Below are some of my personal notes from the matchup:
Early on in the video, you see that I opt to Port a Tundra over a Volcanic Island, and my creature gets Lightning Bolted immediately afterwords. I had the read that Seth had a Lightning Bolt based on how he played in previous turns. While taking him off red seems optimal on paper, if I’m pretty sure he has Lightning Bolt, then the Port activation actually does nothing; he will just cast the Lightning Bolt in response and move on. By taking the line I did, I actually deny him a mana.
I bluff Vial activations at multiple times throughout the match. UWR Delver and UWR Stoneblade decks can be very similar. I was not 100% sure if he had Stifle in his deck. I wanted to do Stifle checks from time to time to make sure an important spell could actually get through.
Once Seth is on 4 lands, you’ll notice that I opt to take him off of WW instead of RR. It is much more likely that he has something like a Council’s Judgment in his deck than something like Sulfuric Vortex. Even if he has Sulfurix Vortex, he certainly isn’t going to play it while at two life!
So the Council’s Judgment situation… I think the card had been out for about two weeks, and it hadn’t picked up too much steam yet or gotten a ton of exposure. Seth was an excellent player, he was just totally confused about how the card worked. When he called a judge for clarification, the judges were avoiding coaching him (i.e. telling him that he could vote for the same thing I did), and they largely could only read the card back to him. We had a good laugh about it afterwards.
For those of you who frequently board out Flickerwisp, I imagine that by watching this matchup served as a great lesson for why not to do that. At most points in the game, a Flickerwisp off the top would have been the end of Seth, and the commentators definitely picked up on that.
