If we go for the second option, we have to play Leonardo, the Balance alongside one of the others, to ensure we meet the five-color requirement.
Let's take a look at these two cards quickly, because while both fit the deck quite nicely, they each bring something different to the table.
First off, Heroes in a Half Shell is a typal commander that bundles together Mutants, Ninjas, and Turtles. Its effect lets you place a counter on creatures of these types whenever they deal combat damage to a player, plus draw cards per player you hit. If we go with this option, we need to make sure almost all our creatures are the correct type, and that we have good fixing to pay for our commander. Finding some way to give things double strike would be pretty sweet as well.
Meanwhile, Leonardo the Balance puts +1/+1 counters on all our creatures when a token enters (once per turn) making packing in token-makers the priority. As a bonus, his five color ability hands out useful keywords to everyone, if you've got the mana for it.
Overall, I think Leonardo is the better option for a strong, consistent deck. Heroes in a Half Shell has higher upside, and with Leo we'll need to think carefully about whether we have enough card draw, but Leo is so much easier to cast, and gives us an extra guaranteed creature to boot.
So who will Leonardo be giving balance to? To my mind, the three best options are Raphael, Michelangelo, or April O'Neil.
Raphael packs a ton of power, but at five mana, he's also pretty expensive. I'm more tempted by the other two options, which guarantee we have a low mana creature to start out the game.
Michelangelo, the Heart gets the ball rolling super early. You play him on turn two and then unless everyone else has a great start, you run away with the game, making food tokens to trigger Leonardo and getting one additional counter on each of your turns. Problems only crop up if we stop being able to attack, but Mikey and Leo together have the buffing potential to make that less than likely.
However, I'd rather have clues than food, and to me April O'Neil, on the Scene seems like a sorely underrated choice. I'm shocked, shocked I say, to see only 10 decks with this pairing on EDHREC right now. April is awesome! She gives Leonardo the guaranteed card draw that he's missing, plus it's a pretty awesome play pattern to start with April, then play out another creature, then play Leo on turn four. This triggers April, which triggers Leonardo, and gets our +1/+1 counter synergies flowing fast.
The slight downside is we're locked back into the typal strategies, since April triggers off Ninjas, Turtles and Mutants. If we run Michelangelo as the deck's leader I can go a little wild with off-type creatures. It gets much easier to find ways to trigger Leo on each players' turn when cards like Tendershoot Dryad are on the table. But that's okay - April helps the deck stay focused and on theme, and I like that!
Some of the deck's new cards like Endless Foot Assault and Tempestra, Dame of Games become even better with this pairing.
So that's our decision finally made, now onto the cuts!
Cards to cut - 11 Out
Acidic Slime
Expensive and unsynergistic.
Krang, The All-Powerful
The first effect mostly just triggers itself, so this is just a five-drop that gets really big.
Rat King, Pale Piper
Can you imagine if we had a way to pay two mana, sacrifice a token, and draw a card. Oh wait! Since we'll have all the clues we need, this is just an overcosted creature that sometimes makes rats.
Electric Seaweed
A finickity board wipe that leaves behind a pinger just isn't doing it for me.
Mole Module
Vehicles? Self-mill? This really doesn't seem to belong in the deck.
Tokka & Rahzar, Unsupervised
The treasures are nice, but since your opponents have a good deal of control over whether you get them, I think this is slightly too low-impact. Even at three-mana, we can do better!
Biogenic Ooze
With Acidic Slime already out, we're not doing ooze strategies here. The ability to make tokens is admittedly quite nice, but there must be easier ways. This just feels a bit too slow.
Roadkill Rodney
If this was a mutant, I'd be very interested. Since it isn't, I ain't!
Continue?
We already have Together Forever in the deck, which does the same job but better.
Steelbane Hydra
Great card, but I'm just not sure it's the best fit for this deck. Plus, if you take it out you can use it in a different one!
Harmonize
We're swapping this out for a new Turtles card.
Cards to Add - 11 in
Academy Manufacturer
Is this too cliche? With April, it isn't going to be hard to make a truckload of clue tokens. Academy Manufacturer lets us leverage that for free mana as well. Simple!
Mona Lisa, Ever Adaptable
The deck is over-stuffed with four drops but we couldn't leave this out. It's such a great way to trigger Leo on other players' turns, and fits the deck perfectly.
Ulvenwald Mysteries
With Ulvenwald Mysteries we can also crack our clues on other players' turns to immediately trigger Leonardo, and build up an ever-growing army
Benthic Biomancer
A super cheap creature that will help you filter through your deck with ease.
Chomping Changeling
A good replacement to Acidic Slime - can't hit lands, but it's two mana cheaper and a mutant, ninja, and turtle!
Mutagen Man, Living Ooze
This makes our Mutagen tokens free to crack and makes spending mana to convert our clues into cards far more appealing.
Evolution Witness
Another good reason not to stress about losing Continue? - Evolution Witness is a more reliable, repeatable form of recursion.
Michelangelo, Weirdness to 11
The reason this deck doesn't need Hardened Scales. Michelangelo 2.0 provides the effect for one more mana and synergizes with the precon perfectly.
Agent Frank Horrigan
An appealing top-end to suit our go-wide strategy. If your opponents survive the overrun effect, they'll still have a giant scary mutant to contend with.
Lessons from Life
Harmonize but better!
Jason Bright, Glowing Prophet
A somewhat marginal inclusion, but it should provide plenty of incidental card draw, and having more ways to give flying is never a bad thing for a combat-heavy deck.
I hope you found this upgrade guide helpful, and if you agreed or disagreed with any of my suggestions, let me know over on the Wargamer Discord.