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Magic: The Gathering’s upcoming Fallout Commander decks promise to be very interesting. In a recent press preview, we spoke to Annie Sardelis (Senior Game Designer, MTG) and Dane Olds (Lead Weapons/Character Artist, Fallout) to learn more about the themes and interesting cards coming our way. There will be four Commander decks, and each of them will be built around a specific faction, theme, or gameplay style.
While we don’t have all the cards revealed in these, we’ll go over the basic Commander deck themes for these Fallout Magic: The Gathering collections and at least one major card - one of the deck leaders. As a long-time lover of the Fallout franchise, I was so excited to get a sneak peek at what’s to come.
All Commander deck themes for Magic: The Gathering’s Fallout decks
- Scrappy Survivors (Red/Green/White)
- Science! (Blue/White/Red)
- Mutant Menace (Black/Green/Blue)
- Hail, Caesar (Red/White/Black)
1) Scrappy Survivors - Voltron/Go Tall (Red/Green/White)
Voltron/Go Tall is one of my favorite Magic: The Gathering strategies, and the Fallout Commander deck is built around exactly this. It also features Dogmeat, who is a fan-favorite character that might be in Fallout, the upcoming Amazon series. The way you want to play this deck is to strap down one to two characters with a ton of equipment and Aura Enchantments and smash through someone with a ton of damage.
Dogmeat, Ever Loyal lets you root around for interesting buffs and also creates Junk tokens - which, in turn, lets you play the top card of your library during this turn. I also love that Three Dog, Galaxy News DJ is in this Magic: The Gathering Fallout Commander deck. Whenever your characters attack, you can pay 2 and sacrifice an Aura equipped to him.
When you do that, for each other attacking creature you control, they gain a token that’s a copy of that Aura attached to them. It’s time to bring back All That Glitters. This deck also brings back Puresteel Paladin, so the equipment you control costs 0 mana to equip, as long as you control three or more artifacts.
2) Science! - Artifacts (Blue/Red/White)
Personally, I’ve never been one for micro-managing Energy in Magic: The Gathering, but I’m willing to try for the Fallout Commander deck. Led by Dr. Madison Li, it also features one of the coolest designs in Fallout history: Liberty Prime, Recharged. Dr. Madison Li is an Energy-farming machine who can use her Energy to draw cards, bring back artifacts, or buff a creature for a turn.
You can either do that or save it for Liberty Prime, Recharged, which needs you to pay two Energy each turn, or it will be sacrificed. As an 8/8 with Vigilance, Trample, and Haste, Liberty Prime, Recharged is one of the biggest creatures in the Magic: The Gathering Fallout Commander decks. You can also use it to sacrifice artifacts to generate the required mana.
3) The Wise Mothman - Big Creatures and Radiation (Black/Green/Blue)
This one is my favorite Fallout Commander deck for Magic: The Gathering, and it's all about mutants! There are so many amazing mutants in Fallout, and this deck also features a rework of the Tarmagoyf card, done in a Fallout style. This deck is led by The Wise Mothman, which gives every play a Rad counter when it enters play or attacks.
Then, whenever one or more nonland cards are milled, X target creatures gain a +1/+1 counter, where X is the number of nonland cards milled this way. That way, when players trigger their rad counters, you can start buffing creatures. While I wanted to feature Hancock, Ghoulish Mayor, my favorite card in this Fallout Commander deck for Magic: the Gathering is Nuclear Fallout.
It makes each creature gain twice -X/-X until the end of the turn, and each player also gains X rad counters, which is a new mechanic. Depending on how many counters you have when you draw a card, you mill that many cards, and you lose life equal to the amount of nonland cards you milled that way.
Then, you remove that many rad counters. So they don’t go away in their entirety - depending on what you threw into the graveyard. It’s definitely a new, exciting mechanic for the Fallout Commander decks in Magic: The Gathering.
4) Hail, Caesar - Go Wide Tokens (Red/White/Black)
Fans of token decks will love this Fallout Commander deck in Magic: The Gathering. After all, Caesar, Legion’s Emperor, is the leader of the Legion in Fallout: New Vegas. Caesar himself has all sorts of useful abilities whenever you attack - as long as you sacrifice a creature. You can use him as a one-shot on your opponent, depending on the number of tokens you’ve generated, too.
This pairs well with one of his followers, the Powder Ganger. It has Squad 2 - so you can pay 2 colorless mana as many times as you want when casting this creature. For each time you pay that, you gain another token that is a copy of the Powder Ganger. It’s a remarkable way to secure a win and have a ton of attackers.
Each of these Fallout Commander decks for Magic: The Gathering has tons of references to the franchise and plenty of synergy. This is among the many excellent products coming in 2024. Fallout’s MTG decks will be released on March 8, 2024.
