If you’re anything like me, there’s nothing you enjoy more than playing a deck that does absolutely nothing but hit land drops, draw cards, and bring the game to a crawl. Winning is an afterthought to making sure there’s absolutely no way your opponent can feasibly stitch together a winning sequence. This week, H0LYDIVER put together an incredibly interesting take on expertise in this vein that I can’t wait to break down:

Blue-White Expertise - Modern | H0LYDIVER, 5-0 Modern League

• Creatures (2)
• 2 Snapcaster Mage

• Instants (10)
• 1 Disallow
• 1 Negate
• 2 Cryptic Command
• 2 Mana Leak
• 4 Path to Exile

• Sorceries (17)
• 2 Supreme Verdict
• 3 Beck // Call
• 4 Ancestral Vision
• 4 Serum Visions
• 4 Sram's Expertise

• Enchantments (6)
• 2 Detention Sphere
• 4 Spreading Seas

• Artifacts (1)
• 1 Brain in a Jar

• Lands (24)
• 3 Plains
• 5 Island
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Mystic Gate
• 2 Ghost Quarter
• 2 Tectonic Edge
• 4 Celestial Colonnade
• 4 Flooded Strand

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Supreme Verdict
• 2 Blessed Alliance
• 2 Dispel
• 2 Geist of Saint Traft
• 2 Runed Halo
• 2 Supreme Verdict
• 3 Rest in Peace

Buy This Deck

One of the biggest issues with Ancestral Vision decks is they are short on other means of drawing cards and they have so few ways to utilize Ancestral Visions after the first turn or two. Thanks to Sram's Expertise, this deck has no such issues. Sram's Expertise does a little bit of everything here. You can use Sram's Expertise to catch up on tempo by gumming up the ground while resolving a key cantrip or removal spell. You can also use Sram's Expertise to immediately cast an Ancestral Vision while generating enough blockers to ensure you get to untap. Or you can set up Sram's Expertise plus Beck // Call to absolutely bury your opponent in value.

This could well be one of the best homes for the expertise shell, as you can effectively utilize all pieces of the combo even in a vacuum. Sram's Expertise and Ancestral Vision are cards this deck might want even in the absence of Beck // Call, and Beck // Call is a card this deck can reasonably cast, even if it’s not something you’d have been likely to play otherwise.

If you want to play long games where you bury your opponents in cards, this seems like a fantastic place to start, given that other Ancestral Vision decks in the format appear to be struggling in a format defined by Death's Shadow and Tarmogoyf. This is a deck uniquely situated to play the foil to Death's Shadow, given your high density of Detention Spheres and Path to Exiles as hard removal plus chump blockers and sweepers to punish your opponent for trying to go wide.