This deck is a take on the standard Jeskai control decks that takes advantage of spirit synergies.
The main aspect of this deck that is different is the spirits, Spell Queller and Niblis of Frost for their value engines. With 7 other spirits already in the deck, Rattlechains becomes a counterspell to removal on your spirits on top of a body. The deck only has 3 Niblis of Frost because it's a 4 drop and there are a lot of 4s in the deck. The deck also only has 3 Rattlechains as it's not close to as strong without other spirits on the board, and with only 7 other spirits and it's unoptimal to draw multiple of them with no other spirits.
Of course, this deck is a control deck, so the deck has the removal in 4x
Galvanic Bombardment
and 4x Harnessed Lightning. The deck runs no board clears because between Selfless Spirit and our own creatures their effectiveness is heavily reduced.
For card draw, the deck has 4 Glimmer of Genius and 4 Anticipate. It's a lot of card draw, but the deck can afford to run it. Though it's often that some comes out post-board against aggro.
The Torrential Gearhulk and Nahiri, the Harbinger combo is run in the deck. The gearhulk is very strong on it's own as well, and Nahiri is able to also get a Niblis of Frost into a spell to tap a creature to close the game with creatures in some cases. Only 3 Torrential Gearhulks are run mainboard because the deck has good enough board presence with the spirits in the deck as well as Gideon, Ally of Zendikar.
Gideon, Ally and Zendikar is the biggest difference in the deck versus other Jeskai variants. It's a very strong card in many matchups. The reason there is only one in the main is because it's not great against every deck, and against some decks there are better options.
The deck only has 3 regular counterspells mainboard because there are the 4 Spell Queller's and the deck has more board presence than other control decks between the spirits and planeswalkers.
Sideboarding in the deck is built around a few different builds.
One archetype switch is taking out the Niblis of Frosts, Rattlechains, and the Gideon, Ally of Zendikar and turning into a more standard control deck. Depending on the matchup, this can sometimes involve bringing in Dynavolt Towers against midrange decks that have a lot of creatures like Tireless Trackers, Sylvan Advocates, other Spell Quellers, etc. etc.
Another option is to take out the Nahiri, the Harbingers, Torrential Gearhulks, and some amount of the card draw (in my opinion 2 Glimmer of Genius) to bring in the Gideon, Ally of Zendikars, Negates, and Blessed Alliance to leverage board control. This option is often best against the R/G energy decks, in which case you bring in Dovin Baan to turn off their activated energy abilities.
Also against control decks you take out the 8 removal and bring in Jace, Unraveler of Secrets, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Negates, and Dovin Baan. This is the simplest sideboard option and is often the deck's strongest due to the advantage all of the planeswalkers and spirits bring over a deck that is somewhat slower.
Finally against aggro bring out
Void Shatter
s and some combination of Glimmer of Geniuses and Torrential Gearhulks for
Radiant Flames
, Gideon, Ally of Zendikars, and Blessed Alliance
