The Doctor Who Commander decks are coming out next week, and I had a chance to learn more about them in a special press event recently. While I learned a lot of interesting things in the showcase and saw some fascinating preview cards, one of the biggest pieces of information I learned was that each of the Doctor Who Commander decks will include fifty new cards.
This is a new high for a Universes Beyond Magic: The Gathering Commander deck, surpassing the figure of forty that the Warhammer 40k Universes Beyond decks had in 2022 and dwarfing the twenty cards that the Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth decks had.
It's more than non-Universes Beyond decks get either, as some of those have had as few as five cards in the past, with the recent Commander Masters decks having ten new cards each.
Doctor Who Commander Has More Cards Than Small Sets Did
Long before the idea of the epilogue set represented in March of the Machine: Aftermath with fifty cards, Magic: The Gathering had small sets in blocks with card counts that often ranged between 140 and 180 cards. That's fewer new cards than the Doctor Who Commander decks, which will have nearly 200 new cards in it. While there are a few repeat cards like the TARDIS that show up in multiple decks, there aren't many of them, according to Wizards of the Coast.
The four Doctor Who Commander decks will be released on October 13th, along with the ability to purchase collector boosters that will contain the cards from the decks, along with special versions of them.
Previews are rolling out more today, and you can check out some more we got to see in our further coverage of the Doctor Who Commander decks.
Bonus Section
We got a couple of responses from Wizards of the Coast giving us a bit more information about the set we'll present here in QnA form.
Question: Do the 50 'new cards' include the Planechase cards or is that in addition to those cards?
Answer (WOTC): The planechase cards are in addition to the 50 new cards! So each deck gets 50 new cards, plus 10 new planechase cards!
Question: Could I get a number on the total of "Doctor's Companions" in the set?
Answer(WOTC): The set has 26 total Doctor’s Companions!
