Image courtesy of Scryfall.com
Origin Story and Set Lore Revealed
When a card comes from the Doctor Who crossover in Universes Beyond, you know you’re in for a lore ride as twisty as a timey-wimey plot. Mondassian Colony Ship lands not with a roar, but with a quiet hum of authority, a colorless centerpiece that doubles as a strategic riddle and a storytelling prompt. In the world’s storytelling tapestry, this Planar—Spacecraft type card threads two unlikely narratives: the practiced, disciplined engineering of Mondasian colonization and the unpredictable chaos of enchantments that bend the battlefield to your will. And yes, it wears the Doctor Who stamp with pride, even though it refuses to print a color in its mana cost. 🧙♂️🔥💎
From its home in the set simply labeled Doctor Who, this oversized commander card sits at the nexus of story and play. It’s a rare cameo for MTG players who crave both nostalgia and clever mechanics, and it’s a reminder that crossovers can feel organic rather than gimmicky. The artwork, credited to Drew Tucker, carries the austere elegance you expect from a spacefaring vessel designed for colonization—likely a Mondasian ark that traveled between galaxies with a crew of seasoned engineers and, yes, the moral complexity the Doctor’s universe is famous for. The card’s status as a common in its Doctor Who print run doesn’t dull its thematic impact; it’s the kind of piece you include in a deck not because it’s flashy, but because it quietly shifts the battlefield in fun, synergistic ways. 🎨⚔️
What makes the card design sing
- Type and frame: Plane — Spacecraft. It’s a tabletop diorama: a seat at the table where the cosmos meets a city-sized artifact. The planar frame signals it’s not just a spell you cast; it’s a realm you invite to exist on the battlefield.
- Mana cost and color identity: None. With an empty mana cost and a colorless identity, Mondassian Colony Ship fits into almost any deck that’s willing to experiment with nontraditional strategies. Its cmc is 0.0, which makes it unusually accessible as a long-term threat or stabilizing anchor in the late game.
- Rarity and print: Common in the Doctor Who Commander product—an approachable entry point for players who want to dip into Universes Beyond without chasing chase foils.
- Artwork and flavor: The art strongly evokes Mondas lore—home of the Cybermen—while the mechanical elegance nods to the era of classic spaceflight. It’s the kind of card that fans show off in chat groups and casual games, then promptly forget in the heat of a game… only to remember it later and grin. 🧙♂️
The two effects that define its playstyle
The card’s text is a compact masterclass in conditional power. First, a creature-attacking trigger hinges on creature-type synergy:
Whenever a creature attacks, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn for each other creature its controller controls that shares a creature type with it.
Second, a chaos-driven twist that can reshape a board state in an instant:
Whenever chaos ensues, turn target creature face down. It becomes a 2/2 Cyberman artifact creature.
That pair of abilities creates two distinct avenues of play. The first encourages you to build around a creature-type theme—humans, pirates, vampires, or whatever your local metagame worships—so your attackers scale with the number of allied creatures that share a type. The second transforms the battlefield into a contest of chaos and control: flipping a troublesome blocker face-down or turning an opposing beater into an unsuspecting 2/2 Cyberman can swing the tempo in surprising ways. The combination of tribal power and chaos-altering disruption is a hallmark of how Universes Beyond mechanics want to complicate your decisions in the best possible way. ⚔️🎲
Lore meets gameplay: why Mondassian Colony Ship matters in a deck
In-universe, Mondas and its Cybermen are archetypes of relentless efficiency and ideology clashing with human values. The Colony Ship, in MTG form, embodies this duality: it’s relentlessly practical, flipping the usual mana rules on their head while offering players a built-in tempo swing with the chaos clause. The card doesn’t wheel out flashy keywords or flashy combos; it asks you to think about your board state, your creature types, and how you want to leverage attackers as you push toward victory. It’s a thoughtful piece that rewards planning, not just flashy plays. 🧙♂️🔥
As a Commander product’s printed piece, Mondassian Colony Ship also signals a narrative ambition: to bring a beloved sci-fi property into a shared fantasy space where every game could feel like a mini-episode. The Doctor Who set’s keepsake value—especially with a card that’s plausible in multiplayer chaos—often resonates with players who collect story-forward cards and deck-builders who savor a good thematic hook. The common rarity makes it a low-risk, high-fun inclusion for casual table talk and creative deckbuilding. 💎
Deck-building and strategy: quick-start ideas
- Tribal focus: Pick a creature type and fill your board with multiples of that type. The buff scales based on “other creatures of the same type,” so more is merrier. A Human-heavy, Elf-heavy, or Zombie-heavy plan can make your single attacker a bomb that grows with each swing.
- Chaos enabler: Pair with cards that reward chaos or randomness. Since the ability flips a random or targeted creature, you can combine with effects that enable mass chaos or protect your own fragile targets.
- Artifact synergy: The second ability creates Cyberman artifacts. Add colorless artifact support and “enter the battlefield” effects that care about artifacts, turning each flipped creature into a synergy point rather than a punishment.
- Tempo and late-game value: With zero mana cost, the ship can land early and anchor your late-game plans. It’s a natural fit for decks that herald ramp into mid-game threats, then deploy Mondassian Colony Ship to threaten a second frontline that your opponents must address. 🧙♂️
For players who love crossovers, this card is more than a curiosity—it’s a reminder that MTG’s multiverse can accommodate ambitious storytelling without sacrificing tactical depth. The Doctor Who set’s bold concept lands in a way that invites you to imagine the ship not just as a stat line, but as a ship full of crew, motives, and a shipboard dynamic that can tilt a match in unpredictable directions. 🎨⚔️
Where to pull it into your collection and community
Even as a common, Mondassian Colony Ship isn’t a “budget no-brainer” card to blindly jam into any list. It’s a thoughtful piece that rewards players who lean into tribal parity and chaos-themed play. Its place in a Commander game is about the story you tell and the tempo you control as you guide a crew of equally themed creatures toward a shared objective. In that sense, the card is a microcosm of what Universes Beyond hoped to achieve: a fusion of beloved franchise flavor with the timeless strategic tension of MTG.
If you’re chasing a narrative-first box for your next Commander night, you’ll likely want to pair Mondassian Colony Ship with fellow Doctor Who cards, spacefaring artifacts, and a deck-building approach that rewards clever synergy over raw power alone. It’s the kind of card that spawns conversations at the table—“Did you see that flip to a 2/2 Cyberman?”—and then quietly proves its value as the game unfolds. 🧙♂️🔥