Raph & Mikey, Troublemakers Commander Deck Guide

Raph & Mikey, Troublemakers | Illustration by Aaron J. Riley

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles introduced a slew of commanders appropriate for many players and power levels. Among the most imposing is the Timmy-approved Raph & Mikey, Troublemakers, a massive threat that pushes immense damage every turn.

Today, I’ve built this turtle team-up to unleash a menagerie of monsters upon your opponents, with an eye towards dragons.

The Deck

Raphael, Tag Team Tough | Illustration by Randy Vargas

This deck has a simple game plan: Big creatures go brrr. The commander wants you to play big creatures, and this build complies, with a focus on dragons since evasion is good and giant death lizards are cool. A couple of extra combat cards help to close games and maximize the commander’s potential.

Despite the lack of Game Changers, this is solidly a Bracket 3 deck. The ramp package is too consistent and fast for most Bracket 2 pods (though it could be a fun archenemy kinda deck), but it’s fragile and even slow for highly interactive, fast-paced Bracket 4 games.

The Commander: Raph & Mikey, Troublemakers

A green commander that cheats things into play is hardly novel. Kona, Rescue Beastie, Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant, Nissa, Worldsoul Speaker, and Loot, Exuberant Explorer are but a few existing options, and Michelangelo, the Improvisor is even in the same set. But the red splash in Raph & Mikey, Troublemakers gives it an aggressive slant as these creatures come into play tapped and attacking. Does that make this commander better than those mono-green options? Maybe not. But it’s distinct.

The deck makes two major concessions to Raph & Mikey. The first is that it plays no cheap creatures. The smallest monsters cost 5 mana, all the way up to 9. No Llanowar Elves, no Reclamation Sage, nothing that it would be disappointing to flip into play. The second concession, parallel to this one, is an immense ramp package to power out the commander as fast as possible and to support the monstrous curve you get when you run 17 creatures that cost 5+ mana. These creatures fall into three primary categories: extra combats, mana, and removal, though there are a few outliers.

Extra Combat Creatures

Since Raph & Mikey, Troublemakers uses an attack trigger with no restrictions, extra combats are a great way to get more triggers. They’re also just generically good since big creatures + extra combat = fast clock.

Port Razer is one of the few 5-mana options that works with this commander. Other popular extra combat cards like Karlach, Fury of Avernus need to be declared as an attacker, which doesn’t happen when they’re put into play tapped and attacking. But Port Razer just needs to deal combat damage, and it results in up to three extra combats.

Raphael, Tag Team Tough has a lower ceiling than Port Razer since it only ever produces one extra combat a turn, but the 5/6 is more likely to survive combat or result in a favorable trade, plus menace makes it unblockable some amount of the time.

Hellkite Charger has a substantial cost for its extra combat step, but sometimes your ramp deck needs a mana sink, plus it enables a combo. It’s an attack trigger, which is risky, but I like the combo potential enough to keep it around.

The best of these is Moraug, Fury of Akoum because it has the highest threshold for the number of combats it can produce. This deck has plenty of Rampant Growth effects that put extra lands into play, and those trigger landfall! The right hand can see two, three, maybe more combats from Moraug in a turn.

Interactive Creatures

The interactive creatures play two major roles in the deck. First is, well, interaction! You need to stop your opponents from doing things. Interactive creatures like these are, in my mind, essential to stompy decks because they don’t mess with the ramp + threat formula the way a Swords to Plowshares would. They’re also very important for the extra combat enablers. Creatures remain marked with damage through extra combats, so clearing away blockers is vital to keep your creatures safe.

I have a huge soft spot for Kogla, the Titan Ape. Having no humans to bounce to hand makes it a little worse, but even in the situation where it trades with a card that could otherwise block Raph & Mikey, I feel pretty good. Kogla and Yidaro made the deck on a similar basis, plus it provides artifact/enchantment hate from hand.

Dragonlord Atarka pressures planeswalkers and works wonders against boards full of small yet significant creatures like Esper Sentinel, Drannith Magistrate, and Birds of Paradise.

To reduce Summon: Bahamut to a removal spell downplays its potential as card draw and a finisher, but it doesn’t always fill those roles; your opponents can, will, and should kill it quickly. But it always catches at least one permanent and hits far harder than Meteor Golem.

Balefire Dragon and Apex Altisaur answer wide boards. Apex Altisaur kills everything if you give it indestructible with Heroic Intervention or Tamiyo's Safekeeping.

Big Mana Creatures

Ancient Copper Dragon and Old Gnawbone are primarily here to combo with Hellkite Charger, but it’s perfectly respectable to see them otherwise; making a bundle of Treasure provides resources to rebuild with if a board wipe nukes the table.

Groundchuck & Dirtbag hits hard and doubles your mana. It’s useful to ramp into if the deck is struggling, and it helps to pay the command tax on your expensive commander. I wavered between this and Nissa, Who Shakes the World; while Nissa is more powerful, enough of this deck’s cards care about creatures to play G&D instead. For example, Defense of the Heart and Elemental Bond.

Odds & Ends

This section is a catch-all for card draw, protection, and a few alternative cheat effects.

Starting with the monsters who didn’t make it into other categories, Etali, Primal Conqueror and Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest provide card advantage straight from a Raph & Mikey trigger. Dragonhawk also works as a finisher with extra combats; you can attack two or three times, exile a bunch of cards, and incinerate the table.

Hellkite Courser is the weakest Raph & Mikey hit because it supports the commander. It’s great to play the turn before you have 7 mana since you can attack with Raph & Mikey on 6 and 7 (the Courser doesn’t increase the commander tax since you don’t cast it) while protecting it from board wipes. It also works well when you can’t pay the command tax, and it even gets around the odd Drannith Magistrate!

Terror of the Peaks could be classified as a removal creature, but it’s more often the last thing your opponents see trigger before they pick up their cards.

Oath of Druids and Defense of the Heart are alternatives to Raph & Mikey that cheat threats into play. Oath is particularly nasty since this deck has no creatures to play early, so you almost always get a trigger. Your opponents can use Oath as well, but your creatures probably punch harder unless you’re facing Eldrazi.

We get more card advantage from Up the Beanstalk, Elemental Bond, and Garruk's Uprising. The Beans can be awkward since you don’t always cast your creatures, but drawing a card on entry smooths much of that out. The others just go nuts with your commander; casting and attacking with Raph & Mikey staples a Divination to it.

The rest of the deck is ramp and protection. Your protection includes lots of single-target interaction: Deflecting Swat, Bolt Bend, Redirect Lightning, and Tamiyo's Safekeeping all protect Raph & Mikey—if you keep it safe, you’ll have a board in no time.

Veil of Summer and Autumn's Veil round the section out to protect the commander and other threats from countermagic.

The Mana Base

One of the most important aspects of this robust mana base, which is most of the deck between ramp and land drops, is the lack of cheap mana dorks. Cards like Birds of Paradise, Bloom Tender, and Orcish Lumberjack are immensely powerful but unacceptable hits off this commander.

As such, the mana biases hard towards land-based ramp with mana rocks for good measure. Many of these are just the greatest hits of the format—Three Visits, Nature's Lore, Migration Path, and so on.

Exploration is particularly notable; the hands where you draw it are the hands that potentially drop Raph & Mikey turn 3.

The deck also has a mighty high land count, and don’t you dare cut one. Nothing kills this deck like stumbling on land drops and being forced to use ramp to keep pace with the table rather than pulling ahead. To mitigate flood, it has a bunch of MDFC lands plus value lands to make them count.

Stump Stomp, Shatterskull Smashing, and Bridgeworks Battle clear the path for creatures or prevent an opponent’s win. On the opposite side, Sundering Eruption removes blockers so you can win.

Turntimber Symbiosis is just a cheat spell. It can whiff, but even that’s better than just drawing a Forest.

Boseiju, Who Endures is just more removal.

Arena of Glory is handy when you hard-cast bombs other than Raph & Mikey—it works particularly well with Old Gnawbone.

Command Beacon helps to recast Raph & Mikey in a pinch by putting it in your hand if the command tax has grown too high.

Talon Gates of Madara can ramp or protect a key card from hand; since it’s an activated ability, it’s extremely hard to interact with.

Beyond these cards, the mana base focuses on fixing with a heavy bias towards green as most of the cards are green, and cards like Skyshroud Claim and Utopia Sprawl require a high forest count.

The Strategy

The strategy is just… ramp. Nothing flashy. It’s pretty straightforward. All that matters in your opening hand has ramp, maybe a little protection. You want two ramp spells and should mulligan to find them. A less ramp-heavy hand might contain card advantage and a different cheat card like Oath of Druids.

Don’t mulligan to find your haymakers. As long as you can cast Raph & Mikey, you have ample access to them. Focus on getting it down early. The absolute nut draw, which leans heavily on Exploration and the other 1-mana enchantment ramp, plays Raph & Mikey turn 3. It’s much more reasonable to expect it to hit turn 4, maybe turn 5 if you miss a land drop or ramp spell. And if you’re holding a Veil of Summer or Bolt Bend or something, don’t be afraid to sandbag Raph & Mikey for a turn if you have something else to do with your mana.

Combos and Interactions

This deck contains one infinite combo plus an extremely powerful interaction to keep an eye out for.

First, the combo: Hellkite Charger plus Old Gnawbone is infinite combats. Though it’s a 2-card combo, it’s more than expensive and disruptable enough to be appropriate in Bracket 3.

Hellkite Charger also combos with Ancient Copper Dragon, but it’s technically non-deterministic since ACD doesn’t always produce 7 mana. But it wins most of the time; you don’t need infinite combats when you hit players for 11 in the air.

The other interaction is Moraug, Fury of Akoum and Sundering Eruption. If you Eruption your own land, you get to put another one into play, getting an extra combat and preventing your opponents from blocking. It might not be as flashy as the infinite, but it’s just as capable of winning.

Also, on Moraug: Trigger landfall after your regular combat phase. While you can stack a bunch of combat steps in your first main phase, Moraug only untaps creatures for the extra combat steps. If you go from extra combat into regular combat, your creatures will untap themselves before the extra combat then remain tapped in your regular combat.

Rule 0 Violations Check

As long as you end up in the right Bracket, this deck shouldn’t have any issues.

Budget Options

The mana is always the biggest place to look for cuts. This deck’s mana is already heavily basic-skewed, but you could make it more so—you don’t really need Boseiju or Cavern of Souls. That said, the MDFCs are extremely useful. If you make cuts to the mana base, I’d recommend that you cut dual lands to keep the MDFCs in. As long as you have a lot of Forests and a Wooded Ridgeline, your ramp spells can fix for the little red you need.

Beyond the mana base, most of the deck’s cost is in the protection suite and creature base. Frankly, you could probably play whatever creatures you like over unjustly expensive haymakers like Old Gnawbone and Ancient Copper Dragon; just focus on creatures with good enters or combat damage triggers. Also, if you cut those two, you should cut Hellkite Charger.

These creatures are a great starting point for budget swaps:

• Terastodon
• Giant Adephage
• Titan of Industry
• Worldspine Wurm
• Darksteel Colossus
• Angrath's Marauders

As for the protection spells, things get tighter. Deflecting Swat and Redirect Lightning have an alternative in Untimely Malfunction, but you’ll often just run hexproof tricks like Overprotect and Snakeskin Veil.

Defense of the Heart is also pretty expensive as it’s pretty old. You could replace it with Smuggler's Surprise or just a ramp spell or another creature; it’s more of a fun card than an integral part of the deck.

Other Builds

Other builds for Raph & Mikey, Troublemakers are tricky, as it’s a pretty linear commander. Another route might avoid the hard ramp and big monsters for a more general midrange plan with cheaper threats like Laelia, the Blade Reforged or Enduring Courage. That would use Raph & Mikey as a top-end finisher rather than the main game plan.

If you wanted to go really janky, you could even use the commander as a tutor of sorts; if you only put one creature in your deck, it always finds that creature. That’s probably not worth doing but it’s a possible path to victory if you can find the right combo.

Commanding Conclusion

Michelangelo, Weirdness to 11 | Illustration by Jason Kiantoro

Sometimes playing Commander is about constructing an intricate game plan that runs with the efficiency of clockwork and assembles a clever win, or it can be about building the most powerful deck you can conceive. Other times it’s about smashing face with giant monsters that wouldn’t see the light of day in other formats, and that’s where Raph & Mikey, Troublemakers ends up. Though simple, it leads to exciting and face-paced games.

Would you build this turtle team-up? What would your ideal top-end look like? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!