Finally, at long last, I get to talk about one of my all-time favorite video game villains. That's right, it's time to talk about Sephi-BZZT

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GET A LOAD OF THIS!

CITIZENS OF EARTH! LEND ME YOUR EARS AND LISTEN TO ME VERY CAREFULLY!

Sonic the Hedgehog is finally coming to Magic: The Gathering thanks to a series of Secret Lair drops coming next week. With them comes the most evil, diabolical villain in gaming: Dr. Eggman, aka Dr. Ivo Robotnik. Eggman seeks to dominate the world by various means, ranging from capturing animals to power robotic monstrosities or else by utilizing the powers of the seven Chaos Emeralds.

Dr. Robotnik, as I came to know him, holds a special place in my heart. The first video games I ever played were the first two Sonic the Hedgehog games and I'll never forget the numerous boss battles featuring the dastardly villain. The swinging ball in Green Hill Zone, the driller car in Emerald Hill Zone, and that unforgettable finale of Death Egg in Sonic 2 are permanently etched into my brain.

What made him so much better than your average video game villain was the way they fleshed him out elsewhere. Throughout the 90s, we got multiple Sonic cartoons that gave him more personality as both a bungling buffoon (Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog) or a truly reprehensible tyrant in the Sonic Sat-Am show, as it's known today. The love for this character would only increase with the games from Sonic Adventure onward all the way to the modern day live-action films featuring Jim Carrey.

If you play video games, Dr. Eggman is an icon, and now he's a Magic card as well.

It's hard to believe after so long I get to say those words, but I'm so happy we do because this card rocks. Every turn, you get to either hinder your opponents by making them discard or you get to cheat something into play. What's not to love there? That's what villains do after all!

To celebrate this momentous occasion, I've gone ahead and put together a Commander deck dedicated to the Blue Blur's arch nemesis. Before we get into it, though, there's one thing that needs to be stated. Say it with me now:

ALL SYSTEMS! FULL POWER!

Let's check out that list!

The Great Dr. Robotnik | Commander | Paige Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 Dr. Eggman

• Creatures (32)
• 1 Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal // Temple of the Dead
• 1 Chief of the Foundry
• 1 Cityscape Leveler
• 1 Combustible Gearhulk
• 1 Cyberdrive Awakener
• 1 Cyclonus, the Saboteur // Cyclonus, Cybertronian Fighter
• 1 ED-E, Lonesome Eyebot
• 1 Etherium Sculptor
• 1 Grand Architect
• 1 Guidelight Optimizer
• 1 Jetfire, Ingenious Scientist // Jetfire, Air Guardian
• 1 Knuckles the Echidna
• 1 Metalwork Colossus
• 1 Myr Battlesphere
• 1 Noxious Gearhulk
• 1 Padeem, Consul of Innovation
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1 Relentless X-ATM092
• 1 Rose, Cutthroat Raider
• 1 Sangromancer
• 1 Scavenged Brawler
• 1 Shadow the Hedgehog
• 1 Starscream, Power Hungry // Starscream, Seeker Leader
• 1 Steel Overseer
• 1 Surge Engine
• 1 The Peregrine Dynamo
• 1 Thought Monitor
• 1 Tinybones, Bauble Burglar
• 1 Traxos, Scourge of Kroog
• 1 Urza, Lord High Artificer
• 1 Walking Ballista
• 1 Y'shtola Rhul

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge

• Instants (5)
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Deadly Dispute
• 1 Negate
• 1 Terminate
• 1 Whir of Invention

• Sorceries (3)
• 1 Feed the Swarm
• 1 One with the Machine
• 1 Thoughtcast

• Enchantments (7)
• 1 Liliana's Caress
• 1 Mechanized Production
• 1 Megrim
• 1 Propaganda
• 1 Raiders' Wake
• 1 Storm the Vault // Vault of Catlacan
• 1 Waste Not

• Artifacts (13)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Cultivator's Caravan
• 1 Demonic Junker
• 1 Geth's Grimoire
• 1 Mirrorworks
• 1 Skysovereign, Consul Flagship
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Talisman of Creativity
• 1 Talisman of Dominance
• 1 Talisman of Indulgence
• 1 The Lunar Whale
• 1 Unlicensed Hearse
• 1 Weatherlight

• Lands (38)
• 2 Mountain
• 4 Swamp
• 5 Island
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Buried Ruin
• 1 Canyon Slough
• 1 Cascade Bluffs
• 1 Cavern of Souls
• 1 Command Beacon
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Crumbling Necropolis
• 1 Dragonskull Summit
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Fetid Pools
• 1 Graven Cairns
• 1 Haunted Ridge
• 1 Inventors' Fair
• 1 Mech Hangar
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Secluded Courtyard
• 1 Shipwreck Marsh
• 1 Spire of Industry
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Stormcarved Coast
• 1 Sulfur Falls
• 1 Sunken Ruins
• 1 Tainted Isle
• 1 Tainted Peak
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Xander's Lounge

Buy This Deck Export text

When building this deck I wanted to look for four things, all plainly written out on Dr. Eggman's card. Those include constructs, robots, vehicles, and ways to take advantage of your opponents discarding cards. For the purposes of the first three options, the plan should be to try cheating out expensive cards where possible, but also not go too heavy on them in the event that Eggman himself gets taken out.

The first one of these I looked at was the one I expected to see the least of: robots. These only just appeared for the first time ever with Unfinity in 2022, meaning the overall population of robots is rather light. The majority come from there, Universes Beyond sets like Fallout and Transformers, and they had a minor presence in Aetherdrift as well. As a result, options are fairly slim, though it's likely we'll see quite a bit more very shortly with Edge of Eternities previews having just started.

For this list, I managed to pull a solid seven robots from the pile of cards. However, it is absolutely worth mentioning that only one of them - Guidelight Optimizer, a small, little mana dork - is not a Universes Beyond card. Three are from Transformers, two are from Fallout, and one is from the latest release Magic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy. This might be a turn-off for some people, but hey, we're already living in Universes Beyond world thanks to this deck's commander, so why not go all in?

The Relentless X-ATM092 from Final Fantasy was perhaps the easiest stand-out of the bunch. It's a massive beater that's hard to block effectively and comes back when it's taken down as well. I ended up going with three Transformers cards as well. To spare you the pain of me writing them out by name here, I'll note that I went and looked at ones that helped to do things such as generate card advantage or provide you with mana to cast more spells with. Starscream, Power Hungry // Starscream, Seeker Leader is perhaps the best at the former, bringing the Monarch into the game so you can repeatedly draw cards every turn.

When it comes to Universes Beyond: Fallout, I opted to only go with two robots. Of the 14 robots in that release, half of them care about energy, which this deck doesn't. So, I stuck with a couple better options that I somewhat liked. Rose, Cutthroat Raider generates you lots of junk tokens and mana, providing you with more spells to cast even if you can't take advantage of them with Dr. Eggman himself. You can, however, do so with ED-E, Lonesome Eyebot provided you can put enough counters on it to make it a worthwhile sacrifice.

Aside from Guidelight Optimizer, there's not many other robots worth discussing. However, there are quite a few constructs. This creature type was Magic's go-to way of representing robots throughout the game's history, spanning all the way back to the early days with the first being Bronze Bombshell in Dissension. Several others would later retroactively be updated as well, but given that it's a type that's been actively used since 2006, it's safe to say the pool is quite deep on these.

This is where I started pulling from the larger side of things. Myr Battlesphere is the obvious inclusion, with a reskin being featured in one of the Sonic Secret Lair drops. Metalwork Colossus and Cityscape Leveler are also two massive options that can take over games quickly. While perhaps not quite as potent, dropping copies of Noxious Gearhulk and Combustible Gearhulk also work wonders. I considered Torrential Gearhulk, but passed on it as I ultimately felt the list didn't run enough instants and sorceries to warrant its inclusion.

There's also plenty of other more tactile options as well. For example, neither Surge Engine or Steel Overseer are going to be a force to reckon with the moment they hit the board. However, the longer they're allowed to stick around, the more dangerous they become. Thought Monitor is another source of card advantage and Chief of the Foundry pumps your whole board of artifacts immediately.

With all the abilities going off throughout the deck, though, there's one particular construct worth mentioning: The Peregrine Dynamo. While it's mostly limited to just letting you copy the abilities of your various legends, that's fine. You're packing plenty in this list that provide you plenty of ways to get up to some serious nonsense. Copy that Urza trigger or flicker another creature with Y'shtola Rhul. Draw more cards with Padeem or get more discard benefits off Aclazotz. There's lots of great ways to utilize this - and you can go even deeper if you use Phyrexian Metamorph to clone an opposing legend as well!

Next is perhaps the lesser part of Dr. Eggman's cheating ability: vehicles. These are far less exciting the majority of the time given how you need to be able to crew them for them to do anything. This is why most of the vehicles I went with here either have a secondary effect that can be utilized without crewing, such as Unlicensed Hearse, or else provide lots of card advantage like Weatherlight. If nothing else, you can drop a cool Cyberdrive Awakener and turn each of these vehicles into a 4/4 to bash opponents' faces in with.

Last but not least, we've gotta talk about the discard aspect as well. While it's nice to salivate over getting to drop huge threats onto your opponents, the reality is that most of the time your opponents will simply discard cards and call it a day. It's quite possible that they might even benefit from doing so. This is Commander, after all!

So how can you mitigate this? Well, I already noted one method: Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal // Temple of the Dead provides you lots of creatures the more lands your opponents toss away. That's great if you find yourself in a position where you struggle to set up compared to your opponents. You also can get additional benefits off of casual favorites like Sangromancer, Waste Not, and several Megrim variants.

One of the cooler new options at your disposal here is Tinybones, Bauble Burgler. This version of everyone's favorite little skeleton exiles any of the cards discarded, making it difficult for your opponents to make good use of them. More importantly, it also allows you to cast them yourself later on if you'd like. Sadly, the original Tinybones, Trinket Thief is a bit of a non-bo with Dr. Eggman since both abilities would happen simultaneously, but you can also use Tinybones, the Pickpocket to rummage about through your opponents' graveyards after they've discarded cards.

Finally, I think it's worth noting the Sonic characters here. While the Sonic the Hedgehog deck I covered last week was primarily built around the other characters in the deck, that's not so much the case here. Despite this, I did include two other characters: Shadow the Hedgehog and Knuckles the Echidna. Shadow seems like an obvious choice here, being an antihero who often teams up with Dr. Eggman. Using the deck's several mana rocks, you can really take serious advantage of his Chaos Control ability.

You might wonder why Knuckles is here, though. That one's a bit funnier, and hopes that you have some familiarity with the franchise. In multiple games - particularly Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic Adventure, Dr. Eggman tricks Knuckles into teaming up with him against Sonic. Fittingly enough, this also played a major role in the story of the Sonic 2 movie, with Knuckles being tricked by Dr. Robotnik into aiding him. It also helps that the card itself works great with all the artifacts this deck spits out, making it an excellent option.

While I built this deck and wrote out the majority of the article prior to the Edge of Eternities debut reveal, I do think it's worth talking a little about that set. We've already seen a solid number of robots, suggesting that there may soon be more great options to pull from for a deck like this. Rust Harvester looks the most menacing in a long game here, but even simply dropping a huge Bygone Colossus on an unsuspecting opponent can be devastating.

What I really want to see, though, is someone including a spacecraft or two. After all, one of the most famous moments involving Dr. Eggman is when he takes over and revives the Space Colony ARK in Sonic Adventure 2 - something recreated in the recent Sonic 3 movie. Eternity Elevator makes for a great option here, allowing you to generate quite a bit of mana to be able to spit out lots of creatures if they get stuck in your hand by opponents not letting you simply drop them.

Simply put, I think Dr. Eggman has some of the best opportunities for long-term growth. It's a card that's playing in some newer spaces that Magic hasn't really gone too deep on yet and has some real potential to get nasty down the line. This is a great option if you'd like a deck that you can keep improving on for years to come. Or perhaps, you could be like me and simply want a deck to reflect one of your favorite childhood villains at your next Commander night.

Just remember, if you're opponents start ganging up on you, be sure to shout out this one simple line:

AHHH! HE'S NOT GONNA GET AWAY WITH THIS!

Paige Smith

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