UW Control

Blue-white control with the manland engine taken out. Where Landstill builds around Standstill and lands that attack, this version plays a straight draw-go game: hold up counters, answer everything, and win with two or three cards that don’t need the board.

The interaction is the format’s best. Counterspell is {U}{U} for a hard counter. Mana Leak is {1}{U} and counters unless they pay {3}, which in practice is a hard counter through turn five and a dead card on turn ten — hence the split. Swords to Plowshares exiles a creature for {W}. Wrath of God destroys all creatures and they can’t be regenerated, and Akroma’s Vengeance takes the artifacts and enchantments with them (and cycles for {3} when you don’t need it).

Impulse and Fact or Fiction do the digging. Fact or Fiction is a {3}{U} instant: reveal the top five, the opponent splits them into two piles, you take one pile and bin the other. Cast at the end of their turn it usually nets three cards, because there’s rarely a clean split.

The finishers are chosen so the deck never has to tap out. Decree of Justice is the main one. Cycling costs {2}{W}, and when you cycle it you may pay {X} to create X 1/1 white Soldier tokens — at instant speed, off an ability rather than a spell, so Counterspell can’t touch it. On an empty board you cycle for five or six Soldiers at their end step and swing. Hard cast for {X}{X}{2}{W}{W} it instead makes X 4/4 flying Angels, which is what you do when you have all the mana in the world.

Exalted Angel is the faster clock. Hard cast she’s {4}{W}{W}; more often she lands face down as a 2/2 for three and flips up for morph {2}{W}{W}, a 4/5 flier that gains you life equal to any damage it deals. That lifegain is the difference in the Sligh matchup, and a face-down morph dodges sorcery-speed removal aimed at a known Angel.

The bad news is what’s always bad news for a reactive deck: the things you can’t counter after they resolve. Enchantress and Parallax Replenish beat you on the enchantments you didn’t have Disenchant for, and fast combo gets under a deck whose plan is to leave mana open. That’s what the sideboard Meddling Mage is for — a {W}{U} 2/2 that names a card, and spells with that name can’t be cast at all.

Choosing between this and Landstill is mostly a question of how much you want your lands to be threats. Landstill’s manlands give it inevitability and a much better fair-deck matchup; the draw-go build has cleaner mana and a stronger raw counterspell count.