Life Gain Deep Dive | A Complete Guide to the Life Gain Archetype in Commander
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- Опубліковано 16 вер 2024
- We're diving deep into the Life Gain archetype for Commander! We've got TONS of info to share, from the goals, themes, and strategies of the deck to the best commanders and win conditions!
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I watch these videos for 1. the content, and 2. the fun it looks like you two have making them. Keep up the great work fellas
I watch for Amber only.
We love making content! We will always have fun doing it!
That’s exactly it! They truly enjoy this jazz and that jazzes me up in return
You guys are true professionals. No one does videos everyday. I wish my fellow co-workers and teams to be so motivated…
Thank you :D
Although I agree that Drana's Emissary generally isn't a very good in life gain decks, in my very niche Licia, Sanguine Tribune Vampire/Lifegain tribal deck it's amazing. Gaining one life at the beginning of the turn means Licia costs one less at the beginning of the turn. Combine this with cards like Fountain of Renewal and Ajani's Mantra and Licia gets discounted a lot just passively. Add to this the Vampire tribal theme and the Vampiric body Drana's Emissary comes on is also relevant
Math. Percent is a portion of 100, which happens to be the size of an EDH deck. 10/100 cards is 10%. 20/100 cards is 20% Easy-peasy. My life gain deck is a Halvar, God of Battle deck with a bunch of equipped life gain Angels. A 7/7 Angel with a +3 Sword getting double strike racks up some serious life gain.
Thanks Dad!
@@NitpickingNerds Ha! My kids are older than you! I’m 63.
Lover of lifegain here! Some other great lifegain cards: Bruse Tarl (very good lifegain commander); Umezawa's Jitte (specifically in Bruse Tarl); Nykthos Paragon (for large instances of lifegain); Elenda, the Dusk Rose; Piru, the Volatile; Fire Covenant; Phyrexian Processor (if you can reliably give the tokens lifelink); Well of Lost Dreams; Angelic Accord; Revenge of Ravens; True Conviction; Angel of Destiny; Debt to the Deathless; Phyrexian Purge; Cradle of Vitality. Have fun!
Been working on my Trelasarra life gain counters deck, shout out to the Nitpicking Nerds discord for helping out with the iterative process! Having some regular top-deck manipulation feels really nice with her.
she puts in work along side sythis in my sythis deck, for every enchantment I gain 1 life and draw a card and trelesarra lets me make sure i continue to get enchantments
@@pizzapm oh that does sound fun!! I'll be sure to include her, I've been itching to make a Sythis deck for a few months now...
I built my niece a Lathiel Unicorn tribal Lifegain deck with a few none unicorns and Spike Feeder might be the best card in that deck she has hit over 6000 life in multiple games because of Lathiel and Spike feeder alone. Then when it's not taking off counters to gain life she has a 120/120 blocker on everyone's turn
First deck I ever built was Lathiel. It was (and still is) hard because there's so many good cards to choose from
@@Mecal00 I agree and you get the best of 2 pretty good Archetypes in +1/+1 counters and life gain to choose between
My Trostani deck does not care about high toughness. I know that's what she says, but when you think about it, if you cast a 20/20, versus 20 1/1s, either way you are gaining 20 life. And we all know A bunch of small creatures is better than one big creature. Not that I'm against the high toughness deck, but I love pointing out that she's just as good as a general green white tokens Commander.
I agree. As long as you pump out a bunch of tokens, life gain becomes a passive. High toughness does not matter at that point :)
Okay no lie I was thinking to myself the other day how cool it would be if you guys did videos going in depth about each commander deck archetype and good commanders for each archetype and you guys delivered, awesome!
Don't forget about Sunscorch Regent! Most lifegain cards are either a payoff or an enabler, but this one gives a ton of lifegain triggers, and gives you a gigantic flyer on top of it!
Sure, it'll almost always get removed before you're able to swing with it as a 40/40, but they NEED to remove it, or else it'll become that 40/40 before they know it. And best of all, even if you never swing with it once, I very rarely see it die before it triggers at least 4-5 times, and in a deck like this 4-5 lifegain triggers can be be very significant, whether it ever gets to swing or not. (Not to mention that it ate one of your opponents' best removal spells, which now won't be pointed at your commander or the Archangel of Thune you have in your hand. And if you manage to give it lifelink, watch out!)
I'm gonna' have to disagree with you about Crested Sunmare, too, but that might just be because I'm running Linden, and the horses being indestructible means you can swing with impunity, which means more Linden triggers. It's definitely a little slow compared to some lifegain payoffs.
Speaking of Linden, though, I think she's far too overlooked. Most lifegain commanders provide the payoff, and she doesn't, but she's unique in that she's a very efficient means of enabling lots of little individual lifegain triggers herself, which frees you up to include even more payoffs in the 99. She might not be as good as Heliod, or anything, (and, in fact, I often describe the deck as "Heliod with extra steps") but I don't think she's as straight up bad as a lot of people think.
I was waiting to hear someone talk about Evra, halcyon witness or angel of destiny. One being a Win-con that's almost impossible to do the math if you give double strike, and the other is a commander that isn't scary until she is unblockable
As the resident Life-Gain player in all my friend's groups and LGSs this is both a solid quick reference resource and solid feedback episode on some of the cards I do and don't use. Thanks for this one fellas!
Gotta love the raw unedited content. Keep it up nit fam!
Thanks! It is definitely edited tho 😂
I've been thinking about making a life-gain deck for a while now. I guess this video is a sign I should commit
We can read minds!
The question now becomes what commander to run 🤔
@@jacobharris7414 I got some suggestions for ya. Depends on what kinda lifegain deck you wanna have. You’ll mostly be working in the White/Black/Blue realm, my suggestion is an Orzhov based deck.
If you want a deck built on “whenever you gain life” triggers then Oloro, the Ageless Ascetic is your go-to, cause he guarantees that lifegain every turn. Cards like Karlov of the Ghost council feed off those triggers, and those are the cards you should be building around. The easy win for this deck would be the classic exquisite blood/sanguine bond-type win-con. I accidentally won a 7-person game with this turn 5 cause somebody’s trigger caused every player to lose 1 life lol 🤦🏼.
If not incremental lifegain then you want dump spells that give you a massive amount of life right away. Lifegain doubler’s like Celestial Mantle, Boon Reflection, Rhox Faithmender etc. work insanely well with the doublers like Beacon of Immortality or Revival//Revenge. Aetherflux Reservoir and the like should be the finishers.
Could have some interesting commanders, Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim is a fun sacrifice based commander, her and Tree of Perdition in the same deck is always a good time. Liesa, Shroud of Dusk. Vona, Butcher of Magan. Tymna, the Weaver with Ravos, Soultender. Kambal, Consul of Allocation.
I’ve built all the decks and they’re very fun to play with, my friends labeled me a Filthy Lifegainer as a result lol. I will say that if you’re going for more power-based or a winning deck, I left lifegain for a Sacrifice based deck piloted by Teysa Karlov or Athreos, God of Passage. Good luck man! Hope you have fun with it.
Crested Sunmare found a place in the Twiligtht Sparkle deck I made for my friend.
beezy, clearly your cat adores you. She is very happy chilling with u guys. Starubg at you and wants to know what youre doing all the time ❤
I built a Liessa, Shroud of Dusk Life Gain/Life Drain Angels deck. It's pretty fun getting a bunch of Life gains events, passive triggers off them, +1/+1 counters, and spending life on stuff like Bolas' Citadel or Toxic Deluge when you have a TON of life to spend. Meanwhile my opponents pay 2 for every spell they cast and aren't gaining life 😅
It gets wild with Archangel of Thune, Nykthos Paragon, Norn's Annex, Voice of the Blessed etc
Aha, this vid (like most Nitpicking Nerds vids) is wonderfully timely. I’ve been wanting to make an *Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim* deck but wasn’t sure how.
We got you homie!!!!
I would suggest multiple copies of Serra Avatar and multiple copies of Flourishing Hunter. They're affordable cards that when played correctly can get you into the Thousands even Ten Thousands of life. Also the Serra Avatar you have left is a complete board wipe now.
Some nasty tricks with Serra Avatar. Rishkar's Expertise and Soul's Majesty for stupid card draw. Careful not to deck yourself though. Predator's Rapport, because gaining your life total PLUS your life total sounds fun. Afterward, you can Swords to Plowshares her and really jack your life total. Just for shits and giggles, toss in Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn for your Commander. What's that? Enough +1/+1 counters to choke the board? Ok!
K’rrick was wondering if you were gonna mention him once. The only commander that turns drain into ramp.
Absolutely loving the K'rrik love here. An absolute unit of a deck but he can be tricky to pilot and has given me a bit of trouble getting him off the ground. Black has plenty of ways to gain life, don't get me wrong, but he can drain you quickly if you're not careful and mono-black doesn't exactly have the absolute best suite of consistent lifegain.
@@Eric_The_Cleric yeah, but when you stare into the abyss with aetherflux reservoir in play and crawl your way back to full health by finding half your mana rocks it’s pretty sweet.
I like dranas emissary.
I totally agree with you that it's a meh card.
But she always pisses my opponents off cause shes annoying. So I normally drop her, she then eats a removal in a turn or 2, then I drop my real threat. Maybe it's just me and my play group but I love her as bait.
I wish you guys would do a recurring video where you guys "Nitpick" 5 decks chosen from submitted decks listed on Moxfield. The deck must be tagged and have a primer. The person submitting must be a subscriber. (I would say "must be a patreon" but I'm poor, but I love the channel!) Not a full bore deck tech, just some constructive criticism. You guys have awesome insight and this would let you guys give input on more decks without having to do full deck techs. Good idea?
Lathiel is insane for me. My most powerful Commander deck. Fill it with lifelink creatures and they become 20/20s quick
What creatures do you use? I just got into magic a couple months ago and I’m having fun with lárguele my deck needs a lot of work.( got it from a friend who made it playable for me lol)
Lathiel**
If you're at a somewhat low power table, and you still want to play your full-power deck without wanting to bully, you can self-arata the cards to function with the new (and proper) wording. "If you have X more than your starting life." Serra Ascendant, for example, would activate at 50 life instead of 30, making it a cheap beater instead of a busted turn 1 play. All the "Win if you have x life" like Felidar Sovereign would be changed based on how much they are above 20, so since Felidar triggers at 40 normally, which is 20 over the normal start, if would instead trigger at 60. If you're in a high power level table, this won't be needed, but if you want to play lifegain with the best cards and not be too strong for a 6-7 table, this is a good way to nerf yourself without making your deck intentionally bad.
Surprised y'all didn't mention Kambal. he's my lifegain commander at least. also another good win con is Angel of Destiny.
Drogskol Reaver does serious work in my Oloro Deck. I'm gaining life 4+ times per turn, resulting in serous card draw.
Yeah I feel like they underestimate Double Strike Life gain + Draw a card each time you gain life. And especially when you combo in the lifegain triggers that happen, like a Heliod buffing it so it survives a trade, even swinging ONCE with Reaver completely changes the board and is an automatic +2 MINIMUM. Definitely a great include, especially in the right deck for it
Joe and beezy seem like two of the nicest guys ever. I like learning from people that aren't talking down to you.
Nykthos Paragon definitely deserves a mention imo. It's similar to Archangel of Thune, but better when you gain a lot of life at once rather than in multiple triggers.
This also leads me to my favorite lifegain deck, which is Bruse Tarl // Ikra Shidiqi. It has access to practically every lifegain card and both commanders have repeatable triggers that gain you life. Nykthos Paragon is such an easy game ender in this deck because Bruse Tarl gives your biggest creature both double strike and lifelink: Swing with Nykthos Paragon and your soul sisters and mana dorks, after first strike put 4 +1/+1 counters on all your creatures then your small creatures do the rest.
True story: the description on Fifth Edition starter deck boxes referred to life as "score".
"Score gain" just doesn't do it for me.
Score sounds just wrong
I had been sharing my collection with a childhood friend back from school and year and half ago he had to leave to his native country, I gave him all my cards and start over my own collection this time with knowledge and experience plus my LGS owner and players helping me out by selling what I wanted at a good price and or exchange of what I open in mh2 packs, Serra ascendant and phyrexian altar was one of those cards that inspire two decks my yawgmoth and elesh norn, so yeah turn one Serra ascendant is no joke even if you mellow it out by saying you will attack at random or one by one lol
Serra asc is no joke
NEW NITPICKING NERDS VIDEO!
I feel like "Life from the loam" is a must include ;)
Great episode, keep 'em comming boiis!
Great video, thanks! Gotta give him some love because my Crested Sunmare has won me many games with my Tymna/Ikra Shidiqi deck. And you know, throwing indestructible horses at your opponents is fun. Also Drana's Emissary is indeed a bit mehh, but she secures the draw from tymna, so it is actually good for tymna decks imo. For the green players that want many little triggers: Life's Gift makes opponents doubt playing lands lol.
Your sneak attack ads finally convinced me to put my decks onto moxfield
Sweet, I just bought a foil etched Liesa, Shroud of Dusk because I found it for cheap and I liked the card, and I was just thinking about brewing a list for her! :D
Wow theres no way i was searching stuff like this 2 days ago holy shit the universe does work in weird ways
Please do more of these
Moxfield is the Nitpicking Nerds of deckbuilding sites
Oh this might help I’ve been building a Heliod lifegain decklist for awhile, i have about 20 of the cards in the list already, I’m currently trying to make the deck a tiny bit cheaper but all of the cards I’m taking out for cheaper cards are going up in price making the deck stay the same
Ajani protecting itself with another lifegain payoff is such a nice little effect for the few games when you really need another trigger for counters and such
Crested sunmare with a sun droplet is pretty strong. Every turn, get an indestructible 5/5. Opponent tries to get smart and not deal damage to you so you don't get counters on your droplet? Fine, we don't want to be attacked anyway!
When I realized the Soul Sisters were all clerics, I built Orah around an Aristocrats theme that gains me life, which can then be used for various payoff potentials. It is hilarious when people just sort of leave me alone since I am not attacking, and all of a sudden I am winning out of nowhere.
so play a competitive Vito deck that over time has been tuned more to just go for Exquisite Blood and trigger it with jank cards. I realize Mono black is a little weak tho so now it’s a Dina deck :)
Got some new additions to my lathiel deck from this! Also if you have archangel of thune, lathiel, and some soul sisters out, things can get confusing quick with trying to spread a million counters on your creatures lol
As an Oloro player, a Lathiel player, and an Elenda player, I agree with this video
I have a life gain deck and i use Patron of the Kitsune as commander. Its a solid deck
I have an Ikra Shidiqi and Prava lifegain deck, with subthemes of buttfight and tokens. It's probably not the most optimal build, but I really wanted Abzan lifegain and it's been a lot of fun, and can be pretty strong.
Damn I didnt see the moxfield ad coming this time
Kenrith lifegain anybody? with a trainigground effect nets you 5-20 life for 1mana including lifegain doublers! Also love my Nykthos Paragon :)
Beeezy, would you put your updated version of god eternal oketra on moxfield please 🙄🙃 there is only the version of Shuffle Scuffle
I built mine based on yours cause i know you two are the best at building decks 😉
Keep up the great content
jerry
Beezy is a slacker! I will yell at him!
@@NitpickingNerds thanks cherries 😉
jerry
Great video as always boys thank you
This is why I sub. I am so excited for this deep dive
We love you Zack!
@@NitpickingNerds you are my guys! I love you too. Before I go back to work, I'll make a trip out there again to jam some games.
Currently I have a modern mono white lifegain that is pretty good but I think if I add some green to it it'll be alot better. Hopefully I'll win fnm instead of being top 5
Could you guys do one on landfall?
Could you guys make a playlist for these archetype deep dives? I'd love to watch more, but they're a little hard to find.
*cackles in Serra Ascendant*
Funny Enough I was just building a Trelassara deck just yesterday
Just started to watch but I run a life gain deck with five colour Sisay at the helm. It uses Litches Mastery
You guys are awesome. Keep it up.
If you have a lifegain deck, please cut Ghostly Prison and Propaganda for Revenge of Ravens. Trust me! It makes combat more interesting, and provides you with some much needed lifegain triggers! Thank me later.
Hear hear! I remember running into opponents playing it on Arena from time to time, and nothing shuts down token decks that wanna swing with 1/1s quite like it. Gets super nasty in multiples, which is of course harder in commander, but with blue copy spells, far from impossible in the right deck.
Life gain works well in vintage however you can't just do that, you need to have offense too. Like grapeshotting someone then playing tendrills or weather the storm.
Is Blind Obedience playable in Selesnya since the Extort cost can be paid in white? I'd love to have another way to slow my opponents down in Trelasarra!
Nope.
@@MrBLAAHHHHHHHHHHH you can actually because the hybrid mana is in the reminder text which means you can put it into any white commander deck
“Heliod is the only white one” *cries in patron of the kitsune*
My lifegain deck is Abzan with Tynma and ikra. i think its a really underrated pair
i like the idea of ajani's pridemate and fling lol
"Gain some . . .butt-life."
Dead.
Dunkey shirt❤️
put a couple tainted remedies in play and the extra life they gain becomes damage instead.
You'll be surprised how amazing Patron of the Kitsune is as a lifegain commander
Created Sunmare loves Patron of the Kitsune
I have never gained as much life as with Sythis, running lifelink auras, rhox faithmender, Alhammaret's archive and Nykthos Paragon.
That is a lot of life gain
Love me some alhamerret's archive.
I won off ajani against another life gain deck. Exiled everything then swung in hard!
I'm the guy in my meta that, no matter what deck I'm building, I always manage to work lifegain into it lol
How does someone also in the buffalo area play with the nerds?
How do you say Archangel is great and talk over Lathiel? Lathiel does it for every life you gain
its a little more than 10-15% of your deck if you dont include your commander (seeing as its not a card you can draw) but yeah basically 10-15%
How do you think glacial chasm would work in a liesa deck? I've considered it because you gain a bunch of life all the time, and from my experience, I don't seem to attack that much with the deck because my creatures are mostly small and I don't want them to die. It seems like a good card because I can just stockpile life for a long time and drain other people as the game goes on. Let me know what you think!
No Firesong & Sunspeaker group-slug lifegain?
Sunmare and Parley Selvala is pretty insane
Seedborn muse loves to join as well...
can we plz get a atafackt sack dep dive like u did for aristakrats i think its cold arkcrats
Would have thought Kambal would come in here.
aetherflux reservoir is NOT a life gain card, its a storm payoff card. You just happen to gain life during the process of storming off and use it to eventually win.
it plays fairly well with Bola’s citadel, but yeah. It’s def more of a storm thing
I’d mostly agree, but late in the game when you’re potentially at like 60+ life it’s just 4 mana to eliminate the most threatening player to you right then and there.
@@sugs_30 potentially, but does that actually win you the game? You just paid a significant chunk of your life to take 1 player out . The problem I have with aetherflux in life gain decks is that those decks rarely can chain together more than 3 spells a turn, let alone keep enough card draw to maintain it. So it's actually rather lackluster as a chunk life gain effect, so it has to be used incrementally, which is just tedious imo. Now take for instance my jhiora cheerios deck. By turn 3-4 I'll probably have cast 25-40 spells aside from it. I can easily mow down an entire group with more to spare. It's just a lot more dynamic in storm. Not that it can't snipe someone like in your scenario, it's just a large cost.
An entire video on life gain and they forgot the unstoppable power of Grave Titan + Whip of Erebos. It's a whole army of lifelinkers.
There have been a few recent life gain payoff cards that help stretch the archetype in another direction - Witch of the Moors and Veinwitch Coven are pretty good, with Moors being the one my opponents are always having to throw removal at.
I run Runo Stromkirk with Whip of Erebos... I was really trying to keep all my creatures blue... But... Whip out the grave titan for 4 zombies then copy grave titan with Runo for 8 more... Throw serpent Assault in there and you get 16!!!! 😮
we need a good abzan lifegain amirite?
Spirit loop is just too good.
So good
He said that commander damage is the only way you die with high life total. Do you want to play against my infect deck. Just kidding I really enjoy your content.
Use card that pays 50 to shoot 50, use cards like enlightened tutor (I think) to find it.
Hey is Alhammarret's Archive a trap card or is it worth it?
what are your guys' opinion on the card "blood seeker"? i've had him in a lifegain deck for a while now and my playgroup absolutely LOATHES him (mostly bc we have a creature heavy meta, and he's the most unassuming common in the deck while secretly just being a house against them, so it may really be a meta call on if it's good or not, but i wanted to see what you guys think, because i've NEVER seen him mentioned ANYWHERE)
i haven't finished the video yet bc the soul sisters section reminded me about it, but i'll update this comment if he's under the "traps" section and i just haven't seen it yet
You guys messed up. The worst version of ajani's pridemate is actually celestial unicorn.
yeah i realized this recently after buying most of the cards I needed for my lifegain deck. Idk what I should use now since they don't even like Ajani's pridemate and i have the worse version of it.
@@forestfalco9949 I wouldn't use the unicorn but pridemate isn't actually that bad depending on what the colors of the deck are and what power level you are going for. They don't like it because there are better options in most decks for it now. There's been so many good cards printed for lifegain decks over the years that ajanis pridemate type cards don't make the cut in most decks anymore.
@@kartzzy6101 ah ok well my deck isnt actually commander its mostly just like a homemade deck to play around with my friends. Its a W/B deck and The basic idea is to use something like cleric class turn one and then get a unicorn/ajani's pridemate turn 2 and get some life gain going with stuff like Kor Celebrant "enter the battlefield" effects and what not. It also has some of the later game combo's like Sanguin Bond/ Exquisite Blood as well as Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose. (edit) it also has a bunch of stuff like Marauding Blight - Priest, Cliffhaven Vamprire, Drana's Emissary as well as other quick life gain/draw cards to keep getting the +1/+1 counters going and keep sapping my opponents of life.
@@forestfalco9949 oh ok, so in just a tabletop no real format type deck it'll be pretty good.
@@kartzzy6101 yeah I think Ajani Pridemate would be decent considering I'm not playing any serious format or competitive setting. I wish there were more ppl i knew who played.
just waiting for the day they release a good abzan lifegain commander without partner.
that would be awesome!
epic
“Heliod is really the only option for mono white”
Me, a Linden player: 😭
Yeah, my Linden deck slaps.
To be fair, it's basically Heliod with extra steps, but Heliod with extra steps is still pretty damn good!
And it's not like she's BAD, or anything. There are few commanders that are as good at gaining a ton of little lifegain triggers in a single turn.
Life gain stands no chance against my infect decks 😱🤯😱
No bitches 🥺
Do this with aristocrats and I’ll be very happy!
Now I’m sad he’s not with them now
Goodbye indestructible horses..
Kambul
I am a simple man give me a Thragtusk and a way to repeatedly Blink and I will gain life and make tokens all day :P
I do love me some Swagtusk on a budget
Amber!!