Not known to many is the power that is held within a good black deck that contains cards which enable you to take the life total of your opponent and add it to your own. Using cards such as Drain Life, Morbid Hunger (beware of the high mana cost), and Syphon Soul (for multiplayer games) enable you to take the damage off of your opponent as well as his creatures for an effective change in balance of life totals. Although the magic within these previous cards are very effective and powerful, sometimes magic isn't always enough. To support your life total stealing deck you require creatures which have a low mana cost ( so that you still have lots of mana to pay for the absorbing cards) and that come in to play only to use as blocking. Attacking creatures may be useful to you, but there are little or none black creatures with low mana cost that allow you to take life from your opponent with an attack. This is why you need creatures solely for the purpose as blocking you as you slowly deprive your opponent of life. Think of it as expendable minions being controlled to protect the evil vampire dictator. Or not. If you would like to build an effective deck that enables you to take your opponent's life (and his or her creatures too!), then I would suggest the following tactics:
1) Effective Mana Accumulation: You require many land to fulfill the expectations of having a working life absorption deck. As a means of doing so you might want to indulge in looking for cards such as cabal coffers, a land which enables you to produce far more mana with your swamps. Also, it would be advised to insert more than 20 land within your 60 card deck. Although this provides less chance for creatures and/or spells within your hand, you can accumulate the land you need to execute deadly spells such as drain life.
2) Deadly Diseases: Add to your opponents downfall and perdition by using cards which enable you to take care of their creatures while you go after the player. Cards that can be used (mostly to annoy J) include the following and more: Pestilence, Engineered Plague (pure evil for those decks composed of one or two creature types), and Travelling Plague. These cards should take care of your opponents (lest they disenchant) and provide you with a good enough distraction while you suck the living out of them!
3) Creature Tips: You want to avoid creatures with regeneration in this deck because you want to maintain the mana you have to use for the absorbing life spells. When you accumulate life, this will make a pleasurable outcome for the state of which creatures you can summon. Creatures with low mana cost and require you to pay a certain amount of life to keep them in play are usually very effective. Creatures such as Carnophage or Wretched Anurid will defend you yet demand a life fee for participating in your onslaught.
Hopefully these suggestions will prove useful if you happen to want to engage your opponent with a life absorption deck.
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