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Ranking the Mythic Rares of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arrived onto the scene in February as the first Universes Beyond release of 2026. The small set saw the Turtles make their grand entry into Magic: The Gathering, bringing with it a bevy of classic characters, fun references, and, arguably, a little too much pizza.

The set also brought with it fifteen Mythic Rare cards. Are they a decent batch of cards this time around or is it a set of duds? Today, I'm going to break them all down and find out.

Grab a slice and let's get ranking.

15. The Last Ronin

The Last Ronin

The Last Ronin is a really cool effect that blows up everything on the board and gives you some neat bonuses afterwards. There's just one problem: we got a substantially better version of this card just a few sets ago.

The Rise of Sozin // Fire Lord Sozin from Avatar: the Last Airbender is also a six drop Saga that blows everything up and follows it up with additional bonuses. The difference is that one allows you to get rid of a problematic card from your opponent's deck and guarantees you're left with a powerful creature.

With The Last Ronin, though, there's no guarantee you're left with a worthwhile creature at all and the bonuses are rather meager and fleeting. As a result, this just feels really impractical compared to other options in just about every format imaginable.

14. North Wind Avatar

North Wind Avatar

North Wind Avatar does something really awesome in that it allows you to take a card from outside the game and put it into your hand. There's just one problem there: without any other relevant abilities, that makes it pretty much useless anywhere except Constructed.

It has seen some minor play in both a handful of Standard decks and a few versions of Pioneer's Niv to Light, but it's so little that this card just isn't the greatest.

13. Mondo Gecko

Mondo Gecko

If you can get a good hit in with Mondo Gecko in a five-color Commander deck, you'll almost certainly draw a ton of cards from his ability.

The problem, though, is that he doesn't have any kind of evasion to land a good hit. His color-changing ability is also costly as it requires you to discard a card and, perhaps worst of all, the design isn't ideal to put into the Command Zone itself.

All of this makes Mondo Gecko difficult to utilize well in both Commander and Constructed play, which makes for an underwhelming Mythic generally. Still, it can be good in one specific type of deck, so it has some small merits if you can give it a Whispersilk Cloak or Trailblazer's Boots.

12. Broadcast Takeover

Broadcast Takeover

Broadcast Takeover is the kind of card that's incredibly niche. It demands that you be playing in an environment swarming with Artifacts, which isn't often going to be the case.

In Constructed, it's largely useless. Even against the matchups where you'd like to mess with Artifacts, you're better off using a cheaper mass destruction spell instead. Nothing (so far) makes it worth playing in Standard either.

That leaves this as little more than Commander fodder. If you happen to be playing with a group that loves Artifact decks, this can be absolutely backbreaking and is worth the inclusion. If you're not planning for that, then it will often feel like a dud in your deck.

11. Raphael, Ninja Destroyer

Raphael, Ninja Destroyer

Commander players love making lots of extra mana, which Raphael, Ninja Destroyer certainly enables. The problem is that since he must be blocked every time he attacks, there's a pretty high likelihood that he dies even if you can get some extra mana out of it.

If you're able to use pump effects or have a means to grant Raphael something like Indestructible, First Strike, or Double Strike, then maybe it can be good. For most decks, though, the juice just isn't worth the squeeze, even if there is some amount of appeal to be had here.

10. Turtles in Time

Turtles in Time

There are few things I love more than a great nod to a classic video game and Turtles in Time is great at that. It's a fantastic mass bounce spell that can also double as a Timetwister variant as well all in one card, which feels fun and flavorful.

In practice, though, it's an effect that can backfire on you. Let's say you need to use it in a Commander game to prevent yourself from dying to a lethal attack but you want to save your Creatures. You may just have given one player an opportunity to refill their hand if they didn't have many that are worthwhile.

Couple this with the high mana cost and you have a card that's fun and interesting, but probably not quite as good in practice.

9. Leonardo, Sewer Samurai

Leonardo, Sewer Samurai

Leonardo, Sewer Samurai presents a fairly powerful effect on a Creature with a relatively decent body. Sneaking in a 3/3 with Double Strike is no joke and is a great way to dish out some heavy damage.

The real power comes from his ability to revive tons of small Creatures from your graveyard once he connects with an attack. Unfortunately, the problem is that being limited to only reanimating Creatures with a power or toughness of 1 narrows the uses.

For Commander, you're often running a deck of higher power/toughness Creatures. Even if you include a modest number of them, chances are you're limiting yourself a bit while your opponents drown you in big threats. In Constructed, this is less of an issue, though the problem there becomes finding a deck willing and able to make use of it.

This leaves Leonardo, Sewer Samurai as an awesome card to play with, but one that's hard to get maximum use out of.

8. The Cloning of Shredder

The Cloning of Shredder

The Cloning of Shredder presents a really awesome casual oriented card for one simple reason: you don't often see Clone effects in Mono-Black.

Typically, those kinds of effects are limited to Blue, with the copying bleeding into other colors via Gold cards. Red gets some temporary cloning (Heat Shimmer effects) and both White and Green can copy tokens. You don't usually see this in Black, though you do see the exile and make a token of the exiled card from time to time. Abyssal Harvester is a good example of this.

What this all means is that The Cloning of Shredder is a uniquely cool card. The only thing keep it from rating better is that its high cost limits how often you can get the most out of it.

7. Triceraton Commander

Triceraton Commander

Triceraton Commander gives me serious flashbacks to cards like Decree of Justice and Entreat the Angels. Instead of getting Creatures like Angels and Human Soldiers, though, you make a bunch of Dinosaurs.

Naturally, this is great for just about any Dinosaur Commander deck that can run it. Even if you make very few tokens, you'll still be able to buff your other Dinosaurs in the process, making for an awesome card in a very specific style of deck.

The beauty of this card, though, is that it also works great even if you're not playing a dedicated Dinosaur deck. The stats are solid enough that there could even be some Constructed potential in the future, though as of now this has yet to materialize much.

6. Donatello, Mutant Mechanic

Donatello, Mutant Mechanic

Donatello, Mutant Mechanic is an awesome inclusion for just about any Artifact-heavy deck.

If you can get him to stick around, you can tap him turn after turn to make an army of Creatures that all buff each other when they die. Even without the counters and animation ability, Donatello is still great for making sure your counters get distributed pretty evenly.

The obvious use here is to move +1/+1 counters around, which works great alongside Creatures with Modular like Hangerback Walker and others. However, it also works great with charge counters as well, which can supercharge certain Artifacts if you build your deck right. Just think of how fast you can speed up Darksteel Reactor this way.

Sadly, Donatello is probably too fragile for Constructed play but given the wide prevalence of Artifact decks in Commander this is a slam dunk for that format.

5. Technodrome

Technodrome

Technodrome reads like a card that can be wildly powerful if you put the work in. After all, a two-mana potential 6/6 is hard to ignore.

What makes it so great is just how many good Artifacts there are for you to sacrifice. Cards like Ichor Wellspring and its cousin Mycosynth Wellspring are great for this but consider sacrificing Munition tokens made by Weapons Manufacturing as well. Artifact Creature tokens from the likes of Pinnacle Emissary and Sai, Master Thopterist work great too.

All this makes Technodrome a surprisingly versatile card in potentially a wide variety of format options. Thus far it's only really showing up in Commander, but even if it only makes a splash there, it's well worth playing in many Artifact-heavy decks.

4. Michelangelo, Improviser

Michelangelo, Improviser

Who doesn't love cheating big Creatures into play? I know I do, and Michelangelo, Improviser is awesome at doing so.

Even if you cast Mikey for his normal cost, you're getting a reasonable rate as long as you're able to give him some evasion. If you can Sneak him into play, though, then you're going to easily slam stuff onto the battlefield.

The best part is that he doesn't just put a Creature into play, but he also puts a Land into play at the same time. That makes him almost a contender for Constructed play, though as of now, he's not making a splash anywhere but Commander and Cube.

In both formats, Michelangelo is an absolute all-star and a slam dunk inclusion.

3. Krang, Utrom Warlord

Krang, Utrom Warlord

Nearly twenty years after its initial release, Akroma's Memorial from Future Sight continues to be an extremely popular Commander card. Krang, Utrom Warlord isn't quite as potent, as it only impacts Artifact Creatures, but the abilities it grants are so good that it's a lot closer than you might think.

This guy brings Flying, Trample, Indestructible, and Haste. That's it. No frills, just all of your Artifact Creatures have these abilities now. It's not hard to win a game from there if your strategy revolves entirely around spamming the board with tokens.

The only downside to Krang is that he's expensive, both in terms of mana cost and in dollar value. That can make it a bit hard to take advantage of, but if you can, it's devastating.

2. Dark Leo & Shredder

Dark Leo & Shredder

Both Krang, Utrom Warlord and Dark Leo & Shredder are among the highest tier of cards for Commander. You could probably swap their placements on this list and it'd be fine.

For me, it comes down to what card is more interesting. Krang is super powerful, but he's extremely one note and is expensive to get onto the battlefield in the first place. By comparison, Dark Leo & Shredder is a sweet build around for a fan favorite theme of Ninjas.

Even better, Sneak was designed in such a way that you can use it from the Command Zone, making this card all the more fun.

As a result, I'm giving the second slot to Dark Leo & Shredder. It's a sweet card with lots of potential and probably only gets better as we get more Ninjas in Magic.

1. Super Shredder

Super Shredder

Most of the Mythic Rares in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lean towards being Commander staples more than Constructed cards. Super Shredder is very much the exception.

Sacrificing permanents is trivial, especially when you do so with Fetch Lands and the like which makes it very easy to trigger Super Shredder. Not only that, but the effect is symmetrical, triggering off all players' permanents. As a result, this card can get really huge, really fast.

Couple that with Moonshadow from Lorwyn Eclipsed and you've got yourself the foundation of an interesting deck.

That's just the Constructed implications as well. Super Shredder also ranks extremely highly among the Mythic Rares of the set for the purposes of Commander and is an easy inclusion in just about any Cube. All of these factors make it head and shoulders the best Mythic of the set.

Paige Smith

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