Marvel’s first family, the Fantastic Four, are often considered cosmic superheroes. They acquired their powers from radiation while out in space, frequently combat entities like Galactus who roam the cosmos, and often dabble in time travel while exploring alternate universes. As such, a mini Doctor Who crossover in Magic: The Gathering is kind of a perfect fit.
Wizards of the Coast’s official livestream Weekly MTG revealed the entire decklist for the Fantastic Four-themed Commander deck that’s part of Magic’s upcoming Marvel Super Heroes set. And while there are a lot of brand-new cards showcasing iconic moments and characters from Marvel Comics, the most expensive reprint comes from the Doctor Who Commander decks released in 2023, specifically the Paradox Power deck focused on the 13th Doctor.
Quantum Misalignment is a mono blue sorcery that costs five mana to cast, and it creates a copy of a target creature you control, except it isn’t legendary. Then, with Rebound, if you cast Quantum Misalignment from your hand, you exile it after it resolves. At the start of your next upkeep, you can cast it again without paying its mana cost. If you’re familiar with the Paradigm cycle of sorcery lessons from Secrets of Strixhaven, the effect is a bit like that, except rather than cast it every turn, you can only cast it twice (unless you can somehow get it out of exile and back into your hand).
Quantum Misalignment is still hugely powerful since it can copy a legendary creature while mitigating the legendary rule — and it does it twice — so you get to trigger enter the battlefield (ETB) effects a total of three times. That may take a while to set up, but it can work extremely well in all sorts of decks, even those with passive triggers instead of ETB. According to data from EDHREC, Quantum Misalignment appears in more than 9,000 Y’shtola, Night’s Blessed decks (She’s the cat lady from Final Fantasy 14 that’s the third-most popular Commander in the game right now.)
Quantum Misalignment is a perfect fit for Doctor Who’s Paradox Power deck, which is Temur (red-blue-green) and focuses on casting spells from anywhere other than your hand to trigger the Paradox mechanic that has various effects depending on the card. For The Thirteenth Doctor, that means putting a +1/+1 counter on a target creature every time you cast a spell from anywhere other than your hand.
The Fantastic Four deck, however, is an Ink-Treader (red-green-white-blue) with a broader focus on casting noncreature spells, of which there are 43 in the precon. These various spells have a wide range of effects, from ramp to card draw to dealing damage to opponents or their creatures. The deck’s main focus is flexible depending on which member of the Fantastic Four you choose as your Commander.
Mechanically, Quantum Misalignment is just sort of there. But thematically? It’s arguably one of the best and most thoughtful reprints to include in a deck like this. The Fantastic Four art for Quantum Misalignment depicts The Thing facing off against what looks like an alt-reality version of himself that’s yellow instead of orange. That’s a lot of clobberin’.
Interestingly enough, Quantum Misalignment isn’t the only Doctor Who card that’s getting reprinted for the first time in this deck, either. There’s also Into the Time Vortex, a five-cost red sorcery with Cascade and Rebound. You exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a nonland card, then you get to cast that card for free and put the other exiled cards at the bottom of your deck. Rebound, of course, lets you cast this spell again on your next turn for free.
Cards like these may have been first printed in Doctor Who decks, but looking at The Thing brawling against an alternate-universe version of himself, it’s hard to imagine a card that’s a better fit with Fantastic Four. It’s also an interesting reminder of how far Universes Beyond has come: Wizards now has a deep enough crossover catalog that a Doctor Who card can become a perfect Marvel reprint. Reed Richards would probably call that a paradox. The Doctor would probably call it brilliant. The Thing would probably tell them both to shut up.
