Haliya, Guided by Light
Lifegain has always struggled to justify itself as anything but a stalling tactic, and the fix white keeps returning to is turning incidental gains into a resource. Here the threshold is deliberately low: three life in a single turn, cleared on its own once you flood the board with cheap creatures and artifacts, since each entering creature or artifact nudges the count. Only creatures and artifacts feed it, so the card wants a specific kind of width (bodies and cheap equipment or Treasures) rather than any permanent flooding into play, and the reward is the end-step draw white has always paid a premium for. What sharpens the design is warp on the front end, answering an old tension in these engines: the lifegain-into-cards payoff wants to land early to matter, but a three-mana legend cast on curve dies to the first removal spell. Warp lets you pay a discounted white to drop the body when it can start generating triggers immediately, then it exiles at the next end step, recastable from exile at full cost once the board can protect it. The same card serves as thin-board enabler and durable late replay without ever costing you a second hand slot. The draw clause stays honest by checking a per-turn count rather than a running total, rewarding proactive tempo over a slow grind up the life bar.



