As the preview week for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles continues, a new co-op experience, Turtle Team-Up, is finally being fully revealed thanks to an announcement by Wizards at Daily MTG. Turtle Team-Up is intended to be a way to bring new, perhaps younger players into Magic while giving them the support of having teammates to help with making thoughtful decisions.
The Turtle Team-Up kit includes 4 play boosters and 4 themed decks. Each deck will be themed around one of the Ninja Turtles. The Leonardo deck will have Leonardo, Big Brother and Leonardo, Worldly Warrior. The Donatello deck will include Donatello, Turtle Techie and Donatello, Rad Scientist. Raphael’s deck which showcases his unique friendship with Casey Jones will include Casey & Raph, Hotheads and Raphael, Most Attitude. The fun-loving Michelangelo will have in his theme deck Michelangelo, Game Master and Michelangelo, Mutant BFF.
These are 60-card decks using cards from both the TMT set code and the TMC set code. The TMC set code will also include 29 cards that are new to Magic: The Gathering with each theme deck getting 8 of them. A 38-card enemy deck is also included.
Turtle Team-Up is for 2-4 players. Players will pick one of the four theme decks and will work together to battle the enemy deck. The enemy deck will randomly assign boss and event cards for the team to tackle. Players will work together so they’ll either win together or they’ll lose together. Aside from being a unique experience in Universes Beyond for Ninja Turtle fans, this will also make teaching new players easier because a new player will be able to collaborate with their team mates.
Jason Fanelli at GameSpot had an exclusive interview with Turtle Team-Up lead designer Corey Bowen, Eric Engelhard, the set design lead for TMNT, and Crystal Frasier, the TMNT narrative design lead. He got an even deeper look into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Turtle Team-Up co-op mode. Frasier said about bringing the heroes in a half shell to life, “It was really important for us to hit each turtle's personality, but also peak weirdness for them, to lean into what I think is the most important part of the Turtles, which is asking, 'Who the hell is that?’”
Engelhard talked about the motivation for creating this unique game mode. He said “"A main purpose of Turtle Team-Up is to be a decent onboarding tool for an enfranchised player to teach a new player, or even a parent to teach their child," Corey Bowen said. "We felt that all we needed is one thing [for each Boss] that flavorfully feels like the Boss, and we just let the Event cards themselves do all the other variants.”
Fanelli also learned how Turtle Team-Up will be played. Games are constructed as duels, meaning there is a boss turn and a player turn. The player team will go through all the normal phases of a turn in Magic. The Boss turn on the other hand only has three phases — Untap, Action, and Combat. In the Action phase, Bosses play event cards — two in a two player game and three in a three or four player game. Event cards are compiled into an Event deck and will be used by revealing the top card of the deck. In the combat phase, all available Ninjas at the Boss’ disposal will attack and the player group can declare blockers. After damage is assessed, the Boss passes the turn. The game is over after the players life total is 0 or the player group defeats all three stages of Bosses.
Turtle Team-Up is releasing on March 6th with the rest of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Universes Beyond set which includes the Turtle Power! Commander precon and the Pizza Bundle. All of these products can be pre-ordered at local game stores.
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