Welcome to the first installment of our Commander Deck breakdowns! This week you’ve got me, and I’m breaking down one of my favorite decks, and a pet deck of mine - The Third Doctor & Sarah Jane Smith.
The Commanders
So, straight into it. Since The Third Doctor has Doctor’s Companion, which is essentially a very slightly modified version of Partner, we can also have another card with Doctor’s Companion as our second commander. Here, it’s imperative we go with Sarah Jane Smith.
The Third Doctor creates either a food, treasure or clue token on entry - in almost all circumstances, you’ll be creating a treasure token because there are several ways to abuse them in this deck, and Sarah Jane Smith makes a clue token the first time you cast a historic spell each turn. What this means if you sequence it correctly is that by the time you can cast The Third Doctor, you’ll have at minimum a 4/4 with trample, since The Third Doctor gets +1/+1 for each non-creature token you control.
Abusing Tokens
The deck comes equipped with several ways to abuse token generation, allowing you to very easily make The Third Doctor massive. Cards like Adrix and Nev, Twincasters, Mondrak, Glory Dominus, Doubling Season, Parallel Lives and Anointed Procession all double the amount of tokens that you generate. Academy Manufacturer quickly turns your token generation into an absolutely wild scene, meaning your opponent HAS to use removal or they’re dead.
The real best way to abuse this, though, is by flickering The Third Doctor. Using cards like Displacer Kitten, Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd, Sword of Hearth and Home and Ephemerate essentially allows you to generate consistent treasure tokens that can be spent on bigger and bigger spells, leading you to your endgame. In a similar vein, this is why Selvala, Heart Of The Wilds is so crucial - every single time your Third Doctor enters the battlefield you’re likely going to draw a card as it’ll be the biggest creature on the battlefield, and you can start generating mana from the wildly large power that your commander is going to have.
Speaking of mana - Jaheira, Friend Of The Forest and Urza, Lord High Artificer are both in the deck specifically because they allow your tokens to generate a mana advantage. Sure, Urza has a brilliant secondary ability that can win games, but that mana? The importance of it cannot be understated.
And if you’re left between a rock and a hard place, then you can use Lonis, Cryptozoologist to put all the Clue tokens that Selvala is generating to good use, and steal cards from your opponent’s deck.
Tutoring And Drawing
You’ve got so much mana that you’ve cast every single card in your hand. How do you refill it? Well, aside from the aforementioned Selvala, this is where cards like Chulane, Teller of Tales, Reki, The History of Kamigawa, Brainstorm, Dig Through Time and Fomori Vault come in. Fomori Vault allows you to really dig through your deck in the late game when you’ve generated a massive amount of artifact tokens, while Dig Through Time allows you to use cards in your graveyard that you’re never going to need again to facilitate getting to cards you really want to see.
The One Ring needs no introduction when it comes to draw power, and it’s as broken as you think it’ll be in a deck that can flicker the thing. Sensei’s Divining Top allows you to stack your deck, an essential tool for one of your endgame cards, and just a really good ability in general.
Tutor wise, you’re playing Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor and Worldly Tutor. These three are important, and it’s important you’re malleable with your targets - different situations require it. In most circumstances you’re using Enlightened Tutor to grab ramp, and Worldly Tutor is usually one of your finisher cards (such as Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite), Mystical Tutor can very much be anything.
Ramping Up Your Strategy
I’m not going to break down every single artifact in the deck - there’s just so many of them, and some of them are pretty obvious inclusions like Sol Ring, Mana Vault and Lightning Greaves. But some of them need to be noted - The Party Tree is an auto-inclusion for the draw power and the fact is it’ll quickly be one of the cheapest ramp options in your entire deck once The Third Doctor hits the battlefield.
Ramp-wise, playing Three Visits, Skyshroud Claim and Nature’s Lore cuts through your deck to get to any color in your deck. The three Moxes in the deck (Mox Opal, Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond) all act as quick ramp with easy to meet conditions - you’ll always have a land card to discard for Diamond, you’ll always have something to exile for Chrome and getting three artifacts on board for Opal is child's play.
It is worth noting that a couple of the lands in the deck are also utility lands - Boseiju, Who Endures allows for manipulation of your opponent’s field, while Otawara, Soaring City allows you to bounce something back that you really don’t want to deal with right now. These should only be played as cards in a worst case scenario - you really want to hold these cards in your hand.
End It All
So you’ve got a massive Third Doctor equipped with some utterly stupid equipment like Commander’s Plate. Your opponent can’t block it, but you’re acutely aware that you also can’t kill your opponent this turn, and next turn if they have an out then you might lose the game. What do you do? Well, you’ve got options to stop them from hurting you with cards like Force of Will, Mana Drain, Force of Vigor, Subtlety and Teferi’s Protection.
This is where the true endgame strategy starts. So, firstly, there are cards like Temporal Mastery, Temporal Trespass and Time Stretch which allows you to just keep taking turns and keep attacking your opponent. Secondly, Tezzeret The Seeker can allow for a very quick win - while you’re normally going to use it for the ability to tutor an artifact, the Ult on the card turns every single artifact token you control into a creature with base power and toughness 5/5, and normally your opponent just can’t block everything you throw at them.
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