The echoing, digitized delivery of the phrase “Big Apple, 3 a.m.” is something that’s burned into my brain. My friends and I blasted through that first level of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time hundreds of times, beating up foot-clan dorks, grabbing pizzas, and falling in open manholes. So when Wizards of the Coast released its Magic: The Gathering TMNT set as part of its Universes Beyond brand, finding the card named Big Apple, 3 a.m. scratched exactly the nostalgic itch I was hoping it would.
What I didn’t expect was how deeply the TMNT video games–which compose a pretty big chunk of the entire TMNT brand, it has to be admitted–inform how the set works and what it does. Magic’s TMNT doesn’t just acknowledge the many different TMNT games with fun, wry references and jokes. It takes fundamental mechanical elements and translates them into the language of Magic in a way that makes the set feel different from any of the others that draw from video games.
The easiest way to see this in action is in the TMNT preconstructed commander deck, Turtle Power. That deck specifically brings together all four titular turtles, plus their mentor Splinter and reporter pal April. Any of those cards can serve as your commander in the deck, giving you a chance to choose your favorite and take it into battle; but they also all have “Character Select,” a Turtles-specific take on the Partner mechanic that lets you field two commanders in a game. It’s a specific reference to the way the arcade games play: You’re picking your characters for an arcade-style beatdown, while thinking about how their different abilities make for different team-ups.
