Last updated on February 29, 2024
The Wise Mothman | Illustration by David Gaillet
If you’re a Fallout 4 fan, a huge part of that has to be the way they pushed mutants to interesting places in that game. And the Mutant Menace precon has a lot of my favorites of those kinds of mutants and supermutants. Of course, if you read one, you know I’m going to remove all of them from the deck in this quick upgrade guide!
Isn’t that just how it goes for mutants in the unforgiving world of the wastes? But I’m positive you’ll find other decks for those cards, many of which are quite powerful. We’re going to streamline this deck to make a table-wide Radstorm, harnessing the power of cloning to make an army of radroaches, bloatflies, feral ghouls, and even glowing ones. Sounds like grinding through the wastes on the way to the next RPG plot point destination to me!
So make sure you’ve stocked up on RadAway, Vaultdweller, and let’s see if we can do a glow up on this deck!
Deck Overview
This deck looks like it wants to make rad counters and proliferate them. Rad counters are kind of cool. As players get them they have to mill and lose life in their upkeep, but that gets rid of the rad counters. Which means you need to deliver rad counters to a player and then proliferate before their upkeep. There’s also a heavy +1/+1 counters payoff suite in the deck, helmed by The Wise Mothman.
- THE VAULTS ARE OPEN—Journey through the wastes with a 100-card deck introducing 41 never-before-seen Magic cards featuring fan-favorite characters, thematic game mechanics, and art that explores the post-nuclear world of the Fallout series
- BATTLE YOUR FELLOW WASTELANDERS—Battle your friends in epic 3–5 player MTG games full of strategic plays and social intrigue; ready-to-play right out of the box, these preconstructed decks let you jump straight into the action
- MUTANT MENACE—Choose the Mutant Menace deck to place your belief in The Wise Mothman and prove that humanity’s time at the top of the food chain is over
- COLLECT SPECIAL FALLOUT CARD TREATMENTS—Each deck comes with a Collector Booster Sample pack containing 2 special alt-frame cards, including 1 Rare or Mythic Rare card
- EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO PLAY AND MORE—Each deck also comes with 10 double-sided tokens, 1 life tracker, 1 strategy guide, and 1 deck box (can hold 100 sleeved cards)
Strengths and Weaknesses
Since most of your payoffs for that plan are +1/+1 counters on your creatures, many of whom are at least 4-drops, I don’t see that happening super quickly, and I don’t see that winning a game any time soon.
To increase the rad counters, I thought about blink, but only a third of the creatures in the deck give you rad counters on ETB. Most dish out radiation from combat damage, which is a lot harder to manage. But the Simic in here gives us access to spells that copy creatures, which seems like a better way to solve the problem that almost everything that distributes rad counters is already in the deck! We need more, so we’ll do it the hard way!
And that means this deck gives us another angle on a clones strategy. Usually helmed in Sultai colors by Volrath, the Shapestealer, these decks can struggle with finding wincons, even in other colors. Our deck provides a rad counter inevitability while also allowing us to pivot to cloning powerful creatures on the other side of the table. And given how many hundreds of Infesting Radroaches and such I’ve faced while grinding through the Fallout games, this seems completely in the spirit of the deck!
We also naturally have some other insane things to copy aside from the rad counter theme, like Alpha Deathclaw, so it all synergizes.
We’ll need some payoffs for all the mill besides the +1/+1 counters, so we’ll toss in a small mill package that can end the game for us eventually if things stall out.
Altar of Dementia
Suggested Cut: Cultivate
We’d rather be dropping some rad counters on turn 3, not still ramping, so Cultivate is out and obnoxious mill card Altar of Dementia is in. This feels like a late game play when an opponent is close to dead and The Wise Mothman is dropping heavy counters. We can mill someone out under those conditions, or we can simply keep looking for mill value if we need this early.
Mesmeric Orb
Suggested Cut: Strength Bobblehead
One Bobblehead is terrible, so save them up for another deck. Mesmeric Orb will just end the game at some point. This deck won’t usually win with mill, but if it needs to, here we are.
Double Major
Suggested Cut: Hardened Scales
The whole +1/+1 counters theme has been eliminated, except on a few cards, so cards like Hardened Scales and most of the creatures on the cut list are all about that theme. You surely have a +1/+1 counters deck you want these for, right? Double Major is a really flexible card, and cheap clone effects are money, especially those that let us clone legends and keep both copies.
See Double
Suggested Cut: Branching Evolution
Most 4-mana clone effects, including bangers like Clever Impersonator have been cut from the potentials list, as we can get the deck working with enough 3-mana clones, which makes our life so much easier. But See Double does an awful lot. It can copy commanders as needed, and it can also double us up on rad counter dorks.
Doppelgang
Suggested Cut: Recon Craft Theta
Doppelgang is broken. We don’t quite have the mana base to pull off more than an 8-mana play with this, but that’s still game-breaking, especially if we’re copying our Mesmeric Orb or a really good rad creature.
Renegade Doppelganger
Suggested Cut: Contagion Clasp
Really, Renegade Doppelganger is a 2-mana clone. You copy something like Vexing Radgull early, something better later, and if that’s a clone, the Doppelganger can effectively keep copying good things already on the battlefield as well. It reverts at the end of the turn, but you can’t have everything for 2 mana.
4 mana to proliferate with Contagion Clasp is not okay Maybe in poison.
Repudiate // Replicate
Suggested Cut: Harmonize
I don’t know why Harmonize is in this deck. The left side of Repudiate // Replicate will ruin someone’s day by surprise. The right side is a 3-mana clone. Nice.
Sublime Epiphany
Suggested Cut: Putrefy
In an interaction war, I’d pick Sublime Epiphany over Putrefy any day of the week! In a deck where I want clones and the Epiphany can do that as well, that’s where I want to be.
Mimic Vat
Suggested Cut: Power Fist
I think Power Fist and the next piece of equipment are pretty cool, but for another deck. Mimic Vat can just get out of hand in this deck though!
Cackling Counterpart
Suggested Cut: Nuka-Nuke Launcher
3-mana clones are our jam. The double blue is trouble on cards like Cackling Counterpart, so as always, be sure to gussy up this manabase with better duals. Anything like this that has graveyard recursion is extra good in a deck like this.
Phyrexian Metamorph
Suggested Cut: Guardian Project
Guardian Project makes zero sense in a deck of clones, but you know you want this in some other degenerate green deck you have sleeved up already! Phyrexian Metamorph is a classic. And a (sometimes) 3-mana clone that can point at an opponent’s cardboard is still pretty rare.
Quasiduplicate
Suggested Cut: Jason Bright, Glowing Prophet
That triple blue is not ideal, but the Jump-start on Quasiduplicate is worth it.
Endless Evil
Suggested Cut: Winding Constrictor
Most of the proliferate style cards are out, and this dodgy enchantment is in. Endless Evil is pretty busted on cards with rad counter ETBs like Nightkin Ambusher, but I wouldn’t be mad to see this on an Infesting Radroach.
Helm of the Host
Suggested Cut: Biomass Mutation
Biomass Mutation is money in your Simic counters deck, but here we want to give Cube staple Helm of the Host a shot. If we can make it work, wow. #edhgoals
Cryptoplasm
Suggested Cut: Cathedral Acolyte
The ability to keep changing is a real benefit in a deck like this, where we scale our rad synergies up the curve. So Cryptoplasm is in for the lost Cathedral Acolyte.
Bramble Sovereign
Suggested Cut: Marcus, Mutant Mayor
4 mana for a clone isn’t enough, but 4 mana for Bramble Sovereign, which can keep cranking them out, is awesome. A lot of the cards we’re removing from this deck are zombies just waiting to go into your Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver deck, and you can toss Marcus, Mutant Mayor in your Simic counters deck.
Reflections of Littjara
Suggested Cut: Corpsejack Menace
All of the good creatures in our deck are mutants, so Reflections of Littjara is great. It’s a cast trigger, so there may be a time when you want to name “shapeshifter” instead of “mutant” in order to trigger this.
Glasspool Mimic / Glasspool Shore
Suggested Cut: Island
MDFCs are awesome, and Glasspool Mimic is just the thing for us. You can always toss relevant MDFCs in any precon, but this one has special utility.
Mirror Image
Suggested Cut: Piper Wright, Publick Reporter
Piper Wright, Publick Reporter wants to be in another deck, maybe even at the helm. But a 3-mana clone that’s easy to cast makes me want Mirror Image on the team.
Croaking Counterpart
Suggested Cut: Tireless Tracker
Another card for a clues deck goes out and a 3-mana clone comes in. Croaking Counterpart is better on creatures with good ETBs, but it’s still useful if the board is reasonably empty. And flashback is great for us.
Flesh Duplicate
Suggested Cut: Hancock, Ghoulish Mayor
We lose our second mayor from the precon in favor of a 2-mana clone from Doctor Who. Sure, Flesh Duplicate has vanishing, but that’s a three-turns-from-now problem.
Rite of Replication
Suggested Cut: Inspiring Call
I really want space for instant speed clones like Irenicus's Vile Duplication and Activated Sleeper, and perhaps either or those is the correct choice in this slot, but I like the wild upside chance of a kicked Rite of Replication.
Wild hope.
Wild hope never changes.
Syr Konrad, the Grim
Suggested Cut: Mutational Advantage
We need another wincon, and when Syr Konrad, the Grim heard about rad counters, they were ready to join the future instead of continuing work on various Christopher Lee cosplays.
Dakmor Salvage
Suggested Cut: Swamp
So we could have included a lot more dredge cards, but I don’t think we get that much bonus from self-mill. We’re not exactly a graveyard deck, and we don’t give ourselves enough rad counters to make that version of this deck worth it. Still, having a card that can get us there isn’t the worst thing as an aspirational goal, so Dakmor Salvage is in.
Commanding Conclusion
Cryptoplasm | Illustration by Eric Deschamps
I love the idea of rad counters, and I like the idea of seeing if we can maximize their impact. Since we’re not likely to get any more of those counter makers any time soon, this might be our last best hope for a dirty bomb of a Fallout deck to really trigger those players who get salty at the idea of Universes Beyond. We’re putting our sci-fi counters on them as players, which might feel even worse for them than us equipping Gandalf with Drach'Nyen and putting him in the TARDIS. So I guess I’m saying be wary of this deck in strange company. It probably won’t be everyone’s cup of Nuka-Cola.
Let us know in the comments or on Discord if this build works for you. It’s my plan when my Mutant Menace deck arrives at my house. I’ll be sure to update you as to how it’s going for me when I unleash it upon my local meta.
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