I found that only 1 explosion as pc hurts way too much.
Sure, you can break a dimshield chain with it, or you can save it till you can kill the opponent in once.
But there is only 1. By the time you draw it, it is quite likely the opponent has killed you.
Replacing gargoyle for a steal, or minor phoenix for a 2nd explosion hurts the speed, though.
I have no idea how to solve this.
And here I found that one explosion is just fine. Sure, against Aether, it can get a pain in the ass, but there aren't only aether decks in silver. The speed is more important. If the speed is decreased further, than you would need to add fog shields or something else with stalling capability as well.
And according to my experience, if you face an aether deck, there are four possibilities:
1. You stall him to death with discord and blackhole. Since aether decks need lots of quanta, this is a likely outcome.
2. He doesn't draw/play a dim shield in time, even without stalling him. He plays some creatures and you finish him off fast.
3. You use the explosion to break through the dim shield chain to either finish him in one turn or reduce his quanta to a state where he can't use another dim shield.
4. You lose.
Yeah, it's like a gamble against aether decks. But against any other decks, more than one PC (for dusk mantle or fog shield or something similar) is pretty useless most of the time. So to get more speed I chose to not beat every aether deck that i come across. (And looking at the SSPH, it was the right choice) (Aside from that, against some decks PC is just dead weight and with each of them speed and win chance decreases(against mono darkness and mono death you need as much speed as possible if you don't have some more stalling.)
If you want change, replace the explosion and the gargoyle for 2 steals, and replace the minor phoenix for a lava destroyer. Then probably repace one grabroid with flesh recluse. (I haven't tried anything of that, and won't try it because I don't think a second PC will help much at all, but I guess these would be the first things I would try out.)