Meditation Puzzle

Lifegain spells live or die on what they cost, and the convoke clause is doing all the accounting: a token-heavy white board can pay for eight life with bodies it would never spend, tapping the untapped creatures sitting back on defense or the freshly-made tokens that have not committed to an attack. That conversion of board presence into a fixed life buffer is the only reason a card this expensive in absolute terms gets cast for a fraction of its printed value. The number is generous by the standards of the era, and at instant speed it can blunt an alpha strike or steal a turn against a burn-out plan. What complicates the math is the timing of the discount: convoke only materializes when you have untapped creatures to spare, which is precisely the board state where you are often already ahead. Stranded with no crowd to tap, it reverts to a full five-mana "gain 8," the dead card lifegain has always struggled to justify. That inversion (cheapest when you least need it, priciest when you most do) is the honest tension behind a card built for go-wide white decks that can reliably tap a crowd without surrendering the attack.