Universes Beyond: Doctor Who has released and is now available for purchase! So, I'd like to look at a select handful of cards and see where the buzz has been with these new cards, and if there are any spicy reprints included.

Variants Galore

The new season of Loki may be starting this week, but you'd be forgiven if you'd confused it for the upcoming Doctor Who Magic: The Gathering release. This set boasts nearly 1200 unique printings of cards, with all cards boasting anywhere from two to seven versions, including regular nonfoil and foil, extended art nonfoil and foil, TARDIS showcase frame nonfoil and foil, regular frame surge foil, extended art surge foils, TARDIS showcase frame surge foils, and serialized Doctor cards. If you're someone who wants to collect fancy versions of cards in this set, you'll be utterly spoiled for choice! You can read more about the specifics of these various treatments on Wizards' official Collecting Magic: The Gathering - Doctor Who article.

The Cards People Are Talking About

Everybody Lives! got an immediate level of buzz going because it's such an all-encompassing protection spell in Commander. For all intents and purposes, it's basically a more mana-efficient version of Teferi's Protection that impacts everyone as opposed to one player, while also drawing comparisons to cards like Heroic Intervention. All this points to the card becoming a longtime staple of Commander decks everywhere.

Blink is an iconic episode of Doctor Who (or so I am told) and features the infamous Weeping Angels. This saga represents the events of that episode and does so in a way that fans have found to be fitting. At the same time, it also created discussion since it is the first saga that bounces between abilities rather than going straight down the card. It's the sort of card that makes players go, "Wait, they can do that?" and many such players took note of it.

The Master, Multiplied generated similar buzz for doing something fairly unique. The Master, Multiplied creates multiple tokens of itself every turn, but through some fancy trickery with the card's third ability, the Myriad ability's delayed sacrifice trigger no longer happens. This means you can continually build up a legion of tokens of The Master, Multiplied but can also do so with several other cards, ranging from additional cards that bear the Myriad mechanic, ones that utilize Blitz or Encore, and even allows you to build up a sizeable army of Zombie tokens with Decayed.

If there's one thing that gets people talking, it's the actual devil showing up in Magic: The Gathering. This feels particularly noteworthy given the lengthy removal of demons from the game from roughly Fourth Edition through Onslaught, making it feel like we've come full circle as a game. Additionally, it makes for an extremely fun card to use and build around, incentivizing you to play abilities that steal from opponents.

What's New and Pricey?

As of now, it's somewhat difficult to determine what's worth money and what isn't. We have seen a handful of new cards selling for over $10 apiece in early presales, such as Weeping Angel, River Song, and The Tenth Doctor. However, these were cards we'd already seen weeks ago, and have had more time on the market comparatively. As the set releases next week, it's likely these cards will settle to a more reasonable valuation. In spite of this, however, there is one clear early winner: Everybody Lives!

As mentioned above, this card is set to become an absolute staple of Commander tables going forward. As a result, it's already commanding a price tag of over $30 and may continue to rise. This is due to the rumored lower print run of the release, as well as the perceived difficulty of reprinting cards based on a specific intellectual property. With multiple variant versions soon to hit the market as well, it will be interesting to see where some of them land long term - particularly the extended art surge foil version.

Additionally, despite being an uncommon, Displaced Dinosaurs is also showing up with sales coming in close to the $30 mark. Even though it's uncommon, that doesn't mean as much when it shows up in only one deck and the rarity doesn't impact accessibility in booster packs to the degree it normally might. In short: for an uncommon, this is going to be quite hard to come by, and casual players everywhere want to get their hands on it. The reason? Because you can do simple things like make treasures and food tokens and, oops, they're suddenly 7/7s!

Noteworthy Reprints

The set also features several outstanding reprints, as one might expect of Commander precons, all sporting new art from Doctor Who.

One area that drew a tremendously positive response was in the decks' land bases. Historically, while Commander preconstructed decks are largely well received for their construction and new cards, they're often lambasted for poor mana bases that feature too many tap lands and very little in terms of value. Wizards seems to have taken this to heart and has provided players with a number of excellent lands, including the likes of Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow's slow lands, Modern Horizon's canopy lands, and even some surprisingly low print options like Sheltered Thicket. As of the time of writing, I haven't even seen all of them yet, however this has been seen as a very good thing by players all over.

Another major item is Carpet of Flowers. This card has been in famously low supply for a long while now, only having been printed in Urza's Saga and then not receiving prints until the release of Mystery Boosters and a single Secret Lair Drop. It's regularly seen in Legacy lists, as well as Commander, and prior to this new printing was going for upward of $12 apiece. With this new set brings a fresh supply for many players looking to get a copy or two for themselves and try it out in their decks!

Last, but not least, is a card that has been slowly creeping up to an unprecedented high price for what has previously been a common. Snuff Out goes for upward of $10 these days, largely due to its utility as a free spell in a variety of formats. It's a format staple in Pauper - where players have long been clamoring for a reprint - and also sees play in Legacy, Commander, and even Vintage. Despite not being legal in more widely played formats on average, the low release numbers of the card - solely Mercadian Masques and a pair of Duel Decks releases - have driven the price up to high numbers, making this a very welcome reprint.

Additional Resources

If you'd like more information on this set, check out the following links to various official resources from Wizards of the Coast:

• Universes Beyond: Doctor Who official card image gallery
• Where to Find Magic: The Gathering - Doctor Who Previews
• Collecting Magic: The Gathering - Doctor Who
• Magic: The Gathering - Doctor Who Mechanics
• Magic: The Gathering - Doctor Who Commander Decklists

You can find everything Universes Beyond: Doctor Who right here on CoolStuffInc.com, so be sure to check out our page and pick up anything that catches your interest!

Paige Smith

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