This is an ARTISAN (uncommon/common only) deck I put together, because I wanted to flesh out some underutilized cards in Magic: The Gathering. In the set Zendikar Rising the card Cleric of Life's Bond cares about Clerics and gaining life and I wanted to do something with my cardboard at home. Thus came this deck list to life.

MAIN:

Before anything else: I want to say: “Cleric of Life's Bond is a bad Ajani's Pridemate!” It's the same card as the Pridemate, but with A LOT more restrictions... This draft signature uncommon in white/black from the set was difficult to get right, yet nonetheless, I “wanted” to build a deck with this card, so I searched for all the best clerics in standard and shoved them into a pile of cards. Having the clause “first time each turn” really brings this card down. However, it still gets big, if left unchecked.

Cleric Class is super weird. It doesn't do much with the creatures coming down on the battlefield, it's SUPER expensive to get going, but the LvL2 mode acts very similar to the Cleric of Life's Bond and therefore made the cut. Paying that much mana comes with a downside and that's why there are only 3 of them in the deck. Bringing back a creature from the grave is very good on the other hand, but paying 10 mana in total to eventually get something back won't come up often.

Lunarch Veteran // Luminous Phantom... finally a good card. A nice turn1 play for the Cleric of Life's Bond on turn2. The disturb on this creature is very valuable, because after removal, we can still get something going with “flying”.

Dawnbringer Cleric is FIRST and FOREMOST removal in this deck. This deck needs time and removing an enchantment, or a creature from the grave will do just that.

Kor Celebrant is a key component of the deck. It's a good blocker, sees other clerics and IF we actually get to LvL2 on the Cleric Class This thing becomes a beating.

Marauding Blight-Priest is the win condition of the deck. One might think, attacking with a few creatures, which have a load of +1/+1 counters is fine, but it's not. All the life gaining won't do anything, but delay our losses, if we don't weaponize it. The Blight-Priest is no joke and having a few counters on this creatures will also be a force.

Skemfar Shadowsage gives this deck a means to finish the opponent off. I've had several games with 6 clerics on the field and that's already enough to let OP explode off of unhealthy life totals.

Village Rites Isn't in this deck for the reason you might think. Having card draw is fine and all, but as this deck is desperately in need of all the synergy, losing a creature for two cards is often the wrong choice. With this card, you want a creature in the graveyard to get back with the Cleric Class and finish the game with said creature. Getting back Skemfar Shadowsage will feel good!

Professor of Symbology is the main source of card advantage in this deck. If there aren't many good lessons to grab, then just ditch a card from your hand a pray to the magic gods.

Bloodchief's Thirst should be kicked whenever possible! Unless you actually have a good target for this one.

Infernal Grasp Best removal at two mana, the life loss won't hurt us in most cases.

Malakir Rebirth is land number 24 and 25, so we can actually hit 5 mana in order to activate Cleric Class. Do not go lower, I repeat: DO NOT GO LOWER THAN 25 lands! Unless you want to invalidate a good chunk of the cards in this deck.

CHEAT SHEET:

13 white sources for the first white mana should be enough (89% turn1) and 15 black sources for the extra black pip of removal cards.

KNOW THY STRENGTH:

This deck is synergy driven. If we lose too many creatures, the deck will lose. This deck is also SLOW, so hyper aggressive decks like mono-white, or goblins will wreck the day, but if you do manage to get the life gaining going, you'll easily end up with 40+ extra life along the way and that should be our weapon!

FUTURE SIGHT:

I will be building several flavourful 60 card artisan decks, with mechanics I deem fun enough to built around. Keep an eye out for the next one.

Thank you for reading!