Regal Bloodlord

Lifegain is one of the harder payoffs to make work, because the obvious build (cards that ask you to gain life to do something) tends to demand a deck stuffed with enablers that do little else. The trigger here sidesteps that by asking the smallest possible question at the broadest possible window: it checks at the beginning of every end step, not just yours, and the threshold is a single point of life. Any incidental gain flips it on, whether that is a lifelink creature connecting, a life-gain land like Scoured Barrens entering, or a soul-sister effect ticking up on token entries. The reward compounds, because each Bat is itself a flier that can carry lifelink riders or feed the same engines that turned the trigger on in the first place. The body is built to outlast early aggression while that stream accumulates behind it. What makes the engine more durable than the numbers suggest is that it never asks you to spend cards to fuel it; it asks you to gain life as a byproduct of the cards you were already playing. That is the restraint that keeps a five-mana 2/4 from feeling overpriced: it rarely dominates a board alone, but left alive for two or three turns it quietly assembles an air force out of the life you were going to gain regardless.