i have been reading and enjoying your articles for some time now and i have come to the conclusion that you always seem to give awesome advise witch is why i have come to you to day with my latest deck that i have been working on. the object of this deck is to gain a card advantage over my opponent by not allowing them to draw any cards and then finish them of with a simic sky swallower . I've been attending a local tournament and getting my butt kicked every week please help.

UG CARD CONTROL DECK

4 birds of paradise

3 noble hierarch

4 eternal witness

3 man o war

4 simic sky swallower

3 recollect

4 plow under

4 temporal spring

4 time warp

3 remand

4 memory lapse

8 forest

8 islands

4 misty rain forest 

as for side board i have no idea what to do because i have no idea what my opponents will bring in but i do know that i will be going against players that use older decks last weeks winner was a deck based on survival of the fittest and second place was a landstill deck and each week is some thing new . i just want to be competitive with the other players please help =)

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So, the current build isn't working out for you, eh? I think I can guess why. Right now, your only answers to what your opponent throws at you are Man-o'-War, which can only bounce creatures, Temporal Spring, which only gets rid of a card for a turn or so, and the counterspells Remand and Memory Lapse, which also put the "answered" card back where the opponent can recast it next turn. You have Plow Under as well, but that only answers lands, and again, it only puts them back on top of the library  where your opponent can get them again. In addition, if you don't have a counterspell in hand or didn't leave mana open when your opponent casts something that you have to stop, then you're screwed. You have no real way of dealing with anything that's already resolved. Sure, all of this can in theory slow your opponent down to the point where your Simic Sky Swallowers can come online and he's in no position to stop you from beating him down, but you told me you've been "getting your butt kicked", so you know from experience that the theory doesn't work in practice, does it? Oh well. No harm in trying new strategies-- we'd never find any if nobody tried them.

As I see it, there are two ways to make this deck work.

Solution #1: Make Permanents Temporary and make "Temporarily" Permanent

Most, if not all, of your stalling cards put their target on top of your opponent's library. Since you're in blue, the color of mill, why not use a milling card to then put the top card of your opponent's library into their graveyard? Then Temporal Spring would become a Vindicate and Plow Under an even better Feast of Worms. This is also the easiest method-- just replace Remand with Jace's Erasure or Grindclock. Grindclock would work nice here, since you'd only really need one counter on it to mill away anything important that you snag with Memory Lapse or Temporal Spring.

The downside of this method is that because you don't really expect to mill your opponent out as a win condition, Jace's Erasure and Grindclock would be dead draws that would have no impact on the game until you put something on top of its owner's library. Combos are nice, but it's best to avoid playing cards that do nothing without their matching combo piece, especially if the combo doesn't win you the game outright. Adding a few more mill cards could make milling a viable "plan B", but most decks don't need a plan B as much as they need to get better at executing their plan A.

Solution #2: Get Hard on Soft Removal

This one requires more card replacements, but may be worth it. Take out every "answer" card you have and replace it with a card that does the same thing, but makes the answered card or spell go where your opponent can't try to play it again next turn. Man-o'-War would probably become Acidic Slime, Mystic Snake, or Mold Shambler. Remand and Memory Lapse would become Mana Leak, Rune Snag, Counterspell, Negate, or Voidslime. Temporal Spring would become... Rootgrapple, I suppose. There isn't really much replacement for Plow Under, though. Drain the Well, maybe? Creeping Mold? Feast of Worms isn't good enough if your opponents don't use legendary lands.

The downside to Solution #2, however, is that Green and Blue just aren't the go-to colors for killing creatures. Sure, green can deep six pretty much any other type of permanent, and blue is just about the only color that can stop instants and sorceries, but killing creatures is the purview of Red, Black, and White. Man-o'-War is probably the best you're going to find in that regard, although Acidic Slime's deathtouch makes it a good candidate for scoring a 2-for-1 for you if it can destroy one card with its ability and another through combat.