One thing we've seen happen in the past is that when a popular supplemental product comes out shortly after a Standard set, the Standard set is sometimes forgotten and under-opened as everyone spends their money on the supplemental product
At their best, shield counters provide an easy way for a card to two-for-one your opponent, forcing them to expend one card to remove the shield counter and another card to finally kill the New Capenna creatures
Luckily, there's a good handful of Equipment that provides protection to Squall to make it harder to remove
Whenever you attack a player, Goad target creature that player controls
Primal EmpathyPrimal Empathy does exactly what the deck wants
There are times where this will backfire, but I think the biggest advantage of this over Pyrostatic Pillar as a maindeck card is that you cant get locked under it by a bigger creature deck as easily because you can just chump block with it and go back to casting spells