Oh Holy Angel, bestow your grace upon the vigilance of this victor.
Creatureless decks shall walk upon the face of modern!
So yeah, basic idea is you utilize your lack of creatures to stuff your deck full of control cards to win by a Near-Death Experience.
The lack of creatures means you can fill yourself up full with mass removal spells like Damnation and Wrath of God. And have enough counterspells and spot removal to constantly fuel that Dig Through Time, making sure you always get an answer, even when you don't have an answer when they play a spell. It is an instant! Play it and rejoice in a 7 card dig.
If Dig Through Time never gives you a Near-Death Experience, hopefully a Plunge into Darkness till you have one life left will do it. Or you can use it like a Dig Through Time, finding yourself an answer to an opponent's spell while setting yourself up for a Near-Death Experience victory.
Sometimes Plunge into Darkness is far too risky. That is why Angel's Grace bestows us with her ... grace ... to last us that one final turn to activate the upkeep win condition of Near-Death Experience. It also works as a good stall till you can find yourself a wrath or spot removal.
Liliana of the Veil is always so obvious, and the wonderful Lili hole is a great boon to this deck! The fact that this deck is creatureless and is able to house a lot of removal, I can use Liliana of the Veil's sacrifice a lot more fluidly, leaving room for mana for counterspells and discarding their cards to remove instants and sorceries when I have removal in my hand. A bonus to discarding, is that it fuels my Dig Through Time!
Turn one plays are rare for control decks, which is why Thoughtseize is here. A quick and easy early game play when you have nothing to answer or can't answer anything. It also make for excellent Lili discard fodder and for filling the grave for Dig Through Time. The life loss also makes the Near-Death Experience easier to experience.
Idyllic Tutor is pretty simple to understand. It tutors up my Near-Death Experience. If I don't need anything tutored up, then it is just Lili discard fodder.
We can't forget the most important aspects of any control deck, our basic counterspells and removal. The removal is pretty simple, some Dismembers, Path to Exiles and some Slaughter Pacts as more utility removal to deal with the things that sorcery speed wraths and Lili can't deal with. The instant speed removal ties in nicely with counterspells in that they are really cheap, meaning that they can be used as surprise removal when they think I'm tapped out with counterspells. They are also more to be used against utility creatures, or like when they try to Splinter Twin their Deceiver Exarch and I don't have an Angel's Grace in hand. As a bonus, Dismember loves to bring me closer to a Near-Death Experience.
The counterspells are more varied, coming in at 4 different kinds. Spell Snare hits all the main modern staples and works really nicely against that turn 2 play. Remand is very useful in counterspell wars and is imperative in combo-control build to dig into your deck deeper to get that combo out. Finally, I've been experiencing hard times without a true nonconditional hard counter., While Mana Leak does come close, Cryptic Command satisfies this requirement nicely. It can also be used to return something to counterspell it from when it gets played next, or to stall them one more turn to make my chances of a Near-Death Experience even more likely.
And now for a little explanation on the sideboard. Being entirely creatureless makes it a little hard to do, but we shall see how it turns out as the times pass by. Also important to note that Idyllic Tutor shines a lot more when combined with my sideboard, as I have a lot of enchantments in here.
Starting with the sideboard is Detention Sphere. This is in here just in case I need a little extra oomph to my removal package, or when I need artifact/enchantment removal, or even mass token removal. It becomes useful against a variety of different decks.
Grafdigger's Cage and Tormod's Crypt are our graveyard hate cards. It is important to note that we have to use cards that will not hinder our use of Dig Through Time. It is also quite useful to know that Grafdigger's Cage works quite well against Birthing Pod decks.
Leyline of Sanctity is very important to shut down RDW and Burn decks, because since I have no creatures, I am very vulnerable to all of their burn. It is also useful in stopping any Scapeshift shenanigans, along with discard and mill decks.
Negate is in here when I'm facing a more control match up, as then I don't need my wraths and would like more counterspells to counter your counterspells with.
Sadistic Sacrament is a wonderful card against combo builds. With this I can remove anyone's key combo pieces straight from their deck and laugh at them. It is also really useful in being an anti sideboard card, as I can then just chuck out any sideboard tech they may have put in against me.
Stony Silence is mainly for affinity. It shuts them down really nicely as all their main cards require their activated abilities to be used. It also works against Birthing Pod and any sword using deck, so that is a bonus there. In contrast, Suppression Field can be used against pretty much any deck. Excellent against Pod, Jund, anything with black, affinity, Scapeshift, Splinter Twin and more recently, Jesaki Ascendency decks.
