Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Prerelease Guide: New Mechanics, Archetypes, and Top Picks

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pre-Release is happening this weekend, February 27th-1st of March. For a breakdown of the mechanics, tips & tricks, and what the best commons to look out for are, read further.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is similar to Marvel’s Spider-Man, a smaller Set that features five distinct Limited archetypes instead of the usual ten we get in a normal Limited set. A notable difference between the two Sets is that, unlike Spider-Man, both  “Pick Two Draft” with four players and normal Booster Draft with eight players are supported. Let’s dive in and talk about the main mechanics of this Set.

Mechanics

Sneak

Sneak allows you to cast a spell by returning an unblocked creature during the “declare blockers” step, usually on a mana discount and often with a bonus attached for fulfilling this requirement. We’ve had a similar ability in Ninjutsu in the past. Notable differences are that Sneak is the same as casting the spell, while Ninjutsu is an activated ability going around counterspells. Ninjutsu was mainly to be found on creatures, Sneak appears on noncreature spells as well. You were able to use Ninjutsu until the end of combat, Sneak you can only use during the “declare blockers” step. 

Cards with Sneak are found in all colours, heavily supported in black and white. The whole draft archetype revolves around the mechanic and Ninjas.

To maximize the consistency and powerlevel of Sneak cards, you want to fill your deck with cheap creatures, the absolute best case being a 1-drop with a form of evasion. Playing against Sneak you want to be able to provide early blockers to prevent them from connecting, and of course be aware not to cast a removal spell into open mana on an unblocked creature during the “declare blockers” step, as they can Sneak their creature back to hand in response.

Disappear

Disappear is a keyword that gives you a bonus when a permanent left the battlefield under your control this turn, which mostly checks when it enters play or triggers in the end step. The keyword is found on nine creatures, all in the black and green colours. The set provides an assortment of Food and Mutagen tokens that work well at enabling Disappear on the cheap. Interestingly enough, Sneak and Disappear create a bit of an interesting dilemma when playing against black for the player in combat. Disappear punishes the opponent for blocking, Sneak punishes them for not blocking.

Mutagen

Mutagen is a new artifact token type with the ability “(1) Tap, sacrifice this token: Put a +1+1 counter on target creature. Activate only as a sorcery.” Mutagen tokens often come together with a spell or a creature entering, just like Lander and Clue tokens in other sets. All cards that give out these new Tokens are found in blue and green, in which colour pair we also find multiple cards that care about +1+1 counters. 
Additionally, the blue-red archetype heavily cares about artifacts and is likely happy to play some of the Mutagen cards to increase artifact count and enable more synergies. 
Gameplay-wise, Mutagen will affect combat in a strong way and allow smaller creatures to attack and block more profitably. Moving and putting your counters well will enable good attacks, so choose your target wisely.

Alliance

Returning from Streets of New Capenna, Alliance is a keyword triggered ability that triggers whenever a creature enters play under your control, giving you some sort of bonus. It’s the main theme of the red-white archetype featured on ten creatures in those colours. Most of the benefits come in power/toughness buffs that allow for stronger attacks. The mechanic is oriented aggressively, wanting you to play cheap creatures or cards that spit out multiple tokens. Sneak interplays nicely as it triggers Alliance during combat for some potentially surprising combat buffs.

Limited Archetypes

Each of the five main archetypes has two Gold uncommons, a single-coloured uncommon with an ability that requires the other colour, two hybrid commons and a hybrid rare. They are very well supported. Of the hybrid commons, many of them work well in some of the other archetypes, making them higher picks early in a Draft to keep yourself open and have a high likelihood of making your deck at the end of the Draft. For the five non-supported archetypes (Blue-Black, Green-White, Blue-White, Red-Black and Red-Green), the situation looks pretty grim. The only support they have is a cycle of hybrid rares, which is basically nothing. I would strongly recommend avoiding them until we know the format deeper and maybe there is something, but from having played a good amount of Marvel’s Spider-Man Limited, these five colour pairs are essentially persona non grata.

Black-White Sneak/Ninjas

Black-White cares about maximizing Sneak by playing cheap creatures to enable your powerful Sneak payoffs. Many of the creatures are Ninjas, and we have some cards to provide benefits for putting Ninjas into your deck. This archetype seems aggressively slanted, but with a backdoor to a grindy midrange deck provided by some of the black cards. When going for this archetype, I would look to have at least six 1- or 2-mana creatures in my deck to enable your Sneak cards. Combat tricks rise in quality here due to your opponents wanting to block your creatures at all costs.

Black-Green Disappear

Your classic, grindy Midrange deck. Overall, you are just looking to play a “good stuff” deck. Play to the board, get into combat, and have some strong removal spells to clear away opposing bombs. This strikes me as a great archetype for Sealed - beefy green creatures and black attrition plus removal. The Disappear cards are mostly fine by themselves, and the synergies aren’t super important, which makes this archetype less reliant on them, which in turn is good for Sealed where you can’t choose what you get. Food and Mutagen Tokens to enable the Disappear ability are nice to have; prioritize cards that provide these. 

Blue-Red Artifacts

All things artifacts. You want to play as many cards that say artifact on them as possible, and there are tons of them in this set, especially in Izzet. We have cards that grow with artifacts in play, that draw cards when artifacts are in play, and are rare with affinity to artifacts and an artifact lord. The uncommon payoff “Baxter Stockman” gives artifact +3+0 first strike and vigilance, which is quite the reward. 

Red-White Alliance/Tokens

Your classic Boros Tokens strategy that wants you to play cards that pop out multiple creatures (which a lot of commons and uncommons do) to provide Alliance triggers en masse. Flash creatures and Sneak provide an extra element to surprise your opponents in combat with extra Alliance triggers. You want your deck to be low-curve, up to 18 creatures and effects that mass pump.

Blue-Green Mutants

This strategy revolves around Mutants and how to grow them into beefy monsters that trample your opponent to death. Generically speaking, this archetype strikes me as strong for Sealed as blue and green combine for a good Midrange and late-game basis - perfect for a slower format in which the aggressive-leaning Sneak and Alliance synergies might not come together that well. 

Mana Fixing

In terms of Mana Fixing, we are getting five common dual lands plus Escape Tunnel. The duals share the same slot as the basic lands and appear in 60% of the packs. 

Colorless fixing in the form of Omni-Cheese Pizza, a variation on Prophetic Prism, as well as the Everything Pizza. At rare, we get a Manalith variant in the form of Weather Maker.

Green offers fixing with a strong mana dork in Frog Butler at common, Mona Lisa, Science Geek, and New Generation’s Technique at uncommon, and Transdimensional Bovine at rare.

This strikes me as a set that wants you not to overly splash colours. Staying on theme seems more rewarding. But this rule set goes easily out of the window in Sealed when you’ve opened the right fixing to splash removal or a bomb.

Archetype Overlap - Sultai, Jeskai, Mardu, Temur, and Abzan

Some of the archetypes intertwine with their respective mechanics well into each other that it should be noteworthy enough to point out. Especially, if you get some good fixing to make things work.

The combination of Black-Green and Blue-Green - Sultai - is filled with Mutants. Black-Green is happy to pop Mutagen Tokens to enable Disappear. Together, they make for a grindy Midrange strategy that looks great in Sealed.

Blue-Red Artifacts wants to fill the board with artifact tokens, Red-White cares about putting a ton of creatures into play. Together, they can perhaps form an aggressively slanted, artifact-based deck. Perhaps not quite as enticing as Sultai in Sealed, but if you get the right cards and the right fixing might be worth going for nonetheless.

Mardu wants to play to the board aggressively. Sneak plays well with Alliance to surprise the opponent in combat. This makes sense in theory, but of course with Aggro decks you have to be even more careful with Splashing to not mess up your own consistency by not being able to cast your spells on curve. So light splashing is advised, and only going for it if the fixing is really good and the payoff is worth the trouble.

In Temur, Mutagen tokens increase your artifact count nicely. To maximize it, you seemingly want to lean harder into Blue-Red to get the most out of the artifact payoffs. Perhaps more often than not a blue-red based deck with a light green splash.

Abzan looks to be the least synergistic of the five. While Sneak does trigger Disappear it seems like a rather clunky way of doing so. So in practice, we are looking at a deck that plays to the board and has the grindy element that black-green provides. Of these five, Sultai certainly makes me the most excited, and something I will actively look out for during Pre-Release.

My pick for Top Commons

White

Grounded for Life
April O’Neil, Kunoichi Trainee
Uneasy Alliance

Blue

Donatello, Turtle Techie
Buzz Bots
Return to the Sewers

Black

Anchovy & Banana Pizza
Stomped by the Foot
Squirrelanoids

Red

Manhole Missile
Mouser Foundry
Bot Bashing Time

Green

Frog Butler
Primordial Pachyderm
Ragamuffin Raptor

I hope you enjoyed the read. Best of luck in your first week of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Limited!