Balancing your creature/spell count can be tricky, but the rate here is pretty good either way
The goad ability hasLets take not occurred yet because it is not a cast trigger
You can pretty much ignore Cephalid Illusionists activated ability, what were really after is that triggered ability, which has been abused in various 60-card formats over the years
Paying one life to create a 1/1 creature token can often make a huge difference if you need to chump block some huge creature without evasion, but the real dream is to sacrifice five token creatures you may have produced to transform Westvale Abbey into Ormendahl, Profane Prince
Heres how you can collect the whole set
Cards like Rush of Ice or Gideon's Lawkeeper that I normally wouldnt play outside of Limited are suddenly cheap ways to draw cards, create powerful tokens, or buff all your creatures