Speaker of the Heavens

Creature — Human Cleric

Vigilance, lifelink

: Create a 4/4 white Angel creature token with flying. Activate this ability only if you have at least 7 life more than your starting life total and only at any time you could cast a sorcery.

Discussion (27)

TheVectornaut on Blue/White Life and Defenders

3 days ago

I think a good place to start would be to evaluate what goals are the most important for your deck while making sure you don't have too many ideas that compete against each other. When I look at the deck now, I can see the general idea of a U/W control list that takes advantage of freeze and lifegain to prolong the fight until you can win. However, I see some major problems with the plan as it is now.

First, the deck lacks a clear win condition at the end of all the control. You'll either need to chip away over the course of a slow game with your smaller creatures or hope you have enough freeze effects to get your big guys in late-game. Control deck usually opt for some type of haymaker that can reliably close the game. Some like AEtherling and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar are designed to protect themselves, some like Celestial Colonnade and Shark Typhoon place emphasis on evasion, some like Torrential Gearhulk and Snapcaster Mage give you as much value as possible, and some like Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Teferi, Time Raveler deny your opponents of counterplay. There's a lot of overlap within those categories and not all of these cards will be played as a wincon, but having a clear plan to win is better than only playing to not lose. The closest cards you have are probably Serpent of Yawning Depths and Archipelagore. Sea monsters are certainly a fine casual deck but slotting them into something else can be awkward at best and ineffectual at worst.

The second problem I see is the missed potential of your chosen colors combined with your chosen tribe. Right now, you have very few ways to take advantage of the clerics in the deck. Clerics are intended to be W/B since you get access to powerful new tools like Orah, Skyclave Hierophant, Taborax, Hope's Demise, and Cleric of Life's Bond along with classics like Sin Collector, High Priest of Penance, and Skirsdag High Priest. The lifegain/drain synergy in clerics also benefits from orzhov colors to play threats like Angel of Destiny, Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, Marauding Blight-Priest, Speaker of the Heavens, Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim, Twilight Prophet, Pious Evangel  ^Flip, Drana's Emissary, and Cruel Celebrant.

Incidentally, black also synergizes quite well with tapdown effects because of Assassinate cards like Royal Assassin, Deathbringer Liege, and Murderous Compulsion, although white does have its share of Vengeance with Sunblast Angel, Deadeye Harpooner, and Swift Response. Anyway, now that I'm on this tangent, it's worth mentioning that including strong freeze effects is important if you want to make such an underused mechanic work. I'm partial to Dungeon Geists and Icefall Regent as permanent taps, but there's also Guardian of Tazeem, Niblis of Frost, Tamiyo, the Moon Sage, Time of Ice, Lorthos, the Tidemaker, Frost Titan, and Hands of Binding. Alternatively you can use cheaper cards that can retap a creature each turn like Gideon's Lawkeeper, Blinding Souleater, Fatestitcher, Hidden Strings, and Minister of Impediments. The final category I'll mention are other cards that take advantage of tapping enemy creatures like Palliation Accord and Verity Circle, except I'd only ever recommend the latter.

In summary, I think you should decide whether you're more interested in clerics or in freeze since they don't synergize with each other that well. For clerics, switching to black and taking advantage of lifedrain and sacrifice is advisable. For freeze control, find ways to abuse tapping, implement a strong win condition, and generally include more card draw and countermagic. If you are dead set on combining these styles, I'd at least invest in some tribal support cards to give the clerics more impact than just weakly contributing to the party mechanic. Adaptive Automaton, Door of Destinies, Obelisk of Urd, and Coat of Arms are some popular options. Finally, if your budget doesn't allow you to purchase many new cards, prioritizing the acquisition of additional copies of your strongest but cheapest cards is a good way to upgrade. For this deck, I think those cards are Attended Healer, Cleric of Chill Depths, Hypnotic Sprite, Kor Celebrant, Luminarch Aspirant, Queen of Ice, Shepherd of Heroes, Skyclave Cleric  ^Flip, Concerted Defense, Dovin's Veto, Negate, Inscription of Insight, Staggering Insight, Trapped in the Tower, and maybe Silundi Vision  ^Flip. Good luck with your build and let me know if you have any questions!

Apollo_Paladin on White Life

2 weeks ago

Thoughts on some of the newer release cards? For instance, Alseid of Life's Bounty who is great for protecting key assets while still keeping with the Lifegain synergy, and Speaker of the Heavens for another cheap-cast Life Total trigger.

Or Heliod, Sun-Crowned who is an extremely reliable counter-generator, even for games that you can finish where you don't hit your Devotion.

Either way, nice build +1

Murphy77 on Mono White Devotion

1 month ago

A simple change that should give your creatures more attack power would be to drop 1 each of Giant Killer, Linden, the Steadfast Queen and Selfless Savior to bring in Felidar Retreat and have your creatures gaining +1/+1 counters with every landfall.

I would at least build a side-board around Basri's Acolyte, Basri's Solidarity, Griffin Aerie and Speaker of the Heavens with life-gain instants like Light of Hope and Revitalize. Yes, I know that you have run out of card slots and you might have to drop 2 creatures to enable the major change that can get you generating a range of useful token creatures.

LordOwlBear on Standard Life Jank 0.6

1 month ago

Daveslab2022

While I also look at life as a disposable resource for the most part, having more life does enable Speaker of the Heavens and Angel of Destiny to work at their utmost and activate win condition.

I think in this meta Feed the Swarm has an edge, but Heartless Act has a place as well, because counter removal works against indestructible creatures like Heliod, Sun-Crowned. While I don't think counter removal will be relevant in this meta in particular, I just wanted to give you an instance of when counter removal can be better than hard removal.

Apollo_Paladin on My Cousin Vito

1 month ago

Alseid of Life's Bounty would make a better replacement for you than Court Cleric since he can double as protection for a more important creature (like your Vito). Especially since you're not even running an Ajani walker for his extra +1/+1

I also like Vampire of the Dire Moon instead of Banehound. Haste on a 1/1 isn't really a huge deal, and having a Deathtouch option in addition to their Lifelink means they can double as genuinely threatening blockers still (unlike the hound).

Finally,Speaker of the Heavens would probably suit you a lot better than Hunted Witness and Vizkopa Vampire

Hopefully these suggestions help you along a little bit. None of them are particularly costly to order singles of either (since that's a big consideration for my own decks).

Murphy77 on Standard Life Jank 0.6

1 month ago

If we can get more consistent early game life gain, then the combination of Speaker of the Heavens and Griffin Aerie can start generating a number of useful tokens. Although I really like Angel of Destiny it might be a little slow to reach a win-con.

I view Tavern Swindler and Feed the Swarm as the weaker cards in the deck that can be removed for 2 Light of Hope and 3 Speaker of the Heavens. If you are going to use Hagra Mauling  ^Flip as a land, then you still need Heartless Act for some extra removal. I think that we probably still need to add some extra life gain.

Daveslab2022 on Standard Life Jank 0.6

1 month ago

I play a deck pretty similar to this one, except my deck is centered around clerics specifically. I play Archfiend's Vessel, Speaker of the Heavens, Cleric of Life's Bond, Taborax, Hope's Demise, Orah, Skyclave Hierophant

As far as your removal suite,

Dire Tactics is good for your colors, Bloodchief's Thirst is probably the best removal in standard right now, and Hagra Mauling  ^Flip doubles as a land so you can just take out a swamp for it!

amicdeep on Dead Angels Rising

1 month ago

there are a few cards that would help Seraph Sanctuary, Lyra Dawnbringer, Kaalia, Zenith Seeker, Bishop of Wings, Angel of Vitality, Speaker of the Heavens, Resplendent Angel

if you wanted to go more reanimation then, Angel of Despair, Angel of Serenity and maybe Angel of Sanctions, should be the main core of the deck, with spells like Unburial Rites, Collective Brutality and maybe mid rangey cards like The Eldest Reborn, Elspeth Conquers Death, Liliana, Death's Majesty