This is the work in progress effort on my Chasm Scales deck, which seeks to exploit the relationship between Chasm Skulker and Hardened Scales.

The entire battle plan typically goes off around turn 5, once the Draw and Skulker engine has been established. The engine is filled with easily replaceable parts, and it's very difficult to take out all of the parts at once. Between lands, enchantments, aura's and creatures, there is a lot going on.

Because of this, there isn't a great deal of need for counter-spell. If a spell takes out one of my Hardened Scales or a Chasm Skulker, it's not game ending by a long shot. Taigam's Scheming keeps the deck flowing in the direction I want it too in order to quickly replace parts and find the answers I need to whatever is on the board.

Hornet's Nest does a great job of slowing down the board, but the game plan is to Savage Punch the Hornet's Nest into the biggest baddie on the board, which will create a wall for fliers and walkers alike.

The second reason to run light on counter-spell is the Chasm Skulker's natural ability to weasel out of the danger zone in this deck. It's a fairly simple matter to get it to 5/5 or higher the turn after it comes down, but the real point is that once it has 3 counters on it, it's out of Lightening Strike range. It will take a bit of effort to take it off of the field from this point, and the most effective abilities will take it down regardless of if it's 5/5 or 10/10 or 100/100, without popping the skulkers. Because of this, it's more important to try to bring up a back-up skulker to drop once the first one pops. By the time the second one drops, the counter engine is already rolling and it should be well on it's way to safety.

Cards that aren't adding much to this deck at the moment include Kruphix and the Prophets of Kruphrix. First, this deck runs pretty smoothly with 5 lands the entire game. Secondly, the wonderful "Flash into Hornet's Nest" as a surprise blocker trick is a lot less useful than having hornet's nest out there anyway. Having my creatures all untap each turn, while nice, is not super useful since the big blocker, Hornets Nest won't be tapped anyway.

Kruphrix himself just builds up unspendable mana. I've finished games with 36 colorless floating and really couldn't spend it if i wanted to.

I have removed Kruphrix and Prophets, as they did not add much and have become dead-draws.

I've also ruled out Stratus Walk as my answer to flyers. That belongs to Bear-Punching the hornet's nest.

Update II: Noting a few variants on this deck that I have come up with...

Gainsay and Stubborn Denial together are a solid counter-Jeskai Ascendency sideboard.

Mistcutter Hydra is in the maybeboard for hard hitting power, having haste, but only really viable as a 5 drop.