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by Justin Gary
Life Gaining vs. Damage Dealing This report would like to take a brief look at the comparison of life gaining vs. damage dealing. Inherently since magic's inception, damage dealing has been a far superior and far more efficient card effect. To illustrate this look at the two primary examples of damage dealing and prevention/lifegaining: Lightning Bolt and Healing Salve. Both effectively cancel the other out, but alone the lightning bolt is clearly better. Why is this? And what conclusions and hence knowledge can we draw from this insight? Perhaps the key reason that damage is better than life gaining/prevention is that it is always effective and supplies a road to victory. Since every opponent will have life, damaging cards such as lightning bolt and fireball will always have a target and a purpose. Not all opponents, however, will attempt to damage you, and so often life gaining is irrelevant and hence playing with life gaining cards is effectively providing card advantage to your opponent. Damage also provides a road to victory in the sense that: if you can produce 20 points of damage, the game is over and you win (barring unforeseen circumstances). However gaining 20 life or even gaining infinite life does not ensure victory (even Tom Wylie tells us in his infinity rulings how damage is better than life gaining!). Damage dealing also is multifaceted in it's ability to remove creatures, the most efficient source of damage in the game. Even a skulking ghost, however, is not afraid of a healing salve. Admittedly, damage prevention can save creatures and life gaining can negate a pure damage based deck. But, as stated earlier, the uses of prevention are far more limited and are often only useful against these heavily damage based decks. Life gaining is not an effective way to deal with creatures or any other continuous threat ("great, you can invulnerability my Shivan every turn, too bad my Orgg and my Ball Lightning will get through, huh?" Or "Yeah Gerrard's wisdom for 10, two turns of attacking should make up for that!" . It is not as of yet viable for a pure life gaining deck to survive an opponent's onslaught (while the pure damage Engine and Sligh decks are clearly viable and deadly) So, why play with life gaining at all? Well, the answer is simple. Wizards has realized the inherent weakness in life gaining and has subsequently given us more and more powerful life gaining tools. Sometimes, doubting the power of any life-gaining, wizards goes too far and creates a card like Zuran orb, or Ivory tower. Do you even think that for one moment they would ever consider a reverse Zuran orb????? I shudder at the thought (uh oh, I'm at 1 and you're at twenty, wish I hadn't drawn all lands this game, wait, I drew my ZURAN ORB OF DOOM, sac 10 lands, bye bye!!). Seriously though, new cards like Natural Spring, Gerrard's Wisdom, and Bottle Gnomes, show how WotC is giving life gaining the punch (or block) it needs to get into tournament decks. Since damage dealing is now so prevalent (this is largely due to the loss of ivory tower and Zuran orb, yet another swing in the pendulum) it behooves the advanced player to have some form of prevention/life gaining in their deck. Since every winning extended deck runs bolts, honorable passage seems like a good idea. Gerrard's has already proven itself to be near broken and Bottle Gnomes have combined the efficiency of a creature with great life gaining often preventing six or more damage over all (and occasionally even dishing out some). Soon enough the deck will be built which utilizes the powerful life gaining tools that WotC is tempting us with (mark my words, Staunch Defenders is a GOOD card). And Sligh's reign as the end all be all of magic will come to a close. In closing I propose a toast. To life!
Justin Gary
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