Top 10 Universes Beyond: Fallout Commanders - With Lists!

It is hilarious to look at the past, see what were the future MTG releases then, and, in very little time, realize they're already here. This happened with Fallout. A while ago, I thought I would still have to wait a lot for this set to get here, but it came fast. It even has a special version of a Tarmogoyf reprint in this set, in the shape of Scrounging Deathclaw.

However, this article isn't going to focus on how the flavor of the Universes Beyond: Fallout cards is incredible, and how the partnership between MTG and this Atompunk adventure franchise is balanced; instead, we'll analyze the ten best commanders in this set with EDH in mind, and see which of them are the best for players who want decks that are more consistent, with higher win rates.

Let's be honest, Treasures are one of the most powerful artifact tokens, are incredibly interactive with numerous cards, and are a solid presence on the board. They also create resources for us if necessary. Being able to create this type of token and sacrifice them to control enemy creatures is what makes Kellogg, Dangerous Mind so dangerous.

This type of ability and situation matches cards like Mirkwood Bats and Reckless Fireweaver perfectly; this way, you'll deal residual damage bit by bit as the game goes on and their abilities trigger or activate.

Crime Novelist is another incredibly powerful card in this strategy, and is also incredibly popular among players.

Big Score, Xorn, and Gadrak, the Crown Scourge are perfect options to create tokens for this deck.

We'll start off with a relatively intriguing commander. Hancock, Ghoulish Mayor is a legendary creature that focuses on being a lord, a creature that increases the stats of other creatures of a certain type. In this case, this will be your Mutants and Zombies.

Hancock, Ghoulish Mayor, in particular, is more than a simple lord that gives your creatures +1/+1 in a static way; he buffs your creatures more and more through counters of any type. It doesn't matter if it is a +1/+1 counter, a Menace counter, or a Shield counter: the simple presence of any of them on this card will make your other creatures stronger. This makes him ideal for tribal decks.

Rex, Cyber-Hound is perfect for this format: it has unusual interactions and can be a part of combos that are impossible in standard x1 matches. Rex can use its abilities on several targets, but, notably, blue mill cards are the ones which will help us the most because they allow us to fill graveyards with our opponents' cards and offer several options for this commander.

Cards like Aetherstorm Roc, Decoction Module, and Aethergeode Miner are perfect to hoard energy counters, and allow us to activate Rex, Cyber-Hound's ability more times.

If you want powerful activated abilities in your own deck to guarantee Rex will always have them available without depending on your opponents, Aetherling and Morphling are always excellent choices.

This deck's style is quite simple: use your smaller creatures, which will go straight through the enemy defenses, and deal small amounts of damage several times with small battalions orchestrated perfectly for combat. As for this legendary creature's second ability, it is useful to hold off the game, considering it drains your opponents if they dare to attack you with big creatures.

MacCready, Lamplight Mayor really reminds me of an Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, considering he focuses on using small creatures, only without Red, and without Reanimating them. We'll use countless small creatures to go through certain obstacles on our opponents' boards while we save up on ways to defend ourselves, such as Ghostly Prison and Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker.

I could easily fill the next 40 pages of this article with how much I like Cryptozoology and this type of concept. Furthermore, the original Mothman, from the U.S.A. folklore, is my favorite cryptid.

The Wise Mothman fills the slot as this set's mysterious, curious monster, which was precisely what a true Ikoria widower, like me, wanted. Additionally, it has excellent colors and interacts with this set's new mechanic: Rad counters. These counters allow us to remove resources from enemy decks, deal damage to them and us, and send our own resources to our graveyard.

This mothman doesn't only give these counters frequently to each player: it also buffs the creatures we pick when we mill non-land cards (which is what Rad itself does), which really improves your board.

This commander, the more we read his text, the better he gets. Caesar, Legion's Emperor offers you the option of sacrificing one of your creatures after you declare an attack (it can be one of your attacking creatures or not), and, if you pay this cost, this emperor allows us to choose two abilities out of the three he has. These are excellent abilities in a deck with colors that give a lot of support to this game style.

Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim is a perfect example of a card that will bring you benefits when tokens enter the battlefield and creatures come out of it, without mentioning effects like Pitiless Plunderer, which allow you to stack Treasures on your board. And, of course, activating these effects once is already excellent, but how about doubling them with Isshin, Two Heavens as One?

After countless "Master" decks in Universes Beyond: Doctor Who, we now have The Master, Transcendent in Fallout. This legendary creature has a very fun recurrent effect: it puts certain types of permanents in play as a certain type of token, but they'll keep their abilities. So, The Master, Transcendent can put creatures that were milled that turn on the board, and keep their effects, but in the shape of 3/3 Mutant creatures. You can also choose this creature out of any graveyard.

This commander has obvious limitations, but, even then, their merits make up for his flaws because of this unusual effect, which allows us to create hordes and hordes of mutants everywhere on the board.

A curious detail: the TARDIS, from Doctor Who, was an "easter egg" we could find in the first Fallout. With a lot of willpower and humor, we can create a Masters tribal deck if we pretend they are sister franchises in a great Universes Beyond deck.

Helm of the Host is one of my favorite cards of all time, precisely because he stacks legendary creatures on the board, even though he removes their supertypes. Shaun, Father of Synths does the same, as long as you attack with any creature; you don't need to attack with Shaun, Father of Synths himself.

An incredibly funny and simple play we can make with this commander is to use Venser, Shaper Savant and return permanents to our opponent's hand, this way clearing their board bit by bit. Yes, permanents, which includes lands! Purphoros, God of the Forge is another perfect legendary creature you can copy and trigger their ETB effects in succession. This will deal damage constantly, and you'll also have excellent Indestructible creatures to attack without thinking twice.

And, of course, equipping a Helm of the Host on your Shaun, Father of Synths is a bit evil.

I'm pleased to announce to everyone: we finally have a commander who uses energy counters efficiently and quite often. Could she be red and blue with green instead of white? Yeah. But I'm not complaining, after all, this archetype now has a great reason to be popular.

Dr. Madison Li creates energy counters as you cast artifacts, and allows you to use these counters to activate different abilities. Cards like Automated Assembly Line and Whirler Virtuoso will help you stack energy counters, and, later on, nothing will prevent you from even Reanimating a Blightsteel Colossus or Liberty Prime, Recharged from your graveyard.

Obviously, you have to build this deck impeccably, considering you need to balance your energy counters and the cards you want to activate with them really well. It will be an incredibly delicate balance.

Everything I said before in this article about Treasures is still true for this card. "They are a relevant type of token", "artifacts are very popular in Commander", and all of that. However, this commander uses Treasures in a very different way: gambling.

Mr. House, President and CEO is an excellent commander who uses dice, and brings you benefits when you roll 4 or higher (or six or higher) on your dice. He also allows you to try to get higher numbers again and again with his own activated ability, considering he allows you to roll dice with six sides.

Then, we're shocked when we realize that, nowhere on this card, its text specifies the type of dice we need to use, which allows you to use cards like Hoarding Ogre and Ancient Brass Dragon. They let you use d20s, dice with twenty sides, which makes the challenge of rolling four, six, or more, entirely trivial.

So, perform all your superstitious rituals to have a lot of good luck, and roll all your d20s as if they were d6s; after all, the house always wins.

Three Dog, Galaxy News DJ has an incredible effect. In a singleton format, in which we can only add one copy of each card in our deck, a commander like this one is worth gold. When one of your creatures attacks, you can use two generic mana and sacrifice an aura to create a copy of the aura you sacrificed to each attacking creature that isn't Three Dog, Galaxy News DJ himself.

So, we can put in practice our most vile and evil ideas. Can you imagine several Etali's Favor entering the battlefield at the same time and triggering Discover abilities? Or several All that Glitters making all your creatures gigantic. Or the brand-new Grim Reaper's Sprint, which can create dozens of extra combat phases, depending on how many of them you created.

This will all bring us a lot of card advantage and makes Three Dog, Galaxy News DJ one of the best commanders in this set.

Out of all Fallout games, the only one I played was Fallout 3. It is an incredible game, refined, and, for the time, quite ambitious. I played for hours on end and did a lot on it; so, I stress that the characters from this game, transported into MTG in this set, really capture their Bethesda counterparts.

The other cards we didn't list in this article are also interesting, both visually and mechanically, and have even moved me to find out more about Fallout!

See you next time.