Basic Overview
A Tamanoa deck is a variant on the Soul-Sister archetype in Modern. The difference between this deck and the typical 'soul sisters' deck most commonly played (other than being Naya) is the main source of life-gain triggers. In this deck, there is an attempt to gain life gain triggers also off of sources of 'pain' (like Lightning Helix or pain lands). I built this off the card Tamanoa. If you are looking for a tier 1 competitive deck, this isn't it.
In approach, it may also be important to note that this deck is more mid-range than the aggro life-gain decks out there (though with each edit of this deck, it seems to becomes more aggro than midrange). I tried to design the deck to work even without Tamanoa, but it becomes better with her in play. Tamanoa allows any non-creature source of damage to be a separate source of life-gain. That damage could even be self inflicted, and so gains you no positive net health, but the important part is that you can have more life-gain triggers than usually possible (especially within the mana-base)
It may not be in a complete state, but setting the sorting of the deck to ''Custom'', may give you an idea on what does what.
-_Gain: Can cause life_gain triggers, but its more conditional.
+_Gain: Consistent life-gain triggers.
Pro_Pain: Damage that helps you directly (Opponent, any target etc...)
Hurt_Pain: Damage to self
Mana: Potential or direct source of mana.
Counters: +1/+1 Counters.
Filter: Any effect that lowers the amount of cards in your library in a productive way. Like Draw, Tutor,etc... We need lots of this, since it is particularly a combo deck.
Creature: An direct or indirect effect to cause a creature to enter the battlefield
Planeswalker: Contributes to a potential planes-walker sub-theme (not certainly prevalent in deck)
Tamanoa vs. Soulfire Grand Master Difference
The fundamental difference between Tamanoa vs. Soulfire Grand Master is that Tamanoa is only restricted to 'non-creature' sources, while Soulfire is just instants and sorceries. So Tamanoa can gain life from lands, Planeswalkers, Enchantments, and Artifacts. Soulfire can't. This makes a HUGE difference when design a deck and means that Soulfire Grand Master deck is NOT a Tamanoa deck.
I personally think Soulfire is worse. The most important thing to note is land sources. By putting enough pain lands (they deal damage to you), you essentially get plentiful life gain triggers consistently and free of cost. This has the added benefit of having great mana filtering, but at the cost of running many non-basic lands. Since you basically always have pain lands, if you put enough in your deck, Tamanoa then just needs a life gain outlet like Ajani's Pridemate, Archangel of Thune, or Heliod, Sun-Crowned. Soulfire Grand Master needs an instant or sorcery with damage, a life gain outlet, as well as itself to function. Soulfire is essencially a 'three card combo', while Tamanoa functions as a 'two card combo'. This is a HUGE difference in play-ability.Not only is Tamanoa more consistent by nature--as well as more flexible as a design space--its also less vulnerable to basic removal than Soulfire Grand Master. Tamanoa passes the Lightning Bolt test, where Soulfire does not. Furthermore, Tamanoa high defense can provide enough delay as to advance mid-range strategies.
If you wish to attempt a Soulfire Grand Master deck, consider ways to consistently have assess to instant and sorceries to get the right bang for your buck. This could be Sunforger, Chandra, Acolyte of Flame, or even Snapcaster Mage. I would recommend Boros Charm as a means to preserve your board state as well as do some serious damage. You could also use Mana Clash for a real jank experience, since the rules say they each damage is a seperate instance of damage and therefore life-gain trigger (according to the gatherer). The difficulty in this deck would not only be consistency in the three card type combo, but also in its ability to function without it. Clearly Ajani's Pridemate is useless by itself, and if the instants you choose can't naturally gain life, there is a constant fear that this sort of deck will be in a stand still.
Infinite combos:
Step 1:Remove a counter to gain life from Spike Feeder.
Step 2: By gaining life, Heliod or Thune can therefore put another counter on the Feeder.
Step 3: Repeat any many times as you want. Though technically, it should be a finite number.
Spike Feeder is not super amazing on its own, so I thought it may be a good sideboard card. You can surprise the opponent by an infinite combo that wasn't there before. It's not super consistent, but it can end the game when it does happens.
Additional things to note:
-Bonecrusher Giant is a non-creature source when cast by its alternative adventure spell 'stomp'. Hence triggering Tamanoa's ability
-Fetchlands, Shocklands, and Shatterskull Smashing
are lands that don't deal damage to you. You do lose life, but that life is a payment. City of Brass 'deals' damage, while Mana Confluence does not. Pain lands trigger Tamanoa's ability.
-City of Brass damages you any time you tap it, while any other pain land can tap for colourless without damaging you.
-You can target your opponent's creatures or your own with Spark of Creativity to essencially draw a card. Even if it isn't something you can play or want to play, you can simply keep it exiled and not do the damage. Since it says 'play', you are also able to play lands found with Spark of Creativity
-Klothys, God of Destiny is a non-creature source until you have enough devotion.
-Mass damage effects like Anger of the Gods, Blasphemous Act, Deafening Clarion, Aurelia's Fury etc... damage all creatures that damage isn't prevented for at the same time. While Tamanoa does gain you life equal the number of damage dealt to each creature times the number of creatures (Usually a LOT!!), this damage doesn't trigger separate instances of damage for each creature. No matter how many creatures are hit by something like Deafening Clarion, Tamanoa only triggers once.
Tamanoa's life-gain ability is a triggered effect. That is, whenever a non-creature source deals damage, it will successfully deal that damage before Tamanoa's ability. It's not lifelink. This means that if you are at 1 life you can't use a pain land, even if you have Tamanoa and would gain that life 'immediately back'.
Possible Variants:
The Jank/Challenge Variant:
Consider Mana Clash. According to the Gatherer:
"Each point of damage is dealt separately, so if you are damaged twice by this spell, each time is considered a separate time this source deals damage."
This means there is potential for many separate lifegain triggers with either Tamanoa or Soulfire Grand Mage at no cost to yourself but . In addition, imagine if you keep it going with Krark's Thumb. This deck could also include stuff like Fiery Gambit. Maybe even Game of Chaos in casual play.
There is an amazing analysis on Mana Clash on this thread (Probability):
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/490712-mana-clash.
I have no idea how a deck like that would work, and I was unsuccessful in the past, so I'm leaving it open.
The Planeswalker variant:
There is actually plenty of potential support for planes-walkers in the Tamanoa space. Unfortunately with this variant, you are probably best with more burn or more soul sisters elements than a balance of both. In this variant, the majority of the higher curve cards will be planeswalkers, and the game progression is slower than my main deck. You can stick 1x Interplanar Beacon into the deck as another source of lifegain. Perhap you could include Shalai, Voice of Plenty to protect your board state; where Shalai, Voice of Plenty can protect combo pieces as well, like Spike Feeder.
In all likelihood, I see 2 potencial sub-variants of the planeswalker deck:
The 1st would have Gideon Blackblade and Ajani, Strength of the Pride, doubling down the life-gain strategy with hardly any direct 'burn cards'. Tamanoa seems less necessary in this deck, but it's interaction with pain-lands still helps the general strategy. This is probably the most safe and fun of any variant I list here.
The 2nd possible sub-variant is a Chandra build. This would throw in a bunch of Chandra planeswalkers and support cards like Chandra's Triumph, Oath of Chandra, Chandra's Regulator, etc. This variants game plan is a slow burn. Tamanoa would mostly be used to delay the game out as you slowly burn them and the board state. Deafening Clarion could be useful, or even Pyrohemia.
Mana Burn Variant:
This variant throws out soul-sisters entirely, and uses cards like Manabarbs, Burning Earth, or casually Overabundance to slowly burn each opponent. You can use talismans or mana dorks to reduce the mana on yourself. With Tamanoa, you gain life for each landed tapped (which is pretty crazy). A big problem with this build is set-up. You have to place a 4 cmc enchantment in place that has little short term effect and it even has the potencial to harm you. This would be hard to build.
There are other variants of this deck that I have tried, but I'll leave it at that...
