Upgrading Commander Precon - Blast From The Past (The Fourth Doctor&Sarah Jane)

In this article, we will once again discuss the incredible Doctor Who decks. More precisely, we'll bring a deck tech upgrading Blast From The Past, a deck in the colors White, Blue and Green focused on the first eight Doctors, their companions and the situations involving them depicted in the classic Doctor Who TV show from 1963.

Unlike the modern series, I'm not too familiar with most of the characters and situations in Classic Doctor Who. I watched some episodes starring William Hartnell, the first Doctor, and saw a lot of the fourth Doctor era. I also have Shada, the book, which contains a story not used on TV, but written by Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's author) for the fourth Doctor.

Now that I've already talked about Doctor who (as I was planning to do from the start), let's discuss the deck!

This precon's main strategy focuses on historic cards. Well, you see, Historic isn't only the name of a format in Magic Arena; it is also a "family" of cards that includes artifacts, sagas and legendary cards, be them creatures, enchantments or whatever has this supertype.

This deck is already uncommon because of its pre-established commanders, The Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith. This is the most famous Doctor and the most important Companion in this series. This is the precon list:

Once this deck comes filled with Doctors, Companions and other legendary creatures, it is possible to create several different commander combinations that are valid in this deck's colors. With all this diversity, we could easily spend quite a while here having fun and researching combination ideas, and changing this deck to include different strategies and philosophies. And if you give me enough time with these options in hand, at one point I'm sure I could spit out a Bant Burn deck.

Like so, let's use the commanders on this deck's cover, The Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith. Both have great synergy with each other: Sarah allows you to create several Clue tokens when historic permanents enter play, while the Doctor allows you to play in the iconic Street Magic style, letting you look at the top of your deck any time you want and cast cards from there, creating Food tokens for you.

Without further ado, let's upgrade this fantastic deck!

Susan Foreman

The Doctor's granddaughter brings us an interesting dichotomy. She might be the best card in the deck or an extremely generic and sad card, depending on a single factor; How much we want to play Planechase. Susan Foreman turns out to be a wonderful card, and commander, when the matter is Planechase, a format whose theme is to travel between planes and go on adventures.

Susan allows you to choose the next plane card that will be activated and, alongside tools like The First Doctor and the TARDIS, can extract a lot of value out of this tool that makes Planechase unique.

That being said, if you're not playing Planechase, Susan Foreman is just a more expensive Llanowar Elves. In that case, the best thing to do is let her live her life with her loved one in the 22nd century, like her grandfather, the Doctor, has done. In other words, if you play Planechase, she is in, if not, like in this article, it's best to remove her.

Vrestin Menoptra Leader is a card that got me very excited the first time I saw it, but not in this deck. The Leader of the Insect race (which showed up in a story involving the first Doctor) does what you expect it to: creates a swarm of Insects that grow and become a huge threat to corn plantations and your opponents' health points.

However, in this deck it does very little, unless you make some changes. Still, I'd love to see a deck featuring this card, with cards such as Hornet Queen and Hornet Nest to really boost what this strategy can do best.

Leela, Sevateem Warrior fits that very common Magic theme: it is a card with tremendous power, but no type of evasion, and is perfect to be blocked by that 1/1 little Goblin on your opponent's board. Besides that, this The Fourth Doctor-era companion has the great problem of needing your opponents to draw cards that are not the first card that they draw in each of their draw steps to grow.

Like so, we can simply replace it with a Narset, Parter of Veils which, instead of depending on other players' card advantage to grow a creature that doesn't bring a lot to the game, will simply disable your opponents' extra draws.

Sergeant John Benton is also an interesting card, and has been useful to me when I was testing this precon deck, but it would work better in a Group Hug or Pillow Fort deck, maybe headlined by The Second Doctor or with the help of the aforementioned Narset, Parter of Veils.

We'll also remove Adric, Mathematical Genius, one of the Doctor's Companions - one of the most annoying ones, by the way. Its effect is good, but it doesn't have much space in this deck, and we often wait, for a long time, for a good reason to activate it, but it always disappoints us.

For artifacts, we can remove Ace's Baseball Bat, which was very useful to me when I was playing the main decks, but ends up not going far. This card only interacts with Daleks, a creature type that only exists in Doctor Who, and in cards with the Changeling ability. Its other effect is quite interesting, granting an equipped creature +3/+0 and First Strike, but, unfortunately, it only works when this creature is attacking. This baseball bat can hit hard, but, in case you need to play more conservatively, and it is still equipped for some reason, it won't help much.

The same goes for Hero's Blade, a very generic equipment which doesn't help much. As for Bessie, the Doctor's Roadster, it fits decks that need this unblockable effect nicely, but that isn't our case.

The Caves of Androzani is a very slow saga that doesn't do much until its fourth chapter, when it will serve to tutor some Doctor from your deck. If you don't have any tapped creature when it enters the game, it will simply not activate any of its effects, and its next two chapters will only have synergy with counters that might not be on the board in great varieties or even be redundant in greater numbers.

The War Games is another saga that works quite slowly and behaves even quite oddly. Many times I think its final chapter will be completely useless.

The same goes for City of Death, which gets worse the fewer tokens you have on the board. The Sea Devils is another saga that we can remove, once, even in its final chapter, it depends entirely on you having Salamanders on board.

This deck's mana base is strong and solid, and is one of the best ever made in precon products, like so proving itself to be quite cohesive straight from the box. If you want to boost it, Thriving Lands, such as Thriving Isle, are the best options to remove and swap. We won't alter this mana base in this article, but that is our advice if you'd like to.

Cards to Add

Even though this card's price is quite above average, Urza, Lord High Artificer fits this deck like a glove. We're talking about a deck that creates countless artifact tokens because of its own commanders, and being able to transform them into mana rocks would really help this deck, allowing you to have new lines of play with it and explosive turns.

Speaking of Urza, we can add an Urza's Ruinous Blast, a playable spell with The Fourth Doctor's ability straight from the top of your deck, once it belongs to the legendary supertype, and, like so, is a historic spell.

In the same sense as Urza, Jaheira, Friend of the Forest will allow you to use all your tokens as mana rocks, this time creating green mana instead of blue.

Once we work heavily with utility, Clue, Food and Treasure tokens, nothing is fairer than taking advantage of them and their "enter the battlefield" triggers as well. Academy Manufactor will simply be this deck's best friend in this sense, and can generate for you all three types of tokens consequently when another source places just one of them on the board.

Samwise Gamgee also works similarly, just like Peregrin Took, which has an effect similar to Academy Manufactor, but more geared towards Food tokens. Besides that, both allow you to advance your strategy at the cost of sacrificing Foods, be it by returning an important spell from the graveyard or drawing a card.

Oko, Thief of Crowns, my favorite Magic card, also fits this deck nicely. Not only does he create Food tokens, but he also spreads fun and smiles throughout the whole board. It is impossible to not have fun with this little fella on the board.

Narset, Parter of Veils has already been mentioned in the part where I mentioned cards that can be removed. As for Martha Jones, the tenth Doctor's Companion, available in the Jeskai deck in this set, Timey-Wimey, she interacts with this deck beautifully, giving even more value to sacrificing land tokens.

Cyberdrive Awakener works as the perfect finisher. After creating countless tokens, you can transform them all into big 4/4 creatures with Flying, and like so get your win with this deck.

Finally, there are many cards, like Parallel Lives, Anointed Procession, Mondrak, Glory Dominus and Doubling Season, that can double the token creation effects in other cards, and simply fill your board with everything you need.

You can use any one of those in your deck - in this one, we'll use Doubling Season as it is the strongest and most cohesive version of this effect, but you are welcome to use whatever's handy!

With that, we can use Whir of Invention as a win condition, once we gather many artifacts with the same name, like Clues, Food and Treasures. Using this enchantment is perfect for bricked games, which is very common when we have so many legendaries that have synergy with each other on the board.

Other Suggestions to Add

Astrid Peth and Sally Sparrow are legendary creatures that come in the Timey-Wimey precon deck, and both have great synergy with the token types we want in this deck; Food and Clue. As the player expands their preferences and modifies this deck, these two legends can be great additions to this deck.

Finally, this deck, after some changes, swaps and alterations, will be something like this:

How about we change this deck a little and focus on The Seventh Doctor and on Ace, Fearless Rebel to build a deck focused on playing a Minigame?

Thanks to The Seventh Doctor's ability, we can use an unrevealed card and ask our opponent: "Is this card's cost higher or lower than the number of artifacts I have in play?" and try to cast a card for free if they get it wrong.

During all this time, I was itching to simply tell you, "when in doubt, play the two Radagasts from Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth, tell your opponents they are considered Time Lord Doctors and have fun". Unfortunately, both these wizards don't really work with this deck, so their inclusion would be just for flavor.

"What flavor?" you might ask. Well, during the Middle-Earth movies, in which Radagast, the Brown appears, they're played by Sylvester McCoy, the actor, who also played the seventh Doctor. Including these wizards in this deck would be quite fun for this reason, but, unfortunately, it wouldn't really make it better. But maybe one day I will build this deck and ask nicely that my opponents consider them a Doctor.

See you next time!