The Wise Mothman Commander Deck Guide

The Wise Mothman | Illustration by David Gaillet

Hello planeswalkers! War never changes, but MTG does quite often. There are always new Magic sets, new metas to pour over, and new ways to enjoy the game. I personally love the Universes Beyond adaptations of beloved franchises. Especially the Fallout set released in March of 2024. As a fan of the games and aesthetics, I couldn't wait to dive into this set.

Along with new sets come new commanders, including this Sultai commander (), The Wise Mothman. There are always plenty of variations that Commander decks can take with any single commander. The Commander deck below won’t break the meta, but with a few different strategies, it might be able to navigate you to some wins.

Let’s check out one of the possibilities of this mysterious cryptid.

The Deck

Infesting Radroach | Illustration by Loïc Canavaggia

This radical deck focuses on a few ways to achieve victory, one of which involves the rad counter put onto players. With these, you may have a chance to mill your opponent to victory. And if that doesn’t work, maybe the creature pumps will do the trick.

The Commander: The Wise Mothman

The Wise Mothman is a relatively cheap flying commander, costing and thus with Sultai color identity. This card and the rest of the deck are centered around this insect mutant, milling your opponents’ cards and turning that into counters or damage.

The Wise Mothman’s strength comes from the way it can increase the number of cards milled and the quickness and spread of its counter-giving ability. The number of rad counters a player has forces them to mill that many cards each turn. This Commander gives a rad counter when it ETBs and whenever it attacks, allowing you to pile them on alongside your other cards. The fact that The Wise Mothman gives counters whenever a player mills nonland cards efficiently doles out tons of counters to your creatures at instant speed.

The Planeswalkers

Not to take away from the main star, The Wise Mothman, this deck only includes two planeswalkers, Ashiok, Dream Render and Jace, the Perfected Mind. Of course, many more planeswalkers could support this deck, but I want speed and mill-ability. Jace, the Perfected Mind is a deterrent as well as an absolute mill machine, and Ashiok, Dream Render cuts off fetching and graveyard strategies.

The Creatures

The goals of the creatures in this deck are fourfold. To give rad counters, to give +1/+1 counters, to proliferate, or to mill your opponents’ decks.

Rad counters are a player counter from the Fallout set, so you’ll need plenty of creatures from the set. You can use ghouls like Feral Ghoul or Glowing One to irradiate opponents. The Master, Transcendent is a bomb way to steal your opponents’ ETB creatures. And don’t forget some elusive creatures like Nightkin Ambusher or Screeching Scorchbeast.

The Wise Mothman gives plenty of counters with some of this deck’s interactions, but you can also use +1/+1 counter support from creatures like Corpsejack Menace and Kami of Whispered Hopes.

Evolution Sage, Thrummingbird, and Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus help you to proliferate rad and +1/+1 counters.

You can also pile on the mill effects with creatures like Ruin Crab, Phenax, God of Deception, and Hedron Crab. Syr Konrad, the Grim also pings your opponent with all the milled cards.

For consistency, I’ll include some mana-creatures like Birds of Paradise and Kodama of the West Tree.

The Instants and Sorceries

This deck has some standard protection like Ripples of Potential that allows your permanents with counters to phase out, control cards like Drown in the Loch, and ramp like Farseek. The interesting cards come from the Fallout set.

Nuclear Fallout is a killer board wipe to use when you don’t have the board advantage. It’s relatively cost-efficient, it can navigate around hexproof and indestructible, and it helps you in the race to mill your opponent with rad counters.

Atomize and Mutational Advantage are solid instants that also proliferate.

One last sorcery to highlight is Breach the Multiverse. It helps to mill and can drastically change the board advantage in your favor.

The Noncreature Permanents

The noncreature permanents of this deck work along the same themes as the creatures, and with great effect.

The one battle is Invasion of Amonkhet, which serves to mill and mimic a bomb card in any of the graveyards.

The enchantments Struggle for Project Purity and Vault 12: The Necropolis are solid ways to irradiate your opponents. But for sure the bomb enchantment is Fraying Sanity. It compounds the number of milled cards from the rad counters to quickly run through an opponent's deck.

Mindcrank, Mesmeric Orb, and Altar of the Brood fit perfectly into this deck. If these artifacts come out on the curve and aren’t removed, they greatly help you to mill your opponents. A fun Fallout artifact for this deck is Nuka-Nuke Launcher. It may be a clunky and inefficient equipment, but it can be responsible for adding quite a few rad counters to your opponents.

The Mana Base

The mana base is fairly straightforward. I’ve included a ton of dual lands and a few triomes to ensure you have the correct mana base and can play on curve. A few lands to highlight include Karn's Bastion for proliferate and Evolving Wilds/Terramorphic Expanse for some more landfall triggers.

The Strategy

The strategy is twofold for this deck: Mill out your opponent, or pump up your creatures for massive swings. The ultimate goal should be to get The Wise Mothman out from the command zone early, give your opponents rad counters, and base your next moves on how the game turns out.

The mill strategy has a few outlets but mostly focuses on the rad counters. Using a card like Vexing Radgull hopefully gives your opponents rad counters within the first few turns. From there all you need to do is proliferate and give more rad counters. Eventually, your opponents may be milling 10 cards a turn.

I do have to mention that the rad counters are removed whenever that player mills a nonland card. Make sure you’re proliferating them often to keep your opponents milling. The goal is to keep a steady number of rad counters on your opponents while adding more mill with cards like Ruin Crab and Maddening Cacophony.

If your opponents are playing aggressively or you can’t wait for your opponents to mill out, your pivot strategy is to pump up your creatures. The Wise Mothman is the distributor of +1/+1 counters, and cards like Inexorable Tide and Winding Constrictor help to grow your creatures much faster.

Combos and Interactions

The main combo and interaction of this deck is to proliferate rad counters by any means. Once you give opponents that first rad counter, your goal should be to proliferate as much as possible.

Some other combos and interactions I like are:

The landfall cards, Ruin Crab and Evolution Sage with Slogurk, the Overslime. When Slogurk leaves the battlefield, you can return a handful of lands from your graveyard to your hand, giving you easier access to those landfall abilities.

I like the repeatable combo of Altar of Dementia and Infesting Radroach. You can sacrifice the Radroach using the altar, and if your opponent mills a nonland card, you may return the Radroach to your hand. A very nice and repeatable mill interaction.

I also just love the interactions you’ll have with The Master, Transcendent. Whether it's self-mill or milling your opponents, you can sit back and wait for a bomb card to be milled and bring it to your side.

Rule 0 Violations Check

It’s not quite banned or broken, but I feel some of your friends may have a problem with Mindcrank and it may warrant a Rule 0 conversation. Since rad counters cause loss of life you could potentially create an avalanche of milled cards. Rad counters are removed over time, so it’s not infinite, but I can still see some people having gripes with that combo.

Budget Options

For the most part, this deck isn’t crazy expensive. The most expensive cards are some of the lands and some of the cheap and efficient spells.

If you don’t want to shell out the money for lands like Morphic Pool, replace them with a budget land like Fetid Pools.

Some spells like Fierce Guardianship and Ripples of Potential can be quite pricey. Cards like Negate and Change of Plans might not be as effective, but they still work on a budget.

And if you really want to save money, you can forgo cards like Kodama of the West Tree and Reanimate for creatures with +1/+1 counters or more lands.

Other Builds

Like pretty much all commanders, there are more strategies that can go along with The Wise Mothman.

You can use more Fallout cards and give yourself rad counters as a way to fill your own graveyard quickly. You can build around graveyard darlings like Insidious Roots, Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord, Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, and Victimize. Some of the Fallout cards that can help with this self-mill/graveyard strategy are Tato Farmer, Strong, the Brutish Thespian, and Contaminated Drink.

The Fallout set also introduced new additions to a mutant-typal build. Many of the creatures in this deck are mutants and could benefit from cards like Hancock, Ghoulish Mayor, Jason Bright, Glowing Prophet, and Vault 87: Forced Evolution. You can lean into the rad counter strategy with these additions, or just focus on crushing your opponents with big creatures.

Or you can lean even more into just one of the strategies, instead of both mill and +1/+1 counters. If you want to go full-blown into mill, switch out some of the counter accelerators like Thrummingbird for cards like Zellix, Sanity Flayer. Alternatively, if you’re more of a creature fan, switch cards like Maddening Cacophony for cards like Master Biomancer.

Commanding Conclusion

Fraying Sanity | Illustration by Ryan Alexander Lee

You don’t have to be a cryptid zoologist to appreciate The Wise Mothman. All you need is some rad counters and creatures to pump. With a commander like this one, my mind pours over all the possible combinations. I can’t wait to see what all of you can do with The Wise Mothman.

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Keep your Geiger counters on and good luck in the apocalypse, my friends.