Tribal Laboratory: Modern Clerics

Hello! I’m back with another Modern brew, this time i’ve decided to take a modern shell and add a twist to it. When I first started playing magic, like most players I gravitated towards green. Well in my case, it was more like a tractor beam, that pulled me to it. Green’s big thing, is well, big things, and I loved stomping down with my Terra Stompers and the like. My friend Dylan, who I learned how t o play magic with, was always one step ahead of me when we were learning. He was the first to start buying singles, he was the first to start looking at decks online, and the first to build a true modern deck. His modern deck was Soul Sisters, a deck that gains a lot of life and uses that life to gain advantages from it’s cards. I remember playing against it for the first time, my deck was still mono green one ofs, cut down to 60 cards, a few ramp spells here and there. I remember him playing Martyr of Sands and gaining fifteen life for the first time. This cleric build will play a lot like Soul Sisters, except I’ve added some spicy pay off cards! Let’s take a look at the list.

The deck started off very simple, with me realizing a lot of the creatures in this deck were already Clerics. I’ve liked clerics for quite a while, a few of my friends play clerics in commander, which allows us to play the Onslaught Cleric cards, which are quite powerful. Unfortunately we have to make due with what we have in Modern. We have four Martyr of Sands, four Soul Warden and Attendant, and four Suture Priest. These are our Soul Sisters, pretty typical stuff. We play these, gain life and turn on our win conditions. The win conditions in this deck are slightly different than more Soul Sisters decks, I’ve added Hanweir Militia Captain, Bygone Bishop and Chalice of Life to the roster of Serra Ascendant.

Hanweir Militia Captain may not start as a cleric, but once we have some soul sisters out and him, he flips into one, a quite strong one at that. The transform mechanic is such a nice mechanic, because to me, magic’s greatest strength is it’s ability to tell a story through the card. Hanweir Militia Captain starts as a stoic looking leader of Hanweir’s Militia. Through Emrakul’s corrupting magic, we get to see on the card, him becoming a dark cult leader. His other side is a powerful */* who gets stronger the more creatures you have in play. Thankfully our deck is chock full of 1 mana creatures that will be cheap to play and force our stoic captain to become the cult leader of our deck. Even if our board isn’t very big, he gains the ability to recruit members to our cult, and by that I mean he makes 1/1 cleric tokens. These new members trigger our soul sisters, for some extra life gain, and keep our Serra Ascendant powerful and our chalice flowing.

Chalice of Life is a lot like the Militia Captain. It begins as very pure and simple, but becomes a corrupted, powerful item. The thing I like most about Clerics is that they’re represented by the mana colors black and white. Other factions and tribes are represented by enemy colors, but nothing like clerics. Black and White are such powerful comparisons and juxtapositions in ideals. Very classical fight, like Black and White Knight. Chalice of Life becomes Chalice of Death, which allows us to begin, sucking the life of our opponent for five every turn.

Bygone Bishop is an addition I made to give the deck a little more gas, unfortunately the deck can run out of cards, playing 1 drops very small creatures the whole game can be a detriment. This card investigates whenever one of our creatures enters the battlefield. Since our creatures are so cheap, playing a creature for one mana, allows us to keep mana up to do things like Path, and then sacrifice the clue whenever we need to.

The place where our clerics really shine is the sideboard. Another thing that inspired me to make this deck, was the amount of creatures that are good in modern and white, that just happen to be clerics. I’ve said this before, but behind every good modern deck is a good sideboard, and it’s important to keep in mind that white has access to a lot of very powerful sideboard cards.

Ethersworn Canonist is a really good card against Storm, and can really shut them down if they try to go off. It can hurt you too, so be sure to play it last if you plan on dumping your hand.

The next card is an old favorite, Grand Abolisher. Grand Abolisher is an effect that white has had forever, stopping your opponents from interacting with you while you’re doing your thing is really good against control decks, depending on your meta, this could stop a counter based control deck in their tracks!

To me, a lot of sideboards need powerful silver bullets, and white has access to most of them. Grixis Deathshadow is a deck that seems to be in the back of everyone’s mind in modern. 1 mana 5/5’s, 4/5’s and 8/8’s are very efficient, Death Shadows, Tasigurs and Gurmags Oh My! Don’t worry though, for there’s a cleric that you can use to stop these creatures, and it’s name is Devout Lightcaster. Devout Lightcaster, is a 3 mana 2/2, with protection from black that exiles a black permanent when it enters. Say good bye to one of their creatures, and then stick a hard to remove, super blocker for any other creatures they land.

As always, let me know if I missed any cool clerics, or cards that have good synergy with this deck in function and flavor! Don’t forget to share this article and leave a comment!