Opinion: Magic x TMNT Crossover Might be a Huge Mistake

On October 10th, Wizards of the Coast joined Nickelodeon at New York Comic-Con to reveal the fourth and final, yet-to-be-revealed expansion for Magic: The Gathering in 2025—the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles partnership.

The comic book series, launched by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird in 1984 and adapted for animation in 1990, is now owned by Viacom, as is Avatar: The Last Airbender, whose set comes out at the end of November.

However, the new partnership already presents some troublesome gaps that make it a potentially failed set from the get-go and some design similarities that make it a bit too close to Spider-Man.

In this article, we analyze the potential risks surrounding this collaboration and how the expansions surrounding it, combined with the time between it and other sets, could ultimately significantly harm the connection between the first and second half of Magic: The Gathering in 2026.

An interesting detail caught the attention of the Magic community on the day of the set's first previews: the cards Raphael's Technique and Bebop & Rocksteady have numbers that could indicate that the set is also an expanded mini-set to serve Limited purposes, given the low popularity of Beyond Boosters / Epilogue Boosters.

With Raphael's Technique being card number 105 and Bebop & Rocksteady being 140, this means there are only 35 cards between the remaining red and green spells before reaching the multicolored ones. For example, the red cards in Final Fantasy start at number 129, while the Fated Firepower card from Avatar is card number 132.

Another concern the set raises regarding planning is the reuse of a mechanic that refers, this time more directly, to Ninjutsu.

Obviously, a variant like Sneak makes much more sense in a set featuring Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it's impossible to ignore the fact that this is the third time in a Universes Beyond set that a mechanic with this style of alternative-cost effect involving an attacking creature has been used, and that the last two expansions were either mini-sets or were originally planned as mini-sets.

Update: TMNT will have 190 cards

Last Tuesday, Blake Rasmussen confirmed on WeeklyMTG that the set will have 190 cards and was planned that way from the very beginning, which raises some concerns regarding the card reduction in each major Magic expansion, given Rasmussen's statement that 2026 will only add 120 more cards than 2025, pointing to the possibility of one or two more sets with fewer than 200 cards during the year.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will be released on March 6th, six weeks after Lorwyn Eclipsed's release on January 23rd. Unless the company decides to delay the preview season to just one week instead of two—as they did with Spider-Man—Lorwyn Eclipsed will likely have less than a month of previews before its release, given that prerelease week will occur at the end of February.

Next up is Secrets of Strixhaven in April, which will likely also fall within this 45-day release window and will pose the same problems for TMNT as it will for Lorwyn Eclipsed—one product will somehow harm the other, and perhaps the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set itself will suffer from such a short release window between two "Magic" sets, especially due to the upcoming issue.

Unless you're already familiar with the comics or animation—and perhaps even if you are—it's undeniable that TMNT's aesthetics don't match the overall aesthetic of Magic: The Gathering.

Like Spider-Man, the adventures of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael take place in New York City and bring with them real-world elements that don't fit with the card game's setting, as exemplified by the infamous Pizza Lands.

Several players and content creators have already expressed dissatisfaction with the aesthetics of TMNT compared to other releases, and this sentiment tends to grow as new cards are revealed: when a motorized bicycle appears on another card, there's a spell referring to eating pizza, or simply something that refers to another element of the game that doesn't quite fit, this will be considered as a turnoff for enfranchised players.

Another challenge for the set is the fact that burnout already exists. Wizards of the Coast doesn't know dosing information: they flood the community with announcements on the same day and then announce more things a few weeks later, creating a process that should create perpetual hype, but this time ended up causing fatigue in the majority of the public, especially due to the excess of partnerships both in mainline sets and in the Secret Lair drops, where some, like Furby or The Office border on the absurd.

While the main TMNT set presents risks, Wizards has learned from Spider-Man's mistake and will release a themed Commander deck for the set—one with a unique mechanic that allows you to play both a Commander and a mix of Partners in the same deck.

Criticisms can—and should—be made about the design of Heroes in a Half Shell if the audience prefers, but a pick-and-play product for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans is precisely what Spider-Man needed to create a useful gateway for fans who want to experience Magic in a setting beyond Welcome Decks.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Commander deck is the perfect gateway for this audience to experience Magic: The Gathering in its most popular and presumably social format, without all the risks that trying to play competitively would entail, and with the possibility of enjoying a closed list only with cards from the expansion.

Ideally, this would be the only Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles product. Releasing one set 45 days after another, and possibly 45 days before the third set of the year, overly stifles the Standard audience and limits the scope for what could otherwise be a second villain-based Commander deck, creating a perfect experience for TMNT fans without further straining the competitive player's wallet.

Next year will be a litmus test for Universes Beyond and Magic: The Gathering. Four collaborations in one year go far beyond what WotC should do to avoid saturating the series for its internal audience and disintegrating its public image for external audiences who only know Magic through social media.

There are two sets that could suffer significantly from an excess of crossovers. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one, due to its poor release timing combined with a natural rejection of the set's aesthetic compared to the Magic universe and signs of its design being similar to Spider-Man's. While Star Trek could suffer from burnout and saturation of previous sets, especially if Marvel Super Heroes and The Hobbit are full-fledged releases with a broad product line.

Magic doubled down on Universes Beyond, and while it's possible to imagine that three of the four 2026 collaborations have the potential to come close to or even surpass Final Fantasy and Lord of the Rings in sales volume, TMNT doesn't fit that mold, and of all the sets revealed for next year, it's probably the one most at risk of failure.