My early little homebrew decks weren't exactly competitive but fun to play decks and obviously a lot of cards have been printed since the last time I updated the lists I ran back then. However, I am trying to give all those old decks a bit of an upgrade, keeping the essence and some key cards the same while using new cards to enhance the flavor they originally had. Of course, I don't want to go overboard on it, as the decks will only see occasional play when my group of friends want to remember those times.
The deck I'm currently trying to give a bit of an overhaul is a white cleric themed deck, pretty much strictly worse than life gain since it was build starting Samite Healer and the concept of preventing damage. The original deck ran a lot of reprints of the card to increase the 'flavor'. The idea was to flood the board wit clerics to create somewhat of a board stall, using Congregates to recover and pump up my life total until I was ready to play my 'combo': Soltari Visionary + Phyrexian Splicer + Serra Avatar. Visionary often could do the trick on it's own, but it was always nice to try and get the biggest possible hit in and see how far I could push my opponent into the negatives.
Of course, the playgroup was quite casual and thus I have more fond memories of the deck doing well than it probably deserves. I ran a few Wall of Nets and Humble as my means of removal, so that should tell a fair bit.
Anyways, I've gone and roughly gathered the cards that I played back then and looked up some of the newer clerics to enhance the deck and so far I have it upgraded to this state:
So the essence of the deck is still there, having Samite Healer there as the card which started the deck so to say and I did expand the clerics around it to synergize a tad better. Suture Priest is a new but effective inclusion since its still a bit of a pillow fort build. When push comes to shove Anointer of Champions pump up our Soltari Visionary to push through extra damage. While Hanweir Militia Captain helps us to go wider in clerics than before.
Mentor of the Meek is no cleric but provides us with needed card draw and works well with the Militia Captain late game.
Removal wise I switched to Banisher Priest since it's a cleric and Reprisal as my other means of dealing with things on a budget.
Feldon's Cane was in the original deck as well so I could recur my Congregates, though the latter I reduced to only three in this build to free up a slot. Angelic Chorus was in the deck as well and remains there as a single copy, budget kept me from adding more of these in the past as well as now.
When it comes to the landbase I made two minor changes, adding Starlit Sanctum to make use of our clerics in other ways and Scoured Barrens just to have some black to trigger the other ability of the Sanctums should it be needed.
Probably the most random new inclusion is Murder Investigation. Aside from Serra Avatar our biggest threat is Doubtless One, so I like the idea of sticking an Investigation on those to 'protect' them. If I have Suture Priests out I even have the option to use Reprisal on my own creature to pop the Investigation. And even without Suture Priest it's likely that there will be enough tokens to swing in.
I might still switch the numbers on Congregate and Reprisal, since the removal might be a tad bit more relevant.
The deck can flood pretty quickly with the fair amount of low drops so I was confortable enough with going down one land. I might still want to switch it up so I have a third Scoured Barrens, the fact that it comes in tapped does hurt the deck a tad but it enabling Starlit Sanctum might be worth it.
A super big Serra Avatar is no longer the game plan as it was in the original deck, so going down another Congregate isn't too bad and because of that Feldon's Cane can be ticked down to a singleton as well. The latter probably could be cut entirely but it does bring back our limited removal.
Anointer of Champions helps speed up the deck a bit with being a decent one drop and being able to pump our shadow cleric is quite worthwhile. Which is also why a third Soltari Visionary was brought in.
This deck looks good, but I have a few suggestions.
I would be remiss if I didn't recommend Beacon of Destiny. You can take something like a Banefire, redirect it, and then use your Battlefield Medics to keep the Beacon alight.
I used to play Clerics a long time ago. One of my favorite combos was Rotlung Reanimator + Wrath of God when you have a few clerics out (or Day of Judgment), creating tons of Zombies while clearing the opponent's board. You can make the deal even sweeter by adding Patriarch's Bidding to gain back all the Clerics you lose.
It's quite different from your deck, but one of the things I wanted to do was to make use of all that life that Clerics are capable of gaining. My version is a slow burn deck with a lot of removal while you build up your (un)holy army of Clerics. With all the life gain from Soul Warden, Suture Priest and Extort via Blind Obedience, the life loss from Sign in Blood becomes negligible. I also put in 4x Scoured Barrens for the 1 life there, as well (even as tempting as Forsaken Sanctuary was because of the matching flavor :)). Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim has really good synergy with Rotlung Reanimator, and should be able to activate her second ability fairly easily in this deck. If a total board wipe is too mean, I'd probably replace it with something like Dark Prophecy to just keep drawing cards.
Ideally it'd run a game of attrition constantly removing the opponent's board of creatures until you can overwhelm them with Clerics or an army of 2/2 Zombies buffed with Orzhov Pontiff or Zealous Persecution. I didn't put Westvale Abbey in the build because of it's price currently, but I'd probably only run one or two, if I did, and it could be another great finisher. It's worth noting that a lot of the best Clerics share the 3-mana slot, but it was never a deck I wanted to have a high mana curve because I always liked playing a lot of removal. Rotlung Reanimator is one of my pet cards, so I always end up building Clerics around him. The Sign in Blood could realistically be taken out for Hymn to Tourach or Duress to add a bit more control.
Also, I didn't notice until after writing this but it seems Patriarch's Bidding has gone up a lot, more than likely due to EDH. It's funny because Rise of the Dark Realms is cheaper and lets you kidnap your opponent's graveyard, too. More expensive to play, so I'd probably remove a Sign in Blood and add in another land to compensate for that.
Anyway, this is just my take on Clerics. I know it's a far reach from where you were going, but it was a deck I loved playing way back when and I was excited to share my thoughts on a Cleric deck in the current day!
That's definitely an interesting take on the deck as well, though my version is pretty much a mono-white Cleric deck, pretty much splashing the Scoured Barrens so I can enable Starlit Sanctum. I ran Sanctum before just not with mana to activate the second ability. Adding more Barrens would give me more chances to enable it, but didn't want the tap lands to slow the deck too much, since it tends to start off slow as a pillowfort like deck.
Nowadays the deck is more geared towards life gain with builds like the Soul Sister's deck, which obviously has it's benefits since the damage prevention version can sit idle a fair bit. In one of the early incarnations of the deck, which was around 2000 I even had a playset of Samite Healer, Femeref Healer and Clergy en-Vec, which made for quite the board stall so to say. Especially since in the casual meta sweepers weren't used too much at that time. The idea I have with this deck now is to simply give it some cheap upgrades and make it a tad bit more efficient while keeping roughly the same strategy for the deck.
Its a nice combo to have when you are going for a more aggro approach for sure. I don't feel it's something I want to include in my version though, as it would start taking away a lot from what the deck originally did. I want to keep the spirit of one of my first decks going and just update/upgrade it with newer cards while not taking away too much from the original game plan. I did try to upgrade the deck before and well I ended up more and more transitioning into Soul Sisters, to the point I had all the cards I once played sitting in a box and a budget Soul Sisters deck in my sleeves. Not that the Sisters deck was bad, but I wanted to keep the nostalgia going of the original. So I sleeved it back up to where it once used to be, with some exceptions of cards that got traded away and/or went into other decks, but I have since worked on getting all the key pieces back together. Once I finished that I just went to look for cards that fit my theme and strategy, using those to enhance the deck a bit more. The main issue with the deck was that it stalled games too much, so I'm trying to speed it up with Anointer for example. The old 'combo' is still present in the deck but it does mainly rely on preventing damage while the cleric with shadow does go for the kill.
I know that it rules out a fair bit of suggestions since I want to stay true to the core of the deck, but sometimes you can get great ideas from people of cards you haven't considered before. The Beacon and Barrage suggested earlier are good examples of that and perfect fits for what I'd like in my deck.
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The deck I'm currently trying to give a bit of an overhaul is a white cleric themed deck, pretty much strictly worse than life gain since it was build starting Samite Healer and the concept of preventing damage. The original deck ran a lot of reprints of the card to increase the 'flavor'. The idea was to flood the board wit clerics to create somewhat of a board stall, using Congregates to recover and pump up my life total until I was ready to play my 'combo': Soltari Visionary + Phyrexian Splicer + Serra Avatar. Visionary often could do the trick on it's own, but it was always nice to try and get the biggest possible hit in and see how far I could push my opponent into the negatives.
Of course, the playgroup was quite casual and thus I have more fond memories of the deck doing well than it probably deserves. I ran a few Wall of Nets and Humble as my means of removal, so that should tell a fair bit.
Anyways, I've gone and roughly gathered the cards that I played back then and looked up some of the newer clerics to enhance the deck and so far I have it upgraded to this state:
2 Anointer of Champions
3 Banisher Priest
3 Battlefield Medic
3 Doubtless One
4 Hanweir Militia Captain
0 Westvale Cult Leader (Flip Side)
4 Samite Healer
2 Soltari Visionary
2 Suture Priest
2 Mentor of the Meek
1 Serra Avatar
ENCHANTMENTS [1]
1 Angelic Chorus
2 Murder Investigation
ARTIFACTS [2]
2 Feldon's Cane
2 Phyrexian Splicer
SORCERIES [3]
3 Congregate
2 Reprisal
LANDS [22]
15 Plains
2 Starlit Sanctum
3 Secluded Steppe
2 Scoured Barrens
So the essence of the deck is still there, having Samite Healer there as the card which started the deck so to say and I did expand the clerics around it to synergize a tad better. Suture Priest is a new but effective inclusion since its still a bit of a pillow fort build. When push comes to shove Anointer of Champions pump up our Soltari Visionary to push through extra damage. While Hanweir Militia Captain helps us to go wider in clerics than before.
Mentor of the Meek is no cleric but provides us with needed card draw and works well with the Militia Captain late game.
Removal wise I switched to Banisher Priest since it's a cleric and Reprisal as my other means of dealing with things on a budget.
Feldon's Cane was in the original deck as well so I could recur my Congregates, though the latter I reduced to only three in this build to free up a slot. Angelic Chorus was in the deck as well and remains there as a single copy, budget kept me from adding more of these in the past as well as now.
When it comes to the landbase I made two minor changes, adding Starlit Sanctum to make use of our clerics in other ways and Scoured Barrens just to have some black to trigger the other ability of the Sanctums should it be needed.
Probably the most random new inclusion is Murder Investigation. Aside from Serra Avatar our biggest threat is Doubtless One, so I like the idea of sticking an Investigation on those to 'protect' them. If I have Suture Priests out I even have the option to use Reprisal on my own creature to pop the Investigation. And even without Suture Priest it's likely that there will be enough tokens to swing in.
I might still switch the numbers on Congregate and Reprisal, since the removal might be a tad bit more relevant.
-1 Feldon's Cane
-1 Congregate
-1 Plains
+2 Anointer of Champions
+1 Soltari Visionary
The deck can flood pretty quickly with the fair amount of low drops so I was confortable enough with going down one land. I might still want to switch it up so I have a third Scoured Barrens, the fact that it comes in tapped does hurt the deck a tad but it enabling Starlit Sanctum might be worth it.
A super big Serra Avatar is no longer the game plan as it was in the original deck, so going down another Congregate isn't too bad and because of that Feldon's Cane can be ticked down to a singleton as well. The latter probably could be cut entirely but it does bring back our limited removal.
Anointer of Champions helps speed up the deck a bit with being a decent one drop and being able to pump our shadow cleric is quite worthwhile. Which is also why a third Soltari Visionary was brought in.
I would be remiss if I didn't recommend Beacon of Destiny. You can take something like a Banefire, redirect it, and then use your Battlefield Medics to keep the Beacon alight.
I'd also recommend Coordinated Barrage for spot removal.
On the other hand, I'll be adding Suture Priest to my own Cleric deck.
By the lovely AWOL of Damnation Studios.
I'm also a big fan of Fiend Hunter, Grand Abolisher, Master Apothecary, and Pious Evangel. has received a lot of love over the years. It's probably too expensive for casual, but Westvale Abbey is a wonderful finisher for a deck like Clerics.
If I were trying to create a casual budget Clerics deck today, I'd probably end up with something like this:
2x Evolving Wilds
7x Plains
4x Scoured Barrens
2x Starlit Sanctum
7x Swamp
Creatures (20)
3x Soul Warden
3x Suture Priest
3x Hanweir Militia Captain
2x Mikaeus, the Lunarch
2x Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim
2x Fiend Hunter
3x Rotlung Reanimator
2x Orzhov Pontiff
3x Blind Obedience
4x Doom Blade
3x Zealous Persecution
2x Day of Judgment
2x Patriarch's Bidding
4x Sign in Blood
It's quite different from your deck, but one of the things I wanted to do was to make use of all that life that Clerics are capable of gaining. My version is a slow burn deck with a lot of removal while you build up your (un)holy army of Clerics. With all the life gain from Soul Warden, Suture Priest and Extort via Blind Obedience, the life loss from Sign in Blood becomes negligible. I also put in 4x Scoured Barrens for the 1 life there, as well (even as tempting as Forsaken Sanctuary was because of the matching flavor :)). Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim has really good synergy with Rotlung Reanimator, and should be able to activate her second ability fairly easily in this deck. If a total board wipe is too mean, I'd probably replace it with something like Dark Prophecy to just keep drawing cards.
Ideally it'd run a game of attrition constantly removing the opponent's board of creatures until you can overwhelm them with Clerics or an army of 2/2 Zombies buffed with Orzhov Pontiff or Zealous Persecution. I didn't put Westvale Abbey in the build because of it's price currently, but I'd probably only run one or two, if I did, and it could be another great finisher. It's worth noting that a lot of the best Clerics share the 3-mana slot, but it was never a deck I wanted to have a high mana curve because I always liked playing a lot of removal. Rotlung Reanimator is one of my pet cards, so I always end up building Clerics around him. The Sign in Blood could realistically be taken out for Hymn to Tourach or Duress to add a bit more control.
Also, I didn't notice until after writing this but it seems Patriarch's Bidding has gone up a lot, more than likely due to EDH. It's funny because Rise of the Dark Realms is cheaper and lets you kidnap your opponent's graveyard, too. More expensive to play, so I'd probably remove a Sign in Blood and add in another land to compensate for that.
Anyway, this is just my take on Clerics. I know it's a far reach from where you were going, but it was a deck I loved playing way back when and I was excited to share my thoughts on a Cleric deck in the current day!
(Also known as Xenphire)
Nowadays the deck is more geared towards life gain with builds like the Soul Sister's deck, which obviously has it's benefits since the damage prevention version can sit idle a fair bit. In one of the early incarnations of the deck, which was around 2000 I even had a playset of Samite Healer, Femeref Healer and Clergy en-Vec, which made for quite the board stall so to say. Especially since in the casual meta sweepers weren't used too much at that time. The idea I have with this deck now is to simply give it some cheap upgrades and make it a tad bit more efficient while keeping roughly the same strategy for the deck.
Coordinated Barrage and Beacon of Destiny seem like interesting options to run though, probably will fit those in by replacing Murder Investigation and Reprisal since its more on theme. So thanks for those suggestions.
I know that it rules out a fair bit of suggestions since I want to stay true to the core of the deck, but sometimes you can get great ideas from people of cards you haven't considered before. The Beacon and Barrage suggested earlier are good examples of that and perfect fits for what I'd like in my deck.