Following an initial taster from Bethesda on Monday, the spoiler season for the MTG Fallout Commander is well underway! Thanks to MTG content creators and Wizards showing off the set, new cards are absolutely everywhere! There are so many new cards, in fact, that it’s a struggle to keep up with every new reveal!
Since over 400 cards are being revealed in just five days, it’s safe to say there’s a lot going on. Thankfully, to keep spoilers somewhat digestible, Wizards is showing off one MTG deck each day. Within this expedited preview schedule, the Scrappy Survivors deck is up first. Centered around a strong auras and enchantments theme, this deck features a ton of fan-favorite characters and items.
Beyond being jam-packed with flavor, it appears this deck also boasts some incredible value. Thanks to a suite of new aura support cards that have been unveiled, this deck may be a real hit!
Strong Back
As one of the iconic perks within Fallout, it’s rather apt that Strong Back does a lot of heavy lifting in MTG. Just like Ethereal Armor Strong Back scales off your other auras and enchantments to create a truly massive threat. As a staple effect within Aura-Typal decks, it’s great to see a new variant of this classic ability.
For better or worse, while Strong Back is similar to Ethereal Armor, it’s not a direct copy. Rather than scaling off every enchantment you control, Strong Back only works with auras and enchantments on the enchanted creature. Unfortunately, depending on your game plan, this could be a serious downgrade in this card’s playability.
Unlike Ethereal Armor, Strong Back can’t really be used to create multiple massive creatures when you already have auras galore. Instead, Strong Back only serves to pump up your already stacked creature, making it a truly devastating threat. Better than this, Strong Back can be the perfect first aura that makes everything else cheaper!
In theory, this ability can be the saving grace of Strong Back that makes it an auto-include within Aura-Typal decks. In reality, however, since Strong Back costs three mana, it’s probably not going to be the first enchantment you play. Does this make it unusable? Absolutely not. Thanks to the prevalence of fast mana in Commander, utilizing Strong Back effectively should be a breeze.
Mister Gutsy
Thankfully, conserving most MTG cards are walls of text nowadays, Mister Gutsy is a fairly simple card. Boasting a pair of abilities, this iconic robot is great at both scaling and dying. As you might presume from the theme of this article, Mister Gutsy scales whenever you play an aura or equipment.
By sitting around and getting bigger while you focus on other creatures, Mister Gutsy gives each aura extra value. Over time, they can easily become a substantial threat, however, you’ll obviously have to cast a lot of spells for that. While this is technically a sizable hurdle in their success, you don’t have to directly invest in them at least.
Beyond their slow scaling, Mister Gutsy keeps on being useful and providing value even when they die. When this happens, you get X Junk Tokens, where X is, or rather was their power. Depending on how long they’ve been around, this can net you a bounty of crackable impulse-draw tokens.
Ultimately, since they will take a while to scale, it seems unlikely that Mister Gutsy will ever get too massive. Should they ever be headed that way, an opponent can easily just kill them and spoil the fun early. Even if this should happen, thankfully Mister Gusty should still provide more than enough delayed value for their 2 mana cost.
Animal Friend
Within the Fallout universe, you’ll usually encounter Squirrels as food, rather than as friends. This is thanks to the irradiated Squirrel Bits food item which seems to be just about everywhere. Flipping the script, in the MTG Fallout Commander decks, Squirrels are definitely friends, and there’s an awful lot of them too!
Similarly to Strong Back, Animal Friend synergizes with the number of auras and enchantments specifically on the enchanted creature. When attacking, this number is used to give +1/+1 counters to a newly created green Squirrel token. In theory, if your creature is absolutely stacked, this can steadily build an army of incredibly powerful and bitey Squirrels.
Unfortunately, while the flavor of this card is fun, the playability may leave something to be desired. Since you need to attack to generate Animal Friend’s Squirrel token, you’ll always be putting your stacked Voltron at risk. Beyond this, without a reliable way to generate extra combat phases, you’ll only get one Squirrel each turn at best.
While Animal Friend may not be the best new Aura-Typal card for a Voltron deck, it is nonetheless welcome. After all, since they’re a beloved creature type, any Squirrel support that MTG receives is a good thing!
Inventory Management
Last, but by no means least, Inventory Management is an absolute bomb of an instant for Voltron Commander decks. Able to move around all your auras and equipment, this card is a truly devastating combat trick. So long as you have just one unblocked creature, Inventory Management lets you pile all your equipment onto it.
Provided that you have enough auras and equipment in play, Inventory Management can easily facilitate a swing for lethal damage. What’s better than this effect on its own, is Inventory Management’s Split Second keyword. Thanks to this, Inventory Management effectively can’t be countered or responded to, outside of niche Morph/Disguise effects.
Beyond the immense potential for shenanigans that Inventory Management allows, the card also has spectacular flavor. When playing Fallout, it’s incredibly common to switch your loadout or inject a dozen Stimpacks while in the inventory screen. As if this connection wasn’t enough, the Booster Fun artwork amps up the flavor even more, which many players can’t get enough of.
So Much More to See
While we’ve only covered four new cards here, as we mentioned at the start, there are over 400 MTG cards in the Fallout Commander decks. Thanks to this, there’s still going to be an awful lot of new and exciting cards revealed over the coming days. As these new Fallout MTG cards get revealed, we’ll be doing our best to cover them all right here.
If 400 new cards somehow weren’t enough for you, Wizards has even more up their sleeves. At the end of the week, Wizards is going to be previewing four upcoming MTG sets during MagicCon: Chicago. With spoilers, art, and lore tidbits expected to be revealed, this preview panel is certainly going to be a blockbuster event!
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