That does make sense. Honestly you had enough tools that game that most any decision would probably have been fine.

Hi Roland!

I appreciate the kind words, I’m glad you enjoyed it! Gideon of the Trials has been outstanding for me so far; I have also been quite impressed. Another Geist in the board definitely seems reasonable, the only issue being that I don’t think I could find the space. Interestingly enough, having access to Gideon of the Trials makes having additional cheap closers in the board such as Geist less necessary, since Gideon does double-duty in that regard! Thanks for watching!

Hi Matt!

Spell Queller is a sweet tool for certain control decks but I don’t think this is the one. The biggest reason is that we are largely a tap-out control deck looking to manage threats after they resolve (albeit countering some that we can’t deal with otherwise). With the large number of walkers and verdicts we have, playing at instant speed can at times be an issue. In addition I’m not a huge fan of the Non-bo with our own Verdicts.

I do realize that you are asking about SB Quellers and not MD ones, so it may seem like a lot of my issues with the card won’t necessarily come up. However, for the matchups where I need to overload on counters, I would prefer just to have access to things like Dispels and additional Negates.

The biggest reason for this (and perhaps the only important reason Quellers aren’t in the board) is that Negates and Dispels have more matchup overlap. I need my counters to be cheap and efficient against decks like burn and Queller is neither of those. On top of that, in the matchups where I need my additional counterspells, I typically need them to be hard counterspells, not temporarily stored under my Queller until a later date. It may seem like people are going to be boarding out all of their removal against UW, but it’s not uncommon to see something like Echoing Truth, or some kind of lingering removal intending to hit a Gideon or a Colonnade.

If you can find room in the board for them, they can definitely be good, I’m just not convinced it’s optimal. Just my two cents. Thanks for watching!

Hi Aaron!

Seas are incredible. I honestly think they are the biggest draw to playing the deck (especially over other control decks). I rarely side any number out and they are frequently a deciding factor for the game’s result. Thanks for watching!

Hi Matt!

Certainly seems like a reasonable line, and I also agree that at that stage of the game most lines look good. Definitely our game to lose at that point! Thanks for watching.

how did the mainboard seas feel? I mean they seem quite good in general vs all the greedy mana. It’s like a mini moon+cantrip to slow people down

1. Played path targeting your own wall, getting basic plains

2. Island, Snap, Path targeting Courser.

3. Attack for 6

4. Pass with Mana Leak up and 3 U and 2 W available mana making the mana denial plan very difficult.

Hi Andy!

At the time my thought was that I wasn’t necessarily digging aggressively for the plains, I was just more concerned with the card advantage the Courser could have accrued over the next few turns while I was still messing around. In addition I figured that my opponent had only 1 card left and that it was likely nothing.

That said, I probably should not have Cryptic’ed the Courser. What was likely the correct line would have been to Cryptic EOT bouncing the Blood Moon, and then killing my opponent with 2 Colonnades. I had enough mana to activate both and my opponent was at 8. The only card I can imagine they would have would be Beast Within, at which point I would just kill them with the beast of the course of the next couple turns. The counter point would be that if my opponent DID have Beast Within, I would be giving them 1 free turn to resolve whatever they may have drawn off the top. However, with the number of cards I had and how high my life total was, that wasn’t really a concern.