25 years is a long time. It's very likely many of you reading this article weren't alive 25 years ago, but even if you were, chances are you were a child or a teenager. Cards have changed a lot, and as last week's article reminded us, Commander didn't even exist back then, so no one made cards with the express purpose of being played in Commander.

It makes me wonder if this guy ever saw any love.

Wrath of God-style effects work better in multiplayer because they are inherently unbalanced: if you kill 18 Creatures and only lose three of your own, that was probably a worthwhile trade. They are also overpowered in casual games, where the winning often happens in the red zone, with Creatures (Commander or otherwise) bashing into players for damage.

Mageta here makes things interesting for our opponents. Do they play out their stuff and tempt the Wrath? Or do they just eye Mageta annoyed, play a Land, and pass the turn? This is the ultimate casual rattlesnake - a card designed to keep players from doing what they want to do.

What's fun, though, is we have modern technology to apply to our old Commander. Specifically, we can play Planeswalkers, which won't die to his constant Wrath effects but can surely help us win the game. There is certainly a reanimator-light version of this deck, or something which plays into lots of cards being in the Graveyard (though White probably struggles with that a bit), but I looked at this guy and thought Mono-White Superfriends!

Mono-White Superfriends | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Mageta the Lion

• Creatures (4)
• 1 Arena Rector
• 1 Djeru, With Eyes Open
• 1 Kytheon, Hero of Akros
• 1 Lae'zel, Vlaakith's Champion

• Planeswalkers (28)
• 1 Archangel Elspeth
• 1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
• 1 Elspeth Resplendent
• 1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
• 1 Elspeth, Sun's Nemesis
• 1 Elspeth Tirel
• 1 Elspeth, Undaunted Hero
• 1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
• 1 Gideon Blackblade
• 1 Gideon, Champion of Justice
• 1 Gideon Jura
• 1 Gideon, Martial Paragon
• 1 Gideon of the Trials
• 1 Gideon, the Oathsworn
• 1 Grand Master of Flowers
• 1 Karn Liberated
• 1 Karn, Living Legacy
• 1 Karn, Scion of Urza
• 1 Karn, the Great Creator
• 1 Nahiri, the Lithomancer
• 1 Serra the Benevolent
• 1 Teyo, Geometric Tactician
• 1 Teyo, the Shieldmage
• 1 The Eternal Wanderer
• 1 The Wanderer
• 1 The Wandering Emperor
• 1 Ugin, the Ineffable
• 1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

• Instants (4)
• 1 Gideon's Sacrifice
• 1 Gideon's Triumph
• 1 Ignite the Beacon
• 1 Semester's End

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Ascend from Avernus
• 1 Call the Gatewatch
• 1 Deploy the Gatewatch
• 1 Repair and Recharge
• 1 Triumphant Reckoning

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Ajani's Last Stand
• 1 Deification
• 1 Elspeth Conquers Death
• 1 Elspeth's Talent
• 1 Oath of Gideon
• 1 Urza Assembles the Titans

• Artifacts (12)
• 1 Bonder's Ornament
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Gatewatch Beacon
• 1 Heart of Kiran
• 1 Hourglass of the Lost
• 1 Intelligence Bobblehead
• 1 Luxior, Giada's Gift
• 1 Magnifying Glass
• 1 Patriar's Seal
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 The Chain Veil
• 1 Throne of Eldraine

• Lands (40)
• 19 Plains
• 1 Castle Ardenvale
• 1 Demolition Field
• 1 Drifting Meadow
• 1 Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire
• 1 Forge of Heroes
• 1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1 Interplanar Beacon
• 1 Karn's Bastion
• 1 Karoo
• 1 Kor Haven
• 1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
• 1 Minas Tirith
• 1 Mistveil Plains
• 1 Mobilized District
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Secluded Steppe
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 The Fair Basilica
• 1 Underdark Rift
• 1 War Room

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The goal here is pretty simple. Play out Mageta, probably Wrath the board, then start playing out Planeswalkers, using them slowly but surely to win the game in some way. Most of the deck is designed around support for the 'walkers; we're not really working with Mageta's ability other than as a threat. When we need to, we'll discard some stuff. I did find in play-testing it was worth it to hold a couple of Lands once I hit about six or seven, just to be able to threaten the Wrath.

Speaking of, we have our requisite 40 Lands here, many of which are Basic Plains to get that White mana count up. We also want to leverage this space to help us win, though, so we have stuff like Castle Ardenvale and Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire. Rogue's Passage makes a common appearance because it's really good (and can be used to target a Gideon), and I'll tell you, these new Lands you can sacrifice to draw a card (in this case, The Fair Basilica) are awesome. War Room, too - that should be played in all your mono-colored decks.

As we know, White suffers to draw cards. We end up doing a fair bit of searching in this deck, so I didn't run every card possible, but kept a lot of the card draw on mana rocks which already exist in the deck. Bonder's Ornament, Throne of Eldraine, even Intelligence Bobblehead are here, despite the fact the Bobblehead costs and only draws us one card. It's worth it, because often we'll not use any mana at all, instead choosing to activate a couple of 'walkers and pass, leaving our mana up to threaten the Wrath. We do have a few other rocks, like Sol Ring and Commander's Sphere, to try to get to an earlier Mageta or pay for some of the larger Planeswalkers.

Winning will be slow with this deck, most likely on the back of random tokens generated by one of the Elspeths or attacks with a Gideon or two. I suppose a combination of 'walkers which buff Creatures and a few unlikely hits with Mageta could kill someone with Commander damage, but mostly we're looking to draw out the game and win as we can, attacking whenever possible into what is likely a mostly empty board.

We're also light on answers, leaning mostly on Mageta to do the heavy lifting. If someone has a bunch of Enchantments assembled to win, we're just going to lose. That's okay, because the deck will be really fun to play and make for a long, winding game when it works. That said, you could drop some of the 'walkers (or some of their support) and run more pieces of interaction, which may be required based on your meta and how well you want this deck to work. I, for one, like this as a somewhat focused take with clear weaknesses; I think it softens how long games will be when it works, knowing it can be beaten without super power.

(I'd like to take a moment to point to my fellow writer's recent series: Cas Hinds' look at the pros and cons of some specific Commander strategies. In this particular one, Cas considers not just why we would run fast mana [ramp! Acceleration!] but why we wouldn't [because the colors are supposed to have strengths and weaknesses, and colorless ramp that matches the strongest Green ramp negates one of Green's strengths, among other things]. I like the article and the series very much, and it's worth reading, but I really like that it points out you don't always have to decide to make the strongest deck possible. Sometimes the fun is in the balance!)

That said, what we lack in interaction we make up in synergy. We have all kinds of fun stuff here, like The Chain Veil, Arena Rector and Djeru, With Eyes Open, Oath of Gideon and Lae'zel, Vlaakith's Champion, Elspeth's Talent... the list goes on. We can Equip one of our 'walkers with Luxior, Giada's Gift and send it in swinging - or just activate a Gideon and do the same. We can make tokens with most of the Elspeths. Serra the Benevolent can dump out an Angel and buff it up the next turn. Archangel Elspeth does the same thing the other way around. I love Grand Master of Flowers here, who can do some serious damage as a 7/7 and otherwise will keep nasty things off our back we don't want to Wrath away.

This deck is for a particular crowd; one that doesn't mind a long game with lots of swings but not wildly long turns. I also find any time I build a Superfriends deck I'm surprised with the way the 'walkers interact with each other - there is always a combination I didn't see as I was building it but is fun or hilarious. All in all, this would be a great deck to have in a stable, and, like last week, we get style points for playing a mostly unknown old Commander.

Thanks for reading.