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Some May Call This Junk, Me, I Call Them Treasures.

Whoops, wrong Bethesda game. Either way...

In this latest installment of the EDHREC Universes Beyond: Fallout set review, I’ll be looking at the artifacts from the nuclear wastelands of the Fallout setting. I’m Joshua, and I’ll be your wasteland survival guide as we figure out which of these cards could be the S.P.E.C.I.A.L sauce your Commander deck needs. I’ve got lots of cards to cover and I’ve been really keen to dissect this latest Universes Beyond offering, so let’s take a trip to Diamond City and kick off this review!

Rares

Brotherhood Vertibird

A Vehicle that once crewed can deal a lot of damage in the air, so long as you’ve got the board state to back it up. The first thing I like about Brotherhood Vertibird is that it’s got a low mana cost and a low crew requirement. This means that it can come down early and you can use it to block nicely.

The second thing I like about Brotherhood Vertibird is that when you’re calculating its power it doesn’t stipulate that the artifacts have to be nontoken. This means that every treasure, Clue, Food, Map, Blood or Junk token counts towards its power. If you count all of that on top of any additional artifact creature synergy you might have in the deck, this could end up dealing a lot of damage out of nowhere.

I can see why this card is in the precon, it’s a nice way to deal meaningful evasive damage and it could even close out a game. Fun for sure!

ED-E, Lonesome Eyebot

This lonesome robot loves company. ED-E rewards us for attacking with an ever-increasing number of creatures by putting a quest counter on itself. Once our hand is looking light, we can sacrifice ED-E to draw cards equal to the number of quest counters that we put on it. 

This card provides some nice card draw in colorless, something that colorless archetypes aren’t particularly known for. I could see ED-E at the helm of a low to the ground aggressive artifact deck, or one that cares about Thopter tokens and other evasive artifact creature tokens. This card might even be a nice addition to a Selesnya tokens deck.

HELIOS One

The lands in this set are looking a little light, but this is a card I can see players running even if they’re not playing an energy deck so let’s take a brief look. It’s very similar to Blast Zone. You can use this as a mana sink to build up energy and eventually remove a problem permanent.

You might want to look at running this in mono-colored decks that struggle to deal with some permanent types such as black, which struggles with dealing with enchantments. Is it inefficient? Absolutely. In some colors it might be your only option though, and I’d rather you be with it than without it.

Mister Gutsy

Mister Gutsy comes down early and grows as the game goes on, a great card for Aura and Equipment decks. If Mister Gutsy lives long enough it could have enough +1/+1 counters on it to be a card worth suiting up with your auras and equipment. The best part is, when it dies it creates Junk!

A relevant, scaling statline that can apply pressure to our opponents and provide card advantage to its owner once it’s died. Count me in, this card is rad as hell and I think this could be a really fun addition to aura and equipment decks. All that leftover Junk could be what you need to suit up your next creature with All That Glitters and resume the beatdown.

Nuka-Nuke Launcher

I mean, if I saw someone carrying a weapon that fired miniaturized nuclear warheads I’d be intimidated too. This Equipment provides support for the rad counters deck, you want to point this at your opponent that will be taking long, convoluted turns that cast multiple spells so you can maximize the amount of counters they get.

It’s not a bad Equipment, with a two generic mana casting cost and a three generic mana equip cost it curves out nicely and provides an evasive keyword to a creature. Equipping a nuclear warhead launcher to a Llanowar Elves isn’t where I thought this article would take me, but early game damage is as relevant as ever in Commander, so maybe it’s time to embrace a little destruction.

Pip-Boy 3000

The Pip-Boy makes its appearance in Equipment form, fitting for one of the most iconic and useful equipment in the Fallout setting. This portable computer can do a bit of everything in the video game and its card game counterpart is no slouch. Equipment with a casting cost of one generic mana are always interesting, some of the recent offerings include Tarrian's Soulcleaver and Shadowspear.

While the Pip-Boy 3000 doesn’t offer a single static effect it offers your choice of three. It offers you card selection, a way to advance your board state and the ability to get a little more mana out of your lands. Not a single one of these abilities is bad, this card is a really nice piece of Equipment offering versatility in the similar way that Umezawa's Jitte once did. I’ve compared this card to enough powerful and iconic Equipment that I’ve convinced myself that this is a powerful and useful card. It’s earned itself a place in my Equipment toolbox, I’ll be interested to hear in the comments where you think this card could shine the most.

T-45 Power Armor

Another iconic piece of Fallout culture, T-45 Power Armor. This armor turns the wearer into a tough but energy-hungry behemoth. You’ll need a steady stream of energy to get the most out of this card but the payoff is there.

Paying energy into this on your upkeep provides your equipped creature with a choice of flexible keywords, effectively allowing you to build your own haymaker. Much like in the later Fallout video games, you might be wishing you brought an extra power cell though. This isn’t going to do much without the energy to get it going.

The Enemy Filter Lands

I’m mentioning these because it’s notable that a cycle of lands gets completed in Magic, so if you were waiting for this cycle to be completed (and if you were, congratulations on your patience) then here they are. I don’t need a Perception Bobblehead to guess that we’ll be seeing these populating Commander precon mana bases for some time now. I’d imagine that will be where they stay though, these aren’t cards you really want to be running in your decks if you want to optimize your mana base.

They don’t tap for mana themselves, which is kinda what you want land to do. Without an Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth or a Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth I’d do the right thing and filter these lands right out of your deck.

Uncommons & Commons

Behemoth of Vault 0

Behemoth of Vault 0 is a difficult card to evaluate right now. Outside of the new Science! precon deck that cares all about energy counters, energy doesn’t see too much love in commander, though that might be about to change.

Modern Horizons 3 comes out this summer, and that set also notably contains a Jeskai energy Commander precon, so we might end up revisiting this card in future articles and upgrade guides. What does this card offer right now though? Well, it’s a source of generating energy counters that could be abused through flicker effects like Cloudshift and Ephemerate, so that’s pretty useful. It’s got a respectable body and nice evasion for its mana cost and when it dies it allows you to use some of that energy to remove a problem nonland permanent. I quite like this card, it reminds me of Meteor Golem which is a very playable card. Though I feel like this will likely only see a home in energy decks, whatever they end up looking like.

C.A.M.P.

C.A.M.P. is an artifact that costs three generic mana and then for another three generic mana you can fortify it. Fortifying it attaches it to a land you control, and once you’ve done that the fortified land puts a +1/+1 counter on the target creature you control once you tap it for mana. If the targeted creature was the same color as the mana produced you also make a junk token.

Oh man does this feel slow, slow and wordy. It’s a unique way of representing the survival craft element of the Fallout games, but this is a very slow card for a very minor payoff. I hate to be campy but if I were on vacation, I’d rather stay in a Hostile Hostel than rough it outdoors.

Expert-Level Safe

This card is frustrating as all hell, just like cracking an Expert-Level Safe in the video games. Is the reward worth it though? I’m leaning towards no. Each time you and your opponent fail to guess the same number, another card from your library is exiled in the safe. The time you do get it right though, you get all the cards you exiled with it. This is a big payday for the aspiring codebreaker.

Sometimes I describe some card advantage as card draw with extra steps, and this might take the cake for the most convoluted way to draw cards I’ve seen in a long while. Is it going to feel awesome when you’ve cracked the safe? Sure. How much mana will you have spent by then as you attempt to crack this every turn? That’s the real question.

Nuka-Cola Vending Machine

*Points to Academy Manufactor*

I’ve got to write more than that? Okay fine. This vending machine is a repeatable source of Food tokens. While Nuka-Cola Vending Machine sticks around your Food tokens are repeatable sources of Treasure tokens!

These Treasures might come in tapped, but they eventually refund you the mana you used to make the Food in the first place. Talk about buy one get one free! The list of cards that care about artifact tokens is getting longer every set but I’ve got a feeling this card has a home alongside most of them. Food tokens are super relevant too. I will be trying this card in my Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit and Sam, Loyal Attendant partner Commander deck, just in case I need a second breakfast.

Silver Shroud Costume

This Equipment operates as a pseudo-protection spell, potentially saving a key creature from targeted removal. Once the coast is clear it leaves behind a relevant evasive keyword that could lead to some clean commander damage kills.

It’s not a complex card, but sometimes they don’t have to be. It’s a card you might be happy to see when the going gets tough, just like the Silver Shroud themselves.

Survivor's Med Kit

Survivor’s Med Kit is a wonderfully thematic card, bringing you everything you might want to survive a day in the wasteland. Costing one generic mana to cast, we can immediately put another generic mana into it to draw a card. Spending two mana to effectively cycle a card while adding to our on board artifact count is nothing to turn your nose up at.

The second ability to create a food token also adds to our on board artifact count, even if it will cost us three mana to effectively gain three life. This isn’t as great a rate but it could get you out of the danger zone.

The final ability, the one that will exhaust the kit, will remove all rad counters from the target player. This is where this falls down a little. In the environment where you’re playing all four precons together, this card is awesome. It could save you from losing lots of key cards due to rad counters. In a traditional game of EDH this is beyond narrow. It’s a flavor win though, and I’m not just talking about the Fancy Lad Snack Cakes.

The Bobbleheads

Finally, there’s the bobbleheads, one for each of Fallout’s attributes. I’ve decided to look at them all as one rather than individually as each provides a different effect that increases in potency the more bobbleheads you’ve collected.

Luck Bobblehead stands out as the most unique, offering an alternate way to win the game and feeding you treasures. I can see lots of deck brewers salivating at this one and this card will be right at home in any dice rolling commander deck.

Intelligence Bobblehead strikes me as the next most playable, because card draw is card draw and you can’t get much better than that.

I’m ranking Agility Bobblehead third, because it offers evasion and sometimes that’s what you need to knock a player out. This ability attached to a mana rock could sneakily win you the game out of nowhere.

Endurance Bobblehead might have been higher on the list except for that sorcery speed limitation. Protect my creatures at instant speed and I might have been a little more impressed! The haste of the Agility Bobblehead is a little more valuable to me than the indestructibility of this one, even if both offer combat benefits.

Perception Bobblehead shines when you’ve got top deck manipulation, like Scroll Rack and its ilk which could see it slotting into the right deck. It’s not as ubiquitous as some of the others on this list though.

Strength Bobblehead puts +1/+1 counters on our creatures, what else! Again this one is limited by sorcery speed. This could have been a cool combat trick but I’m left wanting a little here.

Finally Charisma Bobblehead allows you to bring your friends to the table, creating a soldier for each bobblehead you control. It’s the last on the list simply because this effect is available in so many other places that I doubt I’d be turning to this card to provide it.

The Bobbleheads are all interesting to different degrees, they incentivize running multiple of them but they don’t all play into the same archetype. I think you might be better just picking the one you want and attempting to make copies of it with cards like Mirrormade I could see you really getting rigging the odds in your favor with a couple of copies of the Luck Bobblehead.

Radio Silence

Alright, that’s a wrap. We’ve sifted through the junk and found glittering diamonds in the rough! I hope you’ve enjoyed my look at the notable artifacts and lands of this set. It looks like some archetypes got a lot of love with this set and I’m already leaping at the chance to play my Equipment deck again.

Which cards are your favorites? Let us know in the comments below. If you’d like to catch up with me as your wasteland survival guide you can check me out on Twitter or watch me over on Youtube. 

I’ll see you in the next one, so until next time. Stay safe out there in the wasteland and keep a Radaway handy!

Joshua Clough

Joshua is a Medical Researcher from the UK. He's played Magic since Dragons of Tarkir and loves all things Commander, the more colours the better! When not playing Commander, he can be found insisting Jund is still a viable deck in Modern and painting tiny plastic miniatures on Twitter @PrinceofBielTan