Doctor WhoandMagic: The Gatheringteamed up for four Commander precons entirely dedicated to every Whovian’s favorite time travelers and bizarre universe(s). Doctor Who has such an endless well of content to pull from that it’s actually a wonder the set was condensed into precons, instead of a fully fleshed-out set like Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth.
This batch of Commander precons wasn’t exactly color-balanced like previous installments, resulting in four blue decks and only a single black deck. Red fared well, though, being represented in three of the four decks, with plenty of new format staples spread out across the surprising 50 new cards per deck.
10Decaying Time Loop
Asa wheel effectthat you can continuously cast from your graveyard, Decaying Time Loop already slots right into plenty of Commander decks. Being an instant is quite a perk for a card like this, allowing you to trigger the abilities of cards like Niv-Mizzet, Parun or Shabraz, Sky Shark during your opponents' turns.
It also lets you use the effect reactively, giving you an opening to dig for interaction if the situation desperately calls for it. Notably, you’ll go down a card on each cast, since retrace will eat a resource before the wheel actually resolves.
9Delete
CTRL, ALT, well… you know the rest. Delete is ared board wipewith the potential to have an asymmetrical effect on the game if you’re running artifact creatures. That makes it obvious when you’ll want this effect in your deck.
It’s noticeably inefficient though. Whipflare does the exact same thing for two mana that Delete does for four, but, of course, there’s power in scaling the effect up beyond that. Artifact decks tend to be good at producing mana, so the inefficiency might end up being a non-factor.
8Flaming Tyrannosaurus
A flaming T-Rex, huh? Whovians, you’ve got some explaining to do. This dino’s one of the stronger, albeit more expensive paradox cards from the Paradox Power precon. The paradox mechanic cares about casting spells from zones other than your hand, which is trivially easy, and happens without effort.
The ability lets you play some serious board control, and there’s nothing stopping the dino from triggering multiple times per turn. It even gets bigger on each trigger, and takes a massive chunk out of all opponents' life totals on its way back to extinction.
7Ecstatic Beauty
At face value, Ecstatic Beauty is already a strictly better version of Act on Impulse. That’s not a Commander staple by any means, but decks like Prosper, Tome-Bound and Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald don’t mind the redundancy of these types of effects.
Tacking on suspend changes the equation. You can invest a single mana early on, then have all your mana available to cast the exiled spells the turn it comes off suspend. And if you draw it late, you’re probably in a situation where you can just pay full price and use the exiled cards that turn anyway.
6Iraxxa, Empress of Mars
Iraxxa doesn’t have Faldorn’s activated ability, but the paradox trigger is easier to achieve than Faldorn’s cast-from-exile effect, since it also countscascade,flashback, and other effects that let you cast from zones besides the hand and exile. Battle cry’s a nice touch on an aggressive creature that builds out its own army.
Faldorn will likely remain the more popular of these two commanders, since it facilitates its own strategy, acting as both enabler and payoff. Iraxxa is a payoff in multiple ways, but fails to enable a paradox strategy without outside assistance.
5Memory Worm
Uncommon raritybe damned, Memory Worm is secretly one of the best cards in the entire Doctor Who line-up. There are just so many ways to fulfill the paradox requirement, whether that be cascading, retrace, suspend, or even niche actions like casting a spell from an opponent’s graveyard.
Cast-from-exile decks are great at accruing resources, but sometimes flounder about searching for a way to win. Cards like Passionate Archaeologist and Keeper of Secrets are the key wincons for strategies like this, and Memory Worm falls right in line at such a low cost.
4Ryan Sinclair
Ryan Sinclair has high upside but requires work, a perfect recipe for a fun and balanced commander. It’s a ‘power matters’ card, scaling with how high its power is, though starting off as a meager 2/2, it’s clear that Ryan needs some assistance.
Note that Ryan’s ability stops digging once it hits the first spell, regardless of whether you can actually cast it or not, meaning it will occasionally brick. You can mitigate that by pumping Ryan up, or alternatively filling your deck with a bunch ofone-mana spellsso Ryan hits more often without help.
3The Flux
The Flux is the latest take onred card advantage enchantmentslike Outpost Siege and Vance’s Blasting Cannons, though this Saga comes with immediate creature removal. That justifies taking a turn off to drop your card advantage engine, most of which don’t affect the board at all.
Four chapters' worth of card draw and a kill-spell is well worth four mana, so long as you’re actually playing the cards you exile each turn. The burst of mana from the final chapter might draw the aggression of other players in a way that similar enchantments usually won’t, though, and they’ll have more than enough time to prepare a response.
2Yasmin Khan
Yasmin Khan’s about as simple as a modern-day Magic card can get. Tap it for an extra card, but you have about the length of a turn to use it. If you activate it on an opponent’s turn, that duration lasts until your next end step, though activating it on your own turn means you’re forced to cast it right away.
The Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Doctors, as well as The War Doctor all synergize with Yasmin, whichcan be companioned with one of themfor extra activations, paradox payoffs, or just good old-fashioned value combos.
1RMS Titanic
The design of RMS Titanic is intriguing, and definitely gets the creative wheels spinning. The baseline play is to crew it, connect in combat, and cash it in for some Treasure, but you can do so much more to maximize its potential.
Effects that recur artifacts to that battlefield let you cycle through the process multiple times. Goblin Welder or Daretti, Scrap Savant can trade out one of the Treasures for the second coming of the RMS Titanic. You can also use damage doublers and triplers for a stronger initial hit and an even greater Treasure payout.
Next:Magic: The Gathering – Every Doctor In Doctor Who Commander, Ranked
