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Hey there to everyone out there reading this. I was going through the spoiler
for 7th and saw that the 4 Paladins(North, South, Eastern, and Western) were
reprinted. The idea took awhile to hit me but then as I picked up a stack of
commons desperately trying to find 4 Armadillo Cloaks for my deck I came
across another neat common: Tidal Visionary. For just a U you get a 1/1 that
changes a creatures color for just a tap. Then pay WW and kill said creature.
Now since there are still a few creature light decks we throw in the easily
acquirable Blind Seer who changes target permanent for just 1U and then use a
paladin to kill said permanent. I figured this is all Blue and White which
means we can take this already control theme and make it a new sort of
control deck. Being that the deck is B/W we throw in some counters and card
draw and were good to go. If you want card by card advantage I'll add it
later. Here's my experiment so far.

4 Tidal Visionary
4 Blind Seer
4 Northern Paladin
4 Southern Paladin
4 Counterspell
4 Absorb
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Accumulate Knowledge
4 Millstone
4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Coastal Tower
6 Plains
10 Island

Card by Card analysis

Tidal Visionary/Blind Seer: 1/2 the combo is based around their color
abilities.

Northern/Southern Paladin: Other half of our combo(Yes I thought 8 Paladins
might be a bit much but the deck kind of sucks if you can't find one).

Counterspell/Absorb: Makes control for the big nasties this deck will have
problems with(Blastoderm anyone?). Also allows for us to make sure no one
gets a Wrath through to mess us up. NOTE: THESE CAN BE REPLACED BY
THWART/FOIL BUT NOT NEARLY AS EFFECTIVE DUE TO THE HIGHER COST AND THE LIGHT
ISLAND COUNT IN THE DECK.

FoF/Accumulated Knowledge: Makes up for the light amount of counters by just
being ridiculously effective in keeping your hand full of 'em.

4 Millstone: More of a space filler than anything else. Either way it's
always nice to have a backup win condition if the first one craps out. By the
way the first win condition is actually dealing damage after you've cleared
the board of their creatures. I recommend you try Blind Seer for this job
since he is the only one who doesn't tap to use the ability.

The Land: The Coastal Tower and Adarkar Wastes just seem right since they
make both colors and this deck is very color dependent. For the basic lands I
use this simple formula. Count every U on every card then count every W on
every card(so Northern Paladin added a total of 8 white to the white total
and the Tidal Visionary added a total of 4 blue to the blue total. Add both
totals together in your head. Then take either total and divide by the sum of
the two colors. Multiply by the number of lands this is going to use(in this
case 16 since we don't count the dual lands).I'll show you how this works
right now.

Blue: Visionary=4 Seer=4+4=8 Counterspell=4+4=8 Absorb=4+4=8 FoF=4 Knowledge=4
4+8+8+8+4+4= 36

White: Northern=4+4=8 Southern=4+4=8 Abosrb=4
8+8+4=20

20+36=56 total

Blue--36/56=.6428572 with the 428571 repeating. Multiply this by 16.
.6428571*16=10.28571428571 with 428571 repeating. Round that off and you get
10 island. Use the same idea for plains if you want to be sure. I'm not going
to waste your time on a sideboard since that all depends on the metagame.

Experimentally,
Tyler Carls
kidcarls@aol.com
Sorry I don't know how to make hyperlinks. Feel free to playtest. Please send
me the results including the exact version you played and the type of deck
they played. If the went rogue give me a vague idea. Please only send version
that are all T2.