The Fifth Doctor

Gameplan

The Fifth Doctor is a UW counters-control commander that rewards patience: keep creatures home and each end step they grow and untap, building an ever-larger, always-available board. You play defense and value behind tappers, mana producers, and utility creatures, then convert the accumulated counters into a single decisive swing or counter-based payoff. The untap clause also lets your creatures block freely and re-use tap abilities every turn.

Key Cards

• Inspiring Call — Draws a card per creature with a counter and protects your grown board from a wipe at instant speed.
• Doubling Season — Doubles every end-step counter, turning the slow buff into a runaway threat.
• Hardened Scales — Cheap multiplier that makes each Peaceful Coexistence trigger meaningfully larger.
• Icy Manipulator — The untap clause refreshes tap-based control pieces so you can lock down threats every turn.
• Branching Evolution — Another counter doubler that scales the whole board with each end step.
• The Ozraeli Diplomat — A strong Doctor's companion option to fill the partner slot and add value.
• Cathars' Crusade — Stacks even more counters as creatures enter, compounding with the Doctor's untapping engine.
• Heroic Intervention — Protects your counter-laden army from removal and wraths for one mana.

Upgrade Path

Lean into counter multipliers (Doubling Season, Branching Evolution, Hardened Scales) and proliferate sources to make the slow engine snowball faster, and add protection like Heroic Intervention and Teferi's Protection to defend against wraths. Sharpen the control suite with efficient counterspells and value tappers whose untap matters, and pick a Doctor's companion that advances the counters or control plan. To push power further, add fast mana (Sol Ring, signets), strong card advantage, and a compact combo finish so you aren't purely relying on combat math."}