Last week's Heliod deck was so much fun that I decided to take a look at some of the other "flip" legendary creatures in March of the Machine. If there was a hidden gem like Heliod, the Radiant Dawn, to be found in the set, maybe some of the others would be worth a look. There is one "flip" commander for each of five color pairings, but the one that caught my interest was the Dimir (U/B) legendary creature: Rona, Herald of Invasion.

The front side of Rona is a Human Wizard who can tap to draw a card and discard a card, and untaps when I cast a legendary spell. For five and a phyrexian Black mana I can transform her into Rona, Tolarian Obliterator. This back side of Rona is a 5/5 Phyrexian Wizard with trample but check out her party trick!

Whenever a source deals damage to Rona, Tolarian Obliterator, that source's controller exiles a card from their hand at random. You know I love a little randomness and chaos in my decks. If the exiled card is a land, it goes onto the battlefield under my control. If it's a non-land I get to cast it at instant speed without paying its mana cost!

The total cost to get the back side of Rona on the battlefield is pretty steep, but the nonsense I could get up to is too tempting to pass up. I've never built a "pinger" deck, but with five toughness I could realistically play a ton of creatures who tap to do 1 damage to target creature and ping my own commander multiple times per turn cycle without even having to go to combat.

To Ping or Not To Ping

This isn't even a question. Of course I'm going to ping my commander and if all goes well, I'll be pinging her a lot. That means I'm going to be running lots of "pingers" - creatures that can tap to deal 1 damage to target creature or player. That's easier to do in Red, but there are pingers in Blue and I even found one in Black.

Prodigal Sorcerer has long been known as "Tim" as an homage to Tim the Enchanter, a character played by John Cleese in the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Tim loved nothing more than tossing fireballs around willy nilly, and this deck is running a full dozen of these guys. They each tap to do 1 damage to target creature, though some of them have restrictions on when they can do their pinging. Apprentice Sorcerer, Capricious Sorcerer and Wu Longbowman can only ping a creature or player during my first main phase.

Cuombajj Witches has some truly terrible art if you're using an old printing of the card, but it was reprinted in Commander Legends with a much less cartoony design. It can ping any target and then do 1 damage to any target of an opponent's choice. They could have it target my creatures, so I need to be careful with these witches. Staff of Nin can tap to ping, and will give me an extra card on my upkeep, but it costs six mana, which is a little steep.

It's possible I could have dug up some creatures that tap to do more than 1 damage, but my dream is to have four of these set up and ready to ping my commander without killing it. Each ping might just give me a land or even hit a counterspell, but it could also hit some much better cards.

Big Mana Targets

I'm going to be trying to hit cards in my hand but the card that gets played or cast will be chosen at random. That means I could be in desperate need of a boardwipe, have a Damnation in hand and miss it four times in a row. That might seem ridiculously bad, but I enjoy a little randomness in my game. This strategy lets me play more expensive cards than I normally include in decks. Some of my targets are going to be high mana card draw spells that I'd normally never consider running.

My card draw spells are definitely not for the faint of heart. For five mana I can cast Tidings or Promise of Power to draw four cards. Covenant of Minds costs the same and will draw me either three or five cards. Into the Story draws me four cards and costs a whopping seven mana, but might cost four mana if an opponent has seven or more cards in their graveyard.

I'm running a few expensive mana rocks that I might not ordinarily include. If I hit Chromatic Orrery, Gilded Lotus or Thran Dynamo with a Rona trigger and cast it for free, that will go a long way towards helping me cast some of these expensive cards the old-fashioned way - by spending mana.

I've included the expensive In Garruk's Wake, as one sided boardwipes are always helpful. Portal to Phyrexia is another expensive artifact, costing nine mana but having a huge impact. Portal will have each opponent sacrifice three creatures and will let me put a creature from a graveyard onto the battlefield on my upkeep.

This is probably where most of your "wincons" are going to be found. Rona, Herald of Invasion can be built in a lot of different ways but if you're jonesing to cheat spells into play for free, it's hard to argue with Eldrazi Titans and Colossi. Sire of Stagnation and Consuming Aberration are worth a look as well, as is Elder Brain and even Xanathar, Guild Kingpin. The sky is the limit, so long as you stay within Rona's colors.

You could run Demons, Dragons, Sea Monsters or even build for a mana-intensive combo gameplan. I decided to run both Ulamogs and both Kozileks along with a Void Winnower. Breaker of Armies probably should have been included as well, but my plan is simple.

Play big stuff. Try to cheat it into play. Try to embrace the randomness because sometimes you'll only hit lands and sometimes you'll get lucky.

That means this deck is a "hope for the best" deck. There is no clean wincon that you can tutor for or depend upon - just a loose idea of what you're trying to do and the hope that maybe you'll luck into the right cards at the right time. You could always pay mana and cast spells but the fun in this commander is in pinging her and seeing what card in your hand you get to play or put onto the battlefield.

Early Results

One game is not much of a sample size, but I did play this list on Tabletop Simulator and can report back on how things went. It was a weird game, in that one player was on Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis and was playing group hug. A second player was on The Council of Four and was trying to get us all to draw cards. The third player was on Umbris, Fear Manifest, and clearly had murder on his mind. I don't mean he was a bad tablemate. We were all trying to win, but his deck was by far the most straightforward about how he was going to try to do that.

In the early game we quickly found ourselves with extra mana from the K&T player's Mana Flare and some extra card draw along with K&T activations giving us more cards or land drops. We were awash in mana and all of my clever planning to use Rona to cheat big stuff into play felt a little silly. I could have just paid for many of my spells late in the game because we had no shortage of lands and those lands were tapping for an extra mana.

I was not going to have my fun taken from me though, and on every possible chance I was either drawing cards to prepare for a Rona trigger or pinging my commander to randomly choose a card from my hand. I hit a lot of lands, but I was also having a lot of fun. When you're both not directly threatening anyone (yet) and you're clearly having a good time with what your deck is doing, your opponents are a bit less likely to want to kill you. They're still trying to win, but you might not be their first target as someone to eliminate from the game. I think that may have helped me survive to the late game.

My biggest problem was that I was only able to get one pinger into play during the early and mid game and it was one that could only activate during my first main phase. When the K&T player played Awakening I was excited to ping my commander on every player's turn, only to remember that my pinger was one usable on my turn.

I ended up playing two Eldrazi Titans over the course of the game, and both of them were paid for with genuine, bona fide mana instead of a Rona trigger. I hit a lot of lands and a Swan Song, which just stayed in exile and helped pump up my tablemate's Umbris.

We somehow survived the Umbris player, who fairly quickly got his commander up to a lethal size and had a Rogue's Passage in play. The K&T player did a good job policing the table and even removed my Void Winnower when it was clear that I was keeping other players from doing stuff. That stuff turned out to be a boardwipe, which was not only well timed but which wiped out all nonland permanents. I kept my commander and my Kozilek, but the Council of Four player phased all of his nonland permanents out before playing the wrath, so he was set up well to close out the game.

I did end up wiping out a bunch of The Council of Four's creatures out by swinging with Basilisk Collar and Nemesis Mask attached to an indestructible Eldrazi Titan. The Nemesis Mask forced all of their creatures to block my Titan and the Basilisk Collar gave it deathtouch so I set them back a bit, but it still wasn't enough to overcome the advantage they had built up.

The Council of Four eventually won the game, but it was fairly close at the end. All of my mass removal was stuck in the bottom 15-20 cards of my deck. Their heavy hitter ended up being Alandra, Sky Dreamer, who combined with The Council of Four and other draw triggers to give their small number of token Drakes a huge power boost. The Drakes were what killed the K&T player and I ended up being finished off by a smaller but still lethal army of token Knights.

Flexible Interaction

That Thursday night Tabletop Simulator game has been very helpful for me to better understand these decks I've been sharing with you. I had a few takeaways from that game that are worth mentioning. The first is the importance of flexible interaction. By that I mean that if you play counterspells, you may get a chance to use them but you might also hit them with a Rona activation. Whether or not that's a big deal is a question you'll have to answer for yourself.

Instead of a Swan Song, a Counterspell, and other standard Blue stack interaction, it might be better to play modal spells like Cryptic Command, or creatures like Venser, Shaper Savant. Venser can either bounce a permanent to hand or return a spell from the stack back to a player's hand.

Looking at EDHRec.com for Lier, Disciple of the Drowned recommendations would be a good place to start if you want to make this adjustment. When Lier is on the field spells can't be countered. That means Lier decks should have ways to interact with the stack that are often more flexible than your average counterspell, either because it has multiple modes or it just returns the spell to the caster's hand. Most spells that do the latter can also bounce a permanent.

Another takeaway from the game was that I had been so focused on pinging my commander to exile cards from my hand that I had a moment where I forgot that if Rona was dealt damage by an opponent's creature I'd get a card out of their hand. Rona looks at the controller of the source of the damage done to her. My build assumed that would be me, but there's a whole lot of fun to be had by using her to snipe cards out of your tablemates' hands!

At one point in the game I had been planning on swinging Rona with Nemesis Mask equipped and was thinking that I'd be hitting my own hand and playing spells (and lands) out of it. When reminded of my oversight I decided not to swing - in no small part because the player I was going to swing at suggested that my commander would get removed if I sent her at him. He might have been bluffing, but he had open mana and a very big hand at the time.

For the record, swinging an indestructible Rona at a player with a lot of creatures and having Nemesis Mask equipped means you'll get a randomly chosen card out of their hand for every one of their creatures that blocks and does damage to Rona. If they've got a lot of creatures and a full hand, that could be very, very profitable. It might just be a bunch of lands and nothing too remarkable, but it's fun (for you) to find out!

Flip Rona and the Army of Tims

I'm not sure I am going to build this in paper, but it was a lot of fun to play. I may well play it again on Tabletop Simulator, and I don't often replay decks with that group. I don't think Rona has a very high ceiling, though I've been led to believe there may be combo potential - possibly involving Wishclaw Talisman and Retraction Helix.

My guess is that any cEDH potential will be hampered by the amount of mana it takes to get this deck going. The tutor Behold the Beyond has you discard your hand, search for three cards and put them into your hand. If you choose the right cards and have a setup to ping Rona three times that turn you'd be able to cast them all. The right three cards from the right deck can sometimes win you the game on the spot, but Behold costs 7 mana so this still doesn't really feel like cEDH to me.

You could tone this down by dropping out the Eldrazi and playing a cheaper and lower powered tribe as your "heavy hitters." For me the fun in playing Rona is in playing overcosted spells like Tidings and in embracing the randomness of not knowing what you're going to get. If you play enough big threats that can work out for you eventually, but randomness doesn't usually translate into competitiveness and high power.

Rona EDH | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Rona, Herald of Invasion

• Creatures (21)
• 1 Apprentice Sorcerer
• 1 Capricious Sorcerer
• 1 Consecrated Sphinx
• 1 Cuombajj Witches
• 1 Elder Brain
• 1 Fledgling Mawcor
• 1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
• 1 Kozilek, the Great Distortion
• 1 Massacre Wurm
• 1 Mawcor
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Pirate Ship
• 1 Prodigal Sorcerer
• 1 Rootwater Hunter
• 1 Suq'Ata Firewalker
• 1 Thornwind Faeries
• 1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
• 1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
• 1 Void Winnower
• 1 Wu Longbowman
• 1 Zuran Spellcaster

• Instants (11)
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Cabal Ritual
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Dark Ritual
• 1 Dramatic Reversal
• 1 Into the Story
• 1 Pongify
• 1 Rapid Hybridization
• 1 Swan Song
• 1 Tragic Slip

• Sorceries (6)
• 1 Boon of the Wish-Giver
• 1 Covenant of Minds
• 1 Damnation
• 1 In Garruk's Wake
• 1 Promise of Power
• 1 Tidings

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Curiosity
• 1 Helm of the Ghastlord
• 1 Hermetic Study
• 1 Ophidian Eye
• 1 Psionic Gift
• 1 Sigil of Sleep

• Artifacts (19)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Basilisk Collar
• 1 Chromatic Orrery
• 1 Darksteel Plate
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Gilded Lotus
• 1 Gorgon's Head
• 1 Hammer of Nazahn
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Neko-Te
• 1 Nemesis Mask
• 1 Portal to Phyrexia
• 1 Shadowspear
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Staff of Nin
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Thornbite Staff
• 1 Thran Dynamo
• 1 Viridian Longbow

• Lands (36)
• 13 Island
• 13 Swamp
• 1 Choked Estuary
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Morphic Pool
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Path of Ancestry
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Sunken Hollow
• 1 Temple of Deceit
• 1 Watery Grave

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If you look at this list and think that you might as well drop your mana costs down and make it more efficient, you're missing the point. You could draw cards with any number of low-cost spells but then there's no point in playing the Rona pinger game and seeing what (if anything) you get to cast for free. Lucking into a "draw four" or "draw five" is going to feel great, even if you're jumping through a lot of silly hoops to be able to cast that spell.

Final Thoughts

The more I think about it, the more I think that a pinger-heavy deck with a subtheme of a specific creature type is the way to go. I chose Eldrazi, though I could have leaned into that creature type more than I did.

If I were to build this around having Rona give me cards out of my tablemates' hands, I would add in a lot of tutors to be able to fish out Nemesis Mask and I would play more ways to protect my Rona. Swinging at the player with the most creatures and biggest hand could be a lot of fun even if my commander would probably die and have to be re-cast. That sort of game plan is not a lot of fun for the person you're swinging at, as they'll probably lose a bunch of creatures and much if not all the cards in their hand.

I generally lean towards playing cards and decks that won't elicit groans from my tablemates, but this is just a game. I'd bet that Voltron Rona would be a blast. You'll end up being hyper-focused on that Nemesis Mask but that's alright. If you get enough lands and other good cards from the player you swung at you'll have no problem re-casting your commander and doing it again.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!