Should Green's Lifegain Rely Upon Creatures?
General forum
Posted on Nov. 19, 2022, 9:18 a.m. by DemonDragonJ
WotC has stated that green's card drawing/card advantage must be related to creatures, such as Elvish Visionary, Collective Unconscious/Shamanic Revelation, or Garruk, Primal Hunter's second ability, which makes Harmonize a color pie break, and I think that green's life gaining should also be reliant upon creatures, to maintain that philosophy.
For example, I believe that Nourish, Weather the Storm and Stream of Life should be regarded as color pie breaks, but Brindle Boar, Obstinate Baloth/Ravenous Baloth, Oracle of Nectars, and Inscription of Abundance are acceptable (Dawnglow Infusion and Heroes' Reunion are acceptable because they contain white).
What does everyone else say about this? Should green's life gaining be reliant upon creatures? And, as a side note, how is Dawnglow Infusion only a sorcery, and not an instant? That severely reduces its utility, in my mind.
TypicalTimmy says... #3
Well, Harmonize was the color-shift from Concentrate from Planer Chaos. Predator's Rapport would have been a better selection for your inquiry over Dawnglow Infusion, but seeing as both of these are among my favorite cards in the game, I'll forgive you <3
Really, Dawnglow Infusion is a bit of a bend for both colors, really. They both focus on creatures, not how much mana you can spend into something.
As for your actual question... what else would it be based around? Green is the big-stompy-boi color. Landfall could work, sure. Or perhaps "X life for each land" or something. But, realistically speaking, what else would you be looking toward? In a lot of ways, green and white are in the same boat here; Green focuses more so on large, singular creatures while white focuses on tokens. But at the end of the day, a creature is a creature.
I understand what you mean though. Black focuses on when creatures die is when you get life.
Red... kind of doesn't? Now that I think about it, nor does blue? Huh, neat.
I believe white also looks at enchantments to gain some life. I think, perhaps, a nice alternative for gaining life could be green looking at things such as total number of lands on the battlefield, revealing the top X cards and you get life equal to the highest power among creature cards revealed... things like that.
November 19, 2022 9 p.m.
plakjekaas says... #4
Green is literally the color of life in MtG, I'm not sure why lifegain would need to be tied to a card type for the color. Every type has lifegain in green:
November 20, 2022 6:29 a.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #5
plakjekaas, I wish for there to be a distinction between white and green in terms of how they gain life; white has unconditional life gain, and black gains life either when an opponent loses life or a creature dies, so how should green be different from the other two colors?
November 20, 2022 6:02 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #6
I feel like white used to be damage /prevention/ (like with Guardian Angel, which is a WILD card when you think about it) and green was actual life gain, with the life-gain-fireball Stream of Life.
November 20, 2022 9:43 p.m.
plakjekaas says... #7
The distinction you wish there to be, is not a mechanical one. It's a flavor one, as FormOverFunction touched upon.
White has lifegain because it's the color of community, of healing the sick to strengthen the group, medical cards are usually white in MtG (Apothecary Geist or Healing Salve)
Black is the color of dark magic, vampires, extracting the force of life out of your victims and sacrifices. That's why many vampires have lifelink.
Green is the color of nature, the food chain, photosynthesis, natural growth and prospering.
They can still mechanically be represented with the same kinds of cards, but the reason each color gains life is not bound by the mechanics but by the philosophy of the color pie. At least that's how I see it.
November 21, 2022 3:35 a.m.
Well, every color does have secondary effects in their color pie and I do think that one of green's is, make and use mana freely, and I think that some of these fall into that side of green. Maybe it's similar to how blue can dabble with big creatures, just so long as they are big blue creatures.
On the flip side, I do think that something like Sylvan Library is a break in the color pie for green. The effect of library feels very to me.
FormOverFunction says... #2
I think it’s fine to have green life gain tied to the destruction (or at least engagement with - ex. Living Artifact) artifacts.
November 19, 2022 2:13 p.m.