MTG Universes Beyond Doctor Who: Time Counters explained
BBC/WOTCIn MTG Universes Beyond: Doctor Who’s Timey Wimey Commander deck, place or remove Time Counters to play your cards early or keep them around for longer.
Out of the four Commander products launching with Universes Beyond: Doctor Who, Timey Wimey is bound to be an explosively popular deck. Focusing on the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Doctors and their companions, Timey Wimey covers arguably the most beloved stretches of the show’s revival era.
With such a popular set incoming, fans will want to get to grips with its main mechanics so they can start playing Timey Wimey right out of the box.
Key among those mechanics is manipulating Time Counters. We’ll explain what Time Counters are, as well as why you should be adding or removing them, with our MTG Doctor Who guide.
Time Counters and Suspend
Suspend is an Iconic MTG ability that has seen less use of late, most falling out of favor in recent sets. Previously thought unlikely to come back in any major capacity, the mechanic’s close association with Time Travel has made it a shoo-in for MTG Universes Beyond: Doctor Who.
Suspend allows you to effectively trade casting cost for time, placing a card with Suspend outside of play and adding a number of Time Counters to it. One time counter is removed at every one of your upkeeps, and when the final Couner is removed, the card can be cast for free.
While the amount of turns necessary for a card to be cast this way can seem overly restrictive, there are many ways to remove Time Counters and allow suspended cards to be played much quicker. In fact, a number of them are included in the Timey Wimey deck.
Time Counters and Vanishing
In contrast to Suspend, when a card has Vanishing, the more Time Counters on it the better. When all of the Time Counters on a permanent with Vanishing are removed, that card is removed from the field.
Permanents with Vanishing can be seriously powerful, balanced out by the fact that their time on the field is inherently limited. Finding ways to increase your Time Counters and keep Vanishing cards around indefinitely can be a key strategy in the MTG Timey Wimey deck,
New uses for Time Counters – Time Travel and more
MTG Universes Beyond: Doctor Who’s Timey Wimey deck isn’t just revitalizing old abilities, but coming up with new uses for Time Counters, too. For example, the card Wilfred Mott allows you to look through the top X cards of your Library, where X is the number of Time Counters on Wilfred. Then, you can place a low-cost card from among them directly into play!
The Timey Wimey deck’s signature mechanic is Time Travel, which gives you immense flexibility regarding how you manipulate your time counters.
Rather than a single effect that adds or subtracts counters, whenever you activate a Time Travel effect, you can choose whether to add or subtract one Time Counter from any permanent you own that already has one. With Time Travel, juggling Suspend, Vanishing and more becomes so much easier.