Mystery Mastery: Terry Pin, Turboturtle Teaches Science

Welcome to the series Mystery Mastery, where we try brewing decks with the most mysterious Commanders around, the Mystery Booster legendaries. I have a deep love of the Test Cards from Mystery Booster products: I think they're the best version of Un-set cards Wizards has ever put out, and I'm always excited to see new ones. With the release of Mystery Booster 2, we get to see a bunch of unusual and wild designs for cards, especially the handful of legendary creatures in each set. Though they might be near-impossible to get or play with, we can still have fun seeing what we can make with them.

To that end, I started this series because of a recently spoiled Mystery Booster 2 card, our new speedy and shelled friend Terry Pin, Turboturtle.

Terry is a Turtle Athlete for who can be flashed in and has haste, showing he's not a stereotypical slow Turtle. Adding to that speed, his ability says we can ignore any instance of "activate only as a sorcery" in card abilities, no matter where they are, which can cause some previously dismissed abilities to become very powerful.

That's what Terry the card does, but who is Terry himself? Let me tell you all about him and the deck that utilized his unique speed.

Surprise Friends

Terry likes to make friends, and though some might consider it creepy, he even likes to make copies of his dead friends. If you've got some fun creatures on your field, Jaxis and Orthion can copy them whenever, even at your opponent's end step so they stick around to swing on your turn. Don't have any creatures yourself? Make and take your opponents' creatures with Echo Chamber and Captivating Crew.

Got friends in the graveyard? Dollhouse of Horrors can bring them back to creep out your enemies, and a surprise encored Impulsive Pilferer can make surprise blockers that turn into Treasure. It pays to have friends everywhere on the battlefield who, with a call from Terry, will be there at a moment's notice.

Terry's Armory

Terry is a speedy guy; he's so fast he's able to sneak into highly secretive locations and world-ending disasters to find and recover incredibly powerful tools. These once-strong artifacts become even more powerful in Terry's hands, turning things like Apple of Eden, Isu Relic into an Uno Skip card for a particularly nasty opponent, or making Bloodthirsty Blade a goad machine.
Some of these items were already scary, and ol' Scary Terry makes them even more terrifying. Put Karn's Sylex on the field and stare deeply into the eyes of any opponent wanting to swing into you, Terry, and enough open mana to turn their nonland permanents to ash. Plus False Floor can drop an entire party of creatures to their doom after an untap step, and Transmogrifying Wand can now act defensively in Terry's capable claws.

Tortoise, not Turtle

Terry is a turtle, NOT a tortoise, and I have to confess I was about a third of the way through this section before I made that realization. See, terrapins (the Turtle that Terry is named after) are usually found near bodies of water and swamps and are considered turtles. I thought that terrapins were the kinds of reptiles that hang out in deserts, and to be cute and flavorful I added in a bunch of Deserts. It turns out that I was thinking of tortoises, not Turtles (insert The More You Know graphic here).

Still, my mistake led to an interesting discovery: Terry works well with the bevy of Deserts and few Desert-adjacent cards in his color. With Terry's speed boost, Cradle of the Accursed can make a surprising blocker, Hidden Volcano and Hidden Cataract can pseudo-cascade whenever, and Lazotep Quarry turns into a haunted house making 4/4 copies of your dead creatures. Instead of sacrificing Deserts, you can also pool their meager mana resources into Cataclysmic Prospecting to wipe the board and make a stack of Treasures.

Static Energy

Terry has a love of education, so if you thought you were only getting one science fact in this article with the turtle/tortoise knowledge, prepare to be enlightened again. Static electricity can be prevalent in desert environments due to sand grains rubbing against each other. In this deck, you can use Deserts and one particularly quick Turtle to harness that static and make energy. That build-up of energy can then be released through things like Stone Idol Generator and Phyrexian Ironworks to make blockers to clog up your board. Also, if you're in the Nevada desert, there's a chance you could run into HELIOS One, and if Terry's in charge, watch out, because any permanent is liable to get blown up whenever you've built up enough energy.

To round out the deck I've included a few of Universes Beyond cards that represent franchises I love and have great synergies with what Terry is doing. There's the Treasures gained from Bottle-Cap Blast, the mill and recursion of The Fifteenth Doctor, and, let's shout it all together in our best southern mascot accent: Dino DNA! Finally, Terry brought along some flashy friends in Tidal Barracuda and Final-Word Phantom, making your opponents' turns even more surprising with your flashed-in permanents and formerly-sorcery-only abilities.

Make It A Reality

What happens if you like this deck and want to build it but you've got a playgroup that absolutely won't allow Terry? I'd suggest replacing him with Jhoira, Ageless Innovator, as I did in the list below since Terry isn't in Archideckt. Many of the best artifacts in this deck cost two mana and come down for free after Jhoira survives a turn (or gets flashed in). From there you can tweak the energy and Desert strategies to add untapping fun, but for the sorcery-at-instant-speed shenanigans you need Terry, even though he's tough to get a hold of.