After the incredibly unfortunate leaks, preview season for Magic’s TMNT set wasn’t exactly off to the best of starts. That said, now that it’s officially here, it’s still bringing plenty of fuel for the hype train. While we’ve seen every rare and mythic in the main set, the MTG TMNT Commander precon is still largely uncharted territory. This means there are plenty of great spoilers to enjoy from it. Today, we got to see a bunch of these, including one of the most unique board wipes we’ve seen in a while, and a ton of excellent counter synergy pieces to boot.
Electric Seaweed
For anyone who played the notoriously difficult TMNT game on the NES back in the day, this new card will immediately trigger harrowing flashbacks. Wizards has managed to capture the essence of the legendary Dam stage pretty well, too, interpreting the seaweed as a kind of ‘death by 1,000 cuts’ board wipe.
Much like Massacre Girl, Electric Seaweed can completely clear the board if every creature in play is only one toughness away from each other. It can even kick things off by itself by pinging something down to start the chain. Unlike Massacre Girl, however, Seaweed deals damage, which has both pros and cons. This quirk lets it play incredibly with cards that grant Deathtouch for an easy clear, but it also means it can’t deal with Indestructible creatures.
Not hitting Walls is a strange bit of text, but it can actually be relevant in a deck full of Defenders, or even just alongside a handful of Changelings. Overall, Electric Seaweed is an intriguing new board wipe option for red and a clear highlight of the MTG TMNT Commander spoilers so far.
Ninja Pizza
Food decks have, to pardon the pun, been eating rather well lately. The Cabbage Merchant was a massive addition to the archetype from Avatar, and now Ninja Pizza is here to bolster things further. Not only does this enchantment make a Food every turn, including the turn you play it, but it also turns your Foods into Lotus Petals, allowing for some absurd bursts of mana.
This turns cheap Food generators, like Many Partings, into efficient ramp pieces. It also plays brilliantly with the usual busted Food suspects, Nuka-Cola Vending Machine and Academy Manufactor. As with most cards that greatly expand your mana production, there are almost certainly combos available here, too. I’d be incredibly surprised if this doesn’t go infinite in at least five different ways with Ygra, Eater of All, for example.
Ninja Pizza is also notable for being available in one of TMNT’s coolest new treatments: the Borderless Pixel style. These are intended to celebrate the strong video game heritage that TMNT has, and they do so beautifully. There will be 15 cards getting this treatment in total, eight rares and seven mythics, all drawn from the Turtle Power Commander precon. Unfortunately for retro gaming enthusiasts, these cards will be pretty elusive as they’ll only be available in Surge Foil and only in TMNT Collector Boosters.
High Score
High Score is the latest in the now considerable line of cards that let you double up on +1/+1 counters. While it lacks the efficiency of other options, like Hardened Scales and Winding Constrictor, it makes up for it by also serving as a pseudo-Phyrexian Arena in many scenarios.
As long as you have one of the highest-power creatures in play, High Score lets you draw a card on your end step. Since you’ll definitely be running this in a +1/+1 counters deck, this condition shouldn’t be hard to meet at all. Extra draw is a great addition to counters decks, too, since one of their big problems is losing creatures they’ve invested a lot of resources in to removal or board wipes.
It’s easy to argue that High Score is a win-more card, since it does literally nothing if you don’t already have creatures in play. This will probably preclude it from play in general lists, but it should prove more than worth the risk in dedicated +1/+1 counters decks.
Level Up
Like High Score, Level Up is a nifty new option for +1/+1 counter decks. By itself, it can put two counters on a creature right away, assuming it’s not summoning sick. From there, things ramp up fast, and you can easily be hitting the 10-power threshold necessary for a draw the next turn. This is particularly good with creatures whose stats come entirely in the form of counters, like Hydras and creatures with Modular.
Unfortunately, Level Up has all the same problems as High Score and then some. Auras are innately risky in Commander, since they open you up to easy two-for-ones, and this is no exception. Even if you can theoretically draw right away with it, there’s still the chance someone has instant speed removal to stop you in your tracks. The 10-power threshold is also not the easiest thing to meet in many cases, meaning you’re better off opting for more reliable draw, like Guardian Project, instead.
Game Over
While it’s always nice to see a new board wipe option for Commander, Game Over feels pretty underwhelming in 2026. The absolute ceiling here is a three-mana destruction-based wipe, which is solid, but the condition pretty much locks that until the late game. Even if you can reliably cast this for three, however, black just has better options available.
Toxic Deluge is the clear frontrunner here, always costing three and getting around Indestructible. Beyond that, the likes of Day of Black Sun and Blasphemous Edict have nice extra utility, too. Even if you just want a straight-up destruction-based wipe, Damnation is almost always the better pick. With all this competition in its slot, I very much doubt Game Over will see much play. It could serve as a valuable budget option, mind you: some of these other wipes are really getting up there in price these days.
Arcade Cabinet
Arcade Cabinet is a bit of a strange card to evaluate. Getting to spread out four counters on entry is nice, and quite flexible to boot. You can use all four on your own board if you’re going wide, or dish some out to opponents if you want to play politics. That said, paying three mana for this effect doesn’t feel great, and the activated ability here does little to make up for that.
Realistically, you need two mana, a token you don’t mind sacrificing, and a creature with a decent amount of counters before this does anything at all. Even in a dedicated counters deck, this feels incredibly situational. Some Voltron lists might try this out as a way to massively boost their Commander, but in general, I don’t expect it to see much play at all.
Baxter, Fly In The Ointment
Despite its punny name, Baxter actually seems like a serious threat in dedicated counters decks. Granting Flying to all your becountered creatures is fantastic, since chump blocks are a common issue for these strategies. The fact that Baxter does this on entry and attack is great too, since it means you can keep up a consistent assault turn after turn.
Baxter’s second ability is arguably even more exciting. Getting a counter every time you draw means Baxter naturally scales up over time, but it’s also ripe for abuse. Drop a wheel effect like Windfall, for example, and Baxter can easily be swinging for double-digit damage in the air. It’s great with cheap draw effects like Brainstorm and Sylvan Library, too. Given how quickly it can get out of hand, I could easily see Baxter as a Voltron Commander in its own right, as well as a solid addition to the 99 of counters decks.
Leatherhead, Iron Gator
Leatherhead, Iron Gator is another entry in the ‘Craterhoof Behemoth at home’ category we’ve been seeing develop over the years. Cards like End-Raze Forerunners and Decimator of the Provinces offer budget alternatives to this Commander classic already, and now Leatherhead is here as another option. To its credit, it does have some advantages over its peers.
For starters, Leatherhead’s buff is permanent, since it comes in the form of counters. This makes it better in scenarios where you aren’t winning right away. It also buffs itself, which you don’t always get with Craterhoof variants. The result is an overall more value-oriented take on this kind of effect, which is an interesting option to have.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t mesh particularly well with what cards like Craterhoof are ultimately designed to do. These are supposed to be game-enders, closing things out immediately to compensate for their high costs. Since Leatherhead doesn’t grant your other creatures any kind of evasion, and its buff is relatively minor, this makes it underwhelming in the role. Unless you really need this effect on a legendary creature for some reason, I don’t expect Leatherhead to see a ton of play.
Turtle Team-Up Cards
On top of the spoilers from the MTG TMNT Commander precon, we also got a few from the Turtle Team-Up product today as well. This is a standalone multiplayer co-operative experience, pitting four players against a single foe in the style of Horde Magic.
This multiplayer element definitely shows on a couple of these cards. Turtle Tracks, for example, is clearly best when you can offer lands to your allies as well. In regular Commander, it’s largely a terrible Cultivate with fringe political applications. Splinter, Aging Champion is similar, forcing you to give an opponent a free draw when it leaves in regular games. You can use both of these cards to form alliances in Commander, but there are better options available, like the Tempt With cycle.
April O’Neil, Human Element is a different story. This is a spell punisher card like The Cabbage Merchant, but one that offers Mutagen tokens instead of Food. These aren’t great on their own, but they do synergize nicely with cards that demand a lot of artifacts, like Mechanized Production and Mox Opal. The trigger here should reliably go off fairly often, too, so I could see April being a bit of a dark horse inclusion in a lot of artifact-based decks.
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