When it comes to clerics as a typal archetype, they’re often forgotten because of their limited raw power and variety of strategy, they focus on life gain/drain and damage prevention, but this doesn’t mean they can’t pack a punch against their foes.

This deck explores the use of the clerics as an aristocrats archetype while maintaining their typal prowess in check.

Orah’s Premise

On a first look, Orah, Skyclave Hierophant screams two things, clerics and graveyard recursiveness, and this is what we are going to exploit with it.

When it comes to tiny creatures, who can protect others for a better purpose, clerics excels in this task, sadly they won’t often grow big or wide enough to become a physical threat, this is where Orah shines at his best, because, let’s be clear, your clerics will die, and he will bring them back from the dead to keep them fighting and protecting others.

This turns Orah into the perfect toolbox commander. Because every time one of your clerics die, he will bring another one with a less CMC to the battlefield from the graveyard. And there’re plenty of clerics that come with ETB effects and triggers on their sleeves.

Core Gameplay

As stated previously, Orah will revive your clerics to keep fighting, this tool box oriented deck will provide you with all the resources you need to drain your opponents while keeping you in a healthy life total. You’ll want to try and ramp up mana as quickly as possible to put him into the battlefield early, and start to sacrifice your own clerics to exploit their ETB triggers. While searching for the answers you need both in your deck and in your graveyard.

Decklist

We’re looking at a budget Bracket 2 deck, that could easily trade some blows on Bracket 3.

Key Cards

This deck centers around two things, recursion and tutoring of creatures through sacrifice.

One of your core cards that you should try to find in your deck by drawing or tutoring it to the graveyard and reanimate it, is Pyre of Heroes. A typal birthing pod that, when paired with Orah, would net you two creatures in the battlefield with every use of it.

Game Plan

This is a very non-interactive deck, you pretty much won’t care about what your opponents are doing, because you’ll have plenty of ways to keep yourself alive while searching to build the perfect board to sweep the victory out of everyone’s hands.

Card Drawing

As we know, draw is king on commander, here are some of the key drawing cards on this deck

In an aristocrat deck, it is a common practice to sacrifice your creatures, and that’s when most of these cards shine.

For example, pair Skullclamp and Taborax, Hope's Demise together, equipping Skullclamp to one of your many clerics with toughness one, and you’ll end up drawing three cards at the cost of one creature and one life point, a fair price if you put it into perspective.

Also, playing Plumb the Forbidden when Orah is in play will result in you drawing multiple cards, reanimating a fair amount of clerics from the graveyard and, if you bring back the likes of Inspiring Overseer or Priest of Ancient Lore, drawing an additional cards because of their ETB.

Mangara, the Diplomat comes to play as a powerful political creature, because if you’re being the target of an attack, you’ll end up drawing a card, and in a game of commander, more often than not if the board left Mangara unchecked, you’ll end up drawing a card on every other players turn at the moment they draw their second card of their turn.

Priest of Forgotten Gods, Relic Vial and Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar, play their part as altar-like effects giving you cards, and in the case of the Priest, also giving you some mana, draining your enemies life point and making them sacrifice a creature, making her a powerful threat if you keep her in the battlefield.

Finally, speaking of key cards, no cleric deck would be complete if it doesn’t have the likes of the evergreen soul sisters, and their cousins. 

Life Gain / Drain Triggers

You’ll be constantly cycling between your clerics from the graveyard to the battlefield, and one of the better ways to capitalize this is with creatures that have trigger effects when another creature enters the battlefield under your control.

In this case, gaining life is our better option and that’s where the likes of Soul's Attendant and Soul Warden, the OG Soul Sisters comes to shine, but we also want to maximize this effect, with cards like Elas Il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim and Suture Priest, both have a pretty similar effect in the life gain department, but can also ping your opponents if a creature you control dies (Elas) or if a creature enters the battlefield under an opponent’s control.

Finally, while not on the Soul Sisters archetype themselves, Starscape Cleric and Marauding Blight-Priest will help you in draining your opponents life points. You might think that 1 life point is meaningless but they will trigger for every instance of life gain you get.

With that in mind, we can finally talk about how this deck wins.

Peaceful Combos

Once you have on the Battlefield any combination of ETB life gain + Life drain creatures. You’ll want to use either one between the 2-cards or 3-cards infinite combos.

2-Cards Combo

For this combo you will need Animate Dead in your hand, and Leonin Relic-Warder on your graveyard.

Here’s how this combo works:

• First, you’ll cast Animate Dead, targeting the Relic-Warder.
• Once it enters the battlefield, triggering your life gain/drain effects, you’ll target Animate Dead with the Relic-Warder ETB effect.
• This will end up killing the Relic-Warder who’ll end up in the graveyard again, and returning Animate Dead to the battlefield.
• Target Relic-Warder with Animate Dead again. And repeat the steps until every opponent’s life total becomes zero.

If by any chance you don’t draw Animate Dead, there’s another, more convoluted way to get the same result by using the following 3 card combo.

3-Cards Combo

For this one you’ll be looking for Fiend Hunter, Leonin Relic-Warder and Journey to Nowhere or Oblivion Ring

Here’s how this version of the combo works:

• Have Fiend Hunter on the battlefield.
• Cast Journey To Nowhere or Oblivion Ring, exiling Fiend Hunter.
• Cast or reanimate Leonin Relic-Warder, exiling Journey or Oblivion Ring.
• Fiend Hunter returns to the battlefield and exile Leonin Relic-Warder.
• Journey or Oblivion Ring returns to the battlefield exiling Fiend Hunter.
• Keep exiling and returning those 3 cards, triggering the life gain/drain effects every time they came into the battlefield. Until your opponent’s life points are zero.

Like I said, a very convoluted way to drain their life. Sadly as a budget deck, these two combos can be disrupted if your opponent has a way to control one of the creatures before the ETB resolves.

Protecting the field

As a creature heavy deck, you’ll need ways to protect not only your Commander, but also the rest of your creatures on the field. Here are some ways to keep your creatures alive.

Anthem Effects

One of the more straightforward ways to keep your creatures alive, is pumping their stats, specially when it comes to a creature type as clerics, who are naturally weak stats-wise.

Etchings of the Chosen is a pretty classic Anthem effect with a typal twist, which also works as a Sac-Engine capable of triggering your death triggers, and also synergizing with Orah’s reanimating effect, while also giving one of your creatures the indestructible status until EoT, making them harder to remove.

Patchwork Banner, a 3 cmc mana rock, may seem a little lackluster for the current meta of quick mana rocks, but it also counts as an anthem effect for pumping your clerics a little more.

Shadow-Rite Priest, a cleric lord who was 20 years late for this classic type, costing only 2-mana is by far the most efficient anthem on this deck. But also for three generic and two black mana, and sacrificing another cleric, you’ll be able to tutor any black creature from your deck and put it directly on the battlefield. This tutoring effect may seem a little high cost, but this deck can generate enough mana to use it every turn.

Protection against color

When it comes to protection against colors, two of the best creatures for it comes in the form of clerics, also, there’s a third one, for when you want to upgrade the deck.

First off, we have Benevolent Bodyguard, a pretty straight forward 1/1 for 1 white mana who will sacrifice himself to protect another creature from the color of your choice, he will easily trigger any death effect from the deck, and is easily reanimated by Orah, because of his 1 mana cost.

Mother of Runes, the classic mom will be at home in this deck, protecting her colleagues from any color of your choice, or even herself, she’ll be one of the targets on your field, because her level of protection could be pretty hostile against your opponents.

If you want to add another creature with this capability, the best one would be Giver of Runes.

She’s the little sister of Mother of Runes, capable of even protecting against colorless sources, sadly she can’t protect herself, but is a good upgrade for your deck.

Boardwipe Protection

In this section we have three creatures and one sorcery which can protect your battlefield against boarwipes.

Glorious Protector is a cleric that you don’t want to play for her casting cost, you’ll always want to foretell her, and keep it there, when a boardwipe enters the stack, if no one else stop it, cast it for her foretell cost, and exile everyone of your non-Angel Creatures, leaving only Glorious Protector on the field more often than not, when the boardwipe resolves and Glorious Protector leaves the battlefield, all your creatures will come back triggering every ETB effect you have, and keeping your presence on the board.

Planar Guide, on the other hand, is a symmetric board protection, who’ll protect not only your creatures, but the creatures of everyone on the field, he will also clean the board of a token-heavy commander, so, in a certain way he will count as a pseudo-boardwipe. And, if you use his ability at the end of your turn, everyone will have no creature on the field until the next end of turn, effectively shutting down some aggro players by a whole round if they come after you.

Finally, Selfless Spirit is a more straightforward AoE protector, just sacrifice it and every creature on your battlefield will become indestructible, the only time he won’t work would be against the occasional farewell.

If all that fails, you have access to Haunting Voyage which will return up to two creatures of the type of your choice, but wait, there’s more, if you cast it for his foretell cost, then it will return every single creature of that type from your graveyard to the battlefield.

Ramping up

Being an Orzhov deck, you won’t have access to the more conventional type of ramp, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to ramp up your mana. Here are some key ramp cards for this deck.

Edgewalker, a pretty unorthodox cost reduction card, who will cut the cost of your clerics by one black or white mana, even turning some of the clerics on the deck to zero cost creatures.

Herald’s Horn, Jet Medallion and Pearl Medallion, will reduce one generic mana, making your creatures way cheaper, and in the case of the medallions, even your non-creature spells will become cheaper.

You want some treasures? Because Life Insurance will flood your field with more treasures than you’ll be able to use, at the cost of one life per non-token creature that died, be careful, because if you overextend the stay of life insurance on the battlefield, without ways to gain life, you could be out of the game pretty easily.

Master of Dark Rites and Priest of Gix are two forms of Dark Ritual in a creature package. Gix will always come into play for free, and if you stack the effects of Edgewalker, Jet Medallions and Herald’s Horn, he will enter the battlefield netting you 3 mana for that. Meanwhile Master of Dark Rites will provide you with a reliable source of a typal Dark Ritual, at the cost of sacrificing another creature, and we know how much Orah will love seeing a cleric being sacrificed to bring back another.

Finally, Weathered Wayfarer a 1/1 for one white will be tutoring a land, any land, not only basic every single turn you have if an opponent controls more lands than you do.

Upgrades

We already talked about one little upgrade by adding Giver of Runes to the deck. Now, this is what I consider a budget deck, specially on the manabase side, but also, you can improve your chances of winning by adding the following, more premium, cards.

Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose a more powerful life drain effect than the ones on the deck, will drain an opponent the exact amount of life you gained and by paying 3 generic and two black mana will give every creature you have lifelink until end of turn.

Sanguine Bond and Exquisite Blood give you a more straightforward game winning combo, and Vito could replace Sanguine Bond in the combo.

If your budget allows it, add to your deck these cards to streamline and optimize the life gain/drain combo in a way that is pretty hard to interact with. 

Also, if you are looking for ways to sacrifice creatures in a more reliable way, Phyrexian Altar and Ashnod's Altar will do the job while also turning your clerics into mana sources, also the relatively new Umbral Collar Zealot can fill the spot of a free sac-engine for the deck while fixing your top card of the deck and filling the graveyard of cards you don’t want to draw.

There’s still some limitations on this deck by making it 100% typal deck, but if you want to give a try on a “pacifist” aristocrats style of play, you’ll surely be having fun with it.