The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are coming to Magic: the Gathering next year. So far, we have seen a few cards spoiled from NYCC and most of them appear to be slam dunks. These cards seem to have very unique effects and abilities that already make them stand out from Spider-Man.

One of the cards in particular that is leading one of the Commander products is leaning into playing creatures that are mutants, ninjas, and turtles. Not only is this incredibly flavorful, but Magic is brimming with a lot of very neat creatures in each of these types. So let's take a look at each one of these creature types and see what it has to offer before TMNT hits next year!

Ninjas

Ninjas are the creature type that stands out the most. Yuriko, Tiger's Shadow is one of the most popular Commanders of all time and is insanely powerful. Kamigawa is a plane in Magic that is brimming full of ninjas and ninja specific support. Silver-Fur Master is a low cost anthem effect for your ninjas that also reduces the ninjutsu ability of each of them by 1 mana. Prosperous Thief creates treasure tokens for each opponent you deal combat to each turn with your ninjas.

Fallen Shinobi and Ingenious Infiltrator are reliable advantage engines that continue to grant you cards and spells throughout the entire game. Higure, the Still Wind is a ninja tutor on a creature that can also grant unblockable to some of your creatures for a low mana investment. Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion is a combination of Bolas's Citadel and Etali, Primal Storm as long as it can get in for damage. In my opinion, Orochi Soul-Reaver is one of the most underplayed token generators when it comes to Commander. This card generates mana and potentially massive flips off your opponent's libraries and it's also a ninja!

Ninjas have the best support out of the three of these creature types, but it has less cards than mutant type creatures. Let's take a look at some of them next.

Mutants

Mutants have 114 total cards as opposed to ninjas only having 64, but they do not have some of the same synergy as ninjas do. Mutants come to Magic mainly in the form of other Universes Beyond sets. Fallout, Spider-Man, Final Fantasy, and Jurassic Park all brought with them a whole cast of new mutant type creatures. Looking ahead to Marvel Superheroes coming next year, we most likely will be getting even more of them thanks to the X-Men. The other thing about mutants is that they usually have a subtheme of +1/+1 Counters which works perfectly with Heroes in a Half Shell and the brand new Mutagen tokens.

Evolution Witness is one of the best common cards from the last year for Commander and it just so happens to carry that mutant type. Hauntwoods Shrieker is a cheap early game value engine that will help you get some more creatures into play. Keeper of Keys introduces the Monarch into the game and if you keep that title, makes all your creatures completely unblockable! Merfolk Skydiver can help grow your team of mutants with its activated ability. Watchful Radstag is a Scute Swarm creature that cares about you playing more creatures than getting lands into play. Rampaging Yao Guai, Aberrant, and Deadpool, Trading Card are all great sources of removal.

Mutants are chock full of so many great cards. While most of them don't inherently work together as well as ninjas do, they can still lead to a commanding board state.

Turtles

There are less than fifty turtle type creatures in Magic's library and unfortunately, most of them are very basic. There are a couple of stand outs though, like Fecund Greenshell. This turtle can help ramp you a little and if you reach ten lands in play, it will boost your entire team. Steelbane Hydra can be a late game attacker that also removes pesky artifacts and enchantments. This card works splendidly with the Mutagen tokens. Ticket Tortoise is a pretty mediocre card from Aetherdrift, but it will help you stay on curve in a pinch.

Thunderous Snapper is not the best card draw engine, but it is still card draw. The Pride of Hull Clade is a much better source of card draw, but it is unclear how relevant toughness will be with the TMNT cards. Taeko, the Patient Avalanche and Kappa Tech-Wrecker are both ninjas and turtles, but I saved them for this section of the list to help boost the number of turtles. Both of these cards are great for synergizing with the ninjutsu ability that so many of these creatures have. Colossal Skyturtle is most likely one of the best turtles we can play. It can Unsummon a creature or Regrowth something back into your hand on a channel ability, which is incredibly hard to interact with. If you decide to cast this card for the actual turtle it is a massive 6/5 flyer with ward two. This card even saw some play in cEDH! Unfortunately though, that pretty much wraps up the relevant turtle creatures. However, we should see a huge influx of brand new turtles out of TMNT.

Here ends the best ninjas, mutants, and turtles we have access to so far for Commander. I am positive we will see a lot more of these creature types in the coming year so you can look forward to that. I hope this list helps you in your search for treasure amongst the bulk trash. I am looking forward to seeing more from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle set, especially more ninjutsu-like abilities.

See you on the battlefield!

-Nigel