Magic: The Gathering Reveals First Details on Fallout Commander Decks

Magic: The Gathering has revealed new details about its upcoming Fallout-themed Commander decks, which are due for release next month. Today, Wizards of the Coast provided a ton of new details about its latest Universes Beyond product, which brings various popular franchises into the world of Magic: The Gathering. The new Fallout set will consist of four pre-constructed Commander decks, with themes of "Scrappy Survivors," "Science!," "Mutant Menace," and "Hail, Caesar", as well as Collector Boosters featuring a variety of new card treatments and alternate cards. 

For those unfamiliar with the Commander format, the Magic gamestyle features a deck of 100 cards (with no duplicates) as well as a "Commander," a Legendary creature card that can be played multiple times and can't be permanently banished from the game. A player can lose a Commander game in two ways – either by having their health reduced to 0 or by taking 21 damage from the same Commander in the game. 

The new Fallout decks feature four new Legendary cards with characters pulled from the Fallout franchise. Scrappy Survivor features Dogmeat as the Commander and introduces the "junk" token, a new kind of artifact token that helps players draw cards. The deck's strategy focuses on having one really big creature in play, buffed through the use of other cards. The new set also features Bobblehead cards that take inspiration from the Bobblehead collectibles found in Fallout games and scale in ability based on how many Bobblehead cards a player has in play. 

The "Science!" deck features Dr. Madison Li as the Commander and focuses on the generation and expenditure of energy, a type of resource that can be used to do things like draw cards or power up the many robot-themed creatures in the deck. Other cards featured in the deck include Liberty Prime, and the T-45 Power Armor.

The "Mutant Menace" deck unsurprisingly features mutant cards and features the Wise Mothman as the Commander. Notably, this deck features a new rad counter mechanic that both mills and damages all players based on what sort of cards are drawn during the mill process. 

The "Hail Caesar" deck focuses on the various militant factions of the universe and features Caesar as the Commander. The strategy of the deck is to utilize a "go-wide" token strategy that occasionally calls for sacrificing creatures to trigger abilities. The set also brings back the Squad mechanic from the Warhammer 40K Commander deck, which allows players to pay extra mana to create copies of a card when it enters the battlefield. 

Alternate card treatments featured in the set include the Pip-Boy treatment, which is meant to mimic the useful wristworn object and features art with CRT scanlines on them, and Vaultboy variants that features the iconic mascot of the franchise. 

The new Fallout Commander decks will be released on March 8th, alongside Commander Collector Boosters featuring cards (and variant cards) from the set.