Greetings, all! This is my attempt at a modern lifegain deck that is fairly competitive for the low price of $15.00. Every creature in this deck is a threat that has to be taken care of immediately by your opponent, because they can grow very quickly. The primary win condition in this deck is just beating your opponents to death with the often stupidly powerful creatures below. However, I can also win through the infinite combo created by enchanting Spike Feeder with Sunbond. (Yes, I know that Archangel of Thune also comboes infinitely with Spike Feeder. No, I don't plan to add it. It's one mana more and literally costs more than the rest of my deck put together.)
An ideal hand has in it three lands and four non-lands, although 4- and 5-land hands are sometimes workable. 2-land hands are somewhat harder to deal with, and should probably be mulliganed.
An ideal play (depicted here against a goldfish) consists of the following: T1: Blossoming Sands or Graypelt Refuge comes in tapped, gain 1 life. (21/20) T2: Play a Forest or a Plains, tap two to play Ajani's Pridemate. (21/20) T3: Play another untapped land, tap three for a Chalice of Life
, which you should then tap to gain 1 life. Put a +1/+1 counter on and attack with the Pridemate. (22/17) T4: Play another untapped land, tap two in order to play Heroes' Reunion, gaining seven life and putting another +1/+1 counter on the Pridemate. (29/17) Then, tap Chalice of Life
, gaining 1 life, putting a +1/+1 counter on the Pridemate, and transforming Chalice of Life
into Chalice of Death
. (30/17) Attack with Ajani's Pridemate for 5, then pay two more mana in order to play out a
Voracious Wurm
, which enters play with 8 +1/+1 counters as a 10/10 creature. (30/12). On your next turn, your opponent (goldfish) will take at least 20 damage and lose the game.
Of course, it rarely ends up actually happening that way. But, as some general advice for running this deck:
Don't play
Voracious Wurm
until turn 4 at the earliest, unless you are really in trouble. The synergy with Heroes' Reunion is wonderful.
Get Ajani's Pridemate out as soon as possible. If you can't do that, get Sun Droplet out as soon as possible.
Remember, Spike Feeder + Sunbond gives you an infinitely powerful Spike Feeder and infinite life. Which is basically a instant win right there. Also, remember that you can have Spike Feeder assign its combat damage to a blocking creature, then remove +1/+1 counters from it while the damage is on the stack, and still have it deal the same amount of damage to that creature as though it had attacked without removing any counters.
Anyway, thanks for reading this far. Give it a +1 if you liked, a comment if you didn't and think I can do better, and as always, thank you very much for reading!
-PhoenixStar
P.S. You could also leave a nice comment if you liked it. That'd be good too.
