Some playtesting results:
Played the deck as listed above vs. my brother's Gristlebrand glasscannon deck, which consistently gets turn 2-3 kills against any deck not running control and went 8-1. Hooray for
remand
s.
Removed the
vedalken shackles
for a
psionic blast
. Swapped two of the three
thalia, guardian of thraben
for the
leonin arbiter
s in the sideboard adn cut one maindeck for a
baneslayer angel
(lifelink is relevant when trying to race another aggressive deck, and she looked lonely collecting dust in my binder).
Then played against my friend's Jund deck and went 6-2. Counter magic really shined in this matchup and only really lost when he was able to stick and protect a
liliana of the veil
.
Then played against my other friend's Martyr-Proc deck and got stomped 1-2. The games he won my deck felt helpless against it, his turn 2 being at 32 life with a 6/6 flying, lifelink cleric was too hard to race.
Conclusions this round: need a bit more spot removal maindeck and some sweepers in the sideboard.
Leonin arbiter
s are boss vs greedy three colour decks running 10+ fetchlands.
Cloudshift
is that good; counters spot removal, gets second uses out of my snappers,spellstutter sprites and cliques, and allows for a free attack with St. Traft into blockers for his angel buddy to get in there.
Eiganjo castle
is an excellent "one of" to give St. Traft some protection when attacking.