Exclusive: Even More Doctor Who Coming to Magic: The Gathering

Back in October we got to reveal cards from Magic: The Gathering’s then upcoming Doctor Who Commander decks. Those decks are now out, but there’s more Doctor Who still to come to MTG thanks to a brand new Secret Lair – and today we’ve got a first look at three of the five cards from it.

Flip through the slideshow below to see th new cards, and read on to hear more about them from Wizards of the Coast’s Gavin Verhey.

All mechanically unique cards, the three we are revealing above depict David Tennant returning as the Fourteenth Doctor, Neil Patrick Harris’ villanous Toymaker, and Yasmin Finney’s new companion Rose Noble. All of these cards, as well as two more to be revealed next week, are part of a drop called Secret Lair x Doctor Who: Regeneration that will go on sale on the Secret Lair website on December 11.

I sent a couple questions to Principal Designer Gavin Verhey about both the drop and the Fourteenth Doctor’s design specifically, and here’s what he had to say:

IGN: Why make a Secret Lair for these cards later rather than put them in the Commander decks earlier this year?

Gavin Verhey, Principal Designer, Magic: The Gathering: Hi there! My name is Gavin Verhey, Principal Designer on Magic, lead designer of Doctor Who Commander – and of this Secret Lair drop as well! I have some answers for you.

We knew we wanted to include the Fourteenth Doctor and Fifteenth Doctor as soon as we learned about them. The only question was, “How?” One thing about Magic sets is that they take years to make, and we were already deep in crafting. How were we going to get a character into the set we knew nothing about, and nothing from the episodes either? And to make matters trickier, we couldn’t include anything in the decks that would spoil the specials since they released before the specials.

Fortunately, Secret Lair gave us a perfect opportunity to make it happen! We could keep the decks as-is, not rush to get them in, and release it after the specials – which just made sense! I love that Secret Lair creates chances to do little additions like this at just the right time.

The Fourteenth Doctor seems tailor-made to be the “Doctor Kindred” commander people have been asking for, was that the explicit intent behind it? And if so, how’d you land on this design to fill that role?

Yes, exactly! An idea core to Doctor Who is regeneration – going from one Doctor to another. An idea we had really early on in design was what if you could play ALL the doctors as your commander at once, in a single stack and they changed out every time you played one? That didn’t work out for all kinds of reasons, but we always liked the idea and tried to find different ways to incorporate it. I wanted to make sure there was a commander that let you live that experience, with your fully-themed Doctor Who deck – and even be able to play all five-colors, to tell whatever story you wanted! The Fourteenth Doctor is an unusual regeneration in the show, and the same is true for the card: it’s the only Doctor that’s more than two colors. And because it doesn’t have to be in the decks – which are locked in at a color identity of three colors, and couldn’t include this card – it can live here in a Secret Lair and let people go build their Doctor Who dreams. This is the card Gallifrey Stands was made for – and I look forward to seeing what you all do with it!

Tom Marks is IGN’s Senior Reviews Editor. He loves card games, puzzles, platformers, puzzle-platformers, and lots more.