One Theme Three Techs: Life Gain
One Theme, Three Techs: Life Gain
Welcome back to One Theme, Three Techs!
Magic has had 30 years to not only come up with a whole host of different and interesting themes to build a deck around but also develop them into something you can play with in all five colors. The problem is that too many five-color decks make them all feel less special. In this series, I want to break apart the five-color decks.
I'll discuss the theme, what value each color adds to it, the core colors of the theme, and then suggest a pair of commanders which each use at least one of the core colors but bring other spices to the table.
Core colors, for the record, will be determined by the total number of decks in a given color with that theme under EDHrec. There will be some consideration given to the mono-color, two-color, and three-color categories.
This entry? Life gain!
Why Play Life Gain?
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a new Magic player in possession of little experience must be in want of more life.
Life gain is one of those strategies that has become deceptive. Padding out your life total will not win you the game. Control decks like to gain life because it gives them the buffer they need to take over the game, but gaining life isn't actually the win condition. If gaining life were to become a long-term viable strategy in regular, competitive Magic, tournaments would be miserable.
No, the fun of life gain isn't the gaining of life itself. It's about the permanents which trigger off of life gain and the ability to more easily spend life as a resource. This is a specific strategy which requires a lot of niche cards to work, so you get some uniquely powerful rewards in the mix, and that can be fun for a lot of players.
Core Colors of Life Gain?
Life gain is only truly a part of white, black, and green. There are a few cards hither and yon that allow some incidentally in blue (Turn into a Pumpkin), while red is all about "can't gain life" as the inverse. That will provide some difficulties in terms of options and how to manage certain parts of this "challenge", but it makes this part exceptionally simple.
A quick look at EDHrec shows us that mono-white and mono-black have a high number of life gain decks, but mono-green doesn't crack 1000. Similarly, green-white and green-black (combined!) don't match up to the number of white-black decks.
So, what does those core colors do?
White is the champ at this. It has a whole slew of ways to trigger life gain, whether through a Soul Sisters strategy that lets your creatures cause you to gain life when entering or by granting life gain or even through limited-use alternate triggers.
From there, white has some of the best "outputs", capable of turning the life gained into evasive tokens, virtual card advantage, or even actual card advantage.
You also have a smattering of ways to turn life gain into big damage, albeit through creature combat.
I could rattle off white's tie-ins to life gain all day, but suffice it to say: the power is real. A lot of it is intertwined with their iconic creature type, Angels, which bring a lot of heat just by virtue of being big, flying threats. However, there is another color which offers an alternative means of power.
Black's relationship with life gain is a little different; it has historically been more interested in converting life into other resources. Life gain has been a necessity in mono-black to keep up with its own demands.
That is not to say that black is without options. It gets lifelink as an evergreen keyword on the occasional big creature, as noted on two of the previous options, but it also has other ways to gain life throughout a normal game. Unlike white, most of black's life gain effects are usually infrequent but larger. This isn't to say you can't get some repeatable triggers throughout the game, but a lot of these tend to be tied into the other evergreen white-black strategy, aristocrats.
While black can turn your life into resources, as previously established, a very common way for black life gain to get to the finish line is by turning your life gain into burn. "Whenever you gain life, target opponent loses that much life" can end games quickly when you're playing those also-aforementioned big life gain spells.
That's already eighteen cards for a white-black deck, notably, but we can dig just a little deeper for our "typical experience" life gain deck. As mentioned, white has a lot of its life gain tied to Angels, but white-black can actually give you three other possible creatures to tie into your theme: Vampires, Clerics, or Bats. We're going for a straight-through life gain, so I'll recommend one of the following three commanders:
White-Black
White
Black
You'll have a lot of triggers to keep up with, but that's what life gain is all about. Now, let's say we wanted to broaden our horizons a little bit.
What Does Each Color Offer?
We get to the... stumbling block, as it were, of the article. As previously mentioned, mono-blue and mono-red have virtually zero cards which gain life (in the case of red, actually zero). Before discussing what they can potentially add, I do want to swing by green.
Green is a strong secondary color for life gain decks. In addition to the usual reasons to play green, it has a handful of life gain enablers and payoffs. It doesn't have nearly as many as white or black, but there are plenty worth running.
Notably, green's approach to life gain is closer to black's. It doesn't have lifelink, but it generally gains bigger chunks of life all at once. Those are okay to run, but the color thankfully includes some ways to gain incremental amounts of life as well for those builds. The color also includes a lot of value cards with incidental life gain.
For blue and red, I'll be more likely to show off multicolor cards due to a lack of immediately synergistic cards. I'll still talk about some of the mono-color qualities that they bring to a deck as a strength.
Starting off with blue, this is a control-oriented color that enjoys life gain as a way to hold off aggressive strategies. This has tied life gain to card draw in a few different ways. Life gain is largely incidental in these cases, used as a buffer for the Draw-Go strategy. Blue's card draw is fairly important to keeping the life gain deck from falling flat before it can get its engine going.
As for red, it works similarly to blue, but with damage. The damage and life gain get tied together, like with Lightning Helix. This makes for cleaner cards, but the life gain is once again fairly incidental.
I do want to note a unique interaction red has with the life gain theme, which is that its big damage-dealing spells can be granted lifelink by either Judith, Carnage Connoisseur or Firesong and Sunspeaker if you want to get absolutely weird with it.
Quick sidebar before the wrap-up, colorless does actually have some offerings here. I kind of find that interesting, since life gain has been so pigeon-holed into white and black for so long, but it's nice!
...Kind of funny how two of those artifacts belong to a white-blue character (and the third has since been stapled onto a Bant creature).
Okay, so with these in mind, our plan will be to separate white and black. Our options are therefore as follows:
Azorius v Jund: Will, Scion of Peace & Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper + Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar
Rakdos v Bant: Judith, Carnage Connoisseur & Shanna, Purifying Blade
Selesnya v Grixis: Trelasarra, Moon Dancer & Sol'kanar the Swamp King
Boros v Sultai: Firesong and Sunspeaker & Zimone and Dina
Golgari v Jeskai: Beledros Witherbloom & The Archimandrite
Okay, there should be six, but if you can find an oppositional pair in Dimir and Naya that can both be reasonably called a life gain deck, go for it. At most, I can find Rin and Seri, Inseparable and... Vohar, Vodalian Desecrator?
Honestly, this leads me to a point, which is that the lion's share of life gain matters effects have been centered in white over the years, which includes a lot of the multicolor effects. If we want to maximize red and blue, we'll want them attached to white. It also means that black would get green, so the colors with life gain support could work together. I know that "Golgari life gain" is supported enough that this is less off-beat than some of the other decks proposed, but this article is already long enough without me including a section arguing for and against each of the options. I picked it! If you happen to enjoy one of the other pairs more, build them and let me know how they run for you.
Overview of Beledros Witherbloom
As previously mentioned, green technically has life gain cards. It only rarely gets life gain as a draft theme, but has done so twice (Adventures in the Forgotten Realms and Strixhaven). Mono-green is the only color technically capable of gaining life that doesn't have a suitable life gain commander or a high number of decks. However, it does suit well to black's style of gaining life in big chunks to pay out for resources, which is what we'll be doing in big swings with Beledros Witherbloom. Beledros can spend 10 of our life total to untap all of our lands, once per turn. She also makes a Pest on each upkeep, just a little 1/1 chump that gives us 1 life when it dies. Not nothing. To take advantage of the land-untapping, we have a few big spells and X-spells that can help turn the game around for us.
But we need to fuel that ability, so we need heavy amounts of life gain. The Pests will only give us about 4 life per turn cycle, which isn't going to help much. There'll be a mix of low mana value permanents that give us 1 life at a time, more expensive permanents with higher amounts of life gain, and a few one-shot big life bursts.
Green's offerings are plenty, but black is no slouch either. It lacks the option for bigger, continual life boosts but makes up for it by offering the utility of also pinging our opponents.
While that life can eventually be turned into big mana turns, it's important to remember that our commander is seven mana, so he's not dropping in the first three or four turns. We'll want a few other ways to seize onto our life gain and make the most of its value. Green is going to be able to turn life gain into some additional mana or ways to make big creatures.
Meanwhile, black is going to use life gain triggers or life payments to present us with various forms of card advantage, burn, or even the occasional big beater of its own.
To round out the list, let's take advantage of some of the token-making, the high creature count in our deck, and a few odds and ends in the "life gain/life loss matters" bin. Let's give a shout-out to the best uncommon commander in recent years, too.
Close your eyes for a moment. Imagine paying 10 life to untap all, let's say eight, of your lands and feed all that mana (minus one) into a massive Exsanguinate. You drain your opponents for 13, gain 39 life, then tap Willowdusk, Essence Seer to make Beledros Witherbloom into a 43/43.
Life is good.
Decklist here.
Let's see how the other side lives, eh?
Overview of The Archimandrite
Okay, so The Archimandrite has a way to gain life (so long as you keep a big hand) and then translate every instance of life gain into giving our creatures a bigger power boost and vigilance. He can also tap three Advisors, Monks, and Artificers to draw one card.
There is an inherent tension here because he wants you to commit to the board to maximize the damage, but he also wants you to carry a full grip. There are several builds possible here, but I think worrying more about maximizing the damage will serve us well.
There'll be plenty of card draw so that we hopefully use his Ivory Tower ability to effect, but we won't be relying solely on it to work.
There will be ways to boost every instance of life gain, as well, to result in bigger bursts for our team and bigger damage to our opponents.
Our commander really likes Advisors, Artificers, and Monks, so we'll bend our deck a little bit to make the most of that. As he taps them to draw cards, we'll also include a few ways to untap all creatures to get a big burst of card draw where possible.
The Archimandrite is a little bit of a glass cannon situation: if he's not on the field, a lot of our cards get drastically worse. We'll want a little bit of redundancy for our aggressive plan mixed in with a few ways to protect either our board or just our commander.
The beauty of our commander is the way he turns usually low-impact spells into major blow-outs. Something like Congregate can become the biggest Overrun of all time with the commander out. A Lantern Flare becomes a spot-removal that will also probably kill an opponent. The big pump to power means we probably want first strike on our team, and maybe an extra combat spell or two so that any life gained during combat can turn into even more damage.
Bonus: the spells that untap your attacking creatures let your vigilant beaters tap for card draw before you go back in for the kill!
Archidekt link here.
Conclusion
Another archetype down! Fun fact: this is actually the pairing which inspired the whole series. I looked at The Archimandrite and realized he formed a complimentary pair with the Golgari life gain deck I had. In designing them, I once again worked towards making sure both would play very differently, and I believe I succeeded there.
The Jeskai life gain is going to be very aggressive, relying on bursts of card draw to keep up the pressure. In counterpoint, the Golgari life gain is going to be more of a classically midrange grind deck, maintaining value over the game.
This is also sort of naturally determined by the way the colors themselves play, but the creature versus noncreature theme which sort of naturally manifested was one of the starker contrasts I think I've seen while making these.
So, would you go the classic white-black route, or an off-beat build like presented here? Let me know what you think, and happy brewing!
