Since its debut in Commander 2016, the Partner mechanic has remained one of the most broken MTG keywords. The value of incorporating support cards in the 99 from across both Commanders’ color identities cannot be understated. Despite this elite potential, some recently printed Partner groupings aren’t nearly as infamous.
The duo of The Sixth Doctor and Romana II is a great example of a pair of Commanders that work incredibly well in tandem. With a handful of sweet infinite combos to build around, these Time Lords are certainly underrated.
MTG The Sixth Doctor and Romana II
While The Sixth Doctor is capable of partnering with any Doctor’s Companion card, the Time Lord pairs best with Romana II. This is because of how well Romana II feeds off The Sixth Doctor’s triggered ability. Getting to copy a big Historic spell upon cast with The Sixth Doctor is already powerful, but you can really start to pull ahead when you make additional copies with Romana II. The only downside is that it requires a lot of mana to get both of these legends in play. Fortunately, there are some workarounds.
Unsurprisingly, mana rocks and mana dorks like Delighted Halfling serve as important sources of acceleration. Similarly, cost reducers like Jhoira’s Familiar and Peri Brown help you get your Commanders into play on the cheap, while also letting you cast future Historic spells at a discount. Then, to ensure you can get immediate value from your Commanders, having cheap Historic follow-ups like Esper Sentinel or K-9, Mark I is essential.
Once you get to untap with your Commanders, you can start copying big bombs like Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite or Summon: Bahamut. With the help of trigger or copy doublers like Roaming Throne and Twinning Staff, you’ll have no problem generating tons of value. Adding on token doublers like Doubling Season even takes things a step further. If you ever get to use The Sixth Doctor to make nonlegendary copies of Adrix and Nev, Twincasters or Elspeth, Storm Slayer, you should have no problem taking over games.
While this upside is very high, the fact that The Sixth Doctor only triggers once each turn does put a cap on how wild you can go. That being said, Flash enablers like Raff Capashen, Ship’s Mage do help you get around this clause. Failing that, with untap effects like Seedborn Muse, you’ll have a much easier time flooding the board with tokens.
Infinite Planeswalker Combos
In addition to being synergistic value engines, The Sixth Doctor and Romana II also enable some sweet combos. The coolest combos available are undoubtedly those that create infinite Planeswalker tokens. This can be executed with both of your Commanders in play and Nissa, Genesis Mage in hand, for instance.
To start the process, simply cast Nissa as your first Historic spell, causing The Sixth Doctor to create a nonlegendary copy. From there, activate one copy of Nissa, untapping two of your lands. Now, you’re free to use the mana from one of those lands to activate Romana II’s ability to copy Nissa once more. Because the copy can untap two more lands and Romana II, you’re able to keep making as many token copies of Nissa as you wish while generating infinite mana.
Even if you can’t win the game with infinite mana, untapping with infinite Nissas will let you buff your board to finish the game. Interestingly, Teferi, Who Slow the Sunset enables a similar combo, but gains you infinite life instead. Plus, thanks to Teferi’s -2 ability, you can use your infinite Planeswalkers to draw your whole deck during your next turn.
Notably, beyond producing infinite Planeswalkers, Romana II is capable of generating infinite creature tokens in conjunction with Intruder Alarm and a mana dork. Once a creature token enters, Intruder alarm will trigger, untapping Romana II and the mana dork. By using the mana dork to activate Romana II’s ability, you get to copy the token and retrigger Intruder Alarm. This sets you up for infinite Romana II activations.
Underplayed Partners in Time
Despite the insanely high upside these two Time Lords provide together, the duo still only accounts for 1,108 Commander decks, according to EDHREC. Admittedly, The Sixth Doctor does see a bit more play in the 99 of other legendary-themed decks, but they’re undeniably interesting in the command zone.
If their strengths weren’t enough, another benefit to playing these legends is that you can pick both up on the cheap. Romana II’s price tag sits at roughly $0.25, while The Sixth Doctor barely cracks $0.30. So, if you want to get in on the fun of running two interesting Commanders at once and don’t want to break the bank, these Time Lords are great considerations.
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