MTG Commander Deck Of The Week: Mr. House, President And CEO

Okay, I got my first Fallout-inspired Commander deck built, and it’s of course the very popular Mr. House, President and CEO!

As with a lot of Commander fans out there, looking at the mechanics of the card immediately led me to think about loading up a deck with cards that let us roll dice with a lot more sides than six. As a lifelong fan of Dungeons & Dragons, I was thrilled at the fun dice-rolling cards that came in Adventures in the Forgotten Realms and Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate, so I’m stoked to have another deck to put them in.

At the same time, I was pondering building a Mr. House dice-rolling deck, I was also wondering what deck I should put the seven Bobbleheads that I collected from the Fallout precons.

Celebrating The Bobblehead Magic Cards Of Fallout Commander

S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Bobbleheads

I have a Zirda, the Dawnwaker deck that I considered, since Zirda’s ability to reduce the activation costs of the Bobbleheads could really help juice them up. But since the Luck Bobblehead involves dice rolling, and a lot of the dice-rolling cards are artifacts, I was already going to have artifact support in the deck, and so I decided to smash the two ideas together in true peanut butter and chocolate fashion!  I even added a Zirda to the list to help with all the activations.

Okay, before the President and CEO calls a board meeting, let’s review the rest of the decklist:

Roll a d20

I’ve got a lot of sweet cards here as well as some fringe players that get the nod simply to round out the dice-rolling. I’ve long been a fan of Contraband Livestock in most of my W/X Commander decks, so I’m definitely slotting it in here. Vexing Puzzlebox is such an odd duck – its quest to accumulate 100 charge counters results in… tutoring up an artifact from your deck to the battlefield. Without Paradox Engine in the format, that just seems anti-climactic, though in this deck, getting another Bobblehead might just push things to the next level!

As a longtime D&D fan, I simply love The Deck of Many Things, but – much like the artifact from D&D – it’s a bit scary to take your chances with, so I love having a deck like this with some ways to lean the odds in your favor. Treasure Chest is cool, but a bit sad that it’s just a one-shot, though in this deck, with some artifact recursion, I might get to use it more than once!

I love Delina, Wild Mage in a lot of decks, and even have her leading a Commander deck and a Brawl deck on Magic Arena. Having her copy an Earth-Cult Elemental with some dice support cards will be a wild time!

Roll Another Die

I’ve got a few other cards that roll dice other than a 20-sided, and I especially love Clown Car, since it scales so nicely the more mana you have available. This deck will have a ton of mana with all those Bobbleheads, so more mana sinks are welcome!

May the Odds Be in Your Favor

Rule Zero Alert! Rule Zero Alert! (Hopefully you read that in The Professor‘s “New Secret Lair Alert!” voice like I do.) Krark’s Other Thumb is technically not a Commander-legal card since it is silver-bordered, but it works so well in a dice-rolling deck that I’m hoping future pod players will allow me to play it anyway. Barbarian Class and Wyll, Blade of Frontiers are both very legal and help our dice-rolling odds considerably.  Barbarian Class is a rock star in my Delina decks; Level 2 is awesome for getting attackers through blockers, and Level 3 giving all my creatures haste is sweet.

Brazen Dwarf’s death-by-a-thousand-cuts trigger helps whittle away life totals so that Mr. House’s growing army of Robots has a better chance of taking down your opponents.

Artifacts Matter

Oswald Fiddlebender and Goblin Engineer both help to assemble more Bobbleheads, and Trading Post can help retrieve any from an untimely demise in the graveyard. Lithoform Engine can even copy a Bobblehead when it’s on the stack. It was fun to get Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient off the bench to copy Bobblehead activations.

Having a legendary artifact as my commander means I’m giving Mount Doom a whirl as a way to sneak a removal spell into my land base. Plus, it seems funny that throwing Mr. House into Mount Doom blows up the world except for two creatures of my choosing!

Protect the House

I don’t think Mr. House is going to be considered the biggest threat on the battlefield, but all the dice rolling might annoy people enough that I’m glad to have a couple ways to protect him from removal spells.  Plus, Boros Charm is always a great surprise spell for various scenarios!

Card Draw

Having all the dice-rolling and artifact synergies doesn’t leave too much room for raw card drawing in the deck, but I did slide a couple into my land slots with Arch of Orazca and Mikokoro, Center of the Sea.  I also really like Caesar, Legion’s Emperor’s modal triggers, especially the card draw.

Ah, good ol’ Sun Titan!  It “draws” you the best permanent in your graveyard with mana value three or less and puts it right onto the battlefield for you!  Again, another way to retrieve Bobbleheads that might have made their way to your graveyard.

Removal

Mardu has a lot of removal options, and I’ve got some of the best in my deck. I actually really like The Nipton Lottery as a fantastic battlefield sweeper, since it doesn’t necessarily set back everyone’s battlefield to zero creatures. One lucky random winner gets to stick around and hopefully get one poke in on your behalf before returning to its controller. Maybe it’s a lowly 1/1 token, or maybe it’s someone’s Lord of Extinction, who knows?  That’s what I find fun about the card; the upside for something wild happening when the spell resolves is high!

Kill! Maim! Burn! is a card I think should see more play; it’s flexible in its modes and is just fun to say.

Mana Ramp

Even though all seven Bobbleheads tap for mana, I’m still running even more mana ramp because the Bobbleheads are also great mana sinks, so the more mana that we can produce, the better!

The Deck

Okay, here’s the full decklist!

Here are the deck stats from our friends at Archidekt:

Looking at EDHREC, there are some cards I didn’t run across while building this deck, but down the road, when I tweak the list, I might include:

Chaos Dragon offers up a d20 each turn attached to a nice evasive beatdown body.

Mr. House generates Treasure when you roll a 6 or higher, so why not make two Treasures with Xorn?

I’m not normally one to play too many planeswalkers in Commander, but I keep hearing good things about Comet, Stellar Pup, and if I’ve got a few ways to roll extra dice when I activate its ability, it could really pop off!

I’ve only got one copy of Ancient Copper Dragon, and this high-dollar powerhouse card is currently in another deck, but I might very well move it over here at some point.  The other two Ancient Dragons aren’t quite as expensive, but they’re not cheap either, and I have them in other decks.

So, what other must-have cards might I have missed including here?  Which of the legendary creatures from Fallout are you building new Commander decks around?

Talk to Me

Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter!  I run polls and start conversations about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun!  You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.

I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl, and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can.  If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel.  You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews.  

And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.