The War Doctor Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on April 10, 2024

The War Doctor | Illustration by Lixin Yin

The War Doctor and Clara Oswald are two legendary creatures that come with the Doctor Who Commander precon Timey Wimey, and that deck is a Jeskai () deck built mainly around suspending cards and messing with time counters. There are plenty of legendary creatures in this Commander precon, but The War Doctor particularly caught my attention because it’s got a pretty interesting ability that’s worth exploring in a Commander deck. Black’s pretty good at exiling stuff as well, so being able to add black to this commander with Clara Oswald is the route I immediately set out to explore.

Furthermore, Clara doubles the Doctor’s triggers, so it looks like a perfect fit. Today, I’m showing you my The War Doctor and Clara Oswald Commander deck and digging into the reasons I’m playing these cards.

Let’s dive in! 

The Deck

War Doctor – Photo from BBC

This is a Mardu () casual deck, mainly Boros () with a black splash. The main commander is The War Doctor, with Clara Oswald as the Doctor’s companion allowing for synergies and that black splash.

The basic plan of this deck is to have The War Doctor in play, use your spells and effects to exile cards, and start attacking players. Each time you attack a player, you’ll get a damage trigger that can remove a creature from somebody else or deal more damage to a player that’s in the lead, for example.

There are a few explosive cards that give your commander so many time counters that your opponents have a small window to deal with it or die. For that, you’re counting on mass exile effects and the cross synergies between Clara and Doctor.

The Commander

The War Doctor is a Boros commander that costs 4 mana and is a 3/5. Each time any player exiles a card, you’ll get a counter on your commander. When it attacks, you’ll deal damage equal to the number of counters to any target, including players. The attack trigger on The War Doctor can be a nice removal spell or even eliminate players.

To build the deck around this commander, fill the deck with exile effects, which can come from many places. There’s removal that exiles, sweepers that exile, and graveyard hate that exiles cards. And there’s red effects that can exile a bunch of cards from your libraries, along with cards that’ll exile cards from your opponents’ libraries.

There are some problems though. This commander doesn’t have an ETB effect or haste, it doesn’t have any evasion, and if it’s killed or removed, you’ll lose all the counters you were building. Naturally, you’ll want some cards that can grant haste and protection to ensure that you can enjoy all the time counters you’ve built for multiple rounds.

Clara Oswald is one of the best Doctor’s companions. It can any one color to this deck, so you can use Clara to add green, blue, or black. Most importantly, it doubles all the Doctor’s triggered abilities, and that’s what you’re building this deck for. If those two are on the battlefield, each exiled card adds two time counters to the Doctor, each attack from the Doctor triggers the damage ability twice, and so on. It’s pretty expensive at 6 mana though, so it’s a good thing that the color identity it provides doesn’t require it to be on the battlefield.

The Creatures

A good chunk of this decklist is creatures, and most of them were selected to work well with the Doctor, the exile theme, and attack triggers.

Duke Ulder Ravengard can give your creatures myriad, including your commander. Three doctors attacking means three triggers. Other creatures from the deck can benefit from the myriad effect, of course.

Adventure cards like Murderous Rider and Decadent Dragon fill multiple roles on this deck, giving you card advantage and removal while exiling themselves because of the adventure triggers. Decadent Dragon gives you three exile triggers when you cast Expensive Taste.

Valki, God of Lies / Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor is a machine gun of exile triggers, and Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor is a very nice late-game card.

Cards like Urabrask, Heretic Praetor and Laelia, the Blade Reforged are beaters that give you exile triggers and card advantage, and Laelia can even benefit from these triggers.

Norin the Wary doubles as an early creature to attack, and many, many exile triggers later in the game.

Etali, Primal Storm gives you exile triggers and juicy cards from your opponents that you can play.

Isshin, Two Heavens as One doubles your attack triggers, which works well with most of your creatures that do something when attacking.

Eldrazi Displacer plays double duty, giving you exile effects and blinking opposing creatures. It can even save some of your creatures from removal.

Toralf, God of Fury can make your commander’s attack trigger kill a creature and trample excess damage into their controller.

Interaction

Since exiling is the main theme of the deck, you have lots of interaction that exiles or phases out:

To protect your creatures, you have Teferi's Protection and Clever Concealment, while you have cards like Anguished Unmaking, Despark, and Swords to Plowshares as options for spot removal. Hurl Through Hell is a fun one, allowing you to exile the creature and cast it, effectively stealing it from your opponent.

Giver of Runes and Mother of Runes are here to protect The War Doctor or give it evasion. That can also be done with the staples like Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots.

In this deck’s theme, you also have cards like Grasp of Fate and Crack in Time to exile multiple creatures and open the way to your attacks. Gallifrey Falls / No More can be used to phase out your creatures as well with the white side.

Tibalt's Trickery can be a fun one, countering a spell (in red) while providing the exile effects you desire.

Sweepers

Here’s where the deck shines. You have lots of ways to sweep the board while exiling, and that can be done mainly via Farewell and Merciless Eviction. Impending Flux and Anger of the Gods can be sweepers for small creatures, while Gallifrey Falls / No More has two modes, one a sweeper and the other that saves your creatures.

Card Advantage

The main part of the card advantage you get from this deck is from the impulse drawing in red, where you’ll exile cards and play them until the end of the turn.

Dance with Calamity can provide you with many cards and many exile effects. This can also be achieved via Outpost Siege in Khans mode.

Lots of creatures in this deck give you card advantage by exiling cards, like Laelia, the Blade Reforged, Prosper, Tome-Bound, and Ryan Sinclair.

In the same way, you can use your sagas like The Day of the Doctor and The Flux. Ensnared by the Mara is like a Combustible Gearhulk, giving you cards or damaging your opponents.

Virtue of Courage can exile lots of cards on a single attack from your commander.

Throes of Chaos gives you cascade and retrace every turn, so you’ll get something out of the cascade effect, exile some cards from your deck, and cast again from the graveyard if you have extra land cards in your hand.

Huge Bombs

The Day of the Doctor is the saga in this deck, and it even has the commander in the art. The first chapters give you card advantage and exile effects, while the last one leaves the battlefield empty with only your supercharged commander.

Possibility Storm is a crazy card in this deck, making all players across the table exile lots of cards just to play spells. You also can exile your opponent’s graveyard and attack with a super commander in the same turn, thanks to cards like Farewell, Bojuka Bog, and Scavenger Grounds. Solphim, Mayhem Dominus can help you kill players via direct damage.

The Mana Base

This deck is mainly red and white, with a black splash. Your commanders don’t require black to cast, and some spells require black mana. There’s a reason this deck won’t play cards like Necropotence, which is an awesome combo with this commander but costs . You also don’t rely on black cards coming early in the game, so the mana base is very much focused on fixing your red and white primarily.

As such, you have 6 dual lands that fix , alongside 5 Mountain and 5 Plains. There are only 2 lands that tap for mana, but many sources of 3-mana fixing, like Nomad Outpost, Savai Triome, Command Tower, along with fetch lands like Fabled Passage and Evolving Wilds that can get a basic you need. Four signets and a Commander's Sphere are also responsible for smoothing your mana necessities.

The Strategy

The strategy of this deck is pretty straightforward. Cast your commander as soon as you can, hopefully ramped by your mana rocks. It’s a 3/5 so it’s not easily dying in the early game. This deck wants to control the board, attacking as often as possible with its commander, preferably after The War Doctor picks up a few time counters. If you’re in a condition where you can’t attack anymore, then it’s time to use your exile spells that give you card advantage or your sweepers.

There are lots of cards that give you the advantage in the long run, so you’ll need to grind resources and use your commander to kill off small creatures or potential threats. You’re very good at killing small commanders and planeswalkers, too.

Cards like Etali, Primal Storm can give you a good board out of nowhere, and if you have 10+ lands and little action, your powerful sagas can put you back in the action. The worst thing that can happen is opponents that keep sniping at your commander to prevent it from gathering counters or not being able to cast the cards you exile until the end of turn.

Combos and Interactions

With Clara Oswald on the battlefield, each exiled card puts two time counters on the Doctor, and each attack from the Doctor triggers twice. One interaction that comes frequently with this deck starts by exiling the top X cards from a library. Put X time counters on the Doctor, attack, deal X damage to a creature, and kill it. When you do, the killed creature is exiled, and you’ll put another counter on the Doctor, which only matters on the next attack. If Clara Oswald is on the battlefield, you’ll have two different triggers of X damage in this situation, and you can point them in any direction. You can then kill two creatures, adding four time counters to the Doctor thanks to all the doubling provided by Clara.

Like the rules on Laelia, the Blade Reforged, when players are required to exile cards until they find a card they need, each exiled card triggers Laelia and The War Doctor. That works with cascade as well.

If you cast a Farewell exiling everything but creatures, each card that you exile puts a counter on the Doctor, leading to at least a very strong attack. That can be double with Clara Oswald, Isshin, Two Heavens as One, Solphim, Mayhem Dominus, and the like.

Phasing a creature out maintains all the counters, and that’s different from blinking it. If The War Doctor phases out, it returns with all the time counters it previously had. Teferi's Protection is huge in this deck because all your permanents phase out, so when The War Doctor returns, it returns with dozens of time counters, being able to attack next turn without summoning sickness.

The Ozolith is the only way you can keep the time counters when the Doctor leaves the battlefield. Being able to recast the commander and have it get onto the battlefield with all the previous counters is very good.

Rule 0 Violations Check

With regards to Rule 0, this deck has no fast combo and doesn’t rely heavily on tutors, being a very midrange/value/fair deck. One thing you should be aware of is that the main win condition of the deck is to exile/phase out a lot of cards at once, say, 15-30, and hit a player with a very strong attack trigger, especially if doubled by Clara. This can be easily disrupted by removing your commander.

Budget Options

These are the most expensive cards in our deck:

• Giver of Runes
• Valki, God of Lies
• Professional Face-Breaker
• Prosper, Tome-Bound
• Solphim, Mayhem Dominus
• Teferi's Protection
• Clever Concealment
• Sacred Foundry
• Savai Triome
• Blood Crypt
• The Ozolith
• Relic of Progenitus

Of these, I don’t want to part with the white phasing cards or The Ozolith since they play key roles in the deck’s strategy.

Let’s replace Giver of Runes with Skrelv, Defector Mite. The lands can be replaced with Temple of Triumph, Haunted Ridge, and Temple of Silence. Rest in Peace replaces Relic of Progenitus.

The other four creatures can be replaced by other cards I’ve considered: Asmodeus the Archfiend, Dream Devourer, Glorious Protector, and Fall of Cair Andros. With these changes, the deck can go from a $250-$300 budget to a $150-$180 budget.

Other Builds

This commander is surprisingly flexible to build. With 26 possible options for Doctor’s companions and almost all colors caring about exiling cards in some way, there are some other possibilities to explore with this commander.

Pair it with K-9, Mark I. This way, you can give The War Doctor unblockable and ward 1, besides access to blue spells. There are plenty of blue spells that provide phasing, like March of Swirling Mist, or blue removal that polymorphs or exiles like Curse of the Swine. Another interesting blue Doctor’s companion is Adric, Mathematical Genius, a companion that can copy activated or triggered abilities you control.

Go heavy on the blink aspect with a blue companion, play lots of Azorius () cards with good ETB effects, and fill your deck with white and blue blink effects. This is a nice Panharmonicon/Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines deck, and each time you blink a creature, you’re building up The War Doctor.

Play a green Doctor’s companion and fill your deck with cascade cards. After all, each time you cascade, you’ll exile a bunch of cards from your library. There are lots of green and red strong adventure cards, and those give you more exile triggers. If you resolve an Apex Devastator, you should exile enough cards to have a really strong The War Doctor attack trigger.

If you’re building the time counters on this commander, it doesn’t hurt to have extra attack steps. A Boros () build with cards like Aurelia, the Warleader can be very interesting.

Commanding Conclusion

Clara Oswald | Illustration by Marta Nael

In Doctor Who lore, the The War Doctor had to take a very important and meaningful decision, and that was to end the war between Time Lords and Daleks by getting rid of everyone at the same time. Not unlike Urza against the Phyrexians during The Brothers’ War.

I like that the saga of The Day of the Doctor reflects exactly this, and if your exiling stuff works, that’s what you’ll feel after playing this deck. Give this deck a try, and I hope that you can deal 30+ damage while attacking regularly while copying the attack trigger a few times.

What do you think about The War Doctor as a commander? Any different ideas?  Let me know in the comments section below or over on Draftsim’s Discord.

Thanks for reading guys, and stay safe out there.