Spot removal these days is very common. People are playing Hero's Downfall, Silence the Believers, Abzan Charm, and the like (various 3+ CC "kill target creature" spells), as well as the obvious 2cc choices of ultimate price, lightning strike, wild slash, and the like, to "deal with" the mono red deck, and other creature decks (which often cast a 3/3 for 2 of some type).
The other end of this spectrum is the mono-red deck, which goes all in on x/1's, and has the same removal suite of small single target burn spells.
What is good against both of these philosophies? Tokens.
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Token Makers:
So, what are our options for making tokens these days? There are four big players:
We have two good two-drops, a three-drop, and a x-drop, that all have pretty good rates on them. Hordeling Outburst is the "best", and the one seeing the most constructed play. Adding a mana and getting another 1/1 is generally a good deal, so this is the best option for raw power level.
Raise the Alarm is the best two-drop for the deck, it is an instant, so we can play it at the end of turn, hold up other spells (or the threat of them), and keep our opponent on their toes a bit. Dragon Fodder rounds out the two-drop "creatures", and ensures that we can get out of the gates at a non-glacial pace.
Secure the Wastes is just a good card at any X above 2, and is not horrific at 2. It's a late-game hedge, and a early game filler card. It's _also_ a different creature type, for what is most likely our nemesis game 1:
Finally, we have one more just generally awesome card:
Alot of token decks use these two cards as a second line of attack, but I don't think they are a very good idea main-deck. The opponent has no good ways to use their little kill spells, or big kill spells, but these cards give them a reasonable outlet for their mana, and card efficiency.
NO!
We don't really want to play God's Willing to save our Mentors, because it doesn't save us from their wraths, we have to have mana open. We're even going so far as not including one of the biggest threats in the format:
Where's the Beef?
So, we have all these little dudes, what's the payoff though? If we have a 1/1 token, and they play basically any creature, they can block pretty profitably, and chump attacking one of my guys away to get a little damage in is not the kind of card advantage we want to see from getting our "2:1" by casting Dragon Fodder.
This card has all sorts of synergies with just the cards we've covered so far:
1) They all trigger a loot when you cast them (unlike a creature)
2) They get multi-buffed by any other non-creatures you cast
3) They are non-creature spells, so they buff your other tokens when you cast them
But we'll see as we go along that this is just the beginning of the possibilities with this card. We'll talk about them more in the later sections.
Elspeth's ultimate ability (+2/+2 to all your creatures) is a great buff for your overall strategy if your opponent cannot interact with what she's doing, but there are a few other cards that pay you off for having a bunch of individual 1/1's, that I'd classify more as "one-ofs" than "four-ofs", and they are:
I think both of these cards are exceptional one-ofs. They are legendary, so you don't want to draw two of either, and both of them really pay you off for having a bunch of little guys, either by letting you draw a bunch of cards, or by making them bigger. They make your instant guys into huge threats, they're non-creature spells that stick around (and are both sticks), can be drawn before or after your creatures to good effect, and both have a secondary ability that is not terrible (and people likely have no idea that they exist)
Both of these enchantments also dramatically increase the threat that having two tokens in play (a minimum investment) represents on your side of the board. Military Intelligence is a super-cheap spell that can get some card volume into your hand (so you can loot away the worst). Dictate is a super-big threat, that adds to your instant-speed plays, either as a combat trick, or to sneak it in while your control opponent is tapped out, to make everything else you do must-answer.
I would rather have one of each of these, than four of any one. The variety of casting costs, and effects, is much better than having two of any one of them. It's possible that we should play more than one copy of some of these, but for the time being, I'd start with having one of each.
Also, I'd like to state here that having raw card drawing is very important when paired with Jeskai Ascendancy. If you have one card in your hand, or even two, having every spell you cast let you draw and discard is not very exciting. You may already have two good cards in your hand, or just one, and you don't get much value out of it. But if you draw an extra card or two, you suddenly have a few cards that aren't what you're looking for, or just an extra land or two, that you can easily decide to discard in favor of another random card.
Every extra random card you draw greatly empowers your future loots, no matter what it is.
It's also really important, as well as cool, that every spell we cast lets us loot with Ascendancy, which makes any of them that draw cards that much more powerful. Seeker of the way is powerful, but it's not great late, and doesn't really do anything, nor does it at least trigger a loot to get rid of some of our other dead draws late (a bunch of extra land).
We can't overdo it with +1/+1 effects ("anthems"), but having a couple of the most powerful ones, or are multifunctional, sounds pretty awesome. (We want "action" to draw into, and not just have a board of pump effects and lands)
Other Spells
All of our "creatures" put a card in the graveyard on resolution. (cutting a mana off the Cruise)
Jeskai Ascendancy loots with every spell we cast, fueling up our graveyard without even having to cast the spells.
Our card drawing and pump effects either are winning us the game (by drawing cards or pumping our guys), or have been killed and are reducing our costs here.
The other busted draw option is:
1) It costs double-blue. Blue is our splash color, because we have so many white and red mana symbols, and double-white and double-red at some levels.
2) It always costs two mana. I expect the colorless portion of the delve spells to be near-zero here, and we can't make this spell cost one if we need it to.
3) It only gives us two cards instead of three. Having an extra card is very important when we're looting non-stop, for reasons above.
Now, objectively, Dig has some advantages, and may be a superior card:
A) It finds specific cards better. Like Ascendancy so we can start looting for example.
B) It finds better cards. We'll have probably one good and one average-or-better card after casting this spell, where we'll have a land, a average card, and another card after casting cruise.
C) It's an instant. We have several instants in the deck already, and instants can be combat tricks in this deck.
D) You can wait to cast this until you know what you need at the end of your opponent's turn.
I'm not sure at this point which of these is "better". I think you could have a mix, but I'm probably starting with 4x Cruise, or 3xCruise/1xDig for the reasons stated above.
This card is a reason why Dragon Fodder is a comparable card to Raise the Alarm, even though Raise seems clearly superior on it's face: it's an instant, a different creature type to Hordeling Outburst, etc... The bonus is that red goblins tap for the "R" in the casting cost of Stoke the Flames, not just the "2", which can cause this spell to be free instead of costing "RR" (still a great deal, admittedly).
Hordeling Outburst is absolutely absurd with this card also, especially on turn four. Tap 1RR, cast Hordeling Outburst. Tap the three goblins, and your remaining mana to convoke out your Stoke the Flames, killing one of their big guys, looting (again) with Ascendancy, etc.
Stoke is super powerful with these tokens, because often you can't attack with the creatures anyway, either on their end-of-turn, or utilizing your summoning sick guys. When your 1/1 guys that cost you (often less than) half a card, and get double-pumped by spells with Ascendancy, also tap for mana, things start to get crazy.
Having a "free" burn spell is an awesome removal spell in a deck like this. We need some interaction, we need to remove blockers, or threats. We might need to get some damage to the face in to close a game out, and 4 is a massive number.
The Rest?
We have between 2 and 4 "slots" assuming we want to play 24 lands (we may want more land), so we have some room to play some random stuff. I would expect these spells to be additional "interaction" spells with your opponent, and we have a ton of options to play with.
There are a few things we want out of our spell:
1) That it is a non-creature spell. We don't want to open ourselves up to creature removal main-deck. We want to trigger our Ascendancy.
2) We want it to not be dead. We want to be able to cast our spell, have it do something, and move on with our life. Wild Slash is not the best in this scenario, because there are decks with creatures, where Wild Slash doesn't kill their threats. Lightning Strike seems better in most cases, because we'd rather do one more damage if we're going to the face, and we have the little guys taken care of to some extent.
3) We want this spell to do something we care about, really answer a problem that we need answered.
4) We want it to be cheap. Things we can cast early, or while leaving up just a mana or two are very important.
I would say Negate, Disdainful Stroke, Anticipate, and Lightning Strike are the front-runners.
Problems we'll face:
Since all but one of these is a non-creature spell, I would say Negate is perhaps the best answer. Disdainful Stroke is commonly played as a general-purpose answer to scary stuff other people do, but it doesn't answer the cheap stuff, and doesn't answer the cheap creatures.
I like that negate counters all the sweepers, and counters their ways of interacting with our enchantment(s). It doesn't deal with Siege Rhino, or Ojutai, but hopefully we can end of turn something big, and punish them with an enchantment on our turn.
Lands:
Taplands are an important part of standard these days. These are our "one drops", helping us be able to cast our spells (giving us the right mana symbols), and doing some scrying to "smooth things out."
We need lands that come into play untapped our deck. We have to start casting spells on turn two, and these fix our mana, and Flooded Strand helps enable our delve spells. We might include one Evolving wilds, or Mana Confluence, to help our mana (we have double-red, double-blue, and double-white costs in our spells)
The reason we're using the RW painland and RW temples to the max is because we have UW fixing from Flooded Strand, and we have the most Red and White mana symbols in our deck. (16-24 red depending on how you count stoke, 20 white, and just 12 blue before the 2-5 "flex slots" are considered)
V1 of this deck:
Tokens:4x Dragon Fodder (1R)
4x Raise the Alarm (1W)
4x Hordeling Outburst (1RR)
4x Secure the Wastes (XW)
1x Elspeth, Sun's Champion (4WW)
Pump:
4x Jeskai Ascendancy (UWR)
1x Spear of Heliod (1WW)
1x Dictate of Heliod (3WW)
Draw:
1x Bident of Thassa (2UU)
1x Military Intelligence (1U)
4x Treasure Cruise (7U, Delve)
Removal:
4x Stoke the Flames (2RR - Convoke 4 damage instant)
3x Some Interaction
Lands:4x Mystic Monastery (UWR tap)
4x Temple of Triumph (WR tap, scry)
2x Temple of Epiphany (UR tap, scry)
4x Flooded Strand (UW Fetch)
4x Battlefield Forge (RW Pain)
2x Island
2x Plains
1x Mountain
1x Evolving Wilds
Sideboard:
One of the reasons I like this deck is that people have a ton of terrible cards in their main-deck against you.The sideboard is something that can really change what your deck is doing, and you can do it in a ton of ways:
Plan Alpha: Beat Creature Decks:
Does this sound like a fun plan against guys with creature swarms? We deploy our enchantments, sweep them up, deploy our instant creatures, and go to town. Dragon Fodder likely comes out in this scenario.
Plan Beta: Beat -x/-x effects. (Control)
These guys have the magic 4 toughness to beat all the sweepers before 5cc.
Plan Gamma: Vs no removal
We probably can't do all of these, but we have a core to this deck that can take many different shells. I think the tokens are the best for Game One, but post-sideboard, we can enable most anything we'd want to try and do, depending on what our enemy can try to answer our main-deck strategy with....
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