Markov Purifier

The lifelink-into-cards loop is one of the older attempts to make incidental lifegain earn its keep, and this is the compact version: the payoff sits on the same body that generates the trigger, so a single 2/3 both gains the life and cashes it in for a draw. The conditional check that you gained life at some point during the turn is what stops the engine from running for free; the creature's own combat damage clears it, but the on top means every card costs mana as well as a swing. The end-step timing is the real limiter. The value never arrives when you actually need a card, only at the close of your own turn, after you have already committed to combat and to the two mana. That timing is generous in one respect: because the trigger only asks that life came in earlier in the turn, any other lifegain source arms it, even on the turn this enters, so it can pay off immediately if the board is already leaking life. That is the shell it wants: small lifelinkers, drain effects, anything that keeps the condition met on turns the Vampire is not attacking. In that context it converts a passive lifegain trickle into a slow but repeatable card-advantage stream, a grindy black-white attrition tool that rewards a board already doing its job rather than one built around this creature alone.