When it comes to Magic The Gathering, the community has a love/hate relationship with the game’s owner Wizards of the Coast. Earlier this week,m it was announced that Wizards of the Coast owner Hasbro had plans to lay off approximately 1,100 employees of its global workforce over weak sales.
This announcement shocked many due to Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks stating in a memo to staff that weaker-than-expected sales occurred in 2023 and were expected to continue into 2024; this came as a shock since the company had seen “historic, pandemic-driven highs.”
This comes with Hasbro having an operating profit loss of $169.5 million for the year. With Hasbro operating at a loss for 2023, many suspect that the Assassin’s Creed and Fallout adaptations of Magic the Gathering sets could potentially be the last adaptation of popular gaming franchises due to licensing agreements.
In the past year (2023), Wizards of the Coast released sets themed around Lord of the Rings and Doctor Who. The Lord of the Rings set made news due to the hunt for the 1 of 1 Ring of Power that would ultimately be sold to Post Malone.
Although there are special syndicated cards for Doctor Who, no equivalent hunt has transpired. With the upcoming My Little Pony, Fallout, and Assassin’s Creed set, we expect that there will be special syndicated cards, but at the moment none have been announced. At the moment. Wizards of the Coast is slowly rolling out information about the Magic The Gathering Fallout set currently scheduled to release on March 8, 2024.
Fallout Set Details
Commander Decks
Back in October, Wizards of the Coast shared some information about the upcoming Magic the Gathering Fallout Commander Decks. The four Commander decks are Scrappy Survivors (Red-Green-White), Mutant Menace (Black-Green-Blue), Hail, Caesar (Red-White-Black), and Science! (Blue-White-Red) aka America!
The Scrappy Survivors deck is described as:
“The goodest of boys, Dogmeat, as your commander, this deck focuses on scavenging for tools, Food tokens, and allies. It also introduces Junk tokens, which can be sacrificed to draw cards. If you enjoy tokens and suiting up your creatures with Auras and Equipment, then this is the deck for you.”
The Mutant Menace deck is described as:
“Looking for something a little “different,” then try your hand at the Mutant Menace deck, which incorporates Fallout‘s dangerous and strange mutated creatures, such as this deck’s commander, The Wise Mothman. Play creatures, then buff them with counters and proliferate. Irradiate yourself and your opponents using the new rad counters (player counters that mill and damage you).”
The Hail, Caesar deck is described as:
“There’s also the Hail, Caesar deck, featuring the franchise’s infamous Caesar as your commander. This deck’s themes revolve around leaders of militant factions and their soldiers, as well as wasteland raiders. Be aggressive with an army of creature tokens with the help of the squad mechanic, which lets you create extra token copies of creatures.”
The Science! deck is described as:
“Finally, we have our Science! deck, which focuses on high-tech energy weapons, scientists, synths, and pre-war robots. With Dr. Madison Li as your commander, you will play artifacts to generate energy, a returning mechanic fit for Fallout.”
Takeaways from the Set
When looking at the Fallout Magic set, the cards advertised feel like they are more modern-era-focused. This seems confusing since Wizards of the Coast has stated that the set, “celebrates elements of all Fallout games since 1997 and represents the first “modern view” of some of the classic Fallout games, including updates to characters and settings from Fallout and Fallout 2.”
With the commander decks and single cards, they seem more focused on Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76. The special Vats edition of cards gives a beautiful variation of different cards in the set and gives something for players to chase after. According to Wizards of the Coast, there will be seven serialized cards including the Bobbleheads; there will be 500 copies of each of the seven cards.
The Magic The Gathering Fallout set is available to preorder but will not come out until March. Will you be preordering any of the Fallout sets? Will they have a special deck set for players who want to play against one another?
