Tuesday, February 21 was the first day of the MTG Fallout spoiler season! Even though things are just kicking off, it won’t take too long for players to know exactly what to expect in the MTG Fallout Universes Beyond crossover hitting shelves on March 8. With the Fallout Spoiler season coming and going in just four days, things may be over just as quickly as they started.
Each of these four days, Wizards of the Coast has teamed up with a bunch of names in the MTG world to bring fans spoilers to one of the four new Commander Precons. On Tuesday, the Commander Precon of choice is Scrappy Survivors, an Aura and Equipment-based Naya strategy piloted by everyone’s favorite good boy, Dogmeat.
Alongside Universes Beyond’s newest crossover, MTG Fallout is introducing a few new mechanics. One of those is the new Junk Token. This token is essentially one unit of Impulse drawing: an effect commonly found in red MTG cards. To translate, that means you get to exile the top card of your library and play it until the end of that turn.
While it can always be fun to see what your Junk provides, there are other ways to utilize your Junk tokens as well. One particular spoiler looks incredibly fun to use, able to knock opponents out in one hit!
Junk Jet
If you want to take out your opponents in one go, Junk Jet is the card for you! In exchange for some mana and some artifacts, Junk Jet can double an equipped creature’s power until the end of your turn. Most importantly, the dreaded ‘once per turn’ clause cannot be found on Junk Jet, allowing you to exponentially increase your creature’s power!
Sweetening the deal slightly, Junk Jet provides you with a Junk Token when the card enters the battlefield. This can either be used to replace Junk Jet in terms of card advantage, or can be sacrificed to the Jet’s activated ability. This can help ease the sting of the card having a somewhat redundant floor. If you cannot make use of the power doubling ability, Junk Jet doesn’t give equipped creatures any other benefits.
This can get incredibly out of hand when combined with the new Legendary creature, Liberty Prime, Recharged. While Liberty Prime has some obvious flaws, if built around properly, it can become a powerful, and fun, Voltron Commander. After all, who doesn’t want to knock opponents out with one punch from a crazy powerful Robot?
As long as Junk Jet is equipped to Liberty Prime, all you need to do is activate Junk Jet’s ability twice, and Liberty Prime is primed to knock out any player of your choice. With Liberty Prime as your Commander, you only need 21 Commander damage to knock an opponent out of contention. Two Junk Jet activations gets Liberty Prime’s Power up to 32! Unless your opponent can put up 12 toughness worth of blockers, Liberty Prime will Trample through to your opponents for lethal damage.
One important note, however, is if you want to use this MTG Fallout combination as a Commander idea, these two cards come from two different MTG Fallout Precons. Junk Jet can be found in Scrappy Survivors, and Liberty Prime makes its appearance in the Science! Commander Precon. That deck will be discussed on Friday of this week.
Read More: MTG Fallout Spoiler Season Kickoff Reveals 10 New Cards!
Moira Brown, Survival Guide Author
As you may quickly notice, this copy of Moira Brown, Survival Guide Author may not be the easiest to interpret. Provided below is a translation from Reddit user mweepinc:
“Moira Brown, Survival Guide Author – 1RW
Legendary Creature – Human Citizen (Rare)
When ~ enters the battlefield, create a colorless equipment artifact token named Wasteland Survival Guide with “Equipped creature gets +1/+1 for each quest counter on permanents you control” and Equip {1}
Whenever you attack, put a quest counter on target nonland permanent you control
2/3″
Before we even discuss what Quest Counters are, many players quickly identified that Moira Brown can be quite powerful alongside Blink and Panharmonicon strategies.
Notably, Moira Brown creates the Wasteland Survival Guide token on entry. This means that Flickering her with cards like Ephemerate can allow you to create multiple copies of the Wasteland Survival Guide token. This, essentially, allows you to increase the buff that your Quest tokens provide. Junk Jet is once again looking like a fun way to one-hit-kill your opponents in combination with these abilities.
Quest Counters have been confirmed to be, at worst, a subtheme in the new MTG Fallout Scrappy Survivors Precon. Interestingly, however, Quest Counters are not a new mechanic, but a returning one. There are some powerful cards from Magic’s history that utilize these unique counters.
Quest Counters
Perhaps the most infamous of MTG’s past cards that utilize Quest Counters is Bloodchief’s Ascension. This nasty enchantment accumulates Quest Counters at the end of turn, caring whether or not an opponent has lost two or more life during that turn. If they have, Bloodchief’s Ascension gets a Quest Counter. Once three have been accumulated, a deadly ability is unlocked, draining an opponent for two life whenever a card is put into a graveyard from anywhere. Consider that this card is one mana, and its no wonder that the card has a decent secondary market value.
Bloodchief’s Ascension demonstrates what is generally the function of Quest Counters. Certain enchantments can accumulate them after a certain action occurs. Once a certain number of Quest Counters are gathered, deadly abilities are granted.
Using Quest cards like Bloodchief’s Ascesion makes Moira Brown a much more powerful card. Not only will the Wilderness Survival Guide tokens buff your creatures up quicker, but Moira’s ability to place Quest Counters on cards when you attack can speed up the rate that you unlock hidden abilities on your enchantments that care about Quest Tokens.
One thing to watch out for, however, is that all Quest Token enchantments are not created equal. Khalni Heart Expedition, a rather popular enchantment that utilizes Quest Counters, sacrifices itself in order to utilize its payoff. In this case, however, Quest Counters are rather easy to accumulate on Khalni Heart Expedition since its a Landfall ability. So, you could use Khalni Heart Expedition simply as a way to quickly accumulate Quest Counters.
If you want to see many of the cards that employ Quest Counters, this Scryfall search should help.
Either way, these new MTG Fallout spoilers from the Scrappy Survivors Commander Precon look incredibly fun to play. Sure, they won’t have any competitive relevance, but that doesn’t mean these cards won’t be popular additions to many existing Commander decks.
Read More: $280 Portal Three Kingdoms Powerhouse Gets Much Needed MTG Fallout Reprint!
