Table of Contents
With Doctor Who going out to tender, it seems like a fitting time to look back at Magic’s Doctor Who set. There were four different precons released highlighting different areas of the show. There was also a small Secret Lair drop of cards with unique effects of characters of the then-new RTD2 era of the show. This Deck Showcase will look at one of those Secret Lair cards: The Celestial Toymaker and all the ins and outs of the deck.
The Commander
The Celestial Toymaker is what the entire deck is built around. This is a deck that is heavily focused on the commander itself and what makes the deck go round. This plays a mixture of Group Slug and Pillowfort strategies, burning opponents while hiding behind various permanents that make it harder to attack you. The deck is not one that cares about damaging opponents, rather, burning your opponents with various burn effects, such as that found on The Celestial Toymaker.
The “Sub-Commanders”
You have a few creatures in the deck that act as a secondary commander. These cards have similar effects that give you a bit of redundancy. Y'shtola, Night's Blessed turns all your noncreature spells into burn spells and a draw engine. Likewise, Kambal, Consul of Allocation is another source of consistent burn damage with how many noncreature spells get played. These creatures allow you to fall back on them if you ever lose access to your commander for an extended period of time.
Copy Spells
You only have one The Celestial Toymaker. However, you don’t have to only have one. You can create copies of it, and each copy will trigger separately. The best copy card is Auton Soldier, which gives itself myriad. This gives you four separate triggers of The Celestial Toymaker‘s effect. That’s four times you made a pile, which means that’s a total of 8 direct damage with just one attack. All of Chameleon, Master of Disguise, Sakashima the Impostor, and Spark Double can enter as your commander. Since they have a different name, they won’t die to the legend rule. Similarly, you can use Irma, Part-Time Mutant to become a copy of any creature while keeping its name.
Along with creatures that can become The Celestial Toymaker, you also have ways to make tokens directly. Irenicus's Vile Duplication makes a nonlegendary copy for you to use. The best is Quantum Misalignment, as you get two tokens for the price of one thanks to rebound. Even if one gets removed, you can still create a copy of the other (unless the board got wiped). Ember Island Production has utility in that it can create a token copy of either a creature you control or one an opponent controls if they have something that’d be beneficial for you.
Building The Fort
A downside of this deck is that you don’t have particularly high defenses when it comes to creatures. So, you want ways to make it harder for opponents to be able to attack you. Thanks to Esper colors, you can run the usual suite of Ghostly Prison, Propaganda, and Sphere of Safety to force opponents to pay mana to actually attack you. Norn's Annex is great too. While opponents can pay life to attack, that just makes it easier for you to burn out your opponents. You have Crawlspace too, so only a few creatures can attempt to attack you.
It doesn’t directly stop your opponents, but No Mercy can dissuade opponents from attacking you; if they do, they’ll get destroyed if they connect for damage. Painful Quandary doesn’t stop attacks, but it does make opponents hesitant to cast spells if they want their life totals or hands to stay intact.
Piling It Up
The Celestial Toymaker wants you to make as many piles of cards as possible, so that’s exactly what a lot of cards in the deck do. On creatures, your commander does this on attacks. Sphinx of Clear Skies forces your opponent to make two piles out of cards from the top of your library when it connects for damage. At most, it’ll only be three cards, as you can only have three basic land types. Unesh, Criosphinx Sovereign piles cards up when Sphinxes or itself enter. You do need to deal combat damage with it, but Jeskai Infiltrator can pile itself and another card and hide itself among the face-down cards.
In the sorcery selection, these are more costly. Brilliant Ultimatum has the potential to cast multiple spells for free if you get lucky. There are multiple reanimator options, strangely, that deal in piles. Ghastly Conscription and Boneyard Parley can exile cards from graveyards in piles and put them onto the battlefield. Death or Glory can reanimate your creatures, but only one selection from a pile. For removal, both Do or Die and Make an Example can do mass board wipes and while putting cards in piles for The Celestial Toymaker triggers.
For instants, this is where most of your card advantage comes in. Cards like Fact or Fiction, Truth or Tale, and Intrude on the Mind make piles that an opponent has to choose which ones you get. On the other hand, you have cards such as Fortune's Favor and Sauron's Ransom that make piles, but the piles are made by your opponents.
Doctor (Guess) Who?
Another aspect of The Celestial Toymaker is making your opponent guess, which will also trigger its ability. So, along with piles, you have cards that make an opponent guess. The Seventh Doctor has the potential to cheat out a card without paying mana, and, at worst, you get to investigate. You have a chance of casting a spell for free when Master of Predicaments deals combat damage. Gollum, Scheming Guide can put a card into your hand when it attacks if the opponent guesses wrong and makes it unblockable. Even if they guess right, Gollum stays safe since it gets removed from combat. Fittingly, The Toymaker's Trap can draw you cards and deal burn damage, but if they guess right, then you lose the card.
Attacking Safely
One of the main ways you’re putting cards into piles is with The Celestial Toymaker itself. You do need to attack with it to trigger the effect, and its stats aren’t exactly the greatest. Luckily, there are a few ways to attack safely. Reconnaissance can remove attacking creatures from combat for no mana. This lets you remove all the copies of The Celestial Toymaker as well, letting you get their effect without actually putting them in danger of getting blocked. Maze of Ith does something similar, but can only target one creature at a time. You can make your commander unblockable with Brotherhood Regalia while giving it an extra layer of protection.
Extra Triggers
As mentioned before, The Celestial Toymaker is the heart and soul of the deck. You want to get the effect to go off as many times as possible. On top of making tokens, you also have permanents that can give you extra triggers of The Celestial Toymaker‘s effect. The best of these is Gogo, Master of Mimicry if you have a lot of mana to dump into its X cost. There is utility with Adric, Mathematical Genius to copy a triggered ability, or it can be sacrificed to counter an ability if a problematic one shows up. Not quite an extra trigger, but Y'shtola Rhul will give you an extra end step, which lets all of your The Celestial Toymakers trigger again. More traditionally, Lithoform Engine can copy an ability, but can also be used to copy an instant, sorcery, or spell for more mana.
Flow of the Deck
The deck is an engine deck that, once it gets going, can snowball. At the start of the game, you are not going to have much going on. The mana curve isn’t necessarily high, but you also have very few cards worth casting that are less than two mana at the start of a game. Don’t expect to be doing much but ramping with your mana rocks like Sol Ring and Talisman of Progress. You don’t actually need a ton of mana on your turns, so you can get away with keeping hands that don’t have too many lands. You still want generally three, especially ones to turn on all your colors.
Odds are, you are going to take damage early on, especially if you’re up against any aggressive deck at the pod. However, if you’re in a game full of Midrange or slower decks, you are likely going to be able to dominate. Once your commander starts getting going, you will burn opponents out quickly while regaining the life you lost at the start. You want to cast The Celestial Toymaker as soon as you can, as it helps you to fill up your hand with cards. Technically, it’s up to your opponent to decide what gets into your hand, but with how the card works, you can trick them into putting great cards into your hand.
There is a chance some cards you don’t want to lose will have to be sacrificed, but that’s the name of the Toymaker game. Some triggers will be nothing but beneficial, but other ones may cause you to have to pick and choose cards you’d rather keep but must sacrifice to ensure you get a better card into your hand.
Setting Up Defenses
In many cases, if you can play a card that can progress your offense or power up your defenses, you always want to load up on defenses first. For example, if you have the choice of casting a Wound Reflection or Propaganda, it is usually the correct choice to cast Propaganda instead. You cannot win the aggro race, but you can definitely win the long game. Unless you’re near the end of the game and need to get that last bit of life total down, always opt to play defensively.
As soon as you have an opening to lay out your Pillowfort cards like No Mercy and Ghostly Prison as soon as you can. Without these, you won’t be able to last in the long game. Stalling out is the name of the game with The Celestial Toymaker. While you can easily recover in the late game, you have to make sure you get there.
Closing Out Games
When it comes time to end the game, that’s when you can hyper-focus on you reffects. By this point, cards like Wound Reflection and Painful Quandary should have done a hefty amount of damage. Generally speaking, you are almost never winning by direct damage. Instead, you’re burning your opponents’ life totals and only attacking to trigger effects instead of for actual combat damage.
Instead, you’re stacking up effects on cards such as Kambal, Consul of Allocation, Y'shtola, Night's Blessed, and Mai, Scornful Striker. These, combined with your commander, are going to do devastating amounts of burn damage. You’re working around large battlefields and any blockers by attacking life totals directly with burn. Don’t worry about rushing to bring life totals down. Thanks to all the stall cards in the deck, you can take things slow without having to worry about attacking creatures too much. Your card selection can get you to these cards quickly, letting you get to work racking down those life totals. These, on top of everyone else attacking, make it easy for you to sneak your way underneath everyone to close out games.
Luckily, with how many ways there are to make multiple versions of cards that burn, you can easily stack them up. Even if you get one removed, you have others that are ready to continue the job. The one thing that the deck is weak to is board wipes. Unfortunately, there is not much you can do about it. You can opt to do a build that’s more about stalling and plays more counterspells, but that weakens your defenses. Most decks don’t run a ton of board wipes, so don’t worry too much about it.
In Conclusion
The Celestial Toymaker is a deck that can run away with the game. It has great card draw while being able to stall opponents out by making it hard, if not impossible, to attack you with creatures. The deck is very explosive and can do a ton of damage in just one turn. With powerful openings, you can win the game in just a short number of turns.
