Magic The Gathering Doctor Who: Ranking Every Doctor In The Commander Decks

The four new Magic The Gathering Doctor Who Universes Beyond Commander Decks add every single Doctor to the game, each with their own abilities and their own mana costs. Not all Doctors are built equally in terms of their abilities though, and we're here to rank every single Doctor from worst to best.

All Doctor's Ranked 

The Second Doctor

The Second Doctor isn't a particularly exciting card, not a very good one. It makes all players no longer have the maximum amount of cards they can have in their hand and allows each player to choose to draw a card during your end phase. Any player who does can't attack you or your permanents during their next turn. The issue is there are a lot of cards that don't need to attack to clear the field, and giving your opponent an additional card isn't great even if it's optional. 

The First Doctor

This probably looks blasphemous to anybody who ever slightly enjoys Doctor Who. Without The First Doctor, we wouldn't be here. Sadly though, the actual Magic The Gathering card just isn't great. It adds a card named TARDIS to your hand from your library or your graveyard and places a +1/+1 counter on a target artifact or creature when a spell is cast with Cascade, but you're unlikely to be doing that much even if you play the TARDIS card you've added (which gives the first spell cast after the TARDIS attacks Cascade). It's just all a bit underwhelming.

The Eighth Doctor

The Eighth Doctor is where these Doctor cards actually start getting good in a meaningful way. When The Eighth Doctor enters your field you get to mill three cards from the top of your deck to the graveyard, then you can play a historic land or a historic permanent spell from your graveyard. This does give it the additional condition that the card will be exiled if it were to leave the field, but having an additional presence on the field that can just increase your advantage is pretty useful.

The Fifth Doctor

The Fifth Doctor is frankly a boring card. It's not a bad effect at all, it's just dull. At the beginning of your end step, you get to add a +1/+1 counter to any creature that didn't attack or enter the battlefield this turn in addition to untapping those creatures. It's clear that this effect is intended for you to quickly amass card advantage using on-field effects, but it's just never that useful. 

The Fugitive Doctor

The Fugitive Doctor is great in certain strategies, but completely meaningless in others. When she hits the field you get to Investigate, which means you get to create a Clue token. Then, when she attacks you can sacrifice a Clue token to give any Instant or Sorcery card in your graveyard Flashback until the end of the turn. It's pretty great if you specifically build your strategy around it, but otherwise, you're unlikely to really use the effect.

The Third Doctor

The Third Doctor is a very respectable card that has a decent effect that just isn't as cool as some of the effects higher on this list. It gains +1/+1 for each noncreature token you control and creates a token whenever it enters the field from the choices of a Clue, Food, or Treasure token. He's pretty good depending on your commander, with a Commander such as Sarah Jane Smith really causing this card to get big.

The Ninth Doctor

The Ninth Doctor is really great specifically in the Commander deck that it comes in, Timey-Wimey. Whenever the card is untapped during your untap step you get an extra upkeep step, which can trigger a ton of effects that add tokens to a card during your upkeep step, which is something that Timey-Wimey specializes in overall. It might not be worth putting in every deck though, so make sure you know what your strategy is.

The Seventh Doctor

The Seventh Doctor is a pretty fun card that requires a whole bunch of artifact management. Whenever The Seventh Doctor attacks you get to choose a card in your hand. The defending player has to guess whether or not that card's mana value is greater than the number of artifacts you control, and if they guess wrong you can cast it without paying the mana cast. If you don't, you can investigate. The difficulty for this card comes in making sure you don't control too many artifacts or your opponent will likely be able to easily guess if the card's mana value is greater than or equal to your artifact count. 

The Eleventh Doctor

The Eleventh Doctor can really advance a strategy surrounding the Suspend mechanic. When this card deals damage to a player you get to exile a card from your hand with a number of time counters equal to its mana value and give it suspend. What this means is that you can easily play more expensive cards without having to mess around with actually getting the necessary mana on the field as long as you can use your other cards to quickly advance the amount of time counters on the card.

The War Doctor

The War Doctor is a really great card. Whenever a permanent phases out and whenever a card is exiled you get to add a time counter to The War Doctor. Whenever the card attacks you can choose any target to deal an amount of damage equal to the number of time counters on it, which can really quickly add up, especially since any creature dealt damage using this effect is exiled instead, triggering the first effect again and making The War Doctor even more fearsome. 

The Thirteenth Doctor

The most recent Doctor included in these Magic The Gathering decks, The Thirteenth Doctor focuses on the mission statement of the Paradox Power deck. That being, casting spells from anywhere that isn't your hand. Whenever you cast a spell from somewhere that isn't your hand you get a +1/+1 counter on a target creature, and you get to untap any creature at the end of your turn that has a counter. This means a lot of cards basically gain vigilance and can block the turn after they've attacked.

The Twelfth Doctor

The Twelfth Doctor gives any card you cast from somewhere other than your hand Demonstrate, meaning that you can copy any spell that you cast while also giving your opponent that spell. This basically means the first spell you cast every turn from somewhere other than your hand is cast twice for you and once for your opponent, but that's not the end of the effect. Whenever you copy a spell with any effect The Twelfth Doctor gains a +1/+1 counter, meaning you can have a really big Doctor on your side.

The Sixth Doctor

Now we enter into our top three. The Sixth Doctor is a supremely underrated Doctor by fans of the series, but his Magic The Gathering card is absolutely brilliant. He has a similar effect to The Twelfth Doctor, except your opponent doesn't get the chance to copy your spell. Instead, you get to copy any historic spell that you cast with the note that the copy isn't classed as a Legendary card. This means you can either create a token of a creature that you've cast, or you can double up on your Sagas.

The Fourth Doctor

The Fourth Doctor is the suggested Commander for the Blast From The Past deck and for great reason. With The Fourth Doctor, you can look at the top card of your library at any time, and you can choose to play a historic land or a historic spell from the top of your library one per turn. Whenever you do this you create a Food token, and it basically means that you can check what you're about to draw into, and if you're able to play it, just play it straight away.

The Tenth Doctor

Now we reach the best Doctor on the list. It was never going to be anybody else. The Tenth Doctor is an absolutely incredible card, allowing you to exile cards from the top of your library whenever you attack until you exile a non-land card. When you do, you place three-time counters on it and give the card suspend. Then as an effect you can use as a sorcery costing seven mana, you can time travel three times, meaning you can add or remove a time counter to every card with a time counter three separate times.