The life-gain options in a format should guide you while building a control deck. Life gain can be a great addition to a slower Limited deck as well, although you might not have quite as many appealing options at your disposal. Slow decks will be hard-pressed to succeed without it. Medium-speed decks benefit from it if they can find it (either main deck or sideboard). Aggro and combo decks can do without life gain. The slower the deck, the more you need life gain. The key is that going down to 3 life doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be forced to play ten or fifteen more turns of a game while you’re at 3 life. If you had to go down to a low life total, instead of gaining that life back, you could instead seek to combo off and go immediately to the next game. Even in games where it didn’t combo quickly, the possibility was always there. Splinter Twin, however, had a combo finish. It was traditionally built without access to life gain and was very successful even without it. Splinter Twin had many aspects of a control deck, and played many games as though it was a control deck. Let’s take, as an example, Splinter Twin from the pre-ban Modern format. There’s a lot of grey area in between the two. But every slow deck needs life gain if it wants to function the best it possibly can. Aggro decks, for example, couldn’t care less. Not every deck needs life gain to function. Loops or combos ( Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek, Syphon Life + Life from the Loam, Elixir of Immortality).Spells that gain you life while progressing your game plan ( Ojutai’s Command, Foul-Tongue Invocation, Lightning Helix, Sphinx’s Revelation).Lands that allow you to gain life ( Dismal Backwater, Shambling Vent, Pristine Talisman).Lifelink creatures, or creatures that gain you life when they enter the battlefield, especially if you have ways to recur them from your graveyard ( Batterskull, Kitchen Finks, Thragtusk, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet).Instead, look for ways to build life gain into the structure of your deck. I’m not suggesting that you include Angel’s Mercy in your Constructed deck (although there are times when that might not be quite as crazy as it sounds). Structure your deck in such a way that your life total becomes a replenishable resource. Replenishable resources and non-replenishable resources are very different. If those cards are not present, then you’re paying a cost that you won’t be able to pay again. If you feel comfortable drawing into your Shambling Vents, Ojutai’s Commands, or Foul-Tongue Invocations as the game drags on, then you know you’ll be able to undo the damage eventually. In this example, it doesn’t necessarily matter whether your life gain cards are in your hand, only whether they’re in your deck. If you lose 3 life from this Siege Rhino, then you’ll paint yourself into a corner where you have to counter the next Siege Rhino, where you’ll have to be deathly afraid of creature lands, where you won’t be able to crack a fetchland without cringing, and where your grasp on the game will be precarious. But this is a play that you can probably only make if you have access to life gain in your deck. That way, you save Scatter to the Winds to protect you from a morphed Den Protector, a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, or perhaps some wacky surprise haymaker that you’re not even thinking of. Your preference here should be to let Siege Rhino resolve, and then kill it with Murderous Cut. You’re at 9 life and your hand has Murderous Cut, Scatter to the Winds, and some card draw. Imagine that you’re beginning to take control against an Abzan deck. You might find yourself trying to use a hammer when you really need a screwdriver. If you build your deck without life gain, then you’re leaving one of your most important tools at home. It’s about finding the right tool for the right job as I discussed in my article here. Playing a control deck is about lining up your defensive cards against your opponent’s offensive cards. You’ll have to be prepared to deal with everything that hits the board immediately, no matter what it might be. You’ll need to hold up instant-speed removal forever against a deck with haste creatures or flash creatures. You’ll need to hold up Negate mana forever against a deck with burn spells. If you find yourself at a low life total with no way to gain life, your options are severely limited for the rest of the game. Gaining life pulls you out of danger once you’ve stabilized the game. It’s harder still to utilize effects that require you to pay life-like Painful Truths-in such a deck. It’s very hard to make a slow deck work without access to life gain. It’s a lesson I’ve learned the hard way too many times: Control decks need life gain.
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