Taeko, the Patient Avalanche – Foundations
Date Reviewed: January 17, 2025
Ratings:
Constructed: 2.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 3.5
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
If people only read Taeko’s first ability and saw an over-statted creature that enters play tapped, they might think we’d gone back in time to 2003. But the rest of his abilities more than make up for it, mostly in straightforward but potentially powerful ways. In addition to being good with the ninjutsu ability, he works with flicker (conveniently in blue) and any kind of self-bounce ability (conveniently in the same colors as flickering). The scry ability is good, but a lot of decks will probably just end up using him as an unstoppable late-game attacker, whether via stats or his own unblockability trigger on himself. There’s something ironic about a ninja fighting like a steamroller, but it might work well in the right deck.
From a different perspective, Wizards of the Coast needs to be careful when and how they do more Turtle Ninjas. They’ve already established that they’ve watched/read Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and we recognize that they recognize it in Magic. Almost every joke has a breaking point.
Constructed: 2.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 4 (let’s evasion love!)
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 3.5
As part of the Jumpstart product, Taeko, the Patient Avalanche is only legal in Eternal formats and Commander.
A proper turtle ninja, because subtle references are always fun. Taeko, the Patient Avalanche is meant to play well and play with Ninjas overall, rewarding you for triggering their ninjutsu and enabling you to get them in unblocked to create a little chaos. All of these are good things…but where the issues start is in the execution. At four mana, this is as pricey as some of the other Ninja lords, but a bit higher than might be ideal.
The other issue is actually the colors, which matters for Commander, given Taeko’s Simic color identity. There are green Ninjas, and there are certainly blue ones, but the colors are focused on Dimir colors mostly, and Taeko is the only Ninja with a Simic color identity (and there are no Sultai Ninjas). While this is cool in concept, it makes it a lot harder to use Taeko in a Ninja deck, since you’d have to compromise by eschewing one of the two strongest Ninja colors or its best commander in Yuriko.
I like Taeko more in concept than in theory. He does a lot of neat things, but he’s just a bit too cumbersome to really make work.
Constructed: 1.25 (just use Yuriko if you’re desperate to make Ninjas work in Legacy)
Casual: 4.5 (pretty good in a Ninja deck)
Limited: 3.5 (making things unblockable reliably adds up)
Multiplayer: 3.25
Commander [EDH]: 3 (loses points for losing access to Yuriko as the Commander and for not being usable with her as the commander)
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