Very nice blog post, thanks for sharing. And congrats on your win, regardless of how well earned you may think it was!
Like many, I've always thought of Academy as a training level for Arena - or a way to try and entice players to step up and try Arena. I've only played Academy games myself with the base set, which I didn't think was a particularly great experience, and have treated the expansions as extra cards for Arena.
Your post has got me thinking that maybe there is more of a game here, now that the cardbase has expanded a bit. And thanks for sharing your deck, I don't think any Academy deck I've ever played would have had an answer to it