Magic: The Gathering – Fallout Review

Magic: The Gathering is a fascinating IP filled with interesting worlds, creatures, and lore. But it’s also a super fun card game, and with the Universes Beyond series, they bring the fun gameplay to other IPs you may love. Everything from Warhammer 40K to Lord of the Rings has been brought into Magic: The Gathering. More out there is the recent Dr. Who release, but more up my alley is the new Fallout release.

The biggest question is: is it worth checking out this series, and how does it respect the source IP?

What is on offer?

Unlike the standard Magic: The Gathering set releases, some of the Universes Beyond ones are more limited. Just like Doctor Who, Fallout purely has Commander Decks and Collector Boosters. 

This is cool because the Universes Beyond cards aren’t legal in many formats, but they are in Commander. So it basically means that buying one of these decks lets you take an IP you love straight into the format that it’s going to be most common in.

The Collector Boosters just let you make one of these decks extra shiny and fancy.

How does it respect the Fallout IP?

This is where I was truly shocked. The design has been carefully considered to ensure that it accurately reflects the Fallout universe. A really simple example is the Scrappy Survivors Deck, which has dogmeat as the main commander card. Dogmeat is all about finding stuff, and as such, when he enters the field, you scry 5 and can grab an enchantment to put in your hand. Then, on subsequent turns, he finds junk tokens. Maybe you don’t want this good boy to be your commander. Well, then you can grab the alternative commander, Preston Garvey. If you’ve played Fallout 4, then you will know him as the settlement guy. Well, he turns your lands into settlements. Not a bad fit.

The most flavourful deck is Mutant Menace. This one is led by the Wise Mothman, and it is all about rad tokens. These new tokens attach to other players and cause you to scry cards each turn, and when you scry a nonland card, you lose a life but also the token. It’s an innovative new feature that’s well suited to the IP.  

It’s meta as bro

While the cards are well designed to fit in with the world of Fallout, it takes it a step further. There are cards that reflect that Fallout is a game too, in the most clever ways. A fantastic example of that is  Inventory Management.

The card reads “Split second (As long as this spell is on the stack, players can’t cast spells or activate abilities that aren’t mana abilities.) For each Aura and Equipment you control, you may attach it to a creature you control.”.

So in other words, you pause the game, and shuffle your equipment around. So in the games world, all of this happened in a split second. It’s so damn clever!

So, should you check out the Magic: The Gathering Fallout decks?

As a fan of Fallout and a fan of Magic: The Gathering, this is a simple Hell Yeah. The decks are fun to play, fit the format well, and fit the Fallout brand well. It’s a simple “yes” for me, and it should be a blast for Fallout fans who want to try MTG!

9.5

It would be cool to have some more booster options to augment your deck outside of the Collector Boosters, but the Commander Decks themselves are absolute slam dunks.

They are fun MTG decks, that represent Fallout so damn well.