This is my Venser control deck, built when Zendikar / Scars was in Standard. It tries to handle most of the tier 1 decks out there with various defenses until it can get a finisher online.
Synergies:
The deck has several mini themes going for it, which are Flicker (via Venser), Proliferate, and Enters the Battlefield.
Venser's flicker can bounce Halimar / Wall of Omens for card draw / filtering, Sun Titan for graveyard recursion, Frost Titan for enemy lockdown, Trinket Mage for fetching, and Contagion Clasp / Engine for removal.
Proliferate, via the Clasp / Engine can pump a number of targets. It can bump Venser's loyalty, getting us closer to his Emblem (which wins games), it can proliferate the -1/-1 tokens on enemy creatures, it can pump Lighthouse Chronologist's level tokens, and it can bump the counters on Luminarch Ascension.
The deck tries to handle lots of different decks, but isn't particularly strong against that many (except for Pod, which is unfortunately banned for this deck). Leyline protects against burn and discard, Ghostly Prison / Supreme Verdict / Wall of Omens protects against aggro, and it's possible when Venser and a Trinket Mage are out to cast an Elixir of Immortality every turn, which has kept me in the game on several occasions.
The sideboard here has several different answers:
Against control and combo, it has more counterspells that come in.
Against tokens and aggro, the Ghostly Prisons and Dissipation Fields come in.
Against tokens, and weenies, the Dissipation Field and Staff of Nin come in
Against Burn, the counterspells and Ajani come in.
Against Boggles (a tough matchup for this deck), the Paraselenes and Kor Sanctifiers, and the Ghostly Prisons and Dissipation Fields and Counterspells come in.
The candidates for siding out:
Luminarch Ascension against fast / aggro / burn decks
Leyline comes out against non-player targetting decks
Return to Dusts come out against non-enchantment / artifact decks
Relic comes out if there are no graveyard type cards
Contagion Engine comes out if it's not an aggro deck
Contagion Clasps come out against a hexproof deck
Think Twice comes out if you side in the Staff of Nin
