Wizards of the Coast announced in August that a Fallout crossover was coming to Magic: The Gathering in the form of four preconstructed decks for Commander, the format in which players go head-to-head with decks of 100 cards, each led by a single legendary commander.
Today we got our first proper look at what’s in store, and it pleases me greatly that one of those commanders is none other than Dogmeat, the storied, semi-immortal pupper who’s been a loyal Fallout companion since the very beginning.
Fallout’s Commander decks are based on four themes drawn from the videogame series, each headed up by an appropriate, “iconic” character: Dogmeat for the Survival deck, Dr. Madison Li from Fallout 3 and 4 for Technology decks, Caesar of Fallout: New Vegas fame for Military decks, and the cryptic cryptid Mothman for Mutant decks.
Each deck also has a unique and suitably themed mechanic: Survival decks, for instance, can sacrifice Junk tokens to play cards off the top of your library, while Mutants can use Radiation tokens to attack other players by milling cards from their library and dealing damage.
Courtesy of the Magic: The Gathering website, here’s a closer look at how each deck works:
🐶 Scrappy Survivors (Red-Green-White): Commanded by Dogmeat, the eternal good boy of the wasteland, this deck focuses on scavenging for tools, Food tokens, and allies. It also introduces Junk tokens, which can be sacrificed to draw cards.
🦋 Mutant Menace (Black-Green-Blue): The Mutant Menace deck incorporates Fallout’s dangerous and strange mutated creatures, such as this deck’s commander, The Wise Mothman. Play creatures, then buff them with counters and proliferate to add even more counters to your team. Irradiate yourself and your opponents using the new rad counters (player counters that mill and damage you).
☠️ Hail, Caesar (Red-White-Black): Featuring the franchise’s infamous Caesar, this deck’s themes revolve around leaders of militant factions and their soldiers, as well as wasteland raiders. Be aggressive with an army of creature tokens with the help of the squad mechanic, which lets you create extra token copies of creatures.
👩🔬 Science! (Blue-White-Red): Science! focuses on high-tech energy weapons, scientists, synths, and pre-war robots. With Dr. Madison Li as your commander, you will play artifacts to generate energy, a returning mechanic fit for Fallout.
As you’d expect, there’s some great and varied art in MtG’s Fallout cards, drawn from throughout the long history of the series: Deathclaws and Rex the Cyber-Hound, numerous land cards, VATS in action, the Vault Boy doing his thing, and even a bobblehead or two. As an inveterate defender of Fallout Tactics, I hope we’ll see an explicit reference or three to that game somewhere in the set—a Beastlord card, maybe?—but honestly I’m not holding my breath.
Magic: The Gathering’s Fallout decks aren’t set to roll out until March 8, 2024, but preorders are live now through Amazon or your local place. Get a look at all of the upcoming Fallout cards Wizards of the Coast revealed today in the gallery below.
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