This list is very heavy on planeswalkers as so many make tokens or pump them or both. You have good disposable blockers to keep the walkers safe against pressure and apply sufficient pressure yourself that control decks are not always afforded the luxury of killing or countering them. It does make the deck very top heavy which in turn requires a sturdy mana base. Mid range decks are often the most ruined by missing the 3rd or 4th lands as they need the weight of their top end to kick in on time to keep up any pressure they might have going on. Against agro decks they jsut need to keep casting things, the inherent card power and advantage you have over the more pure agro decks will mean you should always live if you can always be casting stuff as long as they are. This rule obviously applies fairly well across the board but is most noticeable I find with the mid-range decks.
24 Spells
Mox Diamond
Land Tax
Doomed Traveller
Mother of Runes
Path to Exile
Swords to Plowshares
Skullclamp
Gather the Townsfolk
Knight of the White Orchid
Bitterblossom
Precinct Captain
Raise the Alaram
Lingering Souls
Spectral Procession
Vindicate
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
Ajani Goldmane
Hero of Bladehold
Sublime Archangel
Elspeth, Knight-Errant
Elspeth Tirrel
Mikeaus the Lunarch
16 Lands
Scrubland
Marsh Flats
Caves of Koilos
Isolated Chapel
Godless Shrine
Windbrisk Heights
Karakas
Swamp
8 Plains
This list is fairly light on things that boost tokens as tokens decks go however those effects are supplemented by equipment and are all reusable allowing things to get very powerful very quickly. There are also a couple of generic powerful cards that work well with tokens like Hero of Bladehold for the battlecry and Sublime Archangel for the super-exhalted. This means that all the pump effects are threats in their own right and never dead cards which is a great help in a mid range deck.
Black is the lightest of splashes mostly so I could run Spectral Procession without much risk. I have only one land in the whole deck which doesn't produce white and I nearly didn't bother doing that. I figured being able to fix black with Land Tax or Path to Exile was more significant overall than having that extra reliability on having the Procession online from three mana. I even nearly threw in a Fetid Heath in a wishful way of offsetting the Swamp. Spectral Procession is one of the very best cards in the deck, it gives you a good pile of dorks with the highly valuable flying attribute. Lingering Souls is better but Procession has better tempo and curves better into something brutal like Ajani Goldmane. There are only four black mana symbols in the deck but without going heavy black there is not much else you want in black. The deck can support Dark Confidant but it is not needed and could be a risk now and again.
The rest of the list somewhat speaks for itself. They are all just the most powerful and suitable cards to fill out the curve that could be found. The Sword could have been one of the better ones however I find winning with equipment to be dull so wanted to make things more interesting. You have to mulligan more than most with a deck like this as you cannot keep hands with too much top end nor can you keep one that is land light (assuming no Land Tax to bail you out). Mikeaus helps with this a little as it is not terrible chucking him down on turn two. In an agro deck doing this would be very poor tempo play but in this mid range list you are just happy to be getting things on the board and spending your mana. The god draw for this deck oddly involves following a Spectral Procession with an Ajani giving you a fast growing aerial armada. Anything useful you do before this only makes it more brutal. So long as you can identify when you should be the control player and when the agro player you will do very well with a deck like this. It is solid across all non-combo matches and even has some game against combo. With combo at an all time low in cube at presenet (more so with an un-powered cube) the mid range decks are having a resurgence and this is a fine example of one of the best.
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