I’ve been slow to accept Universes Beyond. As a lover of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic: The Gathering’s story and worlds, the thought of entire sets being devoted to things outside of it I don’t care about nearly as much was a tough pill to swallow. Then 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Doctor Who came along, and like the shill I am, I’m now on-boarꦍd with crossovers. I’m all aboard the IP train and all it took was a silly alien with a sonic screwdriver.
It’s not just that Magic’s doing the things I like instead of Lord of the Rings and Warhammer, and therefore it’s now good. Universes Beyond: Doctor Who manages to combine incredibly flavourful design with a minimalist appr♋oach to its mechanics that perhaps make it one of the most cohesive set of decks ever released.
Every Card In Magic: The Gathering's Universes Beyond: Doctor Who Commander Decks
Step into the TARDIS with Magic: The Gathering's Universes 🙈Bꦦeyond: Doctor Who Commander decks.
Three of the four decks are based on different eras of the show: Blast from the Past focuse🌄d on the classic series, Timey-Wimey on the Eccleston,꧑ Tennant, and Smith eras, and Paradox Power on the Capaldi and Whitaker years. The fourth is based on the enemies of the Doctor, regardless of when or where they come from – Daleks, Cybermen, the Master, and Weeping Angels all in one box.
Individually, the card designs are some of the strongest we’ve seen in a Commander product. There aren’t any out-and-out, format-warping cards (at least, none anyone’s identified so far), but tons of clever, inventive cards that look fun to play. I can&rsquo💃;t wait to build a myriad deck around The Master, Multiplied; or turn a Treasure token deck into a Dinosaur stompy one with Displaced Dinosaurs.
It’s the flavour that’s the real highlight. I could spend all day gushing over every single card and the significance they have to the Doctor Who universe – Solemn Simulac🅘rum being a Vardi Emojibot from the 12th Doctor story Smile is a perfect nod to the card’s ‘Sad Robot’ nickname, for example. But instead, it’s worth pointing out just how many of these go beyond the art and use their mechanics to reflect the stories as well.
Take ﷽the Sagas, which are all based on iconic episodes of the show. One is Heaven Sent, from the Twelfth Doctor’s tenure that saw him trapped in a clockwork mansion for billions of years, slowly wearing down a diamond wall with nothing but his fists. The card matches the story perfectly, having you repeat and reuse the Saga over and over again to chip away at your opponent’s health. Every single Saga is as well thought-out as this, effortlessly telling the story of the show for long-time fans, while still being a mechanically interesting and useful game piece for those who don’t care much for Doctor Who itself.
While making 200 flavourful, thematic, and fun cards is already a massive undꦍertaking, the crowning achievement of Dꩲoctor Who is how well they fit together into decks. All four decks have distinct play design spaces – Timey-Wimey plays with the often-underused time counters, while Paradox Power wants you to play cards from out of your hand. It’s so nice to have decks that do away with the regular themes of a Commander release – there isn’t a typal deck or equipment-focused one in sight.
I love how they also don’t inundate you with a billion new mechanics. It would’ve been so ea💜sy to make brand new mechanics to represent The Doctor, the TARDIS, Daleks, or anything else in the Who universe, but with ꧒that comes an added mental load for new players. Instead, Wizards mostly stuck to using already-existing mechanics in new ways, like turning voting into ‘villainous choices’, or pairing up suspend and vanishing to make ‘time travel’ effects.
Blast From The Past, the deck based on the classic series, is by far🍌 the most impressive. This is a deck that needed to fit eight Doctors and their most iconic companions, and Sagas based on their episodes which span across 33 years, all within 100 cards and three colours.
What could’ve felt like a cramped, unfocused deck is brought together by the gen꧃ius emphasis on Dominaria’s historic mechanic, which conveniently cares about the exact three things this deck has lots of: legendary creatures, Saga enchantments, and artifacts. Being able to include everything a classic Who fan would want from a Commander deck, without having to make new and confusing mechanics to justify it,꧟ is an utter triumph for Wizards, resulting in one of the cleanest, most cohesive preconstructed decks ever released.
Doctor Who and Magic: The Gathering are my two favourite things in the whole world, and I’m picky. There was every chance I’d hate this release for not doing either half of it justice. But, instead, looking through the cards makes me weirdly emotional. Seeing two things you love brought toge♛ther with such care, creativity, and reverence for the source material isn’t something that happens very often, and Universes Beyond: Doctor Who managed to effortlessly solidify itself as one of the greatest Magic releases of all time because of it.