Ondu War Cleric

Cohort was the mechanic that asked Ally decks to commit bodies before they could spend them, and this is the clearest illustration of why that tax was steep. The lifegain itself is incidental: two life per activation is a rounding error in most games. What the card actually demonstrates is the cost structure cohort imposed, where the ability requires both tapping this creature and tapping a second untapped Ally, meaning two of your bodies sit out the turn to buy a single small effect. That double-tap turns every cohort card into a question of board commitment rather than mana, a rare design lever that prices abilities in tempo and attacker count instead of colored pips. As a payoff it is thin, but as a teaching piece it shows the seam in the whole cohort experiment: the more the deck wanted to attack with its Allies, the more it had to choose between swinging and grinding out marginal value. The 2/2 body is the part that did real work, holding the early turns of an aggressive curve; the cohort line was a late-game pressure valve the deck rarely had the spare creatures to justify pulling.