Four Commander decks in the wasteland
Fallout is four Commander decks and no booster set, which is the shape most Universes Beyond crossovers took before the policy changed. There is nothing to draft and nothing that enters Standard.
Rad counters are the mechanic it is remembered for. They sit on a player rather than a permanent, and at the start of your precombat main phase you mill one card per rad counter, losing a life and removing a counter for each nonland card milled. It is a slow, self-limiting clock that fills your graveyard as much as it hurts you, which is exactly what a Commander deck wants from it.
It is also where energy came back. The Science! deck runs on energy counters two years before Modern Horizons 3 made them a headline mechanic again, which is worth knowing if you assumed MH3 was the return.
Themes
Rad counters
They go on a player, not a permanent. At the start of your precombat main phase you mill one card for each rad counter you have, and for each nonland card milled that way you lose a life and remove a counter. The counters clear themselves as they do damage, so a pile of them is a fixed cost rather than a spiral.
Junk tokens
A predefined artifact token: sacrifice it to exile the top card of your library and play that card this turn. It is impulse draw in token form, so anything that makes, counts or sacrifices artifacts turns it into two things at once.
Energy
Back from Kaladesh, and this is the return people forget about because Modern Horizons 3 came later and louder. Energy counters are held by the player and spent as a resource, which the Science! deck uses to fuel Dr. Madison Li's three abilities.
Where You Can Play It
Fallout shipped as precon decks under a single code and was never Standard- or Pioneer-legal. It predates the policy that made later Universes Beyond sets Standard-legal.
Standard was never in play for this set, so no rotation has ever touched it. Nothing here leaves Modern, Legacy, Vintage or Commander either. Commons from any set are Pauper-legal; that isn't listed per set here.
Commander
One per faction the games are built around, and the mechanics split cleanly between them.
Scrappy Survivors
Dogmeat, Ever Loyal
Red-green-white, and the Junk token deck. Equipment and Aura payoffs on top of the tokens.
Mutant Menace
The Wise Mothman
Blue-black-green rad counters, milling the table and yourself and profiting from both.
Hail, Caesar
Caesar, Legion's Emperor
Red-white-black tokens and sacrifice, the most straightforwardly aggressive of the four.
Science!
Dr. Madison Li
Blue-red-white artifacts and energy, and the deck that quietly brought energy back to Commander.
Building one of these into something of your own? The precon buying guide covers how to judge a deck, and the Commander deck template is the shape to build toward.
FAQ
Rad counters go on a player rather than a permanent. At the start of your precombat main phase you mill one card for each rad counter you have, and for each nonland card milled this way you lose one life and remove one rad counter. Because the counters come off as they do damage, a pile of them is a fixed cost rather than something that spirals.
Scrappy Survivors, led by Dogmeat, Ever Loyal; Mutant Menace, led by The Wise Mothman; Hail, Caesar, led by Caesar, Legion's Emperor; and Science!, led by Dr. Madison Li.
No. It shipped as four Commander decks with no booster set, so its cards are legal in Commander, Legacy and Vintage. It predates the policy that made later Universes Beyond sets Standard-legal.
A predefined artifact token you sacrifice to exile the top card of your library and play that card this turn. It is impulse draw in token form, and because it is an artifact, anything that counts or sacrifices artifacts gets value from it too.
Yes, and this is the return most people miss. The Science! deck runs on energy counters two years before Modern Horizons 3 made them a headline mechanic again.
Mutant Menace is the strongest out of the box and the one that best shows off rad counters. Hail, Caesar is the easiest to pilot if you want to attack rather than assemble an engine.
All card names, art, and mechanics belong to Wizards of the Coast. Fallout released on Mar 8, 2024; details reflect the set as published. Sources: Wizards of the Coast set pages and release notes, Draftsim, Untapped.gg.
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