Magic: The Gathering has not been shy about its cross-media tie-ins. The entire premise of Magic involves multiple realities, and the heroes tend to be creatures that can flit across reality at will. So Doctor Who is a natural match for Magic: The Gathering, even though it just feels like a bit of a novelty cash grab.
The Doctor Who-themed release involved a range of booster packs and four pre-built Commander decks, each focusing on a slightly different part of the 60-year-old franchise. However, only one of these decks made it to STARBURST’s Secret Gaming Thunderdome. Fortunately, it was the best one, Blast From the Past, a deck filled with classic Doctor Who characters and companions.
At its core, Blast From the Past is a green, white, and blue Commander deck. This means it packs a decent punch, fortifies its creatures and is a little bit tricksy. Perfect for the Fourth Doctor.
Four is, of course, our Commander, the lead card that everything else hinges on. Magic: The Gathering quite rightly considers The Doctor to be a Legendary Creature. The deck comes with a version of The Doctor from one to eight, and they are separate characters so you can re-enact your favourite crossover event. (You could easily do the Five Doctors, there’s even a specific card for that.) We don’t advise creating a Dimensions in Time deck, as there are currently no EastEnders-related Magic cards. We await the inevitable Dot Cotton Commander tech with eager anticipation!
There are a lot of synergies between the Doctor, his companions and his equipment. Though the deck focuses on the Fourth Doctor, you could easily rebuild it to work with The Fifth Doctor with Peri Brown and Ian Chesterton if you wish. Want to build a battle-based deck in which Jamie, K9 and Ace team up to beat up everything else, while the Sixth Doctor softly chuckles in the back, divining opponents’ power levels and building up his own power base? This deck lets you do that.
Blast From the Past is a fun example of how Magic: The Gathering, for all its mechanical coldness, is really just about storytelling. The deck also comes with ten planechase cards – an optional rule that randomly adds blanket conditions to the game. Of course, they’re Doctor Who-themed, and include the likes of the TARDIS bay and the Cheetah Planet. The latter fills the field with cats, which inevitably cause a ruckus.
Accessories include a box to put all the cards in, a cardboard ‘wheel-based’ life counter, some oversized tokens, some smaller round tokens, a black envelope to put the planechase cards in, and a sparkly blue six-sided dice with only two symbols on it; Gallifrey and the Planeswalker emblem, also used for Planechase. The tokens have to be popped out of the box; very little of the packaging is wasted here.
This is a good value set for folk looking to have fun playing Magic. It’s not the sort of deck you can strip for parts; it’s very specific to Doctor Who, but it’s colourful and filled with character. It’s an absolute must for the Magic-playing Doctor Who fans.
