SwaggyMcSwagglepants - I nust confess that i doubted aether cial due to how poor it is as a top deck in a deck that has 0 card draw. However as a 4 of it comes up wnough in your opening hand to do serious work, and given that im on 8 counterspells and 4 removal spells, allowing it to tick up to 3 counters is not hard. Im glad you suggested it and that i tried it.

As a general note, dark confidant is my go-to 2 drop after jace because card advantage is important. With aether vial i should have the tempo i need to play all the extra creatures i draw. I do worry about the damage i will take though.

If dark confidant doesnt work out I will test Harbinger of the Tides because vialing that is silly.

For your controlling two-drops problem, I could only think of a couple of cards.

Firstly, Thalia's pretty damn good. I don't think I need to explain it much. You'd probably want to drop a few spells if you include it, though.

Secondly, Selfless Spirit is great against removal and sweepers.

Thirdly, amusingly, Quickling could be used pretty well. It could not only save your stuff from removal (hopefully after it serves its purpose) and allow you to get another ETB trigger, but also has the nice interaction with Tidehollow Sculler and Spell Queller. Stonecloaker is a similar alternative, but costs 1 more and may therefore be unusable.

Though not a 2-drop, I could also see Fiend Hunter in this deck, but the 3-drop slot is probably oversaturated as it is.

I'm surprised that you're not running 4x Delay and 0x Mana Leak just seems better for this specific build?

Bob is working quite nicely at the moment. I realise Quickling could be great though. There are so many options in esper.

ddxxe - Delay is great here but I have to have the stranglers to back it up which is really risky business. The chance of me having a delay or a strangler is high. The chance of me having both? not great. If I delay a spell and the opponent gets to tick it down to 0 it's actually a huge blow.

By far the next best processor in your colors is Blight Herder. You can make it a more controlling, processor orientated deck if you play some. Of course, that would change some of your card choices, especially Confidant. That's just an option, though, and I'm not sure which build would be better.

As DarkLaw said, I think this deck needs more processors.

You can't enable processors reliably enough, and quickly enough in modern. Tidehollow Sculler dies, you don't find a Path to Exile, the threat you Delay comes off suspend, your Spell Queller eats a Lightning Bolt. It happens - frequently in fact. I tested the deck extensively with 4-drops. Notably Ulamog's Nullifier and Restoration Angel. Over a period of 1 week of solid playing I did not ONCE get to cast Ulamog's Nullifier with the counterspell trigger. I was on 23 lands as well and many times I drew him and couldn't even physically cast him. If it's not the lack of exiled cards, it's the lack of lands and vice versa. Just a nightmare. The more hoops you have to jump through, the worse a deck becomes, in my opinion.

If I were to add Blight Herder I would certainly need 24 lands, and also, I'm not sure why I would because a 4/5 that comes with 3 1/1s isn't even that good in modern. Not for 5 mana. I mean people are producing 4/5s for 1 or 2 mana in modern. A bunch of tokens and a mediocre body won't be winning me the control game or the aggro game so I'm not sure what it achieves.

If I were to add more processors I would go back to Ulamog's Nullifier but I've had very negative experiences before and I'm not sure I'm realy to repeat them.

Testing a hatebears versions. Could be faster.

Ulamog's Nullifier? Not expensive, and seems like a mix of queller and strangler on curve.

tested for a pretty long period and found it hard to reach 4 mana and also hard to exile 2 cards. it was really difficult to play favourably.

Ok then. Nice deck!