Last Friday’s big Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reveal had no shortage of spicy new cards. The main set spoilers included a number of bangers, which look ready-made for established archetypes. The eternal-legal cards, from the set’s Commander deck and co-operative board game, look less impressive overall. That said, there are still some diamonds in the rough here. The eternal-legal version of everyone’s favorite comic relief Turtle, Michelangelo, On the Scene, for example, looks excellent in MTG Commander.
While it seems a little slow and lumbering at first glance, this is a legend with a lot of powerful synergies to its name. Even more excitingly, it’s also capable of fueling several different game-winning infinite combos. Put these two things together, and it could be worth buying the Team-Up Bundle for this card alone.
Michelangelo, On The Scene In MTG Commander
- Mana Value: 4GG
- Type: Legendary Creature – Mutant Ninja Turtle
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Card Text: Trample (This creature can deal excess combat damage to the player it’s attacking.)
Michelangelo enters with a +1/+1 counter on him for each land you control.
When Michelangelo dies, return this card to your hand.- Stats: 2/2
Michelangelo, On the Scene is a bit of a Déjà vu-inducing MTG card. It feels like we’ve seen countless variants on the idea of ‘big green creature that scales up based on your land count’ in recent years. There are a few key differences here, mind you.
First of all, Michelangelo actually starts with base stats of its own, rather than being a 0/0 or a */*. This means it’s a better creature on-rate than most of its fellow land-scaling peers. Since its stats come from counters placed on entry, this does mean Michelangelo doesn’t continue to scale over time, but in practice, the extra starting stats will likely do more work.
Secondly, and much more importantly, it also has built-in recursion. When it dies, it jumps right back into your hand, making it an absolute pain to get rid of. This also allows you to milk a ton of value out of the card over repeat casts.
There are a ton of great synergies you can exploit with this card, many of which revolve around its excellent counter-generation capabilities. If Michelangelo dies while you have Cleopatra, Exiled Pharaoh in play, for example, you’ll get to draw cards equal to your land count. This will likely be at least six, given Michelangelo’s cost. You also get it right back in your hand to repeat this interaction later, creating a surprisingly potent draw engine.
You can also turn Michelangelo into a repeatable removal spell on a body with All Will Be One, or an ever-growing Trample threat with The Ozolith. Basically, if you’re in green and you’re already running counter synergies of any kind, Michelangelo should make a great addition to your deck. The rate here is solid, and the recursion really gives it an edge over similar options.
All You Can Eat
This recursion ability is also what gives Michelangelo, On the Scene its massive MTG combo potential. There are no limits or ‘once per turn’ restrictions here, which means you can easily set up loops where you bring Michelangelo in and out of play constantly.
One way to do this is with Phyrexian Altar and Infested Thrinax. You’ll need Altar in play to start with, as well as a Michelangelo with at least three counters on it. Next, drop Thrinax to set up its Saproling-producing aura effect until the end of the turn. You can then sacrifice Michelangelo to Altar, returning it to your hand, as well as adding one mana and creating five Saproling tokens. Sacrifice all five to Altar as well, and you’ll have enough mana to cast Michelangelo from your hand again to continue the loop.
This combo does an awful lot for you. You get infinite enters and dies triggers, for a start, which allows you to win on the spot with something like Impact Tremors or Blood Artist. As long as you have at least four lands in play, this combo will also give you infinite mana. You only need Michelangelo on five power to keep the combo going at a mana-neutral rate, so every point above that will get you extra mana with each loop. You can then sink that many into any number of outlets, like Walking Ballista or Torment of Hailfire.
There isn’t a ton of redundancy available for this combo, but there are a few options you can consider. Warren Soultrader can sub in for Phyrexian Altar, provided you have something like Zulaport Cutthroat to offset the life loss. Alternatively, you can bring in any other free sacrifice outlet and Pitiless Plunderer, and get your extra mana that way.
Slicin’ And Dicin’
The above combo is great, but it does come with the downside of forcing you into at least Golgari colors. This means you can’t run Michelangelo, On the Scene as your MTG Commander, denying you access to one of your combo pieces in the command zone. Fortunately, there’s another potent combo with the card that can be done entirely in Mono-Green.
This combo revolves around Deathrender, a bizarre Lorwyn Equipment that lets you cheat out a new creature to equip it with when the first one dies. With Michelangelo out and equipped with Deathrender, all you need is a sacrifice outlet to get an infinite loop going.
When Michelangelo dies this way, both its own trigger and the Deathrender trigger will go on the stack at once. You can order them so that Michelangelo’s goes off first, returning it to your hand in time to be brought out again by Deathrender’s trigger. You can then sacrifice Michelangelo again and repeat this process infinite times.
If you use Blasting Station as your sacrifice outlet, you can end the game immediately this way. The same is true of Altar of Dementia, and both of these options are handily in colorless, letting you stick to Mono-Green. This combo will also generate infinite enters and dies triggers just like the one above, so something like Essence Warden can net you infinite life if you don’t have your outlet ready yet.
There are likely many more combos out there for Michelangelo, too, just waiting to be discovered. Goofy as it is, this is a real dark horse contender in these early days of TMNT spoilers.
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