Ephara, the Azorius Goddess

First, understand that everything I say comes viewed through MY personal lens, and as such may not apply to most people. I personally HATE goodstuff decks, and when it comes to EDH so my comments are going to reflect that personal deckbuilding philosophy. I'm very married to building something thematic, and at this point this deck doesn't even look goodstuff . . . it's just randomstuff. The first thing I'd do is find some cohesive theme/plan to build around.

Ephara lets you draw a card the turn after you cast a creature. But it's any turn, not yours, so I myself might take a look at running an all flash deck and maybe instant-speed token producers. Doing so A. draws you cards B. keeps people unsure of what your board state is since you can flash stuff in at any time, and C. lets you leave mana free for countering scary stuff.

Aff Guard Hound, Angel of Salvation, Angel of the Dire Hour, Aven Mindcensor, Celestial Crusader, Containment Priest, Deceiver Exarch, Deputy of Acquittals, Draining Whelk, Faerie Harbinger, Hushwing Gryff, Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, and Masako the Humorless are all decent flash creatures I pulled just from the first page of searching gatherer.

Heliod makes tokens at instant speed, as does join the ranks, Benevolent offering, cackling counterpart, field of souls, Hoofprints of the stag, kjeldoran oupost, luminarch ascension, master's call, midnight haunting, mimic vat, mirror mockery (on an oppent's creature), mobilization, myr turbine, Nuisance Engine, Pentavus, pride of the clouds, raise the alarm, repel intruders, rootborn defenses, springjack pasture, summoner's bane, summoning station, supplant form, talrand, sky summoner, tetravus, thopter squadron, Thraben Doomsayer, throne of empires, trading post, and white sun's zenith.

Basically you can play so can draw a card on every player's turn. And since you're doing that, you could take advantage of it with stuff like Archmage Ascension which would fill with counters pretty quickly, Psychosis Crawler would deal okay damage, and Chasm Skulker would get a lot of counters

Beyond that, Ephara is indestructible, so why not use that? Pariah and Pariah's Shield would be good defense. Add some non-creature permanents to get devotion and also add some defense like propoganda and ghostly prison, collective restraint and norn's annex and you're suddenly hard to attack.

I'd say you need ramp to get stuff out faster and because you're going to be casting spells on each person's turn. Azorius keyrun, signet, cluestone, sol ring, and talisman of progress, a some removal, etc.

Just quick throwing all of that stuff together gives me: http://www.mtgvault.com/doctorhydrogen/decks/ephara-god-the-polis/

thank for the tip. for the life of me I could seem to find a good theme for Ephara, i'll try to improve on the deck as soon as I can.

thank again for the advice doctorhydrogen ;)

No problem. If you want to diversify your land base a little manabasecrafter.com is super useful to see what your options are.

Couple of small things:

I'd run Detention Sphere over Banishing Light. Same converted mana cost, but Detention Sphere can sometimes get lucky and hit two things if there are two Nyleas or something in play, or a clone, and I've used it to delete a swarm of like 50 tokens before. There's really no downside to switching and decent upside.

Rootborn Defenses does mostly the same thing as Bar the Door at the same cost, plus you can drop it in response to a board wipe and save your guys, plus it might make an extra token if you've got one out.

I had Rootborn Defenses in the deck, but I over looked it at the moment. Thanks again.