Yes, it's all about that. The synergy beetween the two cards is simply great (And Rods block jewelry - at least, they should): Opponent should be slowed down enough to let us play.
Anyway, as I said, I haven't tested this deck in serious metagames, just a bunch of plays to be sure that it works per se, without screwing up. It seems it does.
If you're gonna test something like this, i'd like to hear your impressions
Thanks

This is the list i've been tinkering with for a while, but i've stopped messing with it a couple of months ago. It still lacks a viable sideboard since, tough i wold like to try it, i never had the chance to test in a tourney environment (And in casual playing me and my friends don't usually use SB).

4 Root Maze
3 Winter Orb
3 Null Rod

4 Llanowar Elves
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Land Grant

4 Rogue Elephant
4 Vine Dryad
4 Skyshroud Elite
4 Werebear
2 Naturalize
2 Tel-Jilad Justice

4 Rancor
4 Bounty of the Hunt
 
10  Forest

As you can see, this is a strongly lock-headed kind of stompy (At least, as far as a Stompy can go this way).

Locking Elements
These 10 cards are meant to slow down the opponent; Stompy isn't as fast as a combo deck can be (Luckily, no really Dirty'n Fast Combo deck - like Belcher - are used here in Italy, "only" TPS and Dragon); furthermore, these cards can help against Control, not letting these decks unleash their full mana resources

Fast Mana
ESG explains itself, i think. Llanowars have been preferred to Quirion Rangers due to Root Maze, as did Land Grant over Fetchlands

Critters
Rogues and Elites are simply the best available green critters as power/manacost; Vine Dryad can be played for free and at instant speed, making really good emergency blockers; Werebears pump up and give mana.
To be honest, i had to regret about the two last creatures: if I shold restart to test this deck, i would put the Dryads in the SB (Maybe) and kick in Scavenger Folks, while throwin' away Bears (That are seldom 4/4 and give a often non-necessary green mana) and let River Boa take part to the show

Removals
Just a bit, having CC2 not to be blocked by a CotV for 1. 2 Naturalize and 2 Justice to have a bit of manipulation and still being able to destroy enchantments. Since the raising of Oath, it could be a good choice to play 4 Naturalize (Metagame call, anyway)

Pump up the volume
Rancor needs no explanation; Bounty of the Hunt plays for free, and that's enough: with this deck, it's unlikely to have some free mana to play Briar Shield or Giant Growth; moreover, there's no place to add more empowerments, so i did my choice

Manabase
10 Forests. Simple and rock-solid

What you won't see, no matter how long you'll serch for it
Hidden Gibbons. Not in the Metagame we have in Italy: too much artifact, to much combos (Or Togs, which can win in a single turn), too many decks that can simply play around it, tacking an attack or two and then win the game. I need something that i can use no matter what my opponent plays
Wasteland and Strip Mine. This deck is simply too color-intensive to play colorless lands: it would mean get from 10 to 15 lands, and I have no place; packing less than 10 forests wold lead to too many mulligans.
Gaeas Cradle. Some stompys play this card; it can be useful in mid-late game, maybe, but it still doesn't give mana in the opening hand and could improve the need for Mulligan a bit too much. Pros are noth worth the Cons

What I would like to get in
Quirion Rangers. Just a couple. Not to sobstitute Llanowar, but to be beside them. Even with Root Maze in paly they can still untap a creature, and not having the chance to play the land untapped isn't too bad when you can untap a Llanowar to get a mana or a Boa to block one more creature; anyway, if Root Maze is countered/destroyed or i don't draw it, having a bit more of acceleration can be useful. I only just don't know what to pick out to make place for Rangers
River Boas and Scavenger Folks. I already talked about tese cards: I would give them a chance in the place of Bears and Dryads

This would be the base i would start from to build my own stompy, nowadays. Something a bit less "brain-dead" than the good old stompy, hoping to have a deeper impact on the game

I think it's used on your own moxes, Mana Vault and Ring to play them again: sacrifying a bunch of tapped lands you get a higher spell count and a bit of mana

It is 4th in my personal discard list. To clarify, mi Top5 is the one below:

• Duress
• Unmask
• Cabal Therapy
• Distress
• Hymn to Tourach
[/list:u]
Duress is far the best: low-costed, can take away almost any menace the Opponent should play.
Unmask has an excellent discard range, being able to get rid of creatures too, and a good alternative cost: being able to make our opponent discard 2 cards

whe choose on turn one (by making Duress+Unmask) can be an unvaluable starting; on the minus side, it is a bet to be played without being foreplayed by a Duress
Cabal Therapy is obviously great when you're able to Flashback it, but can be a good single shot discard if a Duress already hitted the opponent or if you know your oppo's deck and are worried about a given card (Cabal for FoW is always an option to be considered); great against bad players who Wish for a card without being able to play it (Way too common )
Distress can get rid of any nonland card without the need of whiping away your own hand, but it's a bit too costed: CC 2 is not good, but BB is definitely bad, not allowing this card to be played in multicolored decks, thus making this worst that Unmask (since both are palyable only in Monoblack decks, maybe with a splash).
Tourach made history, but is nowadays not worth playing: way too many decks around that play using their own graveyard; what if I make a W-Mud player discard, to say, Triskelion and another random card, while he has a Welder in his hand? Or make a TPS player discard something that's nor Fow neither Y.Will? I think that aiming is better than quantity, so Tourach is going 5th

I just want to point that according to this: Copy Artifact is Blue just as long as it's on the stack, not while it's in play, so REB is pretty useless once Copy Artifact resolves.
Anyway, let's face wich decks will use this rather than Sculpting Steel: primarly Fish and MonoU. Since MonoU isn't played here in Italy, i'm gonna talk about Fish and leaving it to people who knows that deck better than me.
Fish, at least here, is starting to use CoW on its own, due to the perfect sinergy it has with Manlands and WaStrips, and to flank opponent's ones; so, since Titan doesn't tramples, Fish can block it with creatures and play needed, lost lands, or just go on playing the same Factory over and over to block it.
Against Colossus, the deck can usually pack some bouncers, (Since it's usually played via Tinker, it won't get back till a resolved Regrowth Effect for Tinker, being it Yaw's Will, a lucky TimeTwister or whatever), that can be useful in a wider range of matchups.
So, in conclusion, Copy Artifact is not a bad card. But since thera are more useful cards that are less narrowed, is it worth a change in the SB (Wich slots are never enough)?

I don't think this unrestriction will lead to a massive use of Fork.
Here in Italy we probably have some the most tuned and well built Sligh decks (Probably due to the fact we don't allow proxies), like the ones i posted here, which got T8 in a couple of tournaments.
Well, noone here will use Fork. Modern monoreds (At least, in my experience) don't play "bombs" like Pyroblast anymore, so you just would be able to copy a PoP at best; this could sound amusing, until you consider that:
_ Monored decks usually don't draw: if your hand's empty and you draw Fork instead of a Bolt or creature, you just lose a turn
_ Monored can't manipulate deck: in the case above, if you don't draw PoP, Fork is pretty useless. You draw Lightning Bolt and Fork it: 6 damage for 3 mana; better you had drawn a Bolt or Incinerate instead of Fork, at least you were able to use it as soon as possible.
_Monored usually doesn't have much spare mana: Today's manabases are pretty tight, due to fetches, Mishras and WaStrips, so it's unlikely you'll have double red to fork an opponent's spell.
These are, as usual, my two cents.
maybe what i told doesn't apply in your metagame, but i hope i said something useful

So, the Gap exists and is here to stay, i think. Maybe we shouldn't cal it "gap", but "difference".
US metagame usually allows Proxies: this led to a more homogenous metagame, fewer rogue deck to worry about in a tournament.
EU metagame (Particularly Italian, wich I know better) generally doesn't allows Proxies, so we can see lots of Not-So-Rogue, Metagamized Unpowered Decks like Sligh, Zoo, Goblin, FCG and so on, and powered palyers just can't ignore them thinking "Chances i meet one of this decks in a tourney are poor".
In the US, playing is hard since every deck can play some broken and change a game in a turn.
In the EU, playing is hard since you'll never have an idea of what you'll meet, and deckbuilding and sideboarding are utterly important.
Just my 2 cents, of course

Well, Mongrels can easily, provided they are enchanted with Rancor and/or equipped with a Skullclamp, inflict 7/9 damages, and they're a menace opponent should never understimate: altough suboptimal in a non-madness deck, its controller may be willing to lose a couple of useless cards from hand to keep it alive, so a single burn may not be enough (and it feeds Lavamancers too). Maybe a Keeper Player will think twice before blocking it with an Exalted Angel: if he does Zoo player could kill the Angel, elseway he risks lots of damage. Against deck that use Life as a resource to be spent (Using Skeletal Scryings, Necropotence, Bargain and so on) a single, pumped-up mongrel can be a big problem to deal with.
I repeat, i do admit that it is not the optimal choice, but the simple potential it has is worth at least a chance


That's because you look at Skullclamp and you see a draw engine that kills one of your creatures every time is used.
Just look at it as an empowerment that nets you two cards if the creature dies. Don't be greedy. You don't have to sac your own creatures to draw cards.
Skullclamp turns a 2/3 kird in a 3/2 that will make you draw if killed (And, as well as Rancor, is a reusable resource). Attack me: shoul I take 3 damages, or block and kill it, knowing you'll easily draw at least another one menace, if not two? "A beatstick going to the graveyard is worth two in the hand."  
Obviously, one should know when to use it and when not to and, as I said, not to be greedy: Zoo is not meant to play towards hand size, it has to be a secondary effect. This, of course, leads to the need to run a bunch of 2+ toughness creatures, like said Kirds, Mongrels, Skyshroud Elites, Hidden Gibbons and so on

As usual, my 2 tokencents

I definitely don't think so.
Here in Italy lots of people used to worry about the same deal when darksteel came out: was Trinisphere gonna be the death of Combo?
Wokshop-Trinisphere seemed to be an opening hand that could decide a match on its own.
This proved to be wrong.
Trinisphere can be Forced, Workshop can be Stripped, and getting three mana for a single spell (animate dead for Dragon.dec and a EOT rebuild for TPS) is all you need.
Of course, this anyway led towards more robust Combo decks, resulting in the predominance of UB TPS over UBrw, fo example (Draw7 and Belcher never really did the cut here, whit no-spoiler tournaments and a wider metagame).
In the end, Combos still win tourneys, approximately at the same rate/percentage they used to do

I think this to be an heavy manabase-dependant choice:
If you run plenty of Mountains, Ankh can be a good card. On the other hand, it is definitely a bad card if you pack Fetchlands (too much damage to yourself), WaStrips or Manlands (Since you will likely need to play any lands you draw to replace the ones you get to lose, one way or another)

Here in Italy Sligh is a good choice as a budget deck; we usually don't run Proxy tournaments so our metagames happens to be really wide: from Hulks and 4cc to TPS to WS.dec reaching even White Weenies (And LLLs, Fish, Zoo...).
This means that no archetype has a huge amount of auto-loss, and no-one is too weird
What i'm gonna do is throwin' in a couple of lists of what Sligh is meant to be in Italian metagame, hoping  you can find some useful idea for your own deck. Probably you couldn't use either of these lists as is, but maybe there is some good hint...

This list got 2nd in a 46-people tourney in Genova on 05/30/04:

MAIN DECK
1 [card]Strip Mine[/card]
4 [card]Wasteland[/card]
4 [card]Mishras Factory[/card]
2 [card]Bloodstained Mire[/card]
2 [card]Wooded Foothils[/card]
8 [card]Mountain[/card]
3 [card]Grim Lavamancer[/card]
4 [card]Goblin Vandal[/card]
4 [card]Jackal Pup[/card]
2 [card]Gorilla Shaman[/card]
2 [card]Goblin Cadets[/card]
4 [card]Pyrostatic Pillar[/card]
4 [card]Chain Lightning[/card]
4 [card]Lightning Bolt[/card]
2 [card]Pyrokinesis[/card]
4 [card]Incinerate[/card]
4 [card]Price of Progress[/card]
3 [card]Null Rod[/card]

SIDEBOARD
4 [card]Red Elemental Blast[/card]
3 [card]Bottle Gnomes[/card]
1 [card]Pyrokinesis[/card]
3 [card]Tormods Crypt[/card]
2 [card]Mogg Salvage[/card]
1 [card]Viashino Eretic[/card]
1 [card]Pulverize[/card]

While this one got 8th ina a 44-people tourney in Genova on 03/14/2004:

MAIN DECK
12 [card]Mountain[/card]
4 [card]Mishras Factory[/card]
1 [card]Ghitu Encampment[/card]
1 [card]Strip Mine[/card]
4 [card]Wasteland[/card]
4 [card]Incinerate[/card]
4 [card]Lightning Bolt[/card]
2 [card]Chain Lightning[/card]
4 [card]Price of Progress[/card]
3 [card]Goblin Cadets[/card]
4 [card]Jackal Pup[/card]
3 [card]Goblin Vandal[/card]
2 [card]Gorilla Shaman[/card]
2 [card]Dwarven Blastminer[/card]
4 [card]Pyrostatic Pillar[/card]
4 [card]Null Rod[/card]

SIDEBOARD
3 [card]Pyrokinesis[/card]
2 [card]Crash[/card]
3 [card]Bottle Gnomes[/card]
2 [card]Rack and Ruin[/card]
1 [card]Pyroblast[/card]
4 [card]Red Elemental Blast[/card]

As you can see, these are not Goblin-Based lists (they both run a pretty fair amount of combat creatures) and aren't "brain-dead-playing" decks.
Here we use to pack a bit of control even in Sligh (Null Rods, WaStrips, Pillar) to give this deck a chance against Combo and Control: it's almost impossible being faster than a well built DARgon or TPS, so you have to slow it down while you beat it. Pillar showed to be a great card against almost any blue-based deck and, if wisely played, it hurts our opponent far more than ourselves.
I'm stopping here, for the moment.
Hope you can get something useful from my post. Elseway, i hope i didn't annoyed anyone
Greetings from Italy

I just had the same reaction the first time i saw this card on the Net: conditional, not so useful, and even rare! What the...?
Then i saw it being used.
Yeah, True, if you Stifle a permanent ability, it can be used again next turn, but not so often: many abilities require sacrifying (Pernicious Deed, Fetches, Wasteland...), some other are one-shot, like come-into-play abilities (FTK, Worldgorger...) or Decree of Justice's cycling, or Storm, other ones can be turned into one-shot (What if you Stifle Regeneration when your Oppo is out of Mana?); And, of course, you've got Tempo gaining (Maybe used on Smokestack or Tangle Wire...). I've been playing 2 in my blue Fish for a while, but now i turned to 4 MD: just too useful.
The point is: the use of this card is really very conditional, but can be useful among a lot of different conditions