Er maybe keep in the 3 guildmages and just sub the Rest for the Weary for a total of 3 Suture Priest .

Suture Priest is one that I had forgotten all about. That would be an interesting addition to this deck, although I would incorporate it by dropping the Soul Warden , Soul's Attendant , and Martyr of Sands to 3-counts. Suture Priest has an ability on par with or even better than those cards, as far as this deck's mechanics are concerned.

Good call.

Yeah Suture Priest is awesome. She is somewhat conditional to an opponent also playing creatures often - making her effective against aggro and token decks - which is why I suggested to do no more than 3. I would probably try and keep the soul sisters at 4 counts though, just to improve draw probability since they are the crux of the deck.

Yah, that's true. Rest for the Weary would probably be the best thing to sub, in that case.

@ Xindlepete, It was too hard!!! haha.

Some great ideas there guys :)
I think this budget version does need some cheap win conditions so I'll definitely give Exsanguinate a try in the next few games.
I also like the Sun Titan and Suture Priest ideas, especially for when I come up against token spamming decks which I seem to see a lot. I think I'll sideboard them for now and swap them around as I need to.
But Rest for the Weary has proven to be so useful lately, so I definitely want to try these things before making the change.

Soul Warden , Soul's Attendant , and Martyr of Sands MUST stay at 4-counts. They, along with Chalice of Life  ^Flip , are the key components of this deck. but thanks heaps for discussing it and giving me ideas to test.

This deck is so close to being finished! so close! :)

It's come a long way in a short time, that's for sure. And definitely keep those cards at four-counts! I must have been high when I suggested that. :P

I just tested this in 2 games by cutting 3x Ajani's Pridemate and 2x Gift of Orzhova in order to add in 3x Serra Ascendant and 2x Cathedral Sanctifier (I was testing a midpoint between this deck and my non budget Life Steal)

With this setup I had 46 life by turn 3 in the 1st game and won very quickly against his Selesnya deck!

In the second game he used his exalted deck: Bant Exalted) and this time I gained a metric #### tonne of life, he reduced it to 66 while I had to chump block all of my Cathedral Sanctifier s and "Soul Sisters", then he finished me off but doing 78 damage in 1 turn and taking me down to -12 :(

The combo that finished me off was: 1x Rafiq of the Many , Finest Hour , Noble Hierarch and 2x Sublime Archangel s. I had 2x Unmake s in my hand but since I played the entire game with only 2 lands I couldn't use them... that was not a typo...haha I am very happy with how this deck worked :)

ok. scroll up to the deck description and there is a section titled "Game Trials" and a spoiler button "show". Click it to see how this deck performed.

Divinity of Pride is good if it's in the budget

What do you think of the DGM spoiled Blood Baron of Vizkopa? 5CMC is really high, but 4/4 lifelink protection from white and black.

Maybe in th non budget version...

@KingSorin and ChemicalBurn
Seems like a good finisher for a vampire deck I'm making that contains Blood Artist Falkenrath Noble and Killing Wave . but I think for this deck Divinity of Pride and DGM "Blood Baron of Vizkopa" have too high CMC.

I still need to weigh up Suture Priest and Rest for the Weary (as MetaphysicalxProdigy said). but Rest for the Weary seems too effective to drop. I also want to incorporate Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant and make a sideboard. Maybe Suture Priest is a sideboard card here.

After I can finish this it might be time to finish the non-budget version Life Steal

+1 if you like :)

If budget is your goal then why not run some Mortify s for removal? I believe Sun Droplet can help you out a lot. It's pretty efficient life gain in my opinion.

Looks pretty good! +1

Only thing I could suggest is Cradle of Vitality if you wanted a more aggro approach.

I think having that 4th Ajani's Pridemate would be good, especially when your gaining a lot of life. I would also replace either the 4 Soul's Attendant or the 4 Soul Warden with the 4 Suture Priest because it fits your type of deck better and it still rewards you for playing creatures plus it punishes your opponent for playing creatures for only one mana more. These are just my opinion. Seems like a good deck. +1

Thanks guys :)

I was very hesitant on putting Ajani's Pridemate in to begin with because it is only a back up beater. I think I should sideboard Suture Priest so that when I need to I can swap out 2x Soul's Attendant and 2x Soul Warden (to stop cards like Detention Sphere from taking away my main life-gain mechanic). I wouldn't take those cards out unless I had to because them being 1 CMC is why they are so quick.

maybe:
-1 Soul's Attendant
-1 Soul Warden
+2 Suture Priest
?????

Yea that would work. You have plenty of life gain in this deck to get your Chalice of Life  ^Flip flipped but having a couple other ways to cause opponents loss of life would be good since a simple artifact destruction would clear your Chalice. I assume your goal is to out heal the damage you take per turn? I recommended Ajani's Pridemate because you mostly have 1/1 and a 2/2 and a overloaded Electrickery would wipe your board of 1/1. The Pridemate would be a good defender against potentially strong attackers. Souls of the Faultless kinda fits your decks theme of "stealing life" but might not be needed.

This looks pretty good. The main thing I would urge is to try as hard as you can to add one or two more lands.

Ok first thing I would do is scrub all your creatures. You want to gain life your going about it the wrong way. Here's what I would do.

4 Nearheath Pilgrim

4 Knight of Infamy

4 Knight of Glory

4 Blood Artist

4 Fencing Ace or if you have alittle more cash to spend Silverblade Paladin

4 Rhox Faithmender

get rid of Exquisite Blood and fill the rest with kill spells. You may also find Faith's Reward useful in the sideboard for board wipers. For draw if you need it use Altar's Reap and I wouldn't be afraid to use Bone Splinters or Killing Wave

Also, how bout a look at my deck liliana for the win

Well now that I think on it Exquisite Blood would be useful with Blood Artist on the field

You'll have to play with the numbers to make it work

Oh and Essence Harvest after an exalted doublestrike attack can really hurt. Especially if Exquisite Blood is on the field