Life. Life is the basic foundation of existence. We that exist are born from life. We are a part of life as life itself dwells within us. Without it, we are nothing. Life sustains us. Life gives us hope. Life is everything.
– Bio-Eco Terrorist, Aerith Gainsborough
So how did we get here? Truth be told, I wanted to try to make my own life gain deck for a while now. Furthermore, with the release of the Chocobo track products, I was tricked into buying a Chocobo art Aerith, Last Ancient by a friend.
I know things about FFVII since I watched part of the gameplay and did research before multiple times. I’ve never been a large fan of the Final Fantasy series, but I can appreciate the art and the contribution the games have made on RPGs and gaming as a whole. In a satirical summary of FFVII, the seventh main line title, an amnesiac joins a bunch of bio-eco terrorists in disrupting fossil fuel industries from depriving the world of life. And no, this is a fantasy game, but you could maybe see it as a parody of reality to some extent.
Aerith here is reflective of the goals of this deck. We are a life gain deck. That means that our cards must gain us life in one capacity or another. And as Aerith suggests, when we gain life, we also get rewards for doing so. Aerith’s reward is typically a free salvage or a reanimate trigger depending on how much life we gain during our turn. As for why the threshold for the reanimate part is seven, my guess, and if you’re about just as disappointed as I am for the reason, it’s because seven is related to Final Fantasy VII. We aren’t especially focused on reanimation in this deck; we are, as Aerith plainly suggests, a life gain deck first and foremost.
We are essentially a Soul Sister deck on crack. Now, given that it’s Commander, the Soul Sisters we plan to run are all the Soul Sisters that grant us life gain whenever any player plays or spawns a creature on their board. We want to be gaining life all the time, not simply only on our turn. With the Soul Sisters above, we can put them on the board early and quickly begin amassing that wonderful and sweet life.
Interestingly enough, Aerith has quite a few common creature traits that are intrinsically beneficial to the archetype of life gain. Clerics and druids in Magic can commonly regenerate life, and being human is just another very common creature type that we can value off of with some mini-synergies.
As a previously mentioned, using her types as a human cleric druid, we may as well benefit by leaning deeper into Aerith’s roots in both professions. As such, the class enchantments from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms can be greatly useful as additional ways to add to our life gain. Cleric Class can rapidly increase the amount of life gained, especially off the Soul Sisters. Each level up has beneficial effects, especially the first level up, allowing us to make our creatures increasingly tanky and hard-hitting each time we gain life. Druid Class offers us life and ramp on its first level up. We will generally ignore the last level up unless we are desperate since it does open up our land to potential destruction.
As stated previously, we are a life gain deck on crack. Every non-land card in this deck must contain some kind of relation to life. This is especially relevant on Aerith as she is a safe guard of Mako (the energy of her source material), the foundation of life. We must lean into her lore and also defend the life stream. And the best way to do that is by multiplying and increasing it as much as we can. Leylines are hilarious. Leylines are ridiculous and especially random considering that in Commander, we have 99 card decks. However, if we can get these two leylines running, they greatly buff our creatures and can turn them into lethal threats. Yes, our Soul Sisters are getting swole.
Everything we have triggers off of life gain. One of our initial strategies is flooding the board with creatures that continue to multiply as we gain life. The key strategy here is that we want to have creatures that create continual value rather than only on our turn. With these cards in play, as we continue to accelerate and grow our life points, we are rewarded with more and more creatures to pummel our opponents with.
Now hear me out, what’s scary, gains life, and causes our opponents to reel in fear and terror? If your guess was the tax man, you’re pretty close. It’s Brisela, Voice of Nightmares. If you’re old, you probably already know what this meld pair does, but for the youngins browsing my site, the two angel horror sisters combine into what could be described as a Hideo Kojima creation and begin wailing down on your opponents. Yes, I know that Bruna “technically” doesn’t gain life, but she works with Gisela (who has lifelink) to create this horrific abomination. And granted, our deck does share many similar creature types that Bruna checks for: human and angel. Bruna can retrieve quite a number of potential targets from our graveyard. Anyways, bring out both sisters, and meld them; then swing out and win the game.
In terms of card advantage, we follow white’s card draw mantra, slow but steady card draw from fulfilling certain conditions. Probably one of my used cards in many white decks, Enduring Innocence is great here as a continual draw engine. Granted, if we have a token generator, Enduring Innocence will prime on our opponent’s turns as well, granting us additional card draw during their turns. Dawn of a New Age is interesting since it is a scaling card that gets better with the more creatures we have on board.
Just because we are a “healing” deck doesn’t mean we can’t go on the offensive. Interaction is a stock standard for Magic as a whole. We can’t just sit idly by as our opponents execute their own game plans. Even if the built in limitations due to the theme is “life”, we can circumvent this by narrowing our interaction. In the case of Reverent Silence, sometimes healing just isn’t an option.
As healers, we must also be able to defend ourselves. Rune-Tail returns once again as a perfect choice as a deck that cares about our creatures while having a high life total. Rune-Tail basically makes our creatures virtually invincible unless our opponents deliberately play kill spells. Moogles’ Valor protects our creatures while also granting us a larger board. Restoration Magic is Aerith’s signature speciality, allowing us to heal while protecting all our cards.
Late game bombs like the above wail on our opponents, swiftly reducing their life total in comparison to our own. Triumph of Saint Katherine is especially tricky to deal with, being extremely recursive thanks to her own ability. With the Miracle tag, we can even spawn her in the early turns to really give our opponents a wailing. Angel of Indemnity starts off as a rather mediocre threat on the battlefield, but we can encore her from the graveyard and turn her into a massive threat later in the game that also resurrects our members.
A trickle of life isn’t enough for us. We need massive life gains. We need to keep our life total up. In that regard, Rhox Faithmender doubles up any sort of life gain. Couple that with Beacon of Immortality, and we can truly look towards ascending to godhood. With a wide enough board, Akroma’s Will can quickly close out the game but also ensure that we remain ahead afterwards should our foes survive.
Just because we are life doesn’t meant we don’t interact with the dead. It is precisely that we are intertwined with life where we must interact with the dead as life has a symbolic relationship with its opposite. As such, Scavenging Ooze and Ashes of the Abhorrent are our forms of graveyard hate, making sure to keep the dead in their place, preventing desecration of the tombs as is the sacred duty of the clerics. Keep in mind that Ashes of the Abhorrent will impact Angel of Indemnity’s Encore ability as it is an activated ability from the graveyard. However, since our other abilities target cards for reanimation using abilities on the cards themselves, Aerith and the like can bypass the ashes and still bring our friends back to life.
And here comes Aerith with the metal chair. With a swift blow, she’s knocked out her opponent. Wait, is that a legal move? Who cares? Aerith claims the champion’s belt. Winning by knockout, Aerith, the human cleric is the new world champion!
