In the mirror, both players are executing the same landfall engine, so the game comes down to who can present the most threatening late-game board state. Surrak, Elusive Hunter is a key differentiator — as a legendary creature with evasion-adjacent abilities, it can push through damage in board stalls where the ground is clogged with similarly-sized creatures. The additional Mossborn Hydra gives you a scalable threat that outpaces the opponent as the land count grows, matching their sideboard plan. Trim the singleton Planar Engineering and one copy each of Keen-Eyed Curator and Meltstrider's Resolve — the sorcery is slow in a race, the Curator has diminishing returns at three copies when both players are flooding the board, and Meltstrider's Resolve as a combat trick loses value when your opponent's creatures are the same size as yours.

Jeskai Control aims to answer your threats one-for-one with No More Lies, Lightning Helix, and Get Lost while burying you in card advantage through Stock Up and Consult the Star Charts. Surrak, Elusive Hunter provides a threat that is difficult to interact with cleanly, putting pressure on their counterspell mana. Origin of Metalbending and Pawpatch Formation give you instant-speed plays to pressure their end step and punish tapped-out turns, keeping you threat-dense through their sweepers. Trim Planar Engineering and Keen-Eyed Curator, as expensive sorcery-speed spells are too slow and easy to counter, and Meltstrider's Resolve underperforms when they're not attacking you.

Dimir Excruciator is a controlling midrange deck that pressures your hand with Duress and Bitter Triumph while setting up Doomsday Excruciator and Superior Spider-Man as threats that can invalidate your board state. Your landfall engine is resilient to spot removal, so prioritize keeping your creature density high and your land drops consistent. Surrak, Elusive Hunter comes in as a threat that generates value while being difficult to answer cleanly, and the Origin of Metalbending lessons give you flexible interaction against their discard-heavy gameplan. Trim the singleton Planar Engineering and some copies of Meltstrider's Resolve since their value diminishes against a deck packing heavy hand disruption that can strip them before you use them. Heritage Reclamation hedges against their graveyard-based threats like Doomsday Excruciator recurring or generating value from the bin.