This is a relatively budget U/W Control deck, chock full of fun synergies, built around Isperia the Inscrutable, who has a very unique effect for a commander. It's no secret that Demonic Tutor effects are powerful in commander, a 100 card singleton format, so a repeatable tutor attached to your commander, albeit one with limitations, seems unique and powerful. However, in order to unlock the potential of this commander, we first need to examine her limitations. Most people gravitate to the "mini-game" attached to the ability, but we have several ways of gaming that, as I'll discuss later on.
The more significant limitation of the ability is that it can only target creatures with flying. Because flying is such a powerful ability in-and-of itself for 1VS1 60-card play, low CMC flier are usually balanced with effects that have mediocre impact in our multiplayer 100-card format. As a result, we're pretty much left with a bevy of angels and sphinxes to choose from. Luckily, there are a number of powerful effects in just those creature types, with angels especially containing a lot of "hate" effects that interfere with our opponents' strategies.
The true power of Isperia's ability is that it allows us to run some pretty situational cards that you wouldn't usually run in other decks, because she can always go and fetch them up for us, if they're relevant. A quick run down of her toolbox shows that we have an array of answers at our disposal. Against tokens, tribal, or other "go-wide" strategies, we have Windborn Muse to make attacking hard, Sunblast Angel and Steel Hellkite to keep their boards clear, and Blazing Archon to make attacking impossible. Against graveyard-based decks, we have Angel of Finality to wipe their 'yards away and Angel of Jubilation which shuts down a lot of value/recursion engines by turning off sac outlets. Against combo decks, we have Voidstone Gargoyle if we know what their primary win condition is and Iona, Shield of Emeria if we at least know what color their win cons are in. Addtionally, we can search up Glen Elendra Archmage, which is very hard to force combos through (unless they're somehow exclusively creature-based), and Draining Whelk, which is just a Counterspell to give us some more interaction. Against other control decks, Glen Elendra Archmage goes a long way towards improving our chances, should we resolve it, but, in general, we're just trying to out value our opponent, by tutoring constant threats using Isperia. Against voltron strategies, we're a little bit soft; the only hard counter we have to voltron is Blazing Archon, because voltron (almost) always involves attacking. Secondly, we can always play Voidstone Gargoyle naming their commander or Iona, Shield of Emeria naming one of their colors, which should work, but might be a little late. If you play against really combo-y voltron decks a lot, I'd suggest adding Angelic Arbiter, as it should prevent a lot of instant deaths from surprise equipment or haste enablers. Furthermore, Angel of the Dire Hour would be good at killing most voltron generals as it is untargeted exile, but both answers are pretty slow at 7-mana.
In addition to these direct answers, we have access to bunch of creatures that draw cards, a few that can remove permanents for us, and a few that recur creatures. On top of that, we have a few miscellaneous effect in our toolbox, the most important of which is Brago, King Eternal. Since a lot of our creatures have "enter the battlefield" effects already, and we can tutor Brago up whenever, the deck runs a light blink subtheme. With this subtheme in mind, we've attached as many effects as possible to ETB effects, so our value can increase exponentially. Kor Cartographer and Knight of the White Orchid, for example, instead of more mana rocks. It turns out that Brago blinking Mulldrifter every turn is just as good when he's not the commander, especially since we can (near) guarantee having both every game, if we want to. Deadeye Navigator is here too because he's just too good.
The last thing in our toolbox is a 3 part infinite combo, which we can tutor 2 pieces of. Karmic Guide and Reveillark are both pretty powerful cards in their own right, that are searchable with Isperia and synergize with our blink subtheme. However, when combined together with any free sac outlet, they go infinite. This deck goes pretty light on the combo, so we only run Altar of Dementia, as it's the only affordable sac outlet that wins outright on its own.
If you don't know this combo works, here's a quick run down: You have a Reveillark on the field, a free sac outlet on the field, and Karmic Guide on the field or in your graveyard. You sac 'lark, triggering its ability, bringing back the Guide and anything else. Guide enters the field, triggering its ability to bring back the 'lark. You then sac the 'lark and Guide and continue to resolve the triggers the same way infinitely. This will produce infinite of whenever effect the sac outlet produces, so in the case of Altar of Dementia, infinite mill, which will win you the game, and infinite of whatever else you may want to revive with 'lark when you go through the loop. If you have a Mulldrifter for example, you could draw your whole deck.
Now let's defeat Isperia's mini-game. Before we get into it, it's worth noting that even if you guess incorrectly the first time, the opponent will have to reveal their hand, therefore, the next time you attack them, you should be able to "guess" correctly. Now, the obvious way to make sure we guess correctly is to Peek at our opponents' hands. For this we have Peek, Gitaxian Probe, and Zur's Weirding (which is especially good since we can break the symmetry on it by tutoring for a card every turn). These are the only Peek cards I'd run though, because they replace themselves or do something else awesome and unique. The next way we can cheat is by bouncing stuff and then guessing the stuff that we bounced to their hand. Lastly, giving Isperia double strike (with Fireshrieker or Duelist's Heritage) lets us cheat by giving us two separate triggers. If we can guess right the first time, we can tutor twice, but, even if we're wrong the first time, we're guaranteed to be right the second time (also double strike is pretty sweet on Brago).
The final component to building around this commander is putting our tutor targets back into our deck, to tutor them up again and use them again. While we have some one-off ways to do that, such as with Vessel of Endless Rest (which has some sweet synergy with Brago), the primary way we accomplish this is with Timetwister effects. These cards all shuffle our graveyards into our libraries, allowing us to reuse our tutor targets, and refill our hand with 7 new cards. While they have the downside of helping out our opponents by giving them fresh hands too, I think it's worth the risk in most metas for how beneficial the effect can be for us. Plus, these cards can randomly hose graveyard based decks by shuffling their graveyards away and sometimes get out of control "no maximum hand size" players too. Additionally, we can break the symmetry on a couple of our board wipes, Hallowed Burial and Terminus, since we can get our creatures back easily with Isperia, but our opponents are stuck with their creatures on the bottom of their decks.
As always, I'm entirely open to suggestions, especially on this deck. I was afraid to do a Gatherer search for every Blue and/or White card with flying, so I'm sure there are some sweet cards that I'm missing.
PS: If you wanted to make the deck more competitive, the first thing I'd do is try going a little deeper on the combo. To do so, I'd include a copy of Peregrine Drake and at least four sac outlets. Including the drake will allow you to make infinite colored mana with the 'lark/guide combo, regardless of what your sac outlet is, and it will give you access to a second infinite combo to make infinite mana with Deadeye Navigator. In the former situation, if you manage to get a Mulldrifter or Cloudblazer into the loop, you can draw your entire deck which will find you the drake even if you didn't have it in the first place. Then you can use infinite mana with Capsize to bounce all your opponents permanents at instant speed forever, which is enough to seal the deal with any creature, such as the ones you're combo-ing off with. In the latter situation, you just need to find the Capsize to win, which can be assisted with the addition of Mystical Tutor. This is especially nice since it gives us a way to win through a Rest in Peace or other hate that we might face against the 'lark/guide combo. Lastly, including some Enlightened Tutor effects to find the sac outlets probably wouldn't hurt either.
PPS: A cute synergy with Voidstone Gargoyle is that it benefits greatly from our constant peeking at hands with Isperia's ability. We can set it on something we know our opponent has and then use our blink cards to reset it to more relevant card later. Voidstone Gargoyle + Deadeye Navigator might not be the most powerful combo, but it sure is fun!
Meld
