Magic’s TMNT set made me fall back in love with Food

After a years-long hiatus from Magic: The Gathering, I found my first consistent pod in the summer of 2019. My Amazon purchase history indicates that to bolster my very old collection of mostly vintage cards, I got the 2020 core set bundle in July, followed by the Throne of Eldraine bundle in September. Little did I know that I’d gotten back into Magic just in time for one of the best and most influential sets in recent memory — and one that introduced Food to the game. Black-green is one of my favorite color combos to begin with, and Eldraine is full of fun cards like Bake into a Pie, a black instant that destroys a target creature and bakes them into a Food token, Sweeney Todd-style. There’s also Giant Opportunity, a green sorcery that creates a 7/7 green giant if you sacrifice two Foods, essentially simulating what happens if you eat two magic beans.

You can sacrifice Foods to regain life, and there are a huge variety of interactions with Foods that can trigger all sorts of effects. While Food cards have popped up again in the years since, particularly in 2023’s Wilds of Eldraine and The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, I wasn’t prepared for how big a showing they have in the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set. I wouldn’t call it a core mechanic, but it’s definitely a noteworthy set for those like myself who consider themselves Magic Foodies.

In my first pick-two draft, I veered into a white-green deck after drawing Party Dude early on, which generates a Food token for each player. At level 2, Party Dude makes it so that whenever an opponent’s artifact is put into the graveyard, you draw a card. In the TMNT set’s ecosystem, this is huge. Tokens still enter the graveyard even though they cease to exist after they get there. While Food tokens aren’t super-common in TMNT, Mutagen tokens are. Pretty much every draft deck uses Mutagen tokens in some fashion, sacrificing them to add a +1/+1 counter to a creature of the player’s choice.

Don’t make my same mistakes however: A white Featherbrained Filcher caught my eye since it generates a Food token when it leaves the battlefield, compelling me to attempt a white-green deck for that reason (black-green is far better for food). He’s an absolutely horrifying-looking mutant bird so grotesque you want him to be put out of his misery. I also managed to pick up two copies of Courier of Comestibles — basically a pizza delivery person on a moped — who searches your deck for a Food card or creates a Food token. A few copies of the colorless Omni-Cheese Pizza also came out, which helps with drawing extra cards, along with Guac & Marshmallow Pizza with flash that can untap and buff one creature on the fly.

The undisputed king of TMNT Food strategies, however, is Pizza Face, Gastromancer. Though I didn’t pull one in any of my drafts or Sealed decks, he’s definitely one of my personal chase cards in this set. Imagine some of that mutagenic green ooze got onto your stereotypical New York City pizza-maker and the pizza he was making, and they combined together into one oozy, nasty, cheesy creature dripping all over the place. This particular design is based on an action figure from 1990, complete with a pizza cutter for a foot and a second face on his forehead. He is an abomination. I love him — and I love how disgusting everything food-related looks in TMNT.

He costs five mana to play (three colorless, one black, and one green) and comes in as a 2/4 that generates a Food token. He has a disappear ability that means if a permanent leaves your battlefield during your turn, he puts three +1/+1 counters on one target artifact or creature. If it isn’t a creature, it becomes one. In other words, as you sacrifice Food or Mutagen tokens or lose creatures in battle, he buffs one of your remaining creatures and/or transforms a remaining token into a creature. You can also sacrifice Pizza Face for 10 mana to gain 15 life, which could save you if you’re feeling the pressure in the late-game. He can make for a nasty and fun Food Commander.

Each of the four Ninja Turtles is represented on numerous legendary creature cards. Raphael predictably favors aggressive red strategies, and Donatello naturally has great artifact synergy. At least over in the set’s preconstructed Commander deck, Michelangelo focuses on Food. If you attack during your turn, he puts a +1/+1 counter on a target creature and creates a Food token. That deck also comes pre-loaded with some other unique Food cards like Dimension X Pizzasaur, a black pizza dinosaur that can destroy a target creature, and Ninja Pizza, a green enchantment that keeps generating Food tokens while making it so that your Food tokens can generate mana instead of life.

Altogether, the TMNT set has me excited about Food again. If I can get my hands on some of these cards, I can make a Commander deck with Michelangelo, the Heart and Leonardo, the Balance as co-Commanders. Then I can aim for a white-black-green deck chock full of the nastiest foods TMNT has to offer that still capitalizes on Mutagen tokens. Will it be overpowered? Definitely not, even if I supplement the strategy with a bunch of older Food cards. Will I have a lot of fun making my opponents get all queasy with cards like Anchovy & Banana pizza? Absolutely. Cowabunga dudes, because I’m going to call this deck Stomach Churn.