Stop me if you've heard this one.

It was more than a decade ago. I was playing Magic at a local game shop, with friends, pretty much anywhere I could convince people to play. I was mostly drafting, playing Mono-Black Vampires in Standard, and, when I could, playing sealed (a format I still adore), but the people around my shop started talking about this new format called "EDH." "What's that?" I asked in my naivete. It got explained and I thought, "That sounds like fun." Vampires was getting rolled by Jund and I was ready to part out the deck for something new, when I randomly opened Anowon, the Ruin Sage in a draft. I already had all the Vampires. A kill-all-the-things Tribal deck was born.

Then we found ourselves back on Mirrodin, and we began to see the shape of the war. The Phyrexians were getting their oil all over everything, but now they had leaders in the form of Praetors, and none of them captured my imagination like Sheoldred, Whispering One. That ability was so much better than Anowon's! I was already running all the mana doublers, every tutor I could get my hands on (including an awesome French version of Vampiric Tutor), and even Vesuva to clone my Cabal Coffers, so mana wouldn't be an issue. I moved out of Vampires and into Mono-Black Reanimator.

Most of my friends were only willing to play against the deck once. After that, they simply wouldn't play against it. A few people came back for seconds but regretted it. Remember, this was the wild frontier of EDH, a world of anything-goes but everyone's still learning, a world where you finally actually got to play that Godsire and not feel like a total newbie. Sheoldred laughed at every Creature-based deck it encountered (all of them), then stomped all over them with those mechanized spider leg things.

Sheoldred remains, to this day, the only Commander deck I've ever fully taken apart. I simply parted it out and put the pieces back in my collection where they belong. I've moved away from tutors (mostly), decks which completely control opponents' Creatures are less effective (though still one of my favorite ways to play), and I've thought it's more important for the whole table to have fun than to win for a while now, so while I still have all the pieces for a wicked cool deck there, my memories keep me from (re-)building it. (There are more tutors and better Creatures now, though. Could be fun...)

Change of topic. I'm not really a Magic storyline guy, but for whatever reason, Ajani's infection at the hands of the Phyrexians got to me. When I heard about it, I went back and read all the stories leading up to his turning, and I'm not going to lie, it was hard to read. I like Ajani, and for a character so wrapped up in honor and duty to lose in that way was rough. However, along the way, I got to catch up with my girl Sheoldred, and meet her newest handmaiden.

Since we're in the middle of Underdogs of Dominaria United, the combination of my love for Sheoldred and the fact that Rona has a paltry 144 decks on EDHREC.com meant she was right where I wanted her to be. We're not going to be doing Sheoldred's thing: Rona's got her own thing. Let's do that thing. Will it win? I don't know. Will it be fun? Absolutely.

Rona, Sheoldred's Faithful | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Rona, Sheoldred's Faithful

• Creatures (1)
• 1 Archmage Emeritus

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Professor Onyx

• Instants (27)
• 1 An Offer You Can't Refuse
• 1 Archmage's Charm
• 1 Brainstorm
• 1 Broken Concentration
• 1 Consider
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Dark Withering
• 1 Deliberate
• 1 Dig Through Time
• 1 Dimir Charm
• 1 Drown in the Loch
• 1 Fervent Denial
• 1 Go for the Throat
• 1 Impulse
• 1 Infernal Grasp
• 1 Murder
• 1 Negate
• 1 Obsessive Search
• 1 Opt
• 1 Peek
• 1 Secrets of the Key
• 1 Silumgar's Command
• 1 Silundi Vision
• 1 Soul Shatter
• 1 Tainted Indulgence
• 1 Think Twice
• 1 Vraska's Contempt

• Sorceries (24)
• 1 Blood on the Snow
• 1 Bontu's Last Reckoning
• 1 Chainer's Edict
• 1 Deadly Tempest
• 1 Deep Analysis
• 1 Feast of Succession
• 1 Ichor Slick
• 1 Introduction to Annihilation
• 1 Murderous Compulsion
• 1 Necromantic Selection
• 1 Night's Whisper
• 1 Phyrexian Espionage
• 1 Ponder
• 1 Preordain
• 1 Read the Bones
• 1 Rise of the Dark Realms
• 1 Scour All Possibilities
• 1 Sever the Bloodline
• 1 Sign in Blood
• 1 Sleight of Hand
• 1 Syphon Mind
• 1 Toxic Deluge
• 1 Treasure Cruise
• 1 Windfall

• Artifacts (6)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Thought Vessel

• Lands (40)
• 13 Snow-Covered Island
• 13 Snow-Covered Swamp
• 1 Barren Moor
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Castle Locthwain
• 1 Castle Vantress
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Contaminated Aquifer
• 1 Creeping Tar Pit
• 1 Ice Tunnel
• 1 Mystic Sanctuary
• 1 Riptide Laboratory
• 1 Shipwreck Marsh
• 1 Sunken Hollow
• 1 Temple of Deceit
• 1 Waterfront District

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The goal here is going to be to get our opponents within striking distance of dying with Rona's triggered ability. That means casting a whole lot of Instants and Sorceries, so we've got a whole lot of Instants and Sorceries! But we're going to need mana to cast all those spells, so let's get to it.

One problem this deck will have is simple: Rona is going to die. Sometimes it'll even be at our own hand. She kindly allows us to recast her from our Graveyard by discarding a pair of cards (more on that in a minute), but still, she's going to die. That means we need to replay her, so we need the mana to do it. We also want to be able to draw cards and cast Counterspells in most of the later turns of the game, so we're going to need the mana to do that, too. That means 40 lands. Why? Because 40 lands is the number we want to hit our drops up to five without drawing any extra cards. Then we can do the things we want to do in a single turn. There are also a few mana rocks here to help us along; they can get us to a turn three Rona, which is fantastic but not necessary.

We are going to draw some cards. We have Instants and Sorceries to do that, and we're likely to cast those spells a lot. A couple of our rocks will draw as well, and don't be afraid to crack those for the card. Same with Castle Locthwain, which will often cost us some life. It's worth it, especially if we're not doing anything else with the mana. Keep the cards coming. We need the removal, the counters, and the ability to discard cards to get Rona back, since if she's not on the 'field we're not doing our thing. We also have one other Creature in our deck, Archmage Emeritus. The slot is worth it for the extra card, even if he only sticks around for a couple of turns.

Remember how I said we were going to try to get people within striking distance of dying with Rona's triggered ability? There's a reason it's not "kill them with Rona's triggered ability." We have 27 Instants and 24 Sorceries in our deck. If we cast them all, we'd do 51 damage to each opponent, which is enough to kill them, but we'd have to draw nearly every card in our deck and they'd have to let us. Also, they can't gain any life or otherwise prolong the game. This doesn't seem like a feasible way to close out the game, so instead, we're going to cast a bunch of spells and stay alive by killing stuff, drawing cards, and killing more stuff, maybe doing some extra damage with something like Deadly Tempest. All the while, we'll tick down our opponents' life totals with Rona's ping. Then, after we've destroyed the board a few times and Graveyards are nice and ripe, we're going to cast Rise of the Dark Realms and kill our opponents with their own stuff. They won't like it, but hey, neither did Ajani. Doesn't change the truth, though.

As is my custom these days, modal spells are making an appearance. Choices are always good, and in a situation like this, I'd take Drown in the Loch over a spell that just kills something or just counters something any day. It's worth it to put more things on a single card, even if the effect is a touch more limited. Professor Onyx makes an appearance, too, since she triples up the damage from Rona when we cast a spell. Her +1 is solid card selection, her -3 could get us out of a scrape or two, and if we can use her ultimate it should get those life totals nice and low, but mostly she's here for her Magecraft ability.

What do we think? I'd love to hear from you on Facebook or Instagram where CSI posts our articles these days. I think a deck like this would be delightfully fun to play. I love thinking through lines of play and having to work both to stay alive and to try to do my thing, and this deck would definitely provide that. Is it worth it to run Snow just for Blood on the Snow? Please let me know!

Thanks for reading.