Today we have a slight departure from usual, diving in to review ALL of the new cards from the third of the Fallout preconstructed Commander decks. In the couple of weeks or so we will be giving our thoughts on all four of the decks being added to our favorite format. While many of us are big Fallout fans, we’re mostly focusing on the cards and their use in the game of Magic in and out of the deck itself.

 

Caesar, Legion’s Emperor

BPhillipYork: That’s a buildable commander with a decent modal ability that really leverages Mardu’s strength. Really the whole package; smaller and cheaper would be nice but at 4/4 that’s decent. They did set it up so you have to have an initial sacrifice but then this will just keep on trucking. To best honest this is probably going to replace my Negan,  the Cold-Blooded as commander of my Mardu recursion sacrifice deck. I will say it’s a bit lacking on pomposity.

Marcy: My fondest New Vegas memory was taking the solar array gun and shooting Caesar with it while he was mid dialogue, evaporating him out of the game in a single shot. In comparison, I think this Caesar is the one capable of doing that to your opponents quite easily if he’s allowed to get going. Sacrificing a single creature to get 2, and then you can also ping someone for an extra amount of damage.

FromTheShire: Very nice value commander, all of the modes are great. As befits a great Caesar, and unusually for a lot of similar commanders, he doesn’t even have to get off of his throne and attack himself, which is excellent.

 

Mr. House, President and CEO

BPhillipYork: It’s a strange ability and I don’t actually remember Mr. House himself being particularly lucky, but the game had a lot of luck themes, so that’s fine. There’s a really kind of strange interaction with say, Urza, Lord High Artificer here, in that you could be paying all the mana from Treasures and rolling a lot of dice. Also fits in really nicely with “cares about dice.” Three mana for a 4/4 wall that’s an artifact creature is kind of interesting too. Can definitely build into or build around but basically has to revolve around dice or Treasure or both.

Marcy: Ok initially I really wasn’t really into this card at first, but I think there is such a fun deck built around dice rolling cards that I want to build it myself and use it. I think Mr. House is not a commander that will likely win games from his own ability, but I think he’s just giving you the reason to have dice rolling cards. I also killed this dude like every time, but I sort of felt a little bad about it. Kinda. Not really.

FromTheShire: Love seeing a good dice rolling commander, and the vast majority of the good dice rolling cards fall in these colors. Right now you may have to rule 0 some silver border cards to fully build around it but you’re already playing a Universes Beyond card so who really cares, and this unifies the Red/White and Red/Black legendaries from those sets into a single deck. That said, once you toss in stuff like Smothering Tithe and Barbarian Class this is going to become a Problem pretty quickly.

 

Aradesh, the Founder

BPhillipYork: Well, if this guy had a bit higher base power, he would be really dangerous. There are lots of ways to get cheap high power creatures; ideally you’d want the tapping of the creature to do something as well or the creature to exist solely to enter play. On the other hand, commanders with double strike are dangerous, since you only have to get their power up to 11 to kill someone outright, which is not particularly difficult. For a monowhite commander this is really a tough sell, but in some kind of Boros “punch people in the face” deck it might be doable. But there don’t appear to be ways to give people enlist, so it’s kind of a dud.

Marcy: I think he could be very good as a beater in an enlist themed deck, or one that takes advantage of enlist, anyway, because his ability is actually quite strong. While he himself can trigger enlist, his card text does not specify that he has to be the one who attacks, just that something that attacks WITH enlist does, and there’s no limit to how many of them, and getting 4 power off of enlist seems very simple to let you start scry and drawing.

FromTheShire: Double strike is a fantastic buff to hand out even if you have to jump through a small hoop. 4 power doesn’t require much of a boost to hit either, and this scales for each creature pair you can enlist with so you can potentially be drawing a whole mess of cards fast.

 

Butch DeLoria, Tunnel Snake

BPhillipYork:  Neat, and neat that you can hand out counters and turn things into Rogues, which is pretty nice with prowl. I’m not sure Rogue Snake typal is a thing though.

Marcy: I love the idea of running some sort of awful gimmick deck filled with Rogues and Snakes. Also, the card is really cheap, meaning that a quick aggro deck in this theming isn’t impossible to imagine.

FromTheShire: The callout is great; I have no idea what deck this goes in off the top of my head, though. Handing out menace tokens can be useful, and the rate is solid.

 

Colonel Autumn

BPhillipYork:  Wow this could get really dangerous, and also potentially generate some loops in weird ways with recursive legendaries having this create their sacrifice trigger automatically. However the main use is just going to be having some kind of fodder to sac to make big fat legendaries, which is fairly on brand for Orzhov.

Marcy: Yeah this is primed to run an Orzhov aristocrats deck in some way for sure. In this deck out of the box, I think you can get some solid use out of this too, since this deck creates a decent amount of token creatures and also wants or takes advantage of you sacrificing things.

FromTheShire: Really great tool for aristocrats decks, for when you want to also beat people to death at the same time you’re draining them out.

 

Craig Boone, Novac Guard

BPhillipYork:  So this will get fairly dangerous in short order if you can keep attacking, mostly pinging stuff off but players will generally prefer to eat the damage instead. This can trigger nicely additional times off stuff that causes attacking to trigger more or more combats, which lets you really leverage the ability and get the number of quest counters up really rapidly to dangerous levels.

Marcy: Oh, Boone. I don’t make it very hidden that I tend to not like male companions in games and other things, but Boone was 100% my favorite and constant companion in all of my plays of New Vegas. I love the flavor of the quest line text here on his card, and the choice here is such an interesting choice, offering your opponent the ability to take damage themselves, or to lose a creature. As Boone is a sniper, I also really like that he doesn’t have to attack for his trigger to activate, just other things do.

FromTheShire: As always I don’t love giving my opponent a choice, but if this comes down early it can rapidly get to the point where it will stop being a choice. All that said, is putting this much work in to kill one creature per turn at most really worth it? I suspect not.

 

Desdemona, Freedom’s Edge

BPhillipYork:  Boros recursion is slowly becoming a thing, and this is another piece. Sadly limited to one time per turn so you can’t combo off with it, it still lets you create quite a value pile.

Marcy: There are a lot of scary artifact creatures that this is looking to cheat out, but the problem is actually that you really aren’t ‘cheating’ them, you’re just able to get them back. If it reduced costs in some way, I think this might actually have been stronger than it is, but overall, I think this is just a good way to get something back. The problem is Desdemona also has to attack to get the trigger to activate, so there’s a lot of moving parts here.

FromTheShire: Not a bad recursion piece, but not Sun Titan either. The upside of hitting artifact creatures over 3 is something at least.

 

ED-E, Lonesome Eyebot

BPhillipYork:  Well that’s kind of an even sadder end to sad companion, but it does let you draw a bunch potentially downstream, and is an okay beater for 3 mana, 2/1 that’s going to ramp to 3/2 right away and possibly continue to ramp with a basic evasion ability is pretty solid. I’m not sure I’d build a deck around this though.

Marcy: ED-E, my beloved other companion. He does at least put a counter on himself at first, but you have to increasingly attack with more and more creatures to get more benefit. You will, assuming he’s attacked at least once, get 2 cards off of his sacrifice trigger.

FromTheShire: Seems like a lot of work to force yourself to hold 2 mana open at all times in case someone tries to remove it. Maximum sadness when it gets Krosan Grip‘d.

 

Elder Arthur Maxson

Marcy: This deck is prime for some upgrades that provide and generate tokens. I can even think that putting this card in a deck with Ratadrabik of Urborg sounds like frankly just a miserably bad time.

BPhillipYork:  This is fairly nasty for decks that can generate a lot of tokens, most default to 1/1 and Maxson will let you ramp them up over successive attacks until going wide also includes being pretty tall at the same time, and then you’re able to just knock out one or more opponents with a load of fat 1/1s with +1/+1s counters everywhere.

FromTheShire: Interesting way to buff your team, and it’s good it can protect itself because people are absolutely going try to kill it. I still prefer the classic Coat of Arms out of nowhere for the win rather than the slow build.

 

Kellogg, Dangerous Mind

Marcy: Obviously the play here is to put Kellogg down while you have treasures to sacrifice, rather than try to build up 5 of them through him attacking enough times (especially since he is kind of squishy), although that does mean that even though he’s 3 mana, he’s a lot more expensive to get control of something and then swing with it. Also, I haven’t said it in a while, but since his trigger is as long as you control Kellogg, I thought I’d bring this back:

BPhillipYork:  Sacrificing Treasure to gain control of creatures permanently is pretty nasty, the fact that he makes Treasure on attack and has haste and first strike is a lot of icing on top to really push you towards stealing your opponents stuff, which people truly love. Five Treasures though is a pretty balanced amount that’s going to take a bit of time to amass, so not too worrisome for turbo baby steal.

FromTheShire: Well, I mean “permanently,” as long as you control Kellogg, aka only until you take something they really want. First strike is great on a card like this that needs to attack to do the thing.

 

Legate Lanius, Caesar’s Ace

Marcy: The flavor here is great, and this can be a great way to wipe the board in your favor by cutting down what your opponents have on the board. And, since it is rounded up, you’ll at least get rid of something.

BPhillipYork:  Really super cute, though also fairly dangerous. Generally going to come out at 4 mana, force 3 sacrifices, and then become a 5/5; that’s a lot in a small package. Rakdos can generate a lot of triggers off of deaths and sacrifices, so not just a small package but a full package.

FromTheShire: Lore on point, sacrifice game less so. Like forcing on average one creature per person to be sacrificed is fine but not impressive. Sure it gets big if you’re able to use Grave Pact effects and the like to keep the board clear so you can get through, at that point you can win with anything though.

 

MacCready, Lamplight Mayor

Marcy: Putting MacCready in charge of a deck of toxic/poison creatures is a death sentence very likely, and his drain mechanic is really nice too. For the mana cost, MacCready is also going to be annoying to get rid of permanently, as the cost to recast won’t provide too much of a deficit.

BPhillipYork: Wow that is a dangerous commander. Giving skulk to like, toxic, or poison counter creatures that easily is pretty gnarly. Also having a defensive capability tacked on and costing 2 mana is a lot. Both a decent commander and a solid add to decks just to enable your creatures that really care about swinging through.

FromTheShire: The defensive effect is nice, and getting your tokens through unblocked if you haven’t found a way to pump them is solid as well. I don’t know that there are enough things with infect in these colors to make a deck that can actually take on a whole table.

 

Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy

Marcy: You’ll get a free 3 CMC creature, but if you can pump Elizabeth up, you can reasonably start dropping huge cost creatures that could have scary ETB and board effects; imagine just windmill slamming an Etali out of your deck, tapped, attacking, and casting 2 free spells.

BPhillipYork:  So just dumping out creatures is potentially pretty nasty. Limiting their power to Elizabeth’s is enough to keep this from being completely out of hand, but it’s not super hard to buff a commander’s power, or just an enabler. Most of red’s ways of cheating out creatures either forces you to sacrifice them or return them to your hand at the end of the turn, but this allows you to build up a board state fairly rapidly, or hold up mana for interaction and to protect your growing horde.

FromTheShire: Kaalia of the Vast at home. It’s a decent amount of work but the effect is powerful.

 

Rose, Cutthroat Raider

Marcy: Potentially getting you 3 Junk tokens off of a single combat, Rose’s other ability is actually even more valuable: it turns Junk tokens into free red mana; you may even want to try and get her into another deck that focuses on generating Junk tokens and then using her to cast something huge while also getting a ton of card advantage from the Junk ability.

BPhillipYork:  This has the potential to cause huge swingy turns. If you generate a lot of Junk and sac them for draw and then generate mana, that can be a formula for storming off and ending the game. There’s only about 14 sources of Junk tokens though so this probably can’t be the win condition it has the potential to be unless WotC continues with Junk tokens.

FromTheShire: For the time being I think this is just a really solid enabler in decks like the Scrappy Survivors precon we discussed last week; if we see an expansion of ways to create them in the future this could absolutely be a combo piece.

 

Sierra, Nuka’s Biggest Fan

Marcy: If you had a food token based deck, maybe this could do some interesting work. In this deck, I’m not sure this is such a great fit, and feels kind of like it would do better to replace it with something that more directly grows your board; this deck really wants creature tokens, not food.

BPhillipYork:  This is neat but doesn’t really fit well into any existing archetypes. Maybe there’s some kind of Abzan Food deck around that wins via combat damage, but generally Foods are trying to combo off some kind of recursion from the yard. At 4 mana this doesn’t really do enough to build around, and there’s not enough other Food sources. Mono-white is mono-white, and in supporting another deck it’s just not enough a powerful enough piece to really perform.

FromTheShire: Another card I think is interesting but slow and requires a fair few hoops be jumped through.

 

Yes Man, Personal Securitron

Marcy: I love Yes Man, and this makes great sense in flavor for the deck. Also, this is one of the better ‘give control of something to someone else’ cards, because sure, they get a 2/2, but you get to draw 2 cards. If people keep passing him around, you can reap the benefits of some tokens, and since opponents can draw the 2 cards off of passing him to someone else, it isn’t a bad deal in the immediacy to take advantage of his ability in a multiplayer game.

BPhillipYork: Fun. Funny synch up with the game, 3 mana to draw 2 cards and also potentially let your opponent draw cards and/or get Soldier tokens is kind of uh, weaksauce.

FromTheShire: Solid political card which I like. Best combined with Homeward Path so you can control the card flow.

 

Battle of Hoover Dam

Marcy: Typing of the card aside, this is another one where I feel one choice is way better than the other, but it really depends on the deck you’re going for, I guess. Most creatures in this deck (and set) are 3 CMC, so it feels like a great way to grab them back to the battlefield. Better if you can get the Finality counter off!

BPhillipYork:  WHY. Why is not a battle. Both of these modes are pretty solid for different things and worthy inclusions in very different kind of decks: short term recursion for Orzhov or Mardu sacrifice or else sacrifice decks.

FromTheShire: Maybe useful for sacrifice decks, yeah. Purpose made for something like Elenda, the Dusk Rose.

 

Boomer Scrapper

Marcy: Good-ish token generation for a slight cost, but since you can toss Junk tokens for free, it’s not hard to start sacrificing tokens with the card’s own ability, and there are plenty of ways to sacrifice other types of tokens too if you need to.

BPhillipYork:  This is an okay beater especially if you have a lot of Treasures, but medium-ish beaters are not exactly rare in Magic, so this is really only worth considering if you are wanting to play cards from exile or maybe use this as a piece to take a bunch of combat steps or extra turns with its help.

FromTheShire: Fortunately it gets big enough to survive combat quickly, and then it provides a slow but steady trickle of card advantage.

 

Charisma Bobblehead

Marcy: Probably one of the best Bobbleheads, at least in a deck that wants to pump out tokens, if you have the others as well!

BPhillipYork:  Another solid bobblehead, if you need a bunch of creatures for sacrifice or going wide this can be pretty decent, and it’s also just a tap for 1 of any color for 3, which is expensive, but not too bad.

FromTheShire: If you can get a couple bobbleheads down this is actually a pretty solid token generator.

 

Desolate Mire

Marcy: Again, what can you say? We got a solid filter cycle.

BPhillipYork:  Oh another filter dual, well good to see more that at least don’t enter tapped, though if you first turn it it effectively does.

FromTheShire: Still stoked we got this cycle completed.

 

Diamond City

Marcy: Cute, although you’re only going to get to use it once if you can’t proliferate.

BPhillipYork:  To protect your commander this is a decent enough colorless land to consider. For Atraxa in particular this is a funny interaction since you can start proliferating it and keep her on the field for a long time.

FromTheShire: Really good in proliferate decks, kind of fine in decks without.

 

Gary Clone

Marcy: Gary! A fun Squad card that could, conceivably, be pretty scary if you mange to get a good number of them down and then swing out with them.

BPhillipYork:  Nice.

 

Luck Bobblehead

Marcy: Shout out to user shanecookofficial over on Reddit, who did the math for how many bobbleheads you need to secure a win. You can read it here, but the answer is 41. Figure out how to get 41 bobbleheads, and you win. Easy, right?

BPhillipYork:  This is a funny win condition to me, really funny. I already have a Galazeth Prismari deck based on untapping my artifacts over and over until I win, this would fit right in something like that. Getting to 7 bobbleheads is pretty rough though, especially as there are only 7, though the Intelligence and Perception bobbleheads will let you go after more bobbleheads.

FromTheShire: Excellent alternate wincon, in that it will be a ton of fun to try and optimize and pull it off. Which is good, because you will actually win with it exactly zero times ever.

 

Mysterious Stranger

Marcy: MYSTERIOUS STRANGER MY BELOVED. So many times has this Perk led to just absolutely some of my favorite moments in Fallout. I love that this card has Flash, because it absolutely needs it, and I like the fact that you can get a free spell out of it. Of course, since it is random, you really want to ensure you pick spells you want at that moment, but you do at least get to select them. If you can bounce him, it’s even better.

BPhillipYork: Neato. Also potentially really nasty if you can keep recurring it, returning it to hand or flickering it.

FromTheShire: Love this, you may be flipping a coin to see if you get what you want but you get to pick what you’re flipping between so you should be happy with whatever outcome. Can also serve as emergency targeted graveyard hate in a pinch.

 

Overseer of Vault 76

Marcy: So, hear me out. While it might seem slow, this card seems primed to go into a Panopticon style deck that creates a lot of tokens. For example, Delney, Streetwise Lookout with some token generation could probably get a lot of Quest Tokens on this card very quickly, and suddenly pumping all of your creatures seems a lot scarier than it might be. Sure, it would take some work, but I think there’s potential here.

BPhillipYork:  I’ve been waiting for more things to start caring about quest counters in general. This does that but it’s uh, you know, underwhelming.

FromTheShire: Feels somehow even slower than the previous quest counter pieces. If your token makers really get rolling you can probably pop this once or twice a turn but there are a ton of cards that will just win you the game with that many.

 

Powder Ganger

Marcy: Unlike some of the other Squad cards, this isn’t one you’re likely looking to just make a ton of copies for to fill the board, and instead probably saving up your mana to use this as artifact hate, which I think it’s good at on its own, and potentially good for in numbers if you want to get rid of your opponent’s annoying pieces.

BPhillipYork: Probably not too viable though in durdle style games this can get you a fair amount of value by generating multiple creatures and destroying your opponents artifacts.

FromTheShire: Most of the time this is going to be a Reclamation Sage rather than squadding up but that’s still very useful. Great to flicker or reanimate, and it has two good creature types for including in decks as a piece of removal on an in-tribe body which is always great.

 

Ruthless Radrat

Marcy: If you’ve got a lot of junk in your graveyard, you can certainly make a lot of rats, and even though they’re only 2/2s, a lot of 2/2s is still pretty scary.

BPhillipYork:  This could be a bit dangerous if you generate several of them for only 3 mana and you have a pay off, like a bunch of on death or sacrifice triggers, so in some kind of mill and sacrifice or aristocrats and maybe recursion deck it’s a strong include.

FromTheShire: Making a bunch of 2/2s with menace late game seems….fine I guess?

 

Securitron Squadron

Marcy: If you’ve got the mana for it, this card is going to take over the board in a scary way, as the triggers for things entering is going to make huge tokens and this deck really wants you to have a lot of tokens for most of the scariest cards for either attacking or sacrificing.

BPhillipYork:  This could get really nasty really fast. As an enabler for go wide token decks, even just casting it for 2 mana to get +1/+1 counter on all your tokens is good, and this will make everything automatically modified, which could be used to really get something going. If you can afford to cast it for more, maybe saccing some tokens for mana or something, then it gets pretty dangerous pretty quickly.

FromTheShire: Solid buff for go wide decks in theory, I think it will suffer from the Door of Destinies problem where unless you have haste you’re going to make a real big army right into a boardwipe. I’d much rather have something that kills the table immediately and out of nowhere.

 

Survivor’s Med Kit

Marcy: This has some decent effects but you probably want this in a deck that can take advantage of also getting rid of an artifact and bringing it back, or doing something with a sacrificed artifact once you’ve used it up. Probably a card that’s easily swapped out of this deck for something else, though, if you’re upgrading.

BPhillipYork: Decent enough if you want to have artifact ETBs. Replaces itself for 2 mana, gets you a Food and then goes away removing all rad counters. It’s a neat callback but I’m not entirely sure where I’d really want that suite of things. Okay, yes, it doesn’t have to be that order but that’s actually the correct order.

FromTheShire: Maybe fine in precon vs precon but this comes out quick once you start upgrading.

 

The Nipton Lottery

Marcy: This might legitimately be the best flavored card in the entire set. I can HEAR this card. I love the flavor and I love the combination of Black board wipe and Red steal control, and the randomness of it really makes it even better.

BPhillipYork: Very good callback. Funny in a creature-less deck, especially if you have some way to sacrifice it as well. I remember killing this guy a lot. Though I’m not sure that’s really fair; we all respond to trauma differently, especially scripted collections of dialogue trees.

FromTheShire: Outstanding flavor on this card, and of course I love the effect as well.

 

Thrill-Kill Disciple

Marcy: If you happen to have cards to spare you can certainly get a few extra tokens out of this, but it seems more likely you’ll use this to discard one or two cards you don’t want in your hand.

BPhillipYork: Could be a neat way to dump big fatties to the yard to reanimate if that is the sort of thing you are into, then sacrifice it for Junk, which you then turn into more cards (I’m thinking things like Victimize here). It’s a neat little value loop to get out something fat like an Archon of Cruelty.

 

V.A.T.S.

Marcy: Four mana split second removal? This card is amazing, especially because you can target something really dangerous, or go for a board wipe; imagine just killing your opponent’s huge swing with similarly powered creatures in a deck? Super, super valuable card in this and probably any deck in Black, honestly.

BPhillipYork:  This is awesome. I mean it’s too expensive, but whatever.

FromTheShire: Strong disagree that this is too expensive. 4 mana for an instant speed mini boardwipe that also has split second so it’s DEFINITELY happening is excellent. Plus the flavor is impeccable.

 

Vault 75: Middle School

Marcy: Really solid conditional board wipe than then pumps your board for the next two turns, which also likely gives you a few turns of having control of the aggression on the board if your opponents are running larger, beefier creatures.

BPhillipYork:  Neat card for go wide weenie decks. A value wrath, essentially.

FromTheShire: Another one that’s excellent for the decks that want it: token decks, Doran, the Siege Tower decks, etc. One-sided wrath and then hopefully you close out the game in the next two turns.

 

Vault 11: Voter’s Dilemma

Marcy: The flavor is fun, but a card that becomes far less valuable depending on your player count. That said, it’s pretty likely that something players don’t like is getting erased off the board, just hopefully not something you control.

BPhillipYork:  Funny card, good callback, decent power, the mechanics of secret voting can be a bit of a hassle but this is a solid enough Saga. I do like the using Sagas for these votes since you sort of uncovered the story of vaults in stages.

FromTheShire: Okay but slow removal for the precons.

 

Wasteland Raider

Marcy: SQUAD UP, cause this card is scary if you’ve got the mana for it. An extremely expensive potential board wipe for each token you make, but if you can make a ton of them and still manage to keep quite a few of them alive, this is likely to leave you in a prime position to take over the board with fairly beefy creature tokens.

BPhillipYork:  Wow. This is a brutal iteration of squad, I mean super expensive but wow. Really dangerous for forcing a ton of triggers at once. Multiple ETBs, sacrifices, deaths, all in one package.

FromTheShire: Here’s a creature I would actually pay the squad cost on finally. Fleshbag Marauder is a highly-played card for a reason, and while this takes a bunch of mana it can be devastating late game.

 

White Glove Gourmand

Marcy: A victim of the modern WOTC “triggers once” language, this card is more flavor than it is anything else. For four mana you get a 2/2 and two 1/1s, and then also you can maybe get a food token. I think there are way better token generators out there; a replacement of this card with Wedding Invitation, for example, is an easy swap.

BPhillipYork:  Well I remember being kind of burnt out by New Vegas by the time I got to this quest, and I didn’t find it all that interesting, but it’s a good mechanical execution. A 2/2 for 4 that makes 2 1/1s and generates Food is solid enough. If you’re going aristocrats on creatures and artifacts this gets really value oriented since your sacrifices will generate artifacts which can then be sacrificed to generate more triggers for things like Disciple of the Vault.

FromTheShire: Only triggering once on your end step makes this a no go for me, way too slow for not enough effect.

 

Wild Wasteland

Marcy: Wild Wasteland is my favorite Perk other than Mysterious Stranger, just because of the bizarre things it lets you experience. For me personally in the game of Magic, I’ve always loved Chaos decks that do things like this, causing players to skip or not do things. In this case, “You” are the only one who skips drawing, but that’s still very strong for 2 cards to choose from every turn. You’re also allowed to play both, meaning that if you rip a land and a valuable card, you aren’t losing one for the other.

BPhillipYork:  Neato. Really solid for 3 mana effectively drawing an extra card each turn, also works well with cards that universally punish drawing, or play off you having an empty hand, or and or playing from exile, all of which can let you stack a lot of value triggers together to make a deck.

FromTheShire: Whenever you see ‘skip your draw step’ you know some wild stuff is about to happen, though this is certainly toned down from something like Recycle. Really like this as a red alternative to Phyrexian Arena and I can see myself putting it in an absolute ton of decks.

 

Next Time: Science!

That wraps up our look at the third preconstructed deck. Join us next time as we review the Jeskai Science! deck, picking out our favorite cards, and talking about the future build-arounds. In the meantime, if you have any questions or feedback, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.