Doctor Who MTG Set Guide (WHO) — Cards, Mechanics & Lore
Few crossovers in Magic's history carry quite the weight of Doctor Who - a franchise with sixty years of television history meeting a card game with thirty years of its own. The Doctor Who set (set code: WHO) is a Universes Beyond product, meaning it sits outside the traditional Magic multiverse while using Magic's rules, card types, and gameplay systems to tell someone else's story. And honestly? It does it with a lot of love for both sides.
With 1,138 cards, this is one of the largest Universes Beyond releases to date, and it covers an enormous sweep of the show's history - from the First Doctor's black-and-white beginnings all the way to the Fifteenth.
What is the Doctor Who MTG set?
The Doctor Who set is a Commander-focused Universes Beyond release, published by Wizards of the Coast as part of a licensing agreement with the BBC. It was released on 13 October 2023, timed to celebrate both Magic's ongoing Universes Beyond initiative and Doctor Who's own milestone anniversary year.
Because it's a Universes Beyond product rather than a mainline set, Doctor Who sits outside Standard and Pioneer legality. The cards are designed primarily for Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Pauper (where individually legal), but they are not part of the main Magic storyline or the Multiverse lore.
At 1,138 cards, the set is unusually large for a Commander product - a reflection of just how much source material sixty years of Doctor Who gives you to work with.
Format check: Cards from WHO are not legal in Standard, Pioneer, or Modern. They are legal in Legacy, Vintage, and Commander. Always verify individual card legality on Scryfall before building.
Themes and mechanics
The mechanical heart of Doctor Who is built around two things: the relationship between the Doctor and their Companions, and the idea of travelling through time and space to encounter strange new situations. Both of those translate into gameplay in surprisingly elegant ways.
The Doctor creature type - a new class for a new kind of hero
One of the most significant introductions in WHO is the Doctor creature type itself. Doctor is a new creature class - used in this set to represent the various incarnations of the Time Lord known as the Doctor. Flavorfully, it replaces Cleric in contexts where that feels appropriate for a character who is, in their own way, a healer and a guide.
Every numbered incarnation of the Doctor appears in this set, from the First Doctor through to the Fifteenth Doctor, alongside notable variants like the War Doctor, the Fugitive Doctor, and the Fourteenth Doctor. Each is a Legendary Creature, which matters a great deal for Commander - you can build an entire deck around whichever Doctor speaks to you most.
Companions and the Doctor-Companion relationship
Mechanically, many cards in the set reward you for controlling both a Doctor and a Companion - a pairing that mirrors the show's central dynamic. Companions are a distinct category of creature in WHO, and building a deck that keeps your Doctor and Companion working together is one of the set's core gameplay loops.
This creates a natural tension that feels very true to the source material: the Doctor is powerful but often more effective when supported, and Companions each bring their own distinct abilities to the relationship.
Time travel - the Cascade cousin
The set introduces mechanics designed to evoke time travel, letting players interact with their library, graveyard, and exile zone in ways that feel appropriately wibbly-wobbly. Specific mechanic names and their precise rules details are worth looking up on Scryfall or the official Wizards rules page for exact wording.
Scientist - a supporting creature type
The Scientist creature type also appears throughout the set, attached to characters who fit that role in the show's world. Notable Scientists in WHO include Davros, Ian Chesterton, Kate Stewart, Nardole, Nyssa of Traken, The Rani, and Romana II - a roll call that will put a smile on any long-time Doctor Who fan's face.
The mix of Doctors, Companions, Scientists, and villains gives the set a genuinely broad cast, and tribal synergies across those types give deckbuilders a lot to work with.
Commander and Limited
WHO is built for Commander first and foremost. The set's 1,138 cards are structured around a collection of preconstructed Commander decks, each themed around a different era or aspect of Doctor Who. The four decks lean into different parts of the show's history, giving players a range of starting points depending on which corner of the Whoniverse they love most.
Because this is a Commander product rather than a traditional Draft set, there is no officially supported Limited format for WHO. If you're looking for a Draft experience, this isn't the set for it - but as a foundation for Commander brewing, it's remarkably rich.
Building around the Doctors: With fifteen numbered Doctors plus variants, the set offers an unusual number of viable legendary commanders. Each Doctor plays differently, which means you can take the same broad theme - Doctor Who - and build fifteen meaningfully distinct decks.
Notable cards and lore figures
The set's card list reads like a love letter to sixty years of television. Every classic Doctor is here, alongside companions, recurring allies, and some of the show's most beloved (and feared) villains. Davros, the creator of the Daleks, is present as a Legendary Creature with the Scientist subtype, which feels exactly right.
On the ally side, characters like Romana II, Nyssa of Traken, and Nardole bring the Scientist type alongside their own individual abilities, while Kate Stewart and Ian Chesterton round out a cast that spans the classic and modern eras of the show.
I won't claim to know which of these cards will end up as long-term Commander staples without more tournament data, but the sheer density of legendary creatures means there's strong potential for cross-deck inclusion, particularly for anyone running a Legendary tribal strategy.
Lore and setting
Doctor Who is, at its core, a show about a Time Lord - an alien from the planet Gallifrey - who travels through time and space in a blue police box called the TARDIS, accompanied by a rotating cast of human (and sometimes non-human) Companions. The show began in 1963 on the BBC and has run, with one long hiatus, ever since.
The Doctor is unusual among fictional protagonists in that they regenerate when they would otherwise die, changing their face and personality entirely. This is what allows the set to feature so many distinct Doctors as separate cards - each one is genuinely a different person, while also being the same person. It's a beautiful piece of science fiction that translates naturally into Magic's Legendary rule.
The set draws on both the classic era (roughly 1963-1989) and the modern revival (2005-present), which is reflected in its breadth of characters. Seeing the First Doctor and the Fifteenth Doctor on cards in the same set, each with mechanics that feel true to their era, is the kind of thing that rewards fans who've been watching since the beginning.
Lore aside: The Doctor's name is, famously, never revealed in the show. They go by "the Doctor" as both alias and title. The set honours this - every Doctor card uses that framing rather than inventing a name.
Set legacy
It's still relatively early to make sweeping claims about Doctor Who's long-term impact on Magic. What I can say is that WHO represents one of the most ambitious Universes Beyond releases to date, both in scale - 1,138 cards is genuinely enormous for a product of this type - and in the care taken to represent a sixty-year franchise faithfully.
The introduction of the Doctor creature class is a mechanical legacy that will persist in any future printings of Doctor-themed cards, and the Companion-synergy design patterns feel like a template that could inform future Universes Beyond products.
For Commander players, this set is a goldmine of legendary creatures and flavourful support cards. For fans of the show, it's one of the most thorough adaptations of a television property into card-game form that I've seen. Whether that combination makes individual cards into long-term format staples is something only time - or perhaps a time machine - will tell. ✨
