While Commander can easily become a slow grindfest, some higher bracket tables tend to hit the ground running. Fast mana and cheaper Commanders are hugely important here, establishing your engines while your opponents are still in the setup phase.
Despite this, some Commanders with fast potential, like Rona, Herald of Invasion, remain underplayed. Acting as a card selection machine, a beater, and a win condition, this Commander has everything you need to succeed.
MTG Rona, Herald of Invasion
Rona, Herald of Invasion can do a lot of different things and excels at doing all of them. Her untap clause is easily enabled by Legendary fast mana pieces like Mox Amber and Mox Opal, granting fast starts alongside excess looting. She can do the same with small legends, like Malcolm Alluring Scoundrel, discarding them in the lategame if they’re no longer effective.
Since Rona will be looting a lot, taking advantage of all the extra draw can run away with the game. Legends like Kid Loki and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, for example, take advantage of all the extra cards Rona is drawing. Taking things further, legendary draw doublers like Alharmmarret’s Archive and Teferi’s Ageless Insight both supercharge Rona’s drawing and replace themselves.
While Rona’s card draw can be easily capitalized on, her discard strategies are arguably even stronger. Containment Construct and Monument to Endurance, for example, can turn Rona’s loot into strict card advantage, while Cryptcaller Chariot can quickly establish a board state. This also enables a reanimator plan, dumping cards like Archon of Cruelty and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur in your graveyard with ease.
Once you’re done with Rona’s Looting ability, there are some other ways to take advantage of her powerful untap clause. Running Relic of Legends, for example, can turn Rona into a repeatable mana dork, while Viridian Longbow turns Rona into an untapping pinger. Agatha’s Soul Cauldron enables some particularly nasty things, like recasting all of your legendary artifacts at once with Emry, Lurker of the Loch under it.
While you could easily build a deck that just uses Rona’s front side, her backside is also quite powerful. Rona, Tolarian Obliterator’s triggered ability mainly works as a blocker deterrent, but you can also use pingers like Pestilence and Plague Spitter to cheat your own bombs into play. This gives a Reanimator plan more consistency, cheating cards like Ulamog, Ceaseless Hunger into play from your hand to dodge graveyard hate.
Creating Infinite Mana
Giving a big bomb plan even more consistency by just casting cards outright, Rona, Herald of Invasion can also create infinite mana. Thanks to her untap trigger, Rona can abuse cards like Retraction Helix and Banishing Knack, bouncing permanents back into players’ hands. You can use this to repeatedly cast a Legendary zero-drop like Mox Amber, making infinite blue mana.
Thanks to Rona’s Rummaging and access to black, these combos are extremely easy to access via tutors. Factoring everything in, Rona makes for an extremely powerful Dimir Commander, which makes her play rate rather shocking. With only 2,676 decks according to EDHREC, Rona can easily catch a table unawares.
On the plus side, this does make Rona, Herald of Invasion reasonably cheap. Despite seeing some play in Pioneer and Modern, Rona is still available for a relatively cheap $1.75. While her best support pieces aren’t exactly budget cards, this does make Rona possible to build on the cheap. Even on a smaller budget, this Commander’s efficiency is hard to rival.
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