I get excited any time a project that I was a part of releases into the world. This past week was even more special to me because it saw a release that was both an exciting new adventure to me while also feeling like coming full circle.

Friday marked the release of the new Magic: The Gathering – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set, which I feel very honored to have contributed to. It was my first opportunity to work on a Magic: The Gathering set, and it was my return to contributing anything to the Ninja Turtles, which I have always dearly loved, especially since it was the first show I ever wrote professionally on.

I came to work on the set in a rather roundabout way. I was aware of Magic: The Gathering, but I honestly hadn’t played it since my early college days (and I’m pretty sure if I’d bothered to save any of those cards, they’d probably be worth a fortune, so that one’s on me). Similar to Dungeons & Dragons with different mechanics and gameplay, Magic is a card-based roll-playing game set in its own unique world of characters. Historically, the art and characters for their cards and the stories that tie together each set have been original. A few years ago, they started producing sets under the banner they called “Universes Beyond” which would adapt popular IP into a set. Previously, they’ve done Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who, and Final Fantasy, among others.

So about two years ago, a friend of mine who I had worked with at Nickelodeon many moons ago was working at Wizards of the Coast, the company who produced the set. Because everything is wrapped up tightly in NDA’s, she contacted me out of the blue and wanted to know how familiar I was with Magic and would I be interested in writing flavor text to a new set they were developing. It wasn’t until I took the meeting that I discovered that the next set they’d be producing was based on my beloved Turtles.

And as it turned out, they were all of our beloved Turtles. The entire team of game designers, artists, fellow writers, and producers had a deep love of the Turtles universe. For a property that has so many different versions, they really took the care to craft their own take on the Green Machine while paying tribute to all the past versions of the characters. And boy were there a lot of characters to write for.

Ultimately, my contributions were contained to the flavor text on the cards (that’s the little bit of dialogue, narration, or description at the bottom below the card’s mechanics). Remember, my work on the set was about two years ago, and by then the art had already been commissioned and mostly completed, so that should give you a good idea how long it takes to produce these sets.

One of my personal favorite things about this set, beyond my familiar with Turtles is it’s playability. For this release, they created a new format called Turtle Team-Up, which has slightly different gameplay than usual Magic games. You can, of course, play the Turtles cards in standard games of Magic, but Turtle Team-Up is truly special in that it is designed to be a cooperative game between players as they work together to defeat non-player bosses. It’s designed to be more friendly to beginners who are just learning how to play, and it’s great because it depends on teamwork between the players, so you don’t have to worry about being completely outmatched by an expert. I’ve also been playing this format with my 8-year-old son, and he’s getting into it super quickly and always wants to know when we can play another game. He also wants to know if I have any more boosters or collector packs to open to he can get more cards, but that is a pricey proposition.

It was a personal joy to return to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fold, and I’ll have another, longer post about my journey with the boys in green soon. It was an even bigger joy to join the Magic: The Gathering family. Before working on this set, I’d been a casual fan, but getting more invested in the current crop of cards and sets has been exciting to see unfold as a fan. It has also been even more exciting as I’ve gotten other opportunities to write for future sets, which I cannot talk about yet, but I hope to very soon.

Oh, and one more thing!

The biggest bonus is I finally feel cool to my son again, who not only loves that I worked on something for Turtles again but also is just old enough that we can play Magic: The Gathering together!