White
- Hamato Guardian Stance: one mana for plus 1/3, flying, and a scry
- Grounded for Life: tap out attacking and a tapped creature eats a two-mana kill
Set TMT
195 cards
Mar 2026
195 cards
Mar 2026
Limited Reference · Draft & Sealed
Ninja TurtlesDraft Guide
Bombs, the five crews, top commons, traps, and team-up combos, consolidated from six expert guides. Then checked against 180,204 recorded games of the actual format, because opinions are cheap and the tape is not.
Every other section here is expert opinion recorded before or during the format. This one is the record of what actually happened. Card tiles throughout carry a win-rate chip: that is the games-in-hand win rate, meaning how often a player won when that card was in hand or on the battlefield. Set median is 57.8 percent, so anything above it beats the average card.
Games analyzed
180,204
Premier draft, whole format
On the play
59.4%
vs 54.2 on the draw
Play advantage
+5.3
points. A tempo format.
Average game
9.4
turns. Short and sharp.
Two-color archetype standings, by win rate
| Pair | Deck | Win rate | Games | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WB | Sneak | 59.0% | 40,782 | |
| UR | Artifacts | 58.1% | 40,121 | |
| RW | Alliance | 55.9% | 17,293 | |
| BG | Disappear | 55.2% | 21,473 | |
| GU | Mutagens | 53.2% | 15,878 | |
| RG | unsupported pair | 45.7% | 679 |
All five supported pairs are winning decks. The two most-drafted (Sneak and Artifacts, about 40,000 games each) are also the two best, so the crowd read this format correctly. Mutagens is the weakest of the five, which matches every guide calling its synergies the loosest. Wander outside the five and the floor drops hard: the unsupported red-green pair posts 45.7 percent on a tiny sample.
Five systems, one of which rewrites how combat works. Learn Sneak properly or lose games you thought you had won.
Sneak NEWAn alternative cost on creatures and noncreature spells: during the declare blockers step, after blocks are in, pay it and return an unblocked attacker to your hand. The sneaked creature enters tapped and attacking. Unlike ninjutsu it is a real cast that uses the stack, and it only happens in that one step.
Disappear NEWTurns on if a permanent left the battlefield under your control this turn. It is revolt under a new name. Bounce a creature to a sneak cost, sacrifice a food, token or mutagen, trade in combat, or crack an Escape Tunnel. Discarding, milling, and getting countered do not count.
Mutagen tokens NEWPay one, tap, sacrifice at sorcery speed to put a +1/+1 counter on a creature. They are artifacts, so they feed the artifact deck, and sacrificing one switches on disappear.
AllianceWhenever another creature you control enters, do a thing. Effects vary from pings to counters, so token-makers, blinks, and sneak-replayed creatures are the payoff. Note it has dropped green from its color identity in this set.
ClassEnchantments that enter at level 1 and level up at sorcery speed for permanent upgrades. All five are rares worth playing in their colors, but only the white one is strong enough to pull you into a color.
FoodSacrifice for life, but more importantly they are artifacts that turn on disappear, feed sacrifice outlets, and are tutorable. Enough real Food cards exist that tutors find spells, not just tokens.
The experts' top ten, in their order, with the tape attached. Every one of these is a real bomb: all sit at 60 percent or better against a 57.8 percent median. The ranking, though, did not survive contact with the data. See the verdict below.
The tape's verdict on the ranking: the set of ten was right, the order was not. Sally Pride at number six posts 69.9 percent and The Last Ronin at number ten posts 69.1 percent, both far ahead of the number one pick at 64.7 percent. Meanwhile Savanti Romero, ranked second, is the weakest of the group at 60.6 percent. Read this list as an unordered set of first-pickables, and move the two token-and-saga engines to the top of it.
This set supports five two-color decks and they are all enemy pairs. That is unusually friendly to drafters: with only five lanes, gold and hybrid cards carry far less deckbuilding risk than in a ten-archetype format, so take them earlier than instinct says.
Sneak59.0% · best deck
Sneak · tempo aggro
Attack with evasive or expendable creatures, then use sneak during declare blockers to bounce an unblocked attacker and drop a threat tapped and attacking. Cheap creatures you are happy to return to hand are the engine, and recursion makes the loop profitable. The most-drafted deck in the format and the best.
Artifacts58.1% · co-favorite
Artifact count · value midrange
Flood the board with cheap artifacts and artifact creatures, then cash them in with payoffs that count artifacts entering. It plays a value game and pivots into oversized, hard-to-block attackers. Hard floor: do not build it without at least seven artifacts, and ten is the real target.
Alliance55.9% · solid
Alliance · go-wide aggro
A steady stream of creatures entering, since every body triggers alliance for pumps, counters, or damage. Repeatable tokens and blinks turn one card into several triggers a turn. Its weakness is card advantage, so it leans on re-triggered enter-the-battlefield value instead of raw draw.
Disappear55.2% · grindy
Disappear · food sacrifice
Deliberately make a permanent leave the battlefield every turn, by sacrificing food, tokens, or trading pre-combat, to switch on end-step disappear triggers. The payoffs build advantage that survives removal aimed at the engine itself. Time them to fire the turn they land.
Mutagens53.2% · weakest
Counters · good-stuff midrange
Make mutagen tokens off Mutants entering and attacking, then convert them into +1/+1 counters and add evasion and card draw so the deck is not just fatties. The synergies are the loosest of the five, so aim to simply have the biggest board, and remember mutagens only activate at sorcery speed.
Two build rules worth printing on your hand: each archetype has hybrid commons and gold uncommons designed for it, so plan to play all of them when you are in those colors. And watch for legendary commons: you will open multiples, and casting the second forces you to sacrifice the first.
The consensus early picks, and the cleanest prediction hit in the whole guide: every one of these landed above the set median, ranging from the 66th to the 98th percentile of all cards. Cheap interaction and bodies that leave value behind are how you beat a tempo format.
White
Blue
Black
Red
Green
The most remarkable call in the source material: ten cards flagged as overrated before the data existed, and all ten came in below the 20th percentile of the set. Most are below the 13th. Better still, the three worst-performing cards in the entire set are all on this list, in order.
The pattern behind all ten: uncommon equipment is a systematic trap in this set, cards that cannot block lose value against sneak aggro, and finding a target for removal is not the same as that removal being worth a card. Judge every card by its floor when you are behind, not by its ceiling.
Bebop gives rhinos menace; Rocksteady stops boars being blocked by more than one. Each is the other's type, so each becomes must-be-blocked-by-two AND cannot-be-blocked-by-more-than-one: simply unblockable, for about 12 a turn.
Venus only grows if she is dealt damage and survives, and nobody blocks her. The Nunchaku attaches free and forces a fight, converting that damage into counters, with trample stapled on.
Splinter's cheap sneak returns Leonardo to hand, so you re-sneak him and re-trigger his team pump every turn. Also the reason to BLOCK an opposing Leonardo rather than let the loop assemble.
With seven mana and two unblocked attackers, sneak both: three Spirits arrive tapped and attacking and the team gets plus two power. Roughly 13 damage from an empty board.
Henchbots can only exile a creature that is already tapped. Tap and stun with the Scientists a turn early and you exile anything, even against an opponent who never attacks. This is the exception that makes Henchbots playable.
The Foundry makes a robot when it enters AND when it leaves, so bouncing it nets a second and replaying it a third. A clean two-into-three curve for the artifact deck.
Tunnel Rats returns itself from the graveyard for five; the Kitty pays two to sacrifice a creature and draw. A seven-mana loop drawing an extra card every turn wins any grind.
Everything Pizza demands one mana of every color, which looks unbuildable until Omni-Cheese replaces itself on cast and later taps and sacrifices for any color. Two of those plus a fetched basic makes five colors genuinely reachable.
The single most important habit in this format: assume an opponent attacking with mana up is holding a sneak card. Block aggressively anyway. An unfavorable trade beats letting them bounce an unblocked attacker and slam a 6/4 deathtouch straight in.
Blue
- Mind Transfer Protocol: rewrites base stats to 4/5 and cantrips, so counters stack on top
- Return to the Sewers: instant-speed answer that leaves them a mutagen
Black
- Stomped by the Foot: assume minus 5/5, not minus 2/2. They always have a token to feed it.
- Pain 101: deathtouch plus it comes back tapped, so it trades with anything
Red
- Mouser Attack!: usually plus three power and first strike, not the token mode
- Bot Bashing Time: six damage answers your best creature at sorcery speed
Green
- Saved by the Shell: with a Turtle out it is ONE mana for a counter, trample, hexproof, and indestructible
- Guac & Marshmallow Pizza: a Food with FLASH that ambushes an attacker
- Tenderize: their big body fights yours at instant speed
Any deck
- Action News Crew: a creature with an instant-speed channel. Six open mana means a team pump plus a card.
- Sneak itself: cast your own spells postcombat to bluff that you are holding one
A dual land shows up in roughly 60 percent of packs, one for each of the five supported pairs. Use your lands as the tiebreaker when two color pairs look equally deep in card quality.
Sealed build, in order
- Sort in color order, commons apart from the rest, arranged by mana value. The uncommons tell you which of the five decks your pool actually supports.
- Stay in the five enemy pairs. Off-archetype builds measurably underperform, and the data backs it: the best unsupported pair still lost more than it won.
- Count artifacts before committing to blue-red. Seven is the floor, ten is the target.
- Count card quality, not card count. A color with few playables that are all excellent is still live.
- Let the lands break ties between two equally deep pairs, and keep the cut cards as a grindier sideboard plan.
Play like a Hamato
- Be on the play, act like it. A 5.3 point play advantage and 9.4 turn games mean tempo decides more here than card advantage does.
- Block early and often. Sneak punishes the polite; take the bad trade.
- Mutagens are sorcery speed. Plan counters in your main phase, not as fake combat tricks.
- Fire disappear the turn it lands: trade or sacrifice pre-combat, then deploy postcombat so you bank a trigger even if they kill the payoff.
- Hold a spare mutagen uncracked if your deck counts artifacts on the battlefield.