Weekly Sale Commander: Winter Chill Sale!

Posted on January 5, 2026

Hi folks, and welcome to Weekly Sale Commander! As always, this column is aimed at showing off cards from CSI's Weekly Sale that could give you new ideas for your decks. These will *usually* be Commander lists in Bracket 3, so you'll be able to play these in any Bracket 3 (or higher) pods. If you want to play in lower Bracket pods, just swap out the Game Changers for other choices, or add more Game Changers, along with some other competitive combos, if you want to compete with Bracket 4 and 5 pods! Keep in mind that the Game Changers in your deck aren't the only thing that moves you up and down a bracket. The intent of your deck, inclusions of other interactions, engines, and combos, and overall playgroup should also be factors in your bracket! Remember that the weekly sale ends on Sunday night at 11:59 PM EST, so you have until then to get your cards ordered!

Today's list is a fun one led by a god of Kaldheim, Jorn, God of Winter // Kaldring, the Rimestaff! Jorn is a modal double-faced card, so you can also cast the backside, Kaldring, the Rimestaff, for its cost instead of casting Jorn, God of Winter. For the purposes of our deck, either side works, but Jorn is slightly better! The reason is that we're playing a Birthing Pod deck! Basically, the front side will serve as fodder for our various pods, but the backside is also good because it lets us recur snow cards from our graveyard, and Birthing Pod decks reusing cards from the graveyard tends to lead to more consistency and overall power!

Let's get into it!

Pods!

As a Birthing Pod deck, the first card added here is none other than Birthing Pod itself! Pod decks tend to revolve round a host of utility creatures that make up a toolbox to help in any scenario. Besides that, we also play Eldritch Evolution and Neoform, cards that let you sacrifice a creature and search for another creature from your deck that costs two more (Eldritch Evolution) and one more (Neoform), respectively. Finally, we also play Fiend Artisan, a Pod-esque creature that lets us search for a creature for cost X or less - based on how much mana we paid into it - plus sacrificing a creature. These Pods are going to assist in accomplishing our goal of flooding the board with the reason for this week's sale, snow permanents!

Snow!

The Winter Chill sale revolves around snow permanents! Originating in Ice Age, snow permanents have been around in Magic for quite some time! They received a more modern look and card border in the later-released set Coldsnap along with the new Snow Mana symbol,which was one of the first unique mana symbols added to the game outside of the original five ()! Kaldheim and Modern Horizons 1 brought more great support for Snow permanents, and the rest is history!

Let's start with our lands, since Snow Mana is needed to use some of our abilities! Dark Depths, one of the most iconic snow cards, creates a Marit Lage token once its condition has been met, and it works well with Thespian's Stage (Thespian's Stage enters as a copy of Dark Depths, but without any of the ice counter so you get the token right away). Mouth of Ronom gives us an easy-to-activate removal spell, and Scrying Sheets gives us some occasional card draw! Beyond those iconic snow lands, we also have a few dual lands, like Ice Tunnel, Rimewood Falls, and Woodland Chasm, plus Shimmerdrift Vale, all of which work together with our Snow Basics to give us a solid foundation for casting our snow spells.

Now, let's get into the creatures!

Creatures!

Mana Value 1-3:

Startingwith cheaper mana value creatures, we have Boreal Druid, a snow-based mana dork, and Frost Augur, another Scrying Sheets effect but on a creature this time! At two mana, we start off with one of our best creatures, Ice-Fang Coatl. In our deck, Coatl is basically Baleful Strix with flash, which is incredibly strong! Iceberg Cancrix is useful for manipulating your opponent's libraries. Flashing in Ice-Fang Coatl after your opponent has resolved a Vampiric Tutor to mill what they tutored for will feel so dirty, but that's your opponent's problem to deal with. Rime Tender and Sculptor of Winter act as removal spells early on and help keep blockers back once you have plenty of mana later in the game. Rimewind Taskmage works similarly, but it can also tap your opponents' creatures. Finally, at mana value three, Boreal Outrider makes your creatures slightly bigger and Ohran Viper has a fun version of deathtouch and draws cards!

Beyond the snow creatures, we also have various mana dorks like Birds of Paradise and Deathrite Shaman, along with Clones like Phantasmal Image and Glasspool Mimic // Glasspool Shore, plus some additional utility from Enduring Vitality, Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, and Eternal Witness. Enduring Vitality works well with Jorn, God of Winter, giving you tons of mana out of your snow creatures. Finally, we have Fierce Empath, a staple in Pod decks since it helps us find our bigger cards to push to the end game!

Mana Value 4-7:

Working our way into midrange for snow, we have Abominable Treefolk, a card that helps push through a blocker and can overwhelm your opponents quickly if left to get too large. Blizzard Specter can control your opponents' boards quite easily, and Draugr Necromancer lets you reanimate your opponents' creatures with snow mana instead of paying their normal costs. Rimewind Cryomancer is a neat counterspell for activated abilities, Spirit of the Aldergard can help us find some mana fixing, and cards like Blizzard Strix will let us blink our useful Enters effects! Heidar, Rimewind Master will give us the ability to bounce permanents each turn, or more often if we untap it with Jorn, and Moritte of the Frost is another of our useful Clones, which all come in handy in a Birthing Pod deck. Ohran Frostfang turns all of our creatures into Ohran Vipers, and at the top of our mana curve for snow cards, Rimefeather Owl helps turn our permanents into Snow Permanents! Getting to use Jorn to untap a Snow-Birthing Pod will be exciting, if we can pull it off!

On the less-icy side, Phyrexian Metamorph is our last Clone, Ravenous Chupacabra, Hostage Taker and Noxious Gearhulk will help control the board, and Yarok, the Desecrated will double the triggers of almost all of our cards, since Pod decks love ETB abilities. Massacre Wurm keeps token decks in check, and Colossal Skyturtle has a ton of useful channel abilities when needed, or is a big ol' beat stick if we don't need those!

Support!

Even creature-heavy decks need support. On principle, for the sake of the sale, we play the card Winter's Chill, which is going to either eat our opponents' mana, Fog some damage, or destroy some creatures, all of which increase the more snow lands we control. Marit Lage's Slumber is going to terrify our opponents as a looming threat on a card type that is hard to remove. Into the North will find us a dual land, and Graven Lore gives us some solid card draw for its cost. Dead of Winter and Blood on the Snow give us mass removal that hurts our opponents more than us, Glacial Revelation helps us find both lands and creatures, and Blessing of Frost will give us some solid card draw along with making our creatures bigger!

Change the Game!

Our game changers here are quite simple! We play both Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor, so that we essentially have two more copies of Birthing Pod in our deck. We also play Seedborn Muse, to keep Jorn's theme of untapping our permanents regularly, along with being a creature that we can search up easily with Birthing Pod. This deck being a themed deck also means that we can drop this down to Bracket 2 quite easily. Our Game Changers don't make or break our list, so dropping them for other cards slots us right into Bracket 2.

If you want to jump up a bracket, you can add Stasis! Be warned, Stasis definitely puts a target on your back, but it has great synergy with both Jorn, God of Winter and Heidar, Rimewind Master, giving you all the benefits of your opponents being affected by Stasis without the drawback since you can untap your permanents (either by returning Stasis to your hand before your untap or untapping your snow permanents with Jorn).

Here's the list, see you next week!