It’s time to make some villainous choices!
Along with the many heroes from the recent Sonic the Hedgehog x Secret Lair release, we also got the diabolical Robotnik (or Dr. Eggman if you’re not as old as us). This is perhaps the most mechanically unique card in the whole Secret Lair Drop, and it’s also in Grixis colors (blue, black, and red), which always has us pretty excited when it comes to Commander.
This is our Commander Bestiary series, in which we go into all the gritty details about the cards we cover, and today we’re talking about Dr. Eggman (although, we’ve never seen his doctorate). We’re going to talk about lore, then go into all the details about this brand-new card.
Lore Intro
Dr. Eggman
Secret Lair Drop Series, Mythic
Dr. Eggman in the Sonic the Hedgehog films is played by Jim Carrey, and is therefore just Jim Carrey with more technology and a massive moustache. In the video games, he’s a mad scientist who wants to collect all of the Chaos Emeralds, destroy Sonic the Hedgehog, and eventually take over the world. He attempts this by having access to a wealth of machines, and in several of the games, he turns animals into little robots to help fight on his behalf. We’re not sure how he does that, but destroying the robots seems to save them. Mario, on the other hand, slaughters thousands of Mushroom Kingdom denizens as they all get turned into the blocks he breaks — anyway!
Strengths
Dr. Eggman is a five-mana blue, black, and red card with flying that reads, “At the beginning of your end step, draw a card. Then each opponent faces a villainous choice — That player discards a card, or you may put a Construct, Robot, or Vehicle card from your hand onto the battlefield.”
In short, we can force our opponents to discard cards, and if they don’t, we get to throw a cool card into play for free. This isn’t a cast trigger either, so it can’t be answered with any opposing counter magic, nor will we reap any powerful cast triggers when the card enters play. We also draw a card during our end step, which is a nice bonus. There’s a clear push towards a few different deck archetypes here, but most of those are “artifact creature type matters” themes. Anyway, playing cards for free is historically good, and so is drawing cards.
Weaknesses
As the drum we often beat when we hit this part, is that Dr. Eggman doesn’t have any form of built-in protection. While (flavorfully) this is a bit wild, considering Dr. Eggman can create and build so many weird machinations. Anyway, Dr. Eggman also needs to stick around during your end step to reap the full benefits of the card’s abilities. It’s a fairly standard weakness when it comes to Commanders, but outside of that, it’s a pretty strong option.
The other potential weakness is the five mana value, which is on the higher end when it comes to casting a Commander on-time and often, but we can slide in a bunch of mana-generating artifacts to offset this issue a little. At time of publication, there aren’t that many Robots outside of what is available in Edge of Eternities, and if you do pick up Dr. Eggman, be sure to add cards from the set as it means you’ll get to slam into play for free!
Recommended Archetypes
The general focus here is on Constructs, Robots, and Vehicles. However, because most of these synergize well with themselves, Constructs is the best option to optimize out of the three, but there’s no denying that you can make a solid deck by including a little bit of all three. You can also build it around villainous choice ability if you want to, but that card pool is mostly from Universes Beyond: Doctor Who.
Key Cards
If you’d like to be your own mad scientist and create a Dr. Eggman deck from scratch, we recommend you consider including these cards:
- Y’shtola Rhul
- Kuldotha Forgemaster
- Scrapyard Recombiner
- Master Transmuter
- Adaptive Omnitool
- Daretti, Scrap Savant
Strategy
Market Price: $11.60
Our strategy here is mainly to just play a bunch of cool Construct cards, but before we get into that, we’ve got an incredibly important card that’s a cat-girl, not a Construct. Y’shtola Rhul lets us “blink” a creature in our end step, and then gives us an extra end step. Here, that means we get to draw another card, but also get another round of potentially putting some Constructs, Robots, and Vehicles into play.
We mentioned a bit above how we’re focusing on mostly Construct cards, and Kuldotha Forgemaster is one of these. This one allows us to sacrifice three artifacts to put another artifact card from our library onto the battlefield, and we can use fodder such as Treasure tokens to help here. Scrapyard Recombiner does something a little similar, but specifies searching up a Construct card and then putting it into your hand. While putting the card into your hand may seem a disadvantage, we’re able to throw the Construct into play for free thanks to Dr. Eggman.
Master Transmuter is another card with a similar effect, which returns an artifact you control to your hand and you may put an artifact card onto the battlefield. Interestingly, the Transmuter’s ability also works with artifact lands such as Great Furnace or Mistvault Bridge if you want to get cute. Our last notable artifact card is Adaptive Omnitool, which gives the equipped creature a significant boost depending on how many artifact cards we have on the battlefield, but also the ability to look through the top six cards of the library and put an artifact card into your hand. It’s both a massive power boost and also a solid card draw engine.
Daretti, Scrap Savant
Commander Masters, Rare
Daretti, Scrap Savant is one of the few Planeswalkers featured here, which lets us discard (and draw) cards and sacrifice artifacts to return another artifact card to the battlefield. Daretti’s ultimate is pretty game-ending as well, as you’re able to return artifact cards to the battlefield from the graveyard at the beginning of the next end step. We’re going to be sacrificing a lot of artifacts, so this just gives us more value if the Commander game goes long.
Our general strategy is to overwhelm everyone as we throw cards into play without casting them, but also power them up with a wealth of artifact synergies. There are a lot of strong cards with the Construct creature typing, and the world of artifact support cards is incredibly vast as well. Dr. Eggman plays out as a pretty fair deck (outside of not paying for our cards), which means that you might even avoid being the threat of every game you play in.
Commander
Dr. Eggman
Market Price:$203.79
Maindeck, 99 cards
Sortsort deckCommander (1)
- 1Dr. Eggman
Creature (36)
- 1Y’shtola Rhul
- 1Kuldotha Forgemaster
- 1Scrapyard Recombiner
- 1Master Transmuter
- 1Foundry Inspector
- 1Walking Ballista
- 1Scrap Trawler
- 1Steel Overseer
- 1Thought Monitor
- 1Noxious Gearhulk
- 1Combustible Gearhulk
- 1Scrawling Crawler
- 1Cyberdrive Awakener
- 1Adaptive Automaton
- 1Hangarback Walker
- 1Marketback Walker
- 1Metalwork Colossus
- 1Memnite
- 1Emry, Lurker of the Loch
- 1Chief of the Foundry
- 1Cryptothrall
- 1Triskelion
- 1Ruin Grinder
- 1Crystalline Crawler
- 1Barbed Servitor
- 1Stuffy Doll
- 1PuPu UFO
- 1Terror Ballista
- 1Phyrexian Dragon Engine
- 1Mishra, Claimed by Gix
- 1Padeem, Consul of Innovation
- 1Etherium Sculptor
- 1Enthusiastic Mechanaut
- 1Rook Turret
- 1Workshop Assistant
- 1Daretti, Rocketeer Engineer
Planeswalker (2)
- 1Daretti, Scrap Savant
- 1Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge
Sorcery (2)
- 1Blasphemous Act
- 1Delete
Instant (10)
- 1Chaos Warp
- 1Demand Answers
- 1Brainstorm
- 1Snap
- 1Big Score
- 1Unexpected Windfall
- 1Disruption Protocol
- 1Counterspell
- 1Desynchronization
- 1Dig Through Time
Artifact (10)
- 1Adaptive Omnitool
- 1Sol Ring
- 1Arcane Signet
- 1Chromatic Lantern
- 1Lightning Greaves
- 1Swiftfoot Boots
- 1Mirrorworks
- 1Mechtitan Core
- 1Strionic Resonator
- 1The Reaver Cleaver
Enchantment (2)
- 1Mechanized Production
- 1Mirrodin Besieged
Land (37)
- 1Seat of the Synod
- 1Great Furnace
- 1Vault of Whispers
- 1Darksteel Citadel
- 1Mistvault Bridge
- 1Drossforge Bridge
- 1Silverbluff Bridge
- 1Reliquary Tower
- 1Buried Ruin
- 1Academy Ruins
- 1Inventors’ Fair
- 1Archway of Innovation
- 1Command Tower
- 1Crumbling Necropolis
- 1Drowned Catacomb
- 1Smoldering Marsh
- 1Sulfur Falls
- 1Exotic Orchard
- 1Dimir Aqueduct
- 1Izzet Boilerworks
- 1Rakdos Carnarium
- 1Path of Ancestry
- 1Underground River
- 1Sulfurous Springs
- 1Shivan Reef
- 1Evolving Wilds
- 1Terramorphic Expanse
- 1Fabled Passage
- 3Swamp
- 3Mountain
- 3Island