Turtle power! Magic plunges further into the sewers with the new TMNT set, but at least we get some cube drafts out of it.

Trophy Triple-Power Esper Ninjas

With three pieces of fast mana, we could've won with just about anything. Here we put together a tidy Esper agro deck. Fliers, ninjas, and a Lutri for the board.

Two cards I was kind of testing out: Guardian Scalelord, a near-permanent resident of the sideboard, and Loch Mare, a cool new blue threat. Both can push damage in a deck like this, but neither one actually showed up too much, which might've helped our win rate!

I still think the Mare in particular has some powerful play patterns, so I'll aim to try it again if I can.

Trophy Esper Tokens

Just the one piece of power this time. Barely even a deck! Pretty similar to the last one, but with more of an emphasis on tokens than evasion.

Like most white decks with an Ancestral Recall, this might've been better without it. We picked up a strong enough suite of blue cards to make it worth the trouble, though the mana's pretty shaky.

Setting aside the Recall, Little Teferi deserves a special shout-out. No surprises that it's a good card, but if I'm flirting with white, this is the signal I'm looking for to jump into blue. It's a fantastic tempo play, but more than that, it enables you to dictate the entire flow of the rest of the game.

2-1 Lurrus Garbage Platter

Ah, crashing out with a bad Lurrus deck; now, this feels right.

Kind of a weird one. A four-colour deck mashing together two combos: Breach/Brainfreeze and Witherbloom/Smog.

The combos themselves are okay, but the deck's really lacking means of finding the pieces. There's the one Demonic Tutor, but then it's nothing but rummaging and prayers. A lot of cards here are just filling out the deck.

I will say, the coolest win was the very last one, where we discarded our hand (including Lurrus!) with the LED, putting just enough cards in our graveyard to Breach out Witherbloom Apprentice and Chain of Smog. Garbage platter, baby!

Trophy Double-Power Double-Time Walk

Not much to reflect on with this one, but an opponent said it was a nice deck!

Outside of that, basically just an assertive Azorious deck. The top end is pretty heavy, so Time Walk as a free Explore definitely helped.

The loosest card is the Ephemerate. We did use it to flicker Spellseeker and pick up Remand before the Time Walk against another blue deck, which was kind no cool.

Trophy Jund Gaak

Love the Gaak, love to Gaak 'em out.

Granted, maybe Icetill + Strip put in more work than the Necropolis. Still, points to the big man and Icetill fueling the graveyard certainly helped power him out.

This deck leans more on the assertive threats than turbo-mill. I cut the Stitcher and the Bloodghast for better threats. I'm genuinely not sure how all-in to go on the Gaak - Caleb Gannon has had success with them, so maybe I'll skew more that way on the next Gaak.

Trophy Triple-Power Lutri Timewalk

Switching over to Arena, we kicked off the season with one of the strongest decks I'll ever get to put together.

Time Walk, Ancestrall, Mox, and a Lutri in case we wanted to cast any of the power a second time.

This deck was on the durdlier side, so we did get steamrolled by a couple agro decks along the way. That said, by and large we finding the Time Walk was enough to stabalize - including a nail-biter against an agro deck that beat us down to one life!

6-3 Grixis Lurrus

We went Ragavan into Psychic Frog and I started praying Lurrus wouldn't show up to lead me astray when, what do you know, guess who was waiting in the very next pack?

As far as Lurrus decks go though, you couldn't dream of much better. Funnily enough, this deck doesn't actually use the Sol Ring too well, but hey, we can always dump the mana into the companion zone.

Just to shout it out, I love Kroxa specifically in these kinds of decks. It's a low pick most of the time, but that means we can normally get it on the wheel and it gives us some much-needed inevitability after griding things out.

Trophy Atraxa Cheats

A Flash/Natural Order cheats deck with Atraxa and The Wurm.

I really didn't expect this one to get there. The mana's rough and we don't have much consistency in lining up our game plan. Still, you only need one big cheat to take over the game and Natural Order in particular is a very compact piece.

I've been taking Overlord of the Mistmoors higher in reanimation decks, especially if there's a chance of actually casting it. It does a great job of stabilizing the board and one or two swings is enough to take over.

Trophy Esper Agro

Back to the Esper agro decks!

This one felt great. A ton of early pressure with Force and Daze to back it up.

The most recent changes to the Arena cube include a black agro package. Like the rest of the community, I think most of it's pretty lackluster, but this is definitely the home for Gix. I'm less sure about Super Shredder - it reads a lot better than it plays. Even here, it was mostly just okay.

Trophy Minsc & Timewalk

Another durdly blue/green Time Walk/Recall deck backed up with some muscle in the form of Minsc and Titania.

Unsurprisingly, I really enjoy these Time Walk decks. Taking a thousand turns in a row is pretty cool! Going all-in means the draft is a bit on rails - you're just looking for anything to rebuy Time Walk - but the gameplay is decadent enough to make up for it.

The best game was one where the opponent had a massive board and an Ouroboroid. There was no way to attack through and they were going to crush us if they got another turn, but we played Minsc into enough extra turns to eventually throw Boo at their face for the win.

Trophy Mardu Blotus

Speaking of decadent drafts. The deck here is definitely not great - chunky on three and too much filler - but Lotus and Sol Ring made up for it.

I've had mixed success with these Mardu decks, which I do mean in a complimentary fashion.

They're missing the raw card advantage of blue, so going down a card for Lotus can be a bit rough, but they can make up for it with tons of effective two-for-ones like the goyf brothers Pyrogoyf and Barrowgoyf.

Trophy Grixis Cheats

The last draft worth talking about, but a high note to end on. This was a nutso reanimator/sneak with three pieces of power.

The mana ended up pretty rough - no red/black lands to be found - and we're only splashing blue for a Show and Tell I would've rather cut. Still, the deck hit its gameplan consistently and it all felt smooth as silk.

I've said before, I'm low on all-in reanimator, but when it works, it feels unbeatable. Archon of Cruelty is far and away the best cheat target and an early Entomb/Animate Dead simply ends the game on turn two.

Turtle Power

And that's it!

Though most of the TMNT cards didn't land, I think that's okay. We probably don't need to test quite so many, but it's worth checking out the new cards.

Super Shredder was alright. Mutagen Man was interesting and I'd like to pick up a copy for my own cube. Leonardo, Leader in Blue is a sweet design that, like every ninja turtle art, isn't something I ever want to see again.

Looking forward to the Strixhaven season!