As I mentioned last week, my knowledge of the Doctor Who TV series is pretty shallow; my partner Wendy is a fan of the show and has had me watch maybe ten episodes, which I certainly enjoyed, and it gave me a feel for the flavor behind the card mechanics of many of the Doctor Who Commander cards and The Doctors in particular.

Because I don’t have a particular Doctor that’s my favorite from the series, instead I’ll rank them from my least to most favorite in terms of the gameplay each promises. I’ve got all thirteen primary Doctors plus The Fugitive Doctor and The War Doctor on the list.

Note that these are my subjective opinions, given the style of Commander decks and games I prefer to play. I like interactive games where everyone gets a chance to “do the thing” before the game winds down with a victor, preferably after Turn 10 or so. I’m not looking for which Doctor does the most busted thing possible; in fact, if a Doctor does suggest some gross infinite combo, that will likely push it further down my list. But Commander is a hugely popular format with players who enjoy all sorts of gameplay, so I fully expect your opinions will vary from mine.

I’m also including the popularity ranking of each Doctor on EDHREC as a comparison.  Let’s jump in!

15. The Thirteenth Doctor

The Thirteenth Doctor ranks #6 on EDHREC, but I’ve got it at the bottom of my list because the mechanics are two of my least favorite in Magic. There are so many +1/+1 counter synergies these days that it’s incredibly easy to make an oppressively powerful deck with that strategy, and I personally don’t like the mental energy required to keep track of all the various triggers those strategies accumulate on the battlefield. Plus, I’m also not a big fan of “playing cards from exile” cards that Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has been pushing lately, at least not in Commander. 

I expect that, most of the time, The Thirteenth Doctor will pick a Doctor’s companion with red in the color identity to unlock the various red “draw into exile” cards like Reckless Impulse. Yasmin Khan seems like the perfect choice.

14. The Eighth Doctor

The Eighth Doctor ranks #15 on EDHREC, so I’m apparently aligned with the general feeling on this card. I can imagine the knobs on this card had to be adjusted quite a bit to keep it from being absolutely busted, and it ended up being mostly safe but also quite weak. Self-milling strategies aren’t something I’m overly excited about, but I acknowledge that the ability is on the card so that you have a chance to mill over a historic permanent you can play even if your graveyard has been nuked.

I imagine you’d want to pair this with a green Doctor’s companion so that you’d have access to mana ramp to cast your six-mana commander, in addition to a bunch of historic good-stuff cards you can recast for value. In particular, you might want to run a fair number of Sagas, which count as historic permanents; they naturally put themselves in the graveyard and typically have some sweet effects for a Commander game. Elspeth Conquers Death, The Mirari Conjecture, and War of the Last Alliance come to mind.