TMNT cards made my Cloud Strife Commander decklist even better

When a friend gifted me the Cloud Strife Magic: The Gathering card, I was pretty intimidated. It’s a reprint of the wickedly powerful Najeela, the Blade-Blossom — the kind of commander that opposing players target immediately. A 3/2 human warrior that costs two colorless and one red mana, Najeela generates a warrior creature token whenever a warrior attacks, but the key detail is its second ability. For five mana (one of each color) you can untap all attacking creatures and give them trample, lifelink, and haste and gives you an additional combat phase after that one. Because of the ability, that means a commander deck with Cloud Strife/Najeela at its head has access to all five colors and a very clear path to victory.

All told, the general strategy is pretty straightforward: ramp up a variety of mana, fill your board with warriors, keep attacking to generate more warriors, and eventually trigger the ability mid-combat. Running a five-color deck, however, means you have to carefully calculate the mana costs across all of your cards and balance your lands and other mana-generators accordingly. There are also a lot of directions you can potentially veer. Warrior appears as a creature subtype across all sorts of sets. While it’s possible to build this out using just Final Fantasy cards, I had the most fun mining the most recent sets and by embracing the weirdness of Universes Beyond — especially when I added Raphael and Leonardo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into the mix.

Raph & Leo, Sibling Rivals is one of the many team-up cards from the TMNT set, combining two characters into one legendary creature. Even though the card is a mutant ninja turtle and not a warrior, its ability works really well here. Every time Raph & Leo attack, they untap one or two attackers and trigger an additional combat phase if this is the first combat phase of the turn. In practice, you can attack with this duo and another big creature to hopefully draw out and eliminate some blockers. And if your other attacker is a warrior, with Cloud Strife on the board, he’ll generate a warrior token. Raph & Leo then trigger an additional combat phase. That’s when you go all out: attack with everything and pay for Cloud’s ability to untap your attackers, buff them, and trigger yet another attack phase.

There are far better extra combat cards out there that I don’t own yet (like Moraug, Fury of Akoum), but the image of Cloud teaming up a pair of Ninja Turtles is too good to pass up. In the TMNT packs I ripped, I also happened to pull a Sword of Hearth and Home reprint featuring an excellent pizza cutter full of cheese. It’s an equipment that lets you blink a creature and search your library for a basic land every time the equipped creature deals combat damage to a player. I’d also previously harvested a Sword of the Animist from the Final Fantasy 7-themed Limit Break preconstructed deck which also seeks out basic lands. Both of these help fix your mana. To add to the FF7–TMNT crossover vibes, I also included Everything Pizza for the flavor. It also seeks out a land and comes with a seven-cost five-color ability that’s super powerful. Since we’ll have that mana base anyway, it synergizes really well.

I also pulled a few useful cards out of the Turtle Power! TMNT precon which is five-color, namely Exploding Barrel, Chromatic Lantern, and various non-basic lands.

Skimming through my Avatar: The Last Airbender cards, I realized that many of the ally creatures double as warriors. So fighting alongside Cloud, Raph, and Leo we have two versions of Sokka and Katara each, along with Suki, Kyoshi Warrior. Suki is probably my favorite here since her power is equal to the number of creatures you control (and we’ll wind up with a lot of warrior creature tokens). She also creates an ally creature token every time she attacks. Katara, Heroic Healer puts a +1/+1 counter on each other creature you control when she enters, making her a perfect candidate for the Sword of Hearth and Home blink effect to trigger it again.

The real backbone for this deck, however, comes from Lorwyn Eclipsed. The set puts a huge emphasis on typal strategies, but it’s mostly limited to creatures that live in Lorwyn and Shadowmoor like elves, goblins, and kithkin. But there are plenty of changeling cards that count as all creature types — including warrior. More importantly, the set has Gathering Stone and Chronicle of Victory. In fact, despite sitting on the Cloud Strife card for a while, it was pulling Chronicle of Victory that finally convinced me to start building this deck. Once played for six mana, it buffs all creatures of a chosen type with +2/+2, first strike, and trample. And whenever you play a card of the chosen type, you draw a card. All of those 1/1 warrior tokens instantly become 3/3s with first strike and trample.

Lorwyn Eclipsed also delivered with Mirrormind Crown, an equipment that attaches to a creature. Whenever you would create one or more tokens, you may instead create tokens that are copies of the equipped creature. This one’s a bit risky since this deck is heavy on legendary creatures, but I do have Curious Colossus, a non-legendary giant warrior that transforms all of an opponent’s creatures into 1/1 cowards. Another typal highlight is Bloodline Bidding, an eight-cost black sorcery with convoke (creatures can tap to help you pay the cost), it returns all creature cards of the chosen type in your graveyard to the battlefield.

I’ve still got some work to do before things feel perfect for this deck, which I’ve named Warriors of Strife, and I still have to tweak the mana base so it’s more balanced. I feel like this is a commander deck I’ll constantly be tinkering with, like it’s a revolving door of warrior heroes from each new set that comes out. For now, it’s in a great spot. Here’s a look at the deck on Moxfield, where it’s a constant work in progress. If you have any tips for cuts, adjustments, or singles I should buy, feel free to let me know in the comments.