The Sixth Doctor Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on April 17, 2024

The Sixth Doctor | Illustration by Matt Stewart

The Sixth Doctor was, at the time, the least popular Doctor, who traveled through time and space in “a rather bombastic manner, from his overly eccentric wardrobe, to his over-the-top performance at nearly every turn.” This characterization reminds Magic players of quite a few planeswalkers, but perhaps none so much as Teferi. So not only does this deck star the famous time traveler of Zhalfir, but it tries its best to make infinite copies of him.

Infinite combos… you may wonder, is that what I should be doing in Commander? Maybe not. But The Sixth Doctor is tailor made for infinity (which, incidentally, seems to have been the design aesthetic of his tailor), especially with Romana II as a Doctor’s companion, so let’s go for it.

There are only six planeswalkers whose untap abilities are good enough to infinite Romana, so I’ve filled the deck with planeswalker tutors and control. Yeah, that’s pretty salty, I agree, but the other options with this commander are artifacts and sagas, and that space is better mined with other generals. I haven’t seen a deck that tries to do this kind of Sixth Doctor nonsense before, so let’s give it a go!

The Deck

Arena Rector | Illustration by Ryan Pancoast

The Commanders

The Sixth Doctor is reasonably underwhelming at first glance. A 6-drop that copies one thing every turn isn’t enough in the colors of Koma, Cosmos Serpent. But it can really start to make things happen when paired with Romana II. Cast your hero, Teferi Who Slows the Sunset, with both on the battlefield and another mana for Romana’s tap, and you get more Teferis than anyone could want.

The idea, which applies to many targets in the deck besides Teferi, which I first saw explored on this reddit thread, is that Romana copies the nonlegendary copy The Doctor creates of the planeswalker once you cast it. That way, when you use the Teferi to untap Romana, it can copy the nonlegendary planeswalker, then rinse, repeat.

There’s a potentially cEDH version of this deck explored by someone who has since taken down their decklist, which is likely a sign! It has a suite of ramp and interaction, but I’ll need to see that deck win at a legit cEDH table before I believe it. It feels quite a few ticks too slow for that format. With this deck, you’re looking at a higher power casual table that’s cool with your combo vibe. If that’s not the kind of table you find yourself at, there are a few other options to explore.

Combo Planeswalkers

Only six planeswalkers can go infinite, which they do by untapping at least two things, which means Romana II and a mana source. Two, Gideon, Martial Paragon and Jace, Ingenious Mind-Mage, require at least 1 mana dork out to untap, which is a harder condition to meet.

The other four can also untap a land, which means you only need your commanders out and the mana:

• Kiora, Master of the Depths
• Nissa, Genesis Mage
• Teferi, Temporal Archmage
• Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset

The goal is to save these until you can safely get and keep your two command zone creatures on the battlefield and engage Teferi-pocalypse.

Other Planeswalkers

You can’t go infinite with other planeswalkers, but you can easily make copies of them with either commander out, and that can be really useful. Plus, you’re a deck with planeswalker tutors, so having some control/utility walkers out seems like a good idea.

Include all playable Teferis, just because that’s the closest thing to being true to theme. Teferi, Time Raveler, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, Teferi, Master of Time, and Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim join the team. These are powerful and valuable, and, because you can copy them, often, on entry, they avoid some of what makes planeswalkers so vulnerable in Commander.

Vronos, the Inquisitor

There are also some decent Bant control-minded planeswalkers, but you don’t have infinite room, so I’ve whittled that list down to Oko, Thief of Crowns, Tamiyo, Compleated Sage, The Eternal Wanderer, and Vronos, the Inquisitor.

Ajani, Strength of the Pride is also here as an emergency stop switch. You can come down after you make a bunch of Teferis and can serve as a board wipe.

You’ve also got Invasion of New Phyrexia, which flips into yet another Teferi, which is on point. You’ve got a few ways to get infinite mana with infinite planeswalkers, and if they counter one of your planeswalker animation spells, the Invasion can make you a huge army. If you flip to Teferi Akosa of Zhalfir of the MOM planeswalkers and make infinite copies but don’t have any way to convert the walkers into creatures, there’s a Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, which is kind of tough to cast but can serve as a Thassa's Oracle substitute when you make your army of Teferi Akosas empty your deck.

Tutors

I generally don’t like to play tutors, as it makes the games too samey, but this is a deck that only works with them and your plan is pretty shoot for the moon, so I feel like it’ll still be fun. You’ve got two tutors that tutor for tutors. Heh. With a sentence like that, you know we’re talking quality decks!

Those are Mystical Tutor and Solve the Equation. You can get one instant planeswalker tutor with those, Ignite the Beacon, and one sorcery, Call the Gatewatch. Two other sorceries only get you particular planeswalkers, but both can go infinite, Grasping Current and Nissa's Encouragement. That last card also pulls up Brambleweft Behemoth, which normally I’d never even sleeve up, but what the heck.

You also have a few creatures that are tutors which find planeswalkers, Arena Rector, Captain Sisay, Djeru, With Eyes Open, and Onakke Oathkeeper. The last one can recur on from the graveyard.

Note that I didn’t include any enchantment or creature tutors in here, even though one of each of those is how you win the game with your army of planeswalkers. This is because almost each walker that goes infinite either draws you cards, which with infinite walkers find what you need, or they can pump out a team to win on their own.

Utility Creatures

There are few other creatures in the deck besides your mana dorks. Spark Double is great for making more planeswalkers while you build up critical mass. Sparkshaper Visionary turns your Teferi army into a bunch of birds that can win for you.

Interaction

You’ve mostly got protection and counters. There’s an on-theme Urza's Ruinous Blast as your only real piece of destruction.

You’ve got a protection suite. Mass protection in Comeuppance, Heroic Intervention, Semester's End, and Teferi's Protection. Note that you can’t Semester's End your tokens. Galadriel's Dismissal, Slip Out the Back, and Reality Ripple are my commander protectors of choice. In a world of increasingly exile-minded board wipes, I want my commander protection to stop that. Legolas's Quick Reflexes is commander protection plus, as it can turn Romana II into a gatling gun mowing down all the creatures as it copies your walkers.

The counterspells are on the cheap or pitch side to protect your combo, and those are:

• Arcane Denial
• Counterspell
• Dovin's Veto
• Fierce Guardianship
• Force of Negation
• Force of Will
• Pact of Negation

Enchantments & Artifacts

These are a few utility pieces, aside from the mana rock. Note that typical superfriends/planeswalker deck staples that you’d run in an Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice deck like Brokers Ascendancy or Inexorable Tide are missing from this deck. You aren’t going to sit around ultimating a million Teferis (although, if you’re looking to climb the salt-o-meter, that would be how you do it!).

Instead, you’re doing things like Concordant Crossroads to allow your Romana to go immediately and to allow any planeswalkers not created by Romana to attack right away if they’re a creature or if you’ve got Gideon, Martial Paragon out.

I’m also pushing it a bit to include Akroma's Memorial, but there aren’t a lot of cards in Bant that grant everything haste. There’s Resourceful Defense, a great way to store and move counters from your walkers. With the walkers who untap a lot of things, you can use this to ultimate the last infinite planeswalker you make, which is most useful with Jace and Nissa. Ichormoon Gauntlet is your best card here. It’s another wincon for infinite walkers, as you can proliferate them to get to infinite turns, and there are a lot of wincons in that state.

The Mana Base

There are quite a few mana dorks in this deck to synergize with your planeswalkers who untap two creatures. This is a lot of green, which means that you’re going to reduce the number of Azorius lands as you fill out the three colors. These also, of course, ramp, which you need to do your expensive tricks. They’re fragile, and I’d rather have another option, but there are only so many planeswalkers that go infinite and only so many planeswalker tutors, so it’s a risk you have to take:

• Avacyn's Pilgrim
• Birds of Paradise
• Delighted Halfling
• Elvish Mystic
• Fyndhorn Elves
• Incubation Druid
• Llanowar Elves
• Noble Hierarch

Stenn, Paranoid Partisan is a pet card of mine, and it’s actually the lead in my superfriends Azorius commander deck. The cost reduction is really nice, as is the ability to blink it at some point, in response to removal, or just bleeding out end-step leftover mana at instant speed to shift the reduction to your instants suite to prepare for the win.

There’s only got one mana rock, because there isn’t space with the creatures, and this rock is really an additional combo piece. Honor-Worn Shaku makes you infinite colorless mana with an army of planeswalkers. You don’t have a lot to do with that, but it can give you infinite knights with Invasion of New Phyrexia.

You’ve got the good lands in this deck, aside from the original bank-breaking duals, as three colors with a lot of double pips is a bit rough, especially with no room for dual mana rocks. Interplanar Beacon and Karn's Bastion are your classic superfriends lands. Otherwise, these look like you’d expect.

The Strategy

Sit back, play your creatures, and defend as best you can. Whine about how everyone else has mana rocks. Save your countermagic for protecting your combo if you can. Play out your noncombo planeswalkers when you get the chance. Some of them will die, but that’s a sacrifice you and Lord Farquaad are willing to make.

When you get to enough mana, a combo planeswalker in hand, and a board state the feels like you can risk it, generally put out The Sixth Doctor first if you have some protection, especially the phasing spells, and if Concordant Crossroads is on the table. Otherwise, you need Romana II out first to be able to tap it right away. But that latter option requires you to have like 11 mana up, more if you need countermagic to get them on the table. One at a time needs four turns and protection the whole way, which is possible in this deck, but it means you can’t waste spells protecting your mana dorks.

Your combo is slow and plodding, which is why it isn’t cEDH! But this is like a lot of janky Commander decks out there, so you’ll have some competition for the table’s interaction with the faster decks. If your timing is right, you may be able to slide in.

If you find yourself getting run over because your local meta is pretty aggro, replace some of the non-combo planeswalkers with more walkers that make tokens. Using your commander or companion to double a few of those walkers really starts to allow you to clog up the board a bit, which gives you more time and space to develop your combo.

Combos and Interactions

Most of these have been illuminated already, as this is a combo deck at its core, but I’d like to outline more details for play with your limited number of combo planeswalkers.

Gideon, Martial Paragon needs a mana dork to go infinite, but it’s also your only planeswalker that can win the game the turn you make a million of it if you’ve got Concordant Crossroads out and can use Gideon’s untap to get enough mana to get out something like a Spark Rupture. You tick up the first Gideon and then make the rest into beaters and swing.

Jace, Ingenious Mind-Mage needs a mana dork, but if you ‘splode it out, Jace can untap them all repeatedly for lots of mana and draw you cards to be able to find and infinite another planeswalker if you want to get annoying about it. It’s also pretty good at digging for either the attack pieces or the decking yourself plan and enacting them that turn. Jace and Gideon win the turn they come down the most easily.

Kiora, Master of Depths and the rest of them can do the combo on a dork-free board, but Kiora is the least good walker you have once you do that. Its card draw only grabs creatures, which you can use to get a Sparkshaper Visionary or to tutor for another planeswalker that you can go wide with that has synergistic abilities, but Kiora exhausts its untapping making copies of itself.

Nissa, Genesis Mage is the hardest to use at 7 mana, but if you make a bunch they give you all the mana you need to cast the rest of your hand, and if you’ve got another combo planeswalker or tutor in there, Nissa can help you win that turn. There are also games when you’d want to drop it with only The Sixth Doctor in play, as the two Nissas can then pump the Doctor to a 13/13, which might be what you need to eliminate someone.

Teferi, Temporal Archmage gives you the card draw and can untap everything, which means your deck is your oyster for a win that turn, even without the Crossroads out.

Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset gives infinite life on the way down, which makes waiting a turn easier.

Budget Options

Your combo planeswalkers are all only a couple of bucks apiece, so the expensive ones are the additional control planeswalkers. You can replace them with others if you want to do some incidental doubling along the way to your combo or replace the lot with a pile of mana rocks and more interaction. There are some expensive lands in here, which you can of course shift to whatever you can afford. Just remember not to pack too many Azorius lands! Most of the other planeswalker specific spells aren’t too expensive, except for Arena Rector, and that card is honestly the hardest to use as you don’t have a ready sac outlet. It does disincline opponents from attacking if you have it out, but you could always replace it.

In other words, aside from lands, this is a reasonably budget deck.

Other Builds

I don’t think, even with a heavy stax component, that this deck in its Teferi form can ever really compete at a cEDH level, and this version, surely not. And this deck has enough red flags for opponents, so adding stax just seems like it would be one tick over the line.

In terms of causal Commander decks, certainly the most reasonable The Sixth Doctor builds are sagas and artifacts.

Doctor’s companions Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright are likely better than Romana for the sagas deck. I just wonder if Bant sagas is powerful enough, given that Tom Bombadil 5-color sagas decks sometimes struggle to find wincons with red and black cards in there as well!

A better deck, I think, is Bant artifacts, with the Doctor and Romana serving as value pieces making copies of things like in Mishra, Eminent One or Drafna, Founder of Lat-Nam decks. I do like the Bant artifacts space, which is relatively unexplored. You take your favorite Azorius artifacts build and toss in the good green artifacts matter cards like Sarinth Steelseeker, Battery Bearer, green ramp, maybe the green golems package, maybe a Food and/or Clues package, maybe the Parallel Lives suite, and Haywire Mite.

Commanding Conclusion

Arcane Denial | Illustration by Xi Zhang

This deck is fun nonsense! It feels like the perfect reason for Doctor Who to join the format. But I love playing combos. I think Commander is too down on combo right now as an attempt to hedge against unsatisfying rule 0 conversations where people sneak cEDH-adjacent decks into casual games. But this is not Ad Nauseam on turn 2! On a perfect draw with zero interaction, this deck still needs like six turns to go off, and with a typical draw, even longer. From that perspective, I’d be happy to play against this deck at a casual table.

If you’re brewing with this planeswalker storm deck idea, let me know in the comments or on Discord what improvements you might find. Also, I’d love to hear about any victories you log with this beast!

Happy brewing!