Magic the Gathering has, of late, been branching out beyond its usual stories and worlds in the hopes of recruiting new players. While many of MtG’s stories take place across the Planes and feature a bevy of Planeswalkers, the designers of the game, Wizards of the Coast, are partnering with other pop culture franchises to bring us the ‘Universes Beyond’.
We’ve already seen some of these crossovers with Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who, and even Fortnite and My Little Pony. Some are released as Commander decks along with boosters, while others are limited to releases through Secret Lair. What we have to show you today is the next in the long line of crossovers, Fallout. The crossover comes just in time for the Amazon Prime Fallout adaptation.
We were invited along to preview some of the new cards that will be released very soon - 8 March 2024, to be exact. You can already pre-order four Commander decks which are decks made of 100 cards with a unique commander card. Also available will be collector boosters that feature 15 random cards from the line-up. The commanders you’ll see are classic characters from the Fallout franchise including Dogmeat, Mothman, Dr Madison Li, and Caesar. Many of the cards’ flavour texts reference in-game mission names and feature characters and plot points we’ve seen throughout the Fallout universe including the most recent, Fallout 76.
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The new set was overseen by Annie Sardelis, made in partnership with Bethesda Game Studios and each of the decks play very differently. Taking a look at Dogmeat’s deck - ‘Scrappy Survivors’ - we saw that this deck is all about stacking, and creating the beefiest creature you possibly can by attaching equipment and auras to bestow buffs. The Mothman deck is all about mutants of the wasteland and you’ll find this deck makes use of the new mechanic, radiation, which mills cards from your deck while damaging both you and your opponents.
The new styles of cards - something that happens with each of these releases - go the whole hog in showcasing Fallout. The new showcase cards, which can only be found in collector boosters, feature some gorgeous Pip-Boy artwork around the edges, with some old CRT scanlines throughout the image. Wizards of the Coast has done a great job adapting the game’s artwork into the new cards using that 1950’s aesthetic throughout.
Of course, it wouldn’t be Fallout without some bobbleheads like the ‘Perception Bobblehead’ which appears as an ‘Artifact’ card allowing you to tap for mana, or look at X number of cards in your deck, where X is the number of Bobbleheads you have.
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From what we saw, fans are going to have a field day. Seeing so many familiar things from the games is a joy. Nick Valentine is in there, as is Three Dog and Hancock. You’ll also find ‘Saga’ cards, one of which comes in the form of the game’s famous vaults.
It wouldn’t be modern Magic the Gathering without tokens, which are cards or resources that you create as you play. In the Fallout set, we’ll get to use several including ‘Junk’ which is used in Dogmeat’s deck and helps exile cards; Human Soldiers, who come from Caesar and can be used to fight or be sacrificed. We also have a new core mechanic, radiation. Radiation feels like a great mechanic that works across all decks by placing a ‘rad counter’ on creatures which causes you to ‘mill’ cards (remove cards from your deck into your graveyard) and then for each nonland card milled this way, they lose one life and remove a rad counter.
You don’t, of course, have to play Magic the Gathering to benefit from these cards. The artwork is gorgeous across everything we’ve seen so far and they’d make for a wonderful collection - you can see more on the official website. On the other hand, if you’ve ever had a passing interest in Magic the Gathering and have wanted to try it out, this is a great time to jump on, especially if you’re a fan of Fallout.
Featured Image Credit: Bethesda, Wizards of the CoastTopics: Bethesda, Fallout, Preview, Magic the Gathering