Going to go into the weird cards with explanation.
Hour of Need: this card is great against the plethora of token removal spells as it simply shrugs them off or circumvents them entirely. It's also a great at putting the pressure on. A 4/4 flier for 3 mana at instant speed is the best the format has to offer. Trades with Stormbreath Dragon eats Wingmate Roc and stops Mantis Rider can also hit multiple target for late game blowouts and works to trigger Jeskai Ascendancy
Disdainful Stroke: I pack 2 in the main board as a meta game call. Most decks are running important cards at or above 4cmc. And they very rarely have no targets. Running them in the main has help combat popular life gain cards such as Whip of Erebos and Sorin, Solemn Visitor which are hard to deal with when online pre-board. The card is pretty bad in the mirror but it can counter a treasure cruise depleting their delve fuel. So if you find yourself drawing into both game 1 against tokens sit back and grind your way to victory.
Banishing Light: I thought it was nessesary for this deck to have a way to combat a resolved threat we normally couldn't deal with. In a world of seige rhinos when on the draw it's important to have an answer turn 3. The deck as its sits can rarely comeback from a turn 3 rhino on the draw and to me, that's not a good thing. Between the stokes and the banishing light now we have ways to combat opposing nut draws and early starts.
Mantis Rider: fliers in the format are getting places. It's a great card for pressure and also stays up after an attack to help with convoking Stoke the Flames The haste is nice too, making it a good late game top deck threat, and it is great in the mirror match, getting in for damage and blocking tokens.
Sideboard ________
Deflecting Palm: I think this card is vastly underrated. Redirects burn in the mirror and can also help you fight the huge amount of green decks employing big creatures such as
seige rhino
ætherspouts: this card is the biggest blowout. It's so potent because no one expects it. If the card became popular so would swinging more conservatively making it less potent. As its sits now though it can turn games on their heads.
The fact is, it has won me games
