As you can tell by the name of the deck this idea is originally credited to the deckbuilding contest between balaam and kamarupa. This is just my version on how I would take their ideas.
General idea behind the deck: The original challenge was for kamarupa to make a deck using Reality Twist and it was done to the tune of counters and land disruption with Back to Basics. I actually liked this idea and tried to expand upon it while still keeping the original theme (including skipping the upkeep with eon hub) and here we are.
Lands: Most of the lands are islands to ignore the downside of Reality Twist although I'm running a copy of Mystic Sanctuary to combo with Cryptic Command *list* to create a creature lockout. Mystic being banned in modern had a lot to do with this. How does it work? Basically, get to the point it comes in untapped and use it to put cryptic back on top of your deck. When it's the opponents turn you would cast cryptic returning mystic to hand and either tapping their creatures or countering their spell. Play the land again and repeat as necessary. Academy ruins should be self-explanatory. Ghost Quarter is to remove any basic lands an oppontent might have that would not be impacted by the Back to Basics. They will probably have more than 1 basic so we run Crucible of Worlds to repeat until they don't have any more.
Creatures: Since this is a control deck I wanted to keep my creatures to a minimum and that is why I'm only keeping the Fog Bank for defense and using a single Meloku the Clouded Mirror as a win condition. Meloku can slowly build an army of its own and even has synergy with Mystic Sanctuary from earlier. Plus it hedged against opponent land hate like Wasteland.
Instants: Most of the instants here are cheap to help in the early game and can be imprinted on Isochron Scepter for additional value later on. Use them freely to help transition to the late game where your most effective. If you can get a scepter active with arcane labratory in play, you have the potential to counter every spell an opponent plays the rest of the game. Boomerang is a potential catch-all that could be used on a scepter as well. Cryptic we talked about earlier.
Enchantments: Back to Basics is the primary hate piece here attempting to limit opposing mana sources to 1 time uses. As time goes on, mana bases get greedier and this is our way of punishing that. It is really the piece that allows Ghost Quarter to be most effective. Arcane labratory was discussed slightly earlier as a combo with scepter and outside that is just something to slow the game down and hurt on decks like storm or belcher (granted they are much faster than us usually). Reality Twist was the initial challenge to build around and helps with the mana denial plan.
Artifacts: Crucible of Worlds allows us to rebuy our Ghost Quarter or legend rule the 2 copies of Academy Ruins letting us keep an untapped version if necessary. Eon Hub helps us avoid the mana intensive upkeep of both Reality Twist and Pact of Negation. Extraplanar Lens is just mana acceleration to enable casting more things but isn't necessary to the decks functioning.
And lastly we have Tezzeret the Seeker to tutor artifacts out of our deck when we are ready for them. His plus ability also doubles as a way to abuse Boomerang
+
Isochron Scepter
and set up a potential attack. (Granted it would never be a large attack but sometimes you take what you can get.)
The Sideboard: I mainly copied kamarupa's board only changing quantities more than anything.
General play pattern: The way I view this deck working depends on the type of matchup more than anything else. For combo matchups, look to counter key spells and then attack the mana. Against aggro, I would probably do the opposite. For control, I have no real suggestinos, sorry. Control can work so many different ways and there is no real 1 size fits all type of plan.
Anyways that's pretty much it so hope it gives you some ideas and good luck.
