A Review of Turtle Team-Up; The New Boss Battler for Magic: The Gathering (Patreon)

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT or Turtles) created in 1983 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird originally as a spoof of several different comics including DC Comic's Teen Titans, Marvel's X-Men and especially Daredevil. The franchise was licenced to Playmates Toys for production in 1987 and Playmates worked to produce an animated series that ran for nearly ten years. This kid safe iteration of the Turtles was a massive hit and since then every generation has had their version of the Turtles with multiple movies, TV shows, video games, comics and board games (shout out to the IDW Games versions which are great and can also cross over with their Batman games). While TMNT is not on the same level as DC or Marvel, it is still an enduring franchise that keeps on reinventing itself with varying degrees of success.

My Turtles, as in the ones which I know from my youth, are the 2003 edition, which ran for seven seasons (plus a movie) on Nickelodeon from 2003 to 2009. This show took a lot of inspiration not from its 1987 counterparts but instead from the comics and as such it ran a lot darker; including some episodes and one entire season that were pulled from being aired because Nickelodeon felt they were too disturbing for kids. I of course watched all of them and I've started rewatching them this year. They still hold up.

On Magic: The Gathering (Magic)'s side of things, since October 12th 2020 Magic with the release of Secret Lair: The Walking Dead has been embracing other properties. Lord of the Rings followed in September 2021 and the concept of outside Intellectual Properties became branded as “Universes Beyond” (UB) with Magic's own brand now becoming Universes Within (UW). Universes Beyond expanded further with releases of cards from Stranger Things, Arcane, Street Fighter, Fortnite, Warhammer 40K, Transformers, Dungeons and Dragons, Creepshow, Doctor Who, Evil Dead, The Princess Bride, Jurassic Part, Tomb Raider, Cluedo/Clue, Fallout, Hatsune Miku, Assassin's Creed, Monty Python, Ghostbusters, Child's Play (Chucky), The Office, Sonic the Hedgehog, Jaws, Furby, Transformers, My Little Pony, Iron Maiden, The Last of Us, God of War, Uncharted, Horizon: Forbidden West, Ghost of Tsushima, Twisted Metal and Spongebob. Most of these were released as Secret Lairs, sometimes even as reskins of existing cards and on occasion as commander decks (Doctor Who & Warhammer 40K). With only Lord of the Rings getting a full proper set release and Assassin's Creed getting a very small set.

The largest shift happened in 2025, where not only was the number of sets being released per year massively increased to seven, but also Wizards of the Coast (WotC) announced that they would renege on their previous promise to not print UB into Standard (their only flagship 60 card format where UB was not printed). In that year Final Fantasy, Spider-Man and Avatar the Last Airbender all got set releases to varying responses from the community. Final Fantasy was a massive success with a lot of love and attention lavished on it by the designers and of course given how rabid the Final Fantasy fan base is when it comes to merchandise, the set was a massive success. Avatar was also well received, but as it's a smaller franchise it didn't sell as well. Spider-Man on the other hand is one of the most maligned and hated sets in Magic's history. It was originally going to be a small set release like Assassin's Creed, but because that set didn't sell well it was pushed into Standard.

Spider-Man's set design is a mess, it doesn't tell any coherent story and instead runs through the “greatest hits” not just of the most commonly known Spider-Man (Peter Parker) but it also unwisely jumps into the Spider-Verse in order to try and cash in on the success of that movie franchise. The set ended up with dozens of different Spider-Men and Spider-Women without really managing to do any of them justice. It could have worked if it had the time and attention that Final Fantasy got, or if it focused on a specific set of story arcs like Avatar, but instead we got this set filled with references and the community hated both that and the modern day setting of New York being so prominent.

To make matters worse, between Marvel's Spider-Man release and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the release of Lorwyn Eclipsed, one of two Universes Within planes that are influenced by Welsh Celtic folklore (the second being Eldraine which borrows from King Arthur) and this plane has become one of the most popular in Magic's history despite not doing well in its original release.

As such, when TMNT was announced and released earlier this year the community reaction was visceral, hostile and nasty. The Turtles had a whole bunch of things that triggered these negative reactions that were building up because of UB in Standard and similarities to Spider-Man via a “return to the plane of New York” as Magic players have sardonically joked about having two New York comic book series being so close together. The set was called low effort slop and the high occurrence of pizza and Turtles along with the false claims that the setting “lacked depth” (patently ridiculous when you're dealing with a multi-series franchise that covers multiple dimensions, space travel, time travel and many different factions). I'll absolutely admit that the set did itself no favours with the Pizza themed lands and this weird choice of art for the new release Commander's Plate.

I get it, pizza is served on a plate, but this just doesn't make any sense, especially when Turtles dressed in Samurai armor was right there for the use and that Turtles in Time armor is even used on other card art.

However, when you are familiar with the series, the effort put into the cards from this release is so evident. I won't point at all of the various amazing references they dig into here in their own version of the Turtles, but I would like to highlight one card that shows how much the designers know the franchise. This is Turtles Forever.

For a casual observer this card certainly will look striking and odd, we have the four turtles, but each of them is depicted in a very different art style and medium. That is because this card is referencing five different series of the turtles all in one. Starting on the left, Donatello is from the 1990s live action movies, Raphael is from the 1987 cartoon, Leonardo is from the IDW series (I believe, I'm not 100% on that one) and Michelangelo on the right is from the original comic series. But the card as a whole and its mechanics references the 2003 series finale. That's so many deep cuts in one card that it's kind of amazing they got it all on there.

I won't continue with this soap box speech on why TMNT is being so maligned here, there are legitimate gripes to be had with it, but there's also a lot of incorrect takes and misguided venom. It's been a very hard time to be someone who plays Magic and loves the Turtles these past few months, mostly because of the misinformation and claims of “slop” being thrown at something clearly put together by designers who adore the franchise.

Instead lets get onto Turtle Team-Up which is a 1 to 4 player self contained boss battler that adapts Magic's rule set and cards into a cooperative card based board game where each player takes the role of one of the turtles (via a themed deck) and works together against a randomised selection of classic Turtles foes.

Before we get into the breakdown of how the game plays, I do want to take a moment to talk about the value this box represents. It retails for around 35 Euros at the moment, so it is a very competitive price just on the surface, but Magic isn't like board games. Cards have individual value outside of the product they came in, especially when you have releases that contain unique cards like Jumpstart or this very box. Cards like some of the ones in this set get a low print run and considering the reception to TMNT as a magic franchise (even though mechanically it is a really good collection of cards) how/when we'll get reprints of this boxed set is currently unknown.

That has resulted in several cards going up in price, including cards that are great for Magic's most popular format (Commander) and one of its longest lived format (Pauper, where only cards that have been printed at common rarity can be used). Here's a link to the Scryfall page where you can see the prices for the unique cards printed in just this box. April O'Neil, Human Element; Raphael, Tag Team Tough; Mona Lisa, Ever Adaptable and Michelangelo, On the Scene are cards with large impact in Commander. Utrom Monitor is the common card that has had a massive impact on Pauper, which is why it's around 9 euros at the time of writing (and you get three copies in the box).

I'm not here to give Magic Finance advice and claim these cards are going to keep going up and up in price, this is more an example of how picking up self contained Magic products like this can result in something that may in the future be worth more than you paid to pick it up in the first place. Just the cards I mentioned above are worth more on the secondary market than the price of the box and you don't need any of them to play Turtle Team-Up if you build your own decks.

In short, Magic tends to go up in value over time, while board games tend to trend downwards unless they get a short print run and are considered classics.

How Turtle Team-Up Plays

I will not get into how to play Magic here, there are enough resources out there that you will be more than able to learn if you want to. In fact Magic is so entrenched in the history of tabletop gaming that most people have at least a passing familiarity with it. I will instead go through the specifics of this game mode and note where it differs.

At the start of the game, six bosses are drawn from the boss deck and placed face down. The first of these bosses is flipped face up and the boss event deck is shuffled and placed in the boss area. The health of each boss stage varies depending on the number of players, it's 20 for a solo or two player game, 30 for three players and with four players there are 10 bosses total and each stage of the bosses has 30 life.

The players share a life total (20 for solo/2 player, 30 for three player and 40 for four player) and they take their turns together at the same time following the normal rules of Magic. As the players share a life total they also get to assign blocks against the Boss's creatures as a team, this can be very important as some of these minions can be very dangerous.

On the Boss turn two event cards are revealed and resolved one after another. These cards can be various members of the Foot Clan (represented by creatures) or events that do a one off thing. The creatures all cannot block, which simplifies that portion of the game, instead they will wait a turn and then attack. There are three different types of Creature as you can see here.

The events vary in what they can do, some force players to lose their own creatures (making it harder to attack and defend), some return the Foot from the event decks' discard or force players to discard cards from hand. Sometimes you get to “dodge” the events because you don't have creatures in play, other times you can really get hurt hard and the cards you spent time marshalling are lost in one swoop.

The bosses themselves are not creatures, instead they are represented by cards that provide a modifier to the game environment. Shredder for example makes the players lose 1 life whenever a Foot creature dies, Bebop gives the Foot Disciples a +1/+1 counter when they attack. Turning them from simple 3/3s into a growing threat that has to be handled quickly otherwise they may grow out of control.

Tricks do not just end there for the bosses, when the first boss is defeated the second stage has two boss cards in play, so they get to interact with each other and make the game harder. This reflects the growth and development the player's own areas should have and if they don't, they're forced to get stronger or lose. The third stage has three bosses in play at the same time and if you're playing four player there will be a fourth stage with four bosses in play.

The four player decks take into account the environment in which they are played, they have cards that can help other players develop their game plan rather than solely helping the player who played the card. Cooperative Magic via the community ran “Horde Mode” has been a fascinating area for a long time and this Turtles Team-Up version of that is an exemplary evolution. Here are a few examples.

Each of these has direct ways you can help other players or benefit from having multiple players in the game and it's been fun to experience these. I'd also like to highlight that the Raphael deck has less teamwork elements than the other three, this is true to his role in the group as the hot-headed loner. Another really neat element is how Michelangelo is the turtle who generally grows the largest (most powerful) as Mikey puts up a facade of being a goofy jokester but underneath it he is both the most emotionally sensitive and technically best at fighting. This is why Mikey's signature weapons are nunchucks.

Beyond the Sewer: Expanding on Turtles Team-Up

There are four booster packs included in the box in addition to the player decks. These offer a chance to customise your decks further and you could easily allow for a “legacy” style game where these boosters are opened one at a time after games and everyone is allowed to swap a card into their deck. However that is just the shallow end of the pool, I am currently working on pulling all of the Turtles cards together in order to construct a cube that has players construct their decks as a group before tackling the bosses, it combines my love of deck construction with boss battling, cooperative play while using a pretty robust (if not perfect) game system.

The boss deck design is also generic and powerful enough that you can use it against other decks, I've found Commander ones in particular to be very enjoyable, especially if you get the Turtles commander deck and keep everything Turtles themed. I'm very hopeful that this “Team-Up” style of release continues into the future because it's as groundbreaking as the Red Rains addition to Ashes (Reborn/Ascendency) has been, there's a lot of potential here for ways to enjoy Magic in a collaborative fashion and the price point is really good compared to how expensive Magic can be normally. This might be the best single Magic product they've put out in years.

Final Thoughts

It is surprising just how self contained this boxed set is, there is of course always the potential to expand on what you have here and that is something which Trading Card Games are always angling to do, but you really don't have to do that because the core gameplay is robust and varied enough to last a good number of sessions. I've covered some ways that this experience can be expanded on, in truth you can run the boss deck against absolutely any Magic deck whatsoever and it will function (with the aforementioned Destroy all Turtles card being the exception if you're outside of the Turtles cards).

This really is a great little thing to have for players who want a cheap, easy to transport 1 to 4 player cooperative Turtles game and it's sufficiently unique that I didn't find myself overly comparing it to Marvel Champions or Sentinels of the Multiverse. If you have a younger family member(s) who are just getting into slightly more complex gaming this can be a great stepping stone because the more complex parts of Magic are shorn away and the cooperative experience allows you to really help them out. But you can go even further than that by utilising the various cooperatively slanted cards to give the younger gamer the boost they need to really feel strong and have fun.

It's also decently hard enough that winning is far from guaranteed, there's enough curve balls and haymakers in the boss decks that you can get put on the back ropes quite often and you can even play the four decks against each other in a free-for-all mode.

The box is a shell of a good time and given the secondary market situation for some of the cards it's also looking like it'll retain its value over the near future. I can recommend this one to turtle lovers and magic players looking for a way to explore the game with the next generation.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go put the first season of TMNT 2003 on in the background while I work.