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Jan 26, 2013 -- 8:34AM, Enigma256 wrote:

they can be found by Farseek and other cards
they come into play untapped whenever you need them to
they have land types, which can matter for cards like Mutilate or Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle

Thanks for all the replies. This here is what I told my friend. Now, he doesn't think that they are worth it because of the two life, but he doesn't play competitevly, for the record neither do I but I follow what's going on in standard. 

Jan 26, 2013 -- 1:11PM, razorborne wrote:

Jan 26, 2013 -- 12:50PM, Fenix. wrote:

I am confused by this post.

he's basically saying "only your last life point matters", which is fairly common knowledge, but he's saying it in a really roundabout way.

 

Wow, the rich cheerleader in every insipid teen movie ever (and they're all insipid) got it right. Life totals, poison counters, drawing a card when you can't, and special cards are the only ways you can lose the game. (You can win the game by special cards or by being the only player who hasn't lost the game.)

To put it in perspective, you lose when you're forced to draw a card, either by the rules or by a spell, but you can't, but we still run Elvish Visionary and Wall of Omens explicitly for the extra cards. Why? Because the card advantage is more important than the risk of decking yourself. Dredge isn't even considered a "cost" by dredge players for this exact reason.

But what about life loss? Follows the same rule. What if I told you of a card that made you pay life in order to use it, and you couldn't draw any cards while it was on the battlefield, and it neutered one of its color's main strengths? It won some of the first Pro Tours. More recently, some Phyrexian mana cards, like Porcelain Legionnaire , found their way into Tempered Steel variants.

What does this mean? The game doesn't really care about your life total until either it's 0 or it passes certain thresholds on certain cards .