love, love, LOVE land control decks. I know, i'm sorry. I have a Mono Red, several R/W, a R/B, and a UB. I made a mono-blue deck, since that's all the rage now, and I really liked how it ran. Monastery Siege being a card that I'm shocked nobody runs in it, but that proves utterly devastating. But I really, really wanted to squeeze white into the deck so I could run my second favorite planeswalker card, Venser, the Sojurner (the first being, of course, Ashiok, the Nightmare Weaver). Venser's ULT is just so perfect with the deck (whenever you cast a spell, exile a permanent). The addition of white makes the game plan change a little bit.
First off, no path to exile. The whole point is you don't want your opponent getting land.
Compared to the mono-blue version that everybody probably is familiar with, the things I do different are: First, I got rid of Frost Titan and replaced it with Venser, Shaper Savant. its ETB is another bounce that can hit any permanent, as well as a pseudo-counter in a pinch. With Venser, you do his +2 and flicker, allowing you an additional bounce every turn. Or you can bounce him back with Jace and have a counter up for the next turn, should you need it.
Your wincons are:
Beats with Colonnade
Beats with Venser
Jace
scooping to an empty board
Some Card Explanations:
Monastery Siege: Siege is here for protection. It makes your opponent's spells that target you "or a permanent you control" cost more. It makes any of your opponent's single-mana answers cost 5. Typically what would happen is is they were able to get 3 lands, they'd just cast something to destroy trinisphere or my creature/manland. Siege makes it almost impossible for the opponent to get out from under your lock.
Venser, Shaper Savant is here as kind of a "budget" version of Snapcaster mage. for the same CMC as Snap+Bounce or Snap+Counter, Venser will bounce a land or a spell (even uncounterable spells). He puts your opponent on the same two-damage-per-turn clock, but with the added bonus of being able to be flickered by the Venser-Walker to give you an extra bounce every turn. Or he can be bounced back to hand with Jace so you can cast him on your opponent's turn if you need to.
Suppression Field: basically Siege but to protect your stuff from activated abilities.
Trickbind: I run trickbind because I find it does a really good job of hosing a lot of the permanent-based combo decks. It shuts off the permanent, entirely, that turn. So if you counter an infinite mana engine, it stops the engine completely. It's important to note that you can't target a mana ability with Trickbind, but if you hit an ability on a card that also has a mana ability, that ability is stopped. So, for example, if you trickbind Faerie Conclave's ability to turn into a creature, and trickbind resolves, then faerie conclave can't tap for mana that turn. Trickbind is also basically uncounterable. ALSO, and this is important, Trickbind counters storm, and they can't counter you in response (split second).
Disclaimer: I stole the sideboard from a bunch of Mon-Blue ponza decks that I've seen over the months. I'm so bad at sideboards, and this is far faaaaaaaaaaaar better than the one I originally had.
