Mutant Menace Precon: Decklist, Value, and Verdict

The Wise Mothman

Flying Whenever The Wise Mothman enters or attacks, each player gets a rad counter. Whenever one or more nonland cards are milled, put a +1/+1 counter on each of up to X target creatures, where X is the number of nonland cards milled this way.

Singles value

$113.55

TCGplayer market, 85 cards, basic lands counted at $0

Sealed price

$115.79

TCGplayer price for the box (Amazon $139.78) · singles are 1.0× that

New cards

41 / 100

First printings in this deck

Bracket

Core, out of the box

Is Mutant Menace worth buying?

from Fallout Commander Decks: Are They Worth It? by Timothy Zaccagnino

This is my personal favorite deck of the bunch. My eyes initially glazed over when I saw all the usual +1/+1 counter support, but the radiation counters, mutant subtheme, and mill payoffs make it feel distinct from previous counter decks. It has a lot of generically good tools for Commander at large, and it just so happens to have the best reprint value, despite not being that generous with its reprints anyway. Using these decks as a lens into the world of Fallout, the mutant creatures just strike me as way more appealing and interesting than all the random humans in the other decks. My bias is showing again, but I suspect other non-Fallout enthusiasts might feel the same.

How Mutant Menace plays

primer from Mutant Menace Upgrade Guide: 24 Easy Changes You Can Make by Steve Vrooman

I’m definitely here for the mutant Fallout deck. This is where all the cool monsters and creatures thrive, which I must admit, are some of the major appeals to this product. As a Fallout novice, it’s way cooler to see deathclaws and bat monsters and mutant monstrosities than it is to see 20-30 humans I have no real connection to.

At its core, Mutant Menace is a +1/+1 counter deck with all the usual counter amplifiers and proliferate effects. Been there, done that. But it’s aesthetically unique from past +1/+1 counter precons and really leans into the new Radiation mechanic, which if you ask me is pretty friggin cool. Rad counters mill players slowly and drain their life totals, and feel like the perfect complement to a +1/+1 counter strategy, since you’ll be pressuring life totals and proliferating everything in sight.

The Wise Mothman puts rad counters on full display and converts milling into an on-board advantage, something mill decks tend to be pretty poor at. It looks under-statted as a 3-color Phantom Monster, but it likely picks up +1/+1 counters on ETB and grows very quickly as non-lands get milled over. The Master, Transcendent is one of the most recognizable villains from Fallout, so of course it had to be here somewhere. While it looks much stronger than the Mothman in general, it doesn’t interact with the +1/+1 counter theme at all, so I’m sticking with West Virginia’s cryptid of choice out-of-the-box.

The gameplay is typical of a normal +1/+1 counter deck (grow creatures, smash), but the mill theme creates an interesting wrinkle. Rad counters give your proliferate spells new purpose, and there are tons of ways to take advantage of milling everyone. There are even a few zombie/mutant typal payoffs that don’t feel distracting here at all. Overall, a very cool set of strategies that feel like they shouldn’t work together, but kind of stick the landing.