Mr. House, President and CEO – Fallout
Date Reviewed: March 22, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 1.37
Casual: 4.13
Limited: N/A
Multiplayer: 3.75
Commander [EDH]: 4.00
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Mr. House’s mechanics bridge two different worlds of Magic mechanics: the mainline dice-heavy set Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, and the very much non-mainline originators of dice-rolling in Unglued and Unstable. Fortunately, Fallout is a role-playing video game franchise which combines traditional tabletop elements and a non-traditional setting. I really hope that was intentional on Wizards of the Coast’s part, or this paragraph will look a lot less relevant.
Mr. House checks a few boxes that make for a good build-around legendary creature and/or Commander: for example, he brings a way to activate his own ability, and he’s in colors that provide some interesting options. The Adventures in the Forgotten Realms D20 creatures particularly stand out, as they send your chances of rolling a 4 or higher to above 80% and a 6 or higher to 70%. I really want to see what he does with Sword of Dungeons and Dragons, as it’s super-aggressive and can go seriously explosive some of the time (especially if you have ways to manipulate the results). Red and white are also good at searching for the Sword and handing it off to attack. He’s probably not going to do much in Legacy, as it involves a lot of setup and the format is very direct, but will be fun to play around with at the fun tables.
I also have to note that he’s a Robot kindred card – surely that’s going to become relevant at some point, right? Didn’t they promise a space opera set in the next few years?
Constructed: 1.5
Casual: 4
Limited: N/A
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
The “man” in charge of the world of New Vegas, Mr. House’s abilities seem to fit rather neatly into what you might expect. He does have some interesting synergies based off of how he’s worded, though, so let’s get into that.
Mr. House has an active that lets you roll dice, as well as a passive that rewards rolls. On his own, you’ll generate a Robot 2/3 of the time and a treasure 1/6 of the time…and the treasure does matter for firing his ability, because you get one more roll for each treasure that goes into paying for it. So he’s a sort of self-sufficient, though slow, engine that will amass an army over enough time.
The wording, though, matters a lot here: Mr. House cares about the result, not what dice was rolled to get there. And Magic has steadily been adding more cards that let you roll dice to get Things to happen, with the Dungeons & Dragons crossovers being especially heavy on d20 usage. The result is all that matters, and Mr. House can reward a heavy bit of ingenuity in putting a package together.
The real knock here is that he’s fairly slow and wants support; he only makes vanilla artifacts, and he has no power and no combat utility besides. I do think he’ll make for a fun build-around, but his three-color demand and slow firing are not things I look for in terms of Legacy playables.
Constructed: 1.25
Casual: 4.25
Limited: N/A
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4
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