My Top 10 Cards from Doctor Who Commander
The first episode of Doctor Who was broadcast nearly 60 years ago, on November 23rd, 1963. The series has gone on to become a staple of British culture, even experiencing a huge resurgence in popularity with the revival of the series that began with the Ninth Doctor in 2005 and continues to this day. While some might see it as an odd choice for Universes Beyond, the amount of hype around the upcoming release of the Doctor Who Commander (WHO) decks is significant.
I’ve only seen a handful of episodes of the show—including fan favorites such as The Doctor Dances, Blink, and Vincent and the Doctor—so I’m far from an expert on the series. I can only judge these cards based on how they work within Magic and Commander at large, though I’ve seen plenty of people excitedly discussing how these cards fit within the lore of Doctor Who. In this article, I’ll round up my personal top 10 cards from the set, and I’ll even show off a few of my favorite reprints as well.
Allons-y, as they say.
Ominous Cemetery
What can I say? I love utility lands, so I’m always happy to see untapped lands with a useful ability stapled on. While paying five mana and going down a land can seem like a steep cost for targeted removal, shuffling a creature into its owner’s library will usually put it out of reach without the help of heavy card draw or tutors. If you can afford to play colorless lands, you could do a lot worse.
Zhulodok, Void Gorger has brought about a big resurgence in people playing colorless decks. Ominous Cemetery feels like a huge boon, since colorless doesn’t have as much access to removal and other interaction as decks that can play colored spells. Fortunately, mana rocks such as Hedron Archive can help pay for the activated ability and mitigate the pain of going down a land to use it.
Me, the Immortal
Voltron is a pretty fun strategy in casual Commander, but it can be hard to find slots for all of the Auras and Equipment that you’d like to play. While you’ll likely still want to play some of those things, this commander will continue to scale in power throughout the course of the game, even if she’s removed. Being able to cast her from the graveyard also feels like a good way to help mitigate commander tax.
The obvious comparison for this commander is Skullbriar, the Walking Grave. She’ll miss out on haste, a cheaper mana cost, and a few black combat tricks, but you’ll gain access to cards such as Seize the Day to help her get extra attacks in as well as everything else that comes with the inclusion of red and blue. This doesn’t really feel like a bad trade-off to me, especially since you’ll now have counterspells to help keep her safe.
Everybody Lives!
True to its name, this card really wants to keep everyone alive. While you can’t use it to come out ahead on a sweeper in the same way that you would with other white protection spells, there will definitely be circumstances where you don’t mind saving the many in order to save the few. The ability to prevent life loss can also come in handy, although it won’t save you from poison counters or commander damage.
People have talked about this card as a way to deal with Thassa’s Oracle in higher power tables, but it just doesn’t feel like a good answer. It also feels like an excellent way to hand the game over to someone who casts Ad Nauseam, because they can pick up as many cards from their deck as they please without worrying about life loss. That aside, I still think that Everybody Lives! will be an excellent card in casual Commander.
Displaced Dinosaurs
The next Magic set on the horizon is The Lost Caverns of Ixalan, so it wasn’t a big surprise to see a few Dinosaur support cards in these Commander decks. This one is the most interesting to me because it can make things into 7/7 Dinosaurs. This provides a way to buff up smaller historic creatures as well as turning things like artifacts—including tokens—into a significant board presence that can function as a beatdown win condition.
Turning things into 7/7 Dinosaurs doesn’t come without its own possible challenges. If you have an Dockside Extortionist, you’ll want to remember that your Treasure tokens will be creatures, which means their mana ability will be subject to summoning sickness. You might also want to be careful that you sequence things correctly in order to avoid downsizing larger creatures such as Ghalta, Primal Hunger.
Everything Comes to Dust
With all of the ways to make things indestructible or recur them from the graveyard these days, board wipes that exile are becoming more and more appealing. The majority of sweepers that exile are symmetrical, but this one offers you a way to come out ahead while simultaneously reducing the mana investment with convoke. It feels like we’re seeing more cards like this that are designed for flexibility in Commander, and I love it.
I’ve really liked what I’ve seen from Kasla, the Broken Halo, so I expect this card to slot right into that deck as another synergistic board wipe that will take care of business while leaving your armies intact. I tend to play a lot of artifacts and enchantments in decks of my own, so I’m hoping to use this alongside Clever Concealment when I have key pieces to protect. A total of eleven mana feels a lot more achievable when it can be convoked.
The Master, Multiplied
I’ll be the first person to say that I’m not a big fan of how many new cards circumvent the “legend rule” nowadays. This feels like an example where I can be a bit more lenient in my evaluation, because you’re a lot more restricted in these colors. Myriad is one of my favorite abilities in Magic and this commander brings something entirely new to Rakdos colors that seems fun and interesting.
Red has plenty of cards like Jaxis, the Troublemaker that can make copies of your creatures, but nearly all of them require you to sacrifice or exile the creature at your end step. The Master, Multiplied puts a stop to that and lets you keep them around, which can be a fantastic way to grow your army. You could also opt for a combo with Breath of Fury, taking more and more combat steps as long as you can connect with opponents.
Trial of a Time Lord
Sagas are such an interesting design, but I typically find it hard to want to play them without getting immediate value out of them. I don’t consider three mana to exile a creature to be a terrible rate, especially because you can keep doing it over the next few turns. This can actively remove threats that are already on the board and also keep opponents from wanting to deploy new ones.
While it’s not as forthright as Grasp of Fate, it can also target multiple creatures controlled by the same opponent over its lifespan. This can make it very easy for opponents to agree that sending everything to the bottom of the library in the final chapter is the correct thing to do. If you’ve ever managed to exile several things at once with Council’s Judgment, I’d imagine that this will satisfy in much the same way.
Cyber Conversion
Whether you want to call it power creep, innovation in game design, or anything else, there are a lot of commanders from recent years that just feel like they warp the game when they’re on the battlefield. You probably know who they are, and it’s also okay if you like playing them. This card is a great way to deal with the usual suspects without them being able to go back to the command zone to come down again in a turn or two.
This reminds me of Reality Shift crossed with Kenrith’s Transformation. It definitely feels like a reliable way to keep a problem commander out of the way for a few turns. After all, a 2/2 Cyberman with no abilities doesn’t pose much of a threat on its own. As long as we continue to see powerful commanders in basically every new product, I look forward to seeing more cards like Cyber Conversion to answer them.
Decaying Time Loop
Wheels are powerful because they’re an efficient way to refill your hand and/or stock up your graveyard with goodies. That said, you don’t always want to do the same thing for your opponents. You don’t have to worry about that with this card. You can cast this spell again and again as needed. Odds are that you’ll rarely ever have a hard time retracing Decaying Time Loop if you’re running an appropriate amount of lands.
The first thing that I noticed about Decaying Time Loop is how nicely it works with Life from the Loam, allowing you to dredge a lot and always making sure that you have access to key lands from your graveyard. I also really like the way that this card plays in graveyard decks that include Bone Miser and other other enablers. It’s nice to see new role-players like this to help fill in these archetypes and keep them fresh.
Flesh Duplicate
There are plenty of reasons to want to get a copy of another creature. If you’re looking to copy something so that you can get its enters-the-battlefield trigger (ETB), then it probably doesn’t matter if it sticks around for very long. In fact, you might even want it to die so that you can bring it back and do it again. If you’ve already gotten the value that you wanted, it usually doesn’t matter if the creature sticks around for long.
ETBs are one of the most undercosted things in the game, and copying a good one for two blue mana is a steal. Flesh Duplicate is a lot like Phantasmal Image, albeit with much creepier artwork and a slightly more restrictive casting cost. Unlike that card, you can target it without sacrificing it, which means that you can use it as part of Hullbreaker Horror loops if it’s copying a Dockside Extortionist.
Okay, but where’s the Doctor?
You know what? That’s a fair question. I actually like a lot of the different Doctors from these decks, even though none of them are in my top 10. I think that my favorite is The Eleventh Doctor, because I like the focus on dealing combat damage in order to suspend cards from your hand. I’m sure that Doctor Who fans will have their own opinions based on their favorites from the show.
I also really enjoy how synergistic this version of the Doctor is with Amy Pond and her partner, Rory Williams. It’s almost like having three commanders and the Doctor does a great job synergizing with Amy to enable you to find and cast Rory. Based on what little I know about Doctor Who, this is also one of the most flavorful pairings in the command zone. I hope that fans of the show will enjoy playing with these cards.
Reprints
As we’ve come to expect from Universes Beyond Commander decks, there are plenty of reprints with appropriate Doctor Who flavor. These range from commonly printed format staples to more desirable cards that haven’t been reprinted in a while. I’d like to highlight Snuff Out as a much-needed reprint that we haven’t seen in a while and Farewell as a newer card that’s already commanding a lot of value.
I also appreciate that eight out of ten of the Talismans showed up in these decks. I can’t possibly be the only one who wants an electric guitar version of Talisman of Impulse! It was also nice to see a solid selection of lands get reprinted this time around. I was particularly happy to see Stormcarved Coast, which was already starting to become a costly land for decks including blue and red.
Conclusion
Whether or not you’re a fan of Doctor Who, I hope that you find something to enjoy in these Commander precons. I think that there’s plenty to be interested in, so I can hardly wait to see these cards in action. If you’re interested in learning a little bit more about Doctor Who and the way that these cards reflect the story and narrative of the series, I recommend checking out the article we released by guest contributor Nathan Jones. You can find it here. I’m fighting the urge to make a bad joke about time here.
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