RedLegendary Creature — Mutant Ninja TurtleRaphael, Tough Turtle
Mana value2Rank#13,032
The Commander
Guide
Gameplan
Raphael turns every creature that enters under your control into a 1-damage burst at an opponent's face. Flood the board with cheap creatures, tokens, and repeatable recursion, then close games out through pure incremental life loss while your creatures also attack. You want to maximize the number of separate enter-the-battlefield triggers per turn.
Strengths
- Cheap 2-mana commander that immediately enables a damage engine
- Scales explosively with token makers and creatures that re-enter repeatedly
- Damage is unpreventable by blockers and bypasses board stalls
- Mono-red gives access to cheap aggressive creatures and burn backup
- Pressures the whole table since you choose the opponent each trigger
Weaknesses
- Trigger does nothing without a steady stream of creatures entering
- Only deals 1 at a time, so it can be too slow against fast combo decks
- Heavily reliant on Raphael staying alive; commander tax slows recovery
- Mono-red lacks card draw and interaction compared to other colors
- Vulnerable to board wipes that erase your token engine
Key Cards
- Krenko, Mob Boss — Generates a flood of Goblin tokens in one activation, each triggering Raphael for huge burst damage.
- Impact Tremors — Doubles up on Raphael's effect, hitting for additional damage on every creature that enters.
- Purphoros, God of the Forge — Stacks another enter trigger plus a sacrifice outlet, turning token waves into lethal pings.
- Goblin Bombardment — Free sac outlet that lets recurring creatures re-enter and re-trigger Raphael repeatedly.
- Skullclamp — Solves mono-red's card-draw problem while encouraging creatures to die and re-enter.
- Hordeling Outburst — Cheap instant-speed-style swarm that fires Raphael multiple times in a single cast.
Upgrade Path
Add more enter-trigger redundancy (Impact Tremors, Purphoros, Terror of the Peaks) and faster token engines (Krenko, Goblin token spells) to multiply each trigger. Include free sacrifice outlets and recursion (Goblin Bombardment, Reassembling Skeleton, Squee) to build repeatable loops, plus Skullclamp and Outpost Siege to fix mono-red's card disadvantage. Lean toward a focused go-wide or sac-loop plan rather than a generic creature pile.
Core Cards
The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.
Win Conditions
- ▸Chip the table down with repeated Raphael triggers backed by Impact Tremors/Purphoros
- ▸Go wide with tokens and swing for lethal combat damage
- ▸Looping a recurring creature with a free sac outlet for unbounded enter-trigger damage
- ▸Direct burn finishers to close out players already softened by pings
Archetypes
- Tokens — Each token entering is a separate Raphael trigger, so go-wide payoffs convert directly into damage.
- Aristocrats — Sacrifice-and-recur loops let creatures re-enter over and over to ping opponents.
- Goblins — Tribal aggro with mass token production and Krenko-style payoffs perfectly fuels the Alliance trigger.
- Burn/Damage — Pair Raphael's incidental pings with Impact Tremors and Purphoros for a multiplied ping engine.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (R), by popularity.
