Cleric of Life's Bond

Two triggers chained into one loop: the first turns every incoming Cleric into a point of lifegain, and the second converts that first drop of life each turn into a permanent counter. The elegance is in the throttle on the second ability. Lifegain triggers get dangerous when they scale linearly (a board of Soul Wardens can grind a game into oblivion), so this one caps its own payoff at once per turn regardless of how much life you actually bank. You can gain fifty life in a turn and the creature still grows by exactly one. That constraint reframes what the card wants: not a lifegain engine that spikes on a single busy turn, but a slow, reliable ratchet that rewards you for gaining something every turn across many turns. The Cleric-count trigger feeds that discipline neatly, since it fires on entries rather than attacks or spells, so a wide tribal board keeps topping off the well. Two colors of white-black lifegain converging on a two-drop body is a familiar Vampire Cleric register, but the once-per-turn clause changes what the accumulation is for: the life you bank is fuel for a growing threat, not the payoff itself. The body climbs; the padding to your total is a side effect of feeding it.