The Face of Boe Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on March 22, 2024

The Face of Boe | Illustration by Greg Staples

The influx of Doctor Who designs from the Universe Beyond crossover has brought a lot of interesting top-down designs, like the Weeping Angel. It also supports suspend, one of my favorite mechanics that debuted in Time Spiral.

Suspend originated as a mechanic to show the fractured time of Dominaria during the events of Time Spiral, in which objects and people from the past found themselves traveling through time rifts to the present. The Doctor Who decks repurpose the mechanic to demonstrate its own time traveling. The decks offered a lot of ways to use the mechanic, with The Face of Boe being especially intriguing.

The Deck

Dreadhorde Arcanist | Illustration by G-host Lee

This is a pretty casual deck that focuses on casting suspend cards. Using your commander is a great way to do this, but you also have plenty of support for suspending the cards regularly. This controlling list wants to get to the late game to leverage all your suspend cards.

You have some great Jeskai staples that help tie the deck together, especially for finishers. It takes time to get rolling, but this deck has some solid late game. You also have an exciting subtheme enabled by our commander: Playing a few banned cards! Namely, the “fixed” versions of Black Lotus, Balance, and Ancestral Recall with suspend: Lotus Bloom, Restore Balance, and Ancestral Vision.

The Commander

The weakness of suspend cards is that they’re slow. You usually need to wait at least two turns, often more, to get your cards. The payoff for waiting is a mana advantage; you often pay far less than what the effect is worth. For example, you can get Ith, High Arcanist for a measly 2 mana. It’s great value if you can afford to wait.

The Face of Boe lets you have your cake and eat it too. Getting your suspend spells right away for the reduced cost lets you play incredibly powerful spells for relatively little mana. You have a few ways to untap your commander to help play multiple spells in a turn. It’s worth noting that creatures cast this way won’t gain haste, as you’re not casting them via the suspend mechanic, so Greater Gargadon is a lowly 1-mana 9/7.

Suspend Cards

Let’s get to the heart of the matter: The suspend cards that you’re cheating out with The Face of Boe, though you’re happy to suspend them when the situation requires it.

Greater Gargadon is just a 1-mana 9/7. It’s large enough to be problematic for any deck that can’t churn out chump blockers. Deep-Sea Kraken doesn’t give your opponents a chance to chump while Gargadon ignores most chump blockers. Judoon Enforcers rounds out the big creatures with a formidable attacker with built-in defenses.

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship is a suspend card you want to suspend instead of casting as it brings a small army with it from exile.

Ith, High Arcanist, Riftwing Cloudskate, and Atraxi Warden provide you with interactive suspend creatures. They can be less impactful if your opponent sees them coming, which makes casting them with The Face of Boe particularly enticing.

Arc Blade and Reality Strobe add additional interaction while resuspending themselves for future value. Rousing Refrain and Inspiring Refrain can also suspend themselves upon resolution; once you get one of these going, you’ll have value every couple of turns.

Your best suspend cards are Restore Balance and Ancestral Vision, which represent one of the best white sorceries and one of blue’s strongest instants, respectively. Balance can win games when cast, especially if you dump your hand into exile to make your opponents discard. The raw card advantage of Vision is pretty much impossible to match on rate.

Wheel of Fate is another callback card to Wheel of Fortune. Suspend costs are cheap, and this deck has plenty of mana rocks, so it’s relatively easy to dump your hand onto the board or into exile and then cast this for maximum value.

Inevitable Betrayal provides you with more than a threat, but the best threat from an opponent of your choice. It’s generally best to target the green player, as they’ll have the best creatures, but it’s important to consider this can find utility creatures like Endurance or Opposition Agent you don’t have access to in your colors as well.

Everything about Ecstatic Beauty is stunning. The episode it references, the art by Alice X. Zhang, and even the effect. Impulse draws can be hit-or-miss. Sometimes you get full value, but sometimes you can’t cast all the cards. Putting counters on your suspend card mitigates much of the potential downside while working with your suspend spells without a mana cost, which you can’t cast with this effect.

The Tenth Doctor gives all your spells suspend. Very few of your spells suspend for less than three time counters, so suspend 3 is often a discount of sorts. Timey-wimey gives you an excellent ability to sink a little mana into slower turns.

The Parting of the Ways similarly suspends cards indiscriminately. It’s not the best with your 0-mana suspend cards, as they won’t get counters and thus can’t be cast from exile, but a few whiffs are an acceptable price for a card that’s often a five-for-one or better once you get to the final chapter.

Suspend Support Cards

These cards help enable the support shenanigans. They primarily focus on getting your suspended cards faster. I included the cards that specifically support The Face of Boe.

The Ninth Doctor is fantastic with suspend cards. Double upkeeps means you cast the suspended spells twice as fast.

Dreadhorde Arcanist and Narset, Enlightened Exile primarily support the costless suspend cards, like Visions and Betrayal. Narset has much more utility, casting more expensive cards and letting you steal from your opponents, but a 1/3 that casts Ancestral Recall or your cheap interaction is still more than powerful enough for the deck.

Thousand-Year Elixir lets you use The Face of Boe’s ability the turn it comes into play. Lotus Bloom and Mox Tantalite are your only suspend cards that cost 0, but many of the others are cheap enough that you can double spell with 5 or 6 mana. More importantly, it untaps your commander for multiple activations a turn. Vizier of Tumbling Sands and Fatestitcher also untap your commander while doubling as mana ramp.

This deck is light on the time travel cards, but The Wedding of River Song is intriguing. I’m not as married to the card as the couple depicted on the art, but this seems like a fun enough Divination variant I’m happy to try it out.

Considering Time Warp, Temporal Mastery, and Alrund's Epiphany mere suspend support cards undersells their impact, but they’re here first and foremost to help get those suspend spells faster. You also have some suspend cards that are great at attacking, which benefit from the extra combats, like your Gargadons and The Tenth Doctor.

Jeskai Staples

This deck also has a healthy number of Jeskai staple cards. They help tie everything together, giving the deck a little more impact. Since it’s so heavy on instants and sorceries, many support a spellslinger strategy.

They may not be the most valuable moneywise from The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, but I suspect Taunt from the Rampart and Forth Eorlingas! will go down as two of the more impactful Lord of the Rings cards for Commander, right next to Orcish Bowmasters and The One Ring. These Boros () spells win. At least one player dies if you cast Taunt later in the game, and Eorlingas can similarly overwhelm a board and give you the monarchy and a commanding army.

If you’re slinging spells, it’s hard to pass on Niv-Mizzet, Parun. It’s a great example of a pushed card that wins the game just for sitting in play. You get a win condition, board control, and card advantage in one package.

Narset, Enlightened Master goes beyond mere instants and sorceries to get your planeswalkers and artifacts in on the action. All the extra turn spells make it even more appealing.

Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is just good, and you can play it pretty quickly. The planeswalker is a fine distraction for your opponents, who either send damage at it instead of you or ignore Teferi and lose to the card advantage and emblem. Teferi, Time Raveler is even more powerful and gives you lots of stack control.

Ral, Storm Conduit could be a bit slow, but it’s hard to pass up on the ability to copy instants and sorceries with three extra turn spells, Ancestral Vision, and a bunch of card draw from cards like Jeska's Will and The Wedding of River Song.

Mystical Tutor nabs your best instant or sorcery if you’d like it, working well with The Tenth Doctor and Narset, Enlightened Master for some mini combos. Spellseeker doesn’t find everything, but it can find your entire interactive suite, your best suspend cards, and Forth Eorlingas!.

The Mana Base

This deck has plenty of mana rocks. You have lots of card advantage, so you need ways to spend all those extra cards. Lotus Bloom is one of the “banned” cards, but Mox Tantalite and Sol Talisman play well with The Face of Boe.

There’s a pretty typical assortment of mana rocks. All the on-color Talismans, Arcane Signet, Sol Ring, and so on.

As for the lands, you have a few modal double-faced lands to help smooth your draws. That’s it for value lands, with the remainder just fixing your mana.

The Strategy

Like many spellslinger strategies, this is all about value. You primarily focus on your suspend cards to help with this. The general game plan is to spend the early game either ramping or suspending spells; once they start coming down, you’ll cast two or three spells every turn. Since it doesn’t cost more than a couple of mana to suspend a card, you can empty your hand quickly, which is where all the card advantage comes in.

The Face of Boe just speeds this up. Instead of paying a little mana and waiting a few turns, you get the best of both worlds. While this deck can generally play a long game, getting your commander out quickly enough with some of your larger suspend creatures can enable a more aggressive start that takes a player or two out.

Your staples double as finishers. The primary goal should be getting something like Niv-Mizzet, Parun or Narset, Enlightened Master into play to maximize the impact of your cards. Your countermagic is best suited for protecting these bombs and extending the advantage they give you as far as you can.

Combos and Interactions

This deck has one infinite combo that’s kind of tricky to pull off but puts you far enough ahead to ensure victory:

The Tenth Doctor + Inspiring Refrain + Reality Strobe

For this combo, you need the Doctor in play, both spells suspended with three or fewer time counters, 7 mana, and an opponent with seven or more cards in hand. The combo begins by activating the Doctor’s timey-wimey ability and removing all the time counters from your suspended spells. Cast Inspiring Refrain targeting the player with seven cards and Reality Strobe targeting a permanent an opponent controls. Both spells resolve, returning the permanent to your opponent’s hand and generating 7 red mana. When they resolve, they return to exile with three time counters. Use the mana to reactivate The Tenth Doctor, continuing this loop until you’ve bounced all your opponent’s permanents.

You can substitute Reality Strobe with Arc Blade for infinite damage and draw your entire deck if you have a suspended Rousing Refrain or Niv-Mizzet, Parun in play. Ral, Storm Conduit can win the game with just The Tenth Doctor looping Inspiring Refrain.

This is a pretty fragile combo. It’s hard to get an opponent with seven or more cards in hand, though Wheel of Fate can help. The targeted opponent could cast a spell to break the loop. This won’t come up often, but it’s a useful loop to keep an eye out for.

Rule 0 Conversation Violations

This deck pushes casual with stronger cards like Niv-Mizzet and Restore Balance. While the deck is on the stronger side, you don’t have any instant wins or consistent combos, so it should pass most conversions. Removing Restore Balance also goes a long way toward balancing the deck’s power level; the idea of playing the “banned” cards was just what hooked me on playing The Face of Boe.

Budget Options

Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is your most expensive planeswalker. Chandra, Torch of Defiance performs a similar function as a source of card advantage that your opponent must deal with or lose to.

Spellseeker is a fine tutor, but Tolaria West finds many of the same cards for the same cost.

Temporal Manipulation and Time Warp are my extra turn spells of choice since they’re cheaper than average, and Narset, Enlightened Exile can potentially recast them, but there are plenty of budget alternatives including Walk the Aeons and Part the Waterveil.

Forth Eorlingas! has a price to match its impact. Insurrection provides a similar “at least one of you loses” vibe, and the mana cost is comparable since you’d likely pay a large X cost anyway.

Jeska's Will provides card advantage and mana, but there are plenty of potential replacements. I’d veer towards Divination variants rather than other impulse draws since those work better with your suspend cards; I think the ritual upside on Will is worth cards like Lotus Bloom being dead draws.

Mox Tantalite works with your suspend themes, but there are plenty of cheaper mana rocks to play, like Mind Stone.

Other Builds

The Face of Boe is a very narrow commander, so it’s hard to build it without leaning into some suspend strategy. Another path you could take would be to make it a more aggressive deck.

You already have a few chunky creatures, but there are more, like Ivory Giant and Errant Ephemeron, that are significantly discounted by The Face of Boe. These would poise you towards a deck that cares more about playing creatures than this deck's spellslinger strategy.

Commanding Conclusion

Forth Eorlingas! | Illustration by Filipe Pagliuso

The Doctor Who Commander decks have looked fantastic. I’m not a precon player, but they all look pretty good. Even more excitingly, they released a small army of interesting build-around creatures.

The Face of Boe is one of the creatures that let you build around the very interesting suspend mechanic. Not only is it interesting, but it’s a flavorful match with the time travel of Doctor Who.

Which commander from WHO are you building around? Do you like the precons? Let me know in the comments or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and remain suspenseful!