Ocelot Pride Midrange goes wide fast with Ocelot Pride and Ajani, Nacatl Pariah tokens, and Orcish Bowmasters punishes our extra card draws, so Feed the Swarm is excellent removal for Ajani, Nacatl Pariah or Guide of Souls before the token engine snowballs. Grafdigger's Cage is a low-cost inclusion that stops any creature recursion plans from Karakas-adjacent value lines without hurting our own mana. We trim one Mishra's Bauble to reduce free Orcish Bowmasters triggers and cut a Cabal Ritual since our clock needs to be faster than grinding through their board, not bigger.

Dimir Tempo's countermagic (Force of Will, Daze) is already respected by our hand-disruption plan, but Surgical Extraction lets us proactively strip Nethergoyf or a key cantrip like Brainstorm from their graveyard, hand, and library while also fighting their escape recursion. Feed the Swarm is a sorcery, so it only answers a resolved creature such as Orcish Bowmasters, Bilbo, Nethergoyf, or Moonshadow on our own turn, and we lose life equal to its mana value. Kaito is only a creature on its controller's turn, so it is never a legal target. We trim the Cabal Ritual since we're less reliant on a huge ritual turn against a deck that is fighting on the stack rather than racing us, and cut two Duress since Thoughtseize and the remaining Duress copies still cover the discard duty we need pre-combo.

This is a pure speed race: they go over the top with Show and Tell into Atraxa, Grand Unifier or Omniscience, so our single-draw-step discard spells are too slow and risk running into Veil of Summer, which punishes black spells by making them hexproof from black. Feed the Swarm can answer a resolved Atraxa, Grand Unifier or Acererak the Archlich before it generates too much value, while Surgical Extraction can strip a key piece like Aluren or a copy of Show and Tell out of their deck/graveyard after it's been used once. We're cutting discard spells rather than any combo pieces since our plan is still to go under them and win first.