"I've Accidentally Irradiated Us All" with The Wise Mothman - Plot Twist #4

The Wise Mothman by David Gaillet

Welcome back to Plot Twist, the series where we build a Commander deck that starts out telling one kind of story only to throw out a plot twist mid-game. If you're joining us for the first time, welcome! I'd encourage you to check out the first article in the series to see what types of stories we're hoping to tell.

While I've never personally played a Fallout game, ever since spoilers from the Fallout crossover began to appear online late last year, the set immediately drew my interest. Now that the full decklists have been revealed, I'm eager to dive in and start tinkering around with the new cards and mechanics. Much like the Warhammer 40K Commander decks that came out in late 2022, these new Fallout decks look to be both powerful and dripping with rich story. Seems like a perfect fit for Plot Twist.

The Wise Mothman was one of the first legendary creatures Fallout creatures spoiled, and it immediately got my mind turning on how we could do something interesting with it. Mill decks have historically left a bad taste in my mouth (I want to play my cards!), but something about The Wise Mothman and the Radiation counters that it gives each player felt different.

How Does The Wise Mothman Work?

Whenever The Wise Mothman enters the battlefield or attacks, it gives each player a Radiation counter. Then, at the beginning of each player's precombat main phase, they mill a card for each rad counter they have. Then, they lose one life and one rad counter for each nonland card they mill this way. It's important to note that milling a land this way does not cause a player to lose a rad counter, so they'll have to mill at least one card on their next turn. Radiation counters are unique in that respect because they can potentially remove themselves as a part of resolving their effect unlike infect, energy, and experience counters.

Our commander also has a second ability that triggers whenever cards are milled, whether it's from rad counters or not. For each nonland card milled, we can put a +1/+1 counter on a single creature. This ability can only place a single counter on each creature, so we're encouraged to either mill a small amount of cards a lot of times to stack the counters on one creature or have a relatively wide board of creatures if we want to mill a lot of cards at once.

Doing the Twist

With a quick glance at The Wise Mothman's EDHREC page, we can see that many players are leaning heavily into the mill theme with cards like Zellix, Sanity Flayer, Ruin Crab, Syr Konrad, the Grim, Bloodchief Ascension, and Bruvac the Grandiloquent each appearing in almost 50% of decks. There's also a strong proliferate theme showing up, with Evolution Sage, Thrummingbird, and Flux Channeler, some players are even dabbling in +1/+1 counter multipliers, too. Overall, the plan seems to be to mill our opponents out and try to buff up our board quickly, so it's likely that our opponents are going to be expecting us to try to mill them out when we sit down across from them with The Wise Mothman.

While we are going to run some of these cards, my mind immediately went in a different direction: Reanimator. Rad counters are unique in that, unlike infect, most cards that dish them out give a rad counter(s) to each player, us included. If we're going to be milled by our own rad counters anyway, we might as well make the most out of it.

Here's the full decklist for you to peruse:

Self-Milling for Fun and Profit

What a surprise our opponents are in for when we reveal that we're actually more interested in milling ourselves out. In addition to Screeching Scorchbeast, Vault 12: The Necropolis, Nuclear Fallout, and Bloatfly Swarm and other Fallout cards that dish out rad counters, any dredge player will tell you that we need plenty of ways to mill ourselves. Golgari Grave-Troll and Stinkweed Imp are the worst of the worst best of the best at self-milling once we get either into our graveyard, while Nyx Weaver, Out of the Tombs, and Perpetual Timepiece provide smaller, but reliable, amounts of self-mill.

I love that Out of the Tombs prevents us from losing the game by drawing from an empty library, while Perpetual Timepiece gives us an instant-speed way to shuffle our graveyard back into our library should we need it. Don't sleep on Nyx Weaver acting as a Regrowth effect that can buy back a win-con, too.

We're also running a few tutors in Corpse Connoisseur and Vile Entomber that can put a card (like Golgari Grave-Troll or Stinkweed Imp) directly into our graveyard. Keep in mind that Vile Entomber can get any card in our deck in case we need a reanimation spell, like Dread Return, Wonder, to give our creatures evasion, or even interaction, with cards like Kederekt Leviathan or Gnaw to the Bone, when we need it.

While I don't normally love mono-black tutors that can get anything, Mausoleum Secrets just seems too synergistic in this deck to pass up. There are 34 other black cards in the deck, so Mausoleum Secrets can get us Bringer of the Last Gift, to reanimate our whole graveyard, Contaminated Drink, to draw cards and give ourselves rad counters, or Syr Konrad, the Grim, to help close out the game or anything else we might need in a pinch.

Reanimatees and Reanimators

Milling ourselves should be relatively easy, but we're looking to hit a few specific creatures that we can reanimate. Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord, Sewer Nemesis, and Splinterfright will all quickly grow into enormous threats as we mill ourselves because each cares about the number of creatures/cards in our graveyard, but Lord of Extinction takes the cake as the best card we can reanimate because its power and toughness are equal to the number of all cards in all graveyards. Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord does double duty as a win condition because we can use his ability to sacrifice our other enormous creatures to drain all our opponents for life equal to the sacrificed creature's power.

Once our graveyard is stocked with creatures, we're going to need ways to bring them back to the battlefield. Dread Return is an all-star in dredge-style decks because we can still cast it with flashback if we happen to mill it by accident, while Bringer of the Last Gift and Living Death can help us get all creatures in our graveyard back at once. Phyrexian Delver and Sheoldred, Whispering One are free ways for us to get other creatures back on the battlefield in addition to being creatures we can reanimate themselves, and while The Scarab God does require four mana in order to reanimate a creature from any graveyard, it's a very resilient creature that fits in perfectly with what we're doing and can drain our opponents for some additional chip damage along the way.

Proliferating Rad and +1/+1 Counters

Since The Wise Mothman is dishing out two different types of counters that we care about, we'll want to lean on a few proliferate effects to keep milling cards and pumping our creatures. We're relying on creatures that proliferate when they enter (and sometimes exit) the battlefield so that we can get their benefits immediately when we cast or reanimate them. Gulping Scraptrap shines in our deck because it proliferates when it arrives and when it dies, while Agent Frank Horrigan and Pollenbright Druid both trigger in more limited but versatile ways.

We have a few less-easy-to-trigger proliferate effects in Contaminant Grafter, Radstorm (which will be very fun to cast on an opponent's turn after they cast a ton of spells), and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, but all of them have the potential to proliferate multiple times in a single turn when we need them to. Rad counters serve a double purpose of milling ourselves and keeping our opponents' life totals low, so we'll want to keep adding them to each player regularly. It seems pretty straightforward that we'll want to proliferate the rad counters on our opponents and ourselves whenever we have the chance, but I can imagine there will be scenarios where we'll to skip proliferating rad counters on ourselves if our life total gets too low or our graveyard happens to get exiled. 

Winning the Game

We have a surprising number of angles to apply pressure to our opponents with this deck. The rad counters our commander dishes out will help whittle down our opponents' life totals and always have the chance to mill them out, too. Sidisi, Brood Tyrant will help create an army of 2/2 Zombie tokens as we mill ourselves, which The Wise Mothman can turn into lethal threats with its +1/+1 counters. Since both Sidisi and the Mothman trigger when we mill ourselves, we can even stack their triggers so that Sidisi makes tokens first and then the Mothman can add a +1/+1 counter to them. We also have a variety of effects that will drain our opponents when any creatures are milled (or die, in Syr Konrad's case) in Bloodchief Ascension, Dreadhound, and Syr Konrad, the Grim, so we can double up on the damage each rad counter does to our opponents.

In addition to Sidisi, Brood Tyrant, we have a couple other ways to make massive amounts of creature tokens in Spider Spawning and Tombstone Stairwell (Shoutout to Joey Schultz from the EDHRECast for bringing this weird, old card to my attention!) that we can pump with the Mothman or give evasion to with Wonder. Keep in mind that Tombstone Stairwell will also benefit our opponents, so it could accidentally backfire on us sometimes by giving our opponents an army of 2/2s, but that will certainly make for an interesting story when it happens.

A Few Extra Twists for Good Measure

I came across a few cards in building this deck that really piqued my interest and I think are worth mentioning. Out of the Tombs, Taigam, Sidisi's Hand, and Underrealm Lich are all sneakily really good in a dredge-style deck because they each help mill our library AND prevent us from losing to an empty library because they all skip or replace our draw for turn. Shigeki, Jukai Visionary seemingly does it all as a self-mill/ramp/mass recursion spell. I've been looking for a home for Shigeki for a long time, and this deck feels like the perfect place. Similarly, Vorinclex does a lot of things we want between ramping us on its front side and reanimating/adding counters/acting as removal on its back side. Lastly, World Shaper and Bringer of the Last Gift both seem poised to make the sort of huge swingy plays that we love on Plot Twist. 

Roll the Credits

I hope you enjoyed reading the latest edition of Plot Twist featuring The Wise Mothman. Next time you sit down for a game of Commander, see what sort of plot twists you can add to take the game's narrative in a new direction.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's deck and what cards could find a home in it in the comments below or on Archidekt. The Maybeboards of my decklists are always filled with cards I thought could work but didn't make the final decklist, and this week's decklist is chock full of cards that could take the deck in a completely different direction. You can find me on Instagram at @girtenjeff, and you can check out my other articles here or see what decks I'm currently playing here. 

Stay tuned to see what other twists and turns are headed your way in the next edition of Plot Twist.