While Magic: The Gathering Commander pre-con decks are a great way to get started with the format, they’re far from perfect, and there are plenty of ways to upgrade each deck, regardless of your budget.
With the TMNT Commander Deck including six total Commanders spread across all five mana colors, this leaves the deck feeling a little messy and unfocused at times, but there are ways you can fix this and bring the deck up to speed with a new, aggressive focus.
The WUBRG Problem
Before we dig into the possible upgrades, you’ll need to pick a Commander for this deck. Given that the deck is structured around all mana colors, you’ll need to ensure your chosen Commander has all five mana colors anywhere on the card.
The Commander rules state that your deck can only use colors that appear on your Commander, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the casting cost.
To meet the WUBRG requirements, you will have to use the Heroes in a Half Shell card, or you can use Leonardo, the Balance, and pair it up with one of the other Commanders that features the Character Select ability, which is a variation of partner. Leonardo has all five mana colors listed on his card to activate an ability, so by choosing him, the deck is legal; having a partner is optional.
For these upgrades, we’re going to build as though we’re using Leonardo, the Balance, partnered with Raphael, the Muscle, and we’ll be leaning into the +1/+1 counter strategy. The mana base for this deck is also extremely strong, so we’ll be making no adjustments there.
Magic: The Gathering – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Commander Deck Guide
The Turtle Power! pre-con deck is stacked with six possible Commander cards, including all four turtles, and the synergies are already looking strong.
Creature Ins And Outs
Biogenic Ooze – Out
This expensive creature generates two Ooze tokens and adds counters to them each turn, and can even create more tokens as a mana ability, but it’s simply too costly at five mana and four mana to activate the ability; this is better spent elsewhere.
Shredder, Shadow Master – Out
While this card is super dangerous and would otherwise be an easy card to keep, if we’re leaning heavily into the counter generation and brute force that supports our Commander choices best, then it’s a card that can easily be left out due to its high casting cost and likelihood that your opponents will do everything to prevent it from resolving.
Krang, the All-Powerful – Out
Another high-cost creature that just doesn’t add enough to justify the outlay, at least not in the kind of deck we’re building. The +1/+1 generation is also self-contained, which, compared to a card like Leatherhead, Iron Gator, makes it easier to cut.
Ouroboroid – In
This creature will start to ramp up your counter generation at the beginning of each of your combat phases. It adds X +1/+1 counters to all of your creatures, where X is the current power of Ouroboroid. If you manage to get counters onto this before the first combat phase, it activates, and then the impact it has only gets better. This card currently costs around $42.
Raphael, the Nightwatcher – In
This Raphael card acts as a mid-step as you build up to activating Raphael, the Muscle. It has a sneak cost of just three mana, and gives all of your attacking creatures double strike. Granted, this is a card that likely won’t be left on the board for more than one turn, but its immediate impact if you can cast it via sneak is huge.
Evolution Witness – In
This creature lets you bring cards back to your hand from your graveyard any time one or more +1/+1 counters are put on it. Even if you find yourself short of routes to doing this, the card can activate adept for two mana and put two +1/+1 counters on itself, provided there are none already on it. This brings brilliant utility to the deck, and it is far more useful than some of the expensive creatures we have removed. A stark contrast to Ouroboroid, this card can be found for less than 30¢ as a single.
Spell Ins And Outs
Continue? – Out
While returning up to four creatures from your graveyard to the battlefield is extremely useful, the fact that this can only be used for creatures put in the graveyard in the same turn is a little restricting. Instead, with Together Forever also in the deck and offering a better way to bring creatures back from the graveyard, we can drop Continue for another, more effective spell instead.
Vanquish The Horde – Out
Given the aggression we’re aiming for with this deck, this spell is simply too defensive and suits a controlling style of play much better. Wave Goodbye also provides a decent board wipe opportunity if needed, but leaves all creatures with a +1/+1 counter on them, on the board.
Teferi’s Protection – In
This three-drop spell protects you from damage for one turn, and everything you have on the board phases out. If you’ve spent a long time building your board and are desperate to protect it, this is a great way to do just that, as it’s effectively a protection from board wipes and even outright game-over situations if you’re low on health and under fire from your opponents. This card costs anywhere from $40-$90 depending on which version you choose to buy.
Vampiric Tutor – In
A Commander staple, this one mana instant lets you do some digging to find a card in your library, letting you then put it on top of your shuffled library once found. Playing this right before your turn gives opponents less opportunity to force another shuffle or mill your chosen card off your library, and the one mana cost is just ridiculously low. Copies of this card can cost as little as $50, but some reach way up to almost $500.
Enchantment & Artifact Ins And Outs
Mole Module – Out
Nothing against vehicles, but this card isn’t a good fit when compared to the enchantment that we’ll be replacing it with. For the same cost, we can instead massively boost our aggressive strategy and don’t have to worry about milling and crewing as actions.
While this cheap equipment artifact can create an annoying flying ninja token and let you sacrifice the equipped creature for card draw when it deals combat damage to another player, it’s just isolated in its usefulness and doesn’t feel like part of the deck.
Uncivil Unrest – In
This enchantment lets every creature you own that enters play come in with either haste or a +1/+1 counter, then all creatures with a +1/+1 counter, when dealing damage to a player or permanent, will instead deal double the damage.
Yes, as a five-mana enchantment, this is a bit costly, and it would be ideal if it could get into the game much earlier, but given how out of control the counter generation can get, don’t overlook that this could be used more for its haste aspect than the counters. It will create an immediate sense of danger for your opponents. This card currently costs around $20.
Embercleave – In
A huge artifact equipment card that gets cheaper with every attacking creature you have is ideal for this deck. It lets you equip it to a creature for free when cast, and has flash, so it can be cast at instant speed. It gives a target creature +1/+1, double strike, and trample. Use this equipment right, and your target won’t know what hit them. This card can cost less than $10, but on average, you’re looking at between $10-$20.
Magic: The Gathering – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: 5 Best Green Cards
Here are our top picks for the best green mana cards from the MTG TMNT set across multiple formats.
