"There's this emperor, and he asks the shepherd's boy how many seconds in eternity. And the shepherd's boy says, 'There's this mountain of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb it and an hour to go around it, and every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on the diamond mountain. And when the entire mountain is chiseled away, the first second of eternity will have passed.' You may think that's a hell of a long time. Personally, I think that's a hell of a bird."
This is my second post on the Twelfth Doctor, but the build is sufficiently different from my first take that it felt worthy of a different thread. In a lot of ways, this is actually an Ian Chesterton deck - his effect is strong, interesting, and unique, with the strongest synergy being Three Blind Mice which goes exponential with Ian replicated even once (two copies yields two mice, and then next upkeep you get two more copies of Three Blind which yields two more mice, and then next main phase you make four more copies of Three Blind which yields four more Mice, and then...). Most folks seem to be pairing Ian with a Simic Doctor which makes sense - City of Death doesn't go exponential in the same way but is still a very strong Saga, and The Sixth Doctor, The Third Doctor, and The Fourth Doctor interact in a more direct way with historical cards. And if a doctor existed that opened up Black, I'd go there for constellation effects and a few strong sagas - but none do. So I like him with 12 for a few reasons:
- IMO, the next best Sagas to replicate after Three Blind Mice are The Flame of Keld, Kumano Faces Kakkazan // Etching of Kumano, and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki, so I kinda wanted to be in Red.
- Obviously, I could do that and also get all of Green's great sagas and constellation triggers by going with The Fugitive Doctor but I'd truly only be running her for the colors as she has no synergy with what the deck is doing otherwise. 12 does something here though - he gets a counter for each time I pay a replicate cost, so he can be large fast, and several of the strongest sagas (The Flux, Showdown of the Skalds) can also enable his demonstrate ability for even more copies of sagas.
- The flavor of being able to kill people with Heaven Sent copied over and over and over again was simply too delicious to pass up.
Decklist
Approximate Total Cost:
I imagine this deck most often wins off a token swarm born of some combination of Three Blind Mice, Historian's Boon, Ajani's Chosen, and Archon of Sun's Grace, but it also looks capable of winning via Voltron with 12 (his screwdriver and Rogue's Passage can help him sneak in and he can get big fast) or by burning out the table with some combination of Heaven Sent, Kumano Faces Kakkazan // Etching of Kumano, and Forgeborn Oreads.
