So I started with /u/SaffronOlive's Mono-U Brain in a Jar budget deck and have made adjustments based on that. It's still fundamentally a combo deck, but I've made it a bit more controling after board.
The combo is to either Brain in a Rise from the Tides at the opponent's EOT or to cast both Part the Waterveil and Rise from the Tides on our turn with stored mana on Mage Ring Network and Brain.
Probable questions:
Why not Jace?
Jace is not an instant, a sorcery, a land, nor is he Brain in a Jar. What's more, he takes instants and sorceries out of the graveyard, and we need as many of those as we can get.
Why not Anticipate? Seth ran them in his deck.
Because Tormenting Voice puts something in the yard--where we want it. Also, it puts more cards in hand.
Why not Shadowlands?
Because we're not going to keep lands in hand to reveal for very long. Either we're playing them or discarding them. Also, notice that while we run enough basics to get our Battlelands online, the odds of us getting Shadowlands online aren't nearly as good.
Why the one Disperse in main?
Because we may need to deal with a Planeswalker, and without it, we have no maindeck answers to that card type. (We also have no answers to enchantments.)
Why not Thing in the Ice?
I've considered it as an early game blocker + sweeper if it lives. The problem is that it's not an instant or sorcery, and as a result, you can't cast it off of Brain or get it off of Pieces of the Puzzle.
Is there room for Investigate cards in this deck?
Maybe if something worth our time shows up in Eldritch Moon. But there aren't enough cards with the mechanic that we'd want: most of the blue Investigate instants and sorceries (Investigate is in Bant) are not things we want to be casting--they're not on plan. The best one would be Confirm Suspicions, but we'd rather be casting Pore over Pages instead.
What about other options for color combinations?
This deck might be viable if you're running a Blue/White variant using Planar Outburst as your sweeper, Declaration in Stone and Stasis Snare for removal, and maybe put in Hallowed Moonlight or something in the sideboard for Collected Company or tokens decks. Naturally, you should also adjust your mana base to match (out: Shivan Reef, Sunken Hollow, Smoldering Marsh, Basic Mountain, In: Port Town, Prairie Stream, Basic Island, maybe Meandering River if you're really feeling it necessary to have the extra dual lands--it's odd that there is no half-decent common cycle of allied-color lands in Standard now). In fact, just look here for a UW variant or here for a UB variant. The difference in price isn't that great, and I'm explicitly not playing the other variants. I think this one may be the best of the three. (It's possible to go straight UR--Kozilek's Return becomes your sweeper, and you have a playset Into the Void in the sideboard--and mono-U as the original deck did, but Kozilek's Return is not a great sweeper if you're not playing Eldrazi, and Green has nothing we want: Green removal is fight-based, and the only sweeper in that color, The Great Aurora, is exactly the opposite of what we want.)
