Life

In Magic: The Gathering, a life total is a sort of score. Each player usually starts the game with 20 life points. Any increase in a player's life total is considered to be gaining life. Any decrease in a player's life total is considered to be losing life. A player whose life total drops to 0 or less loses. They are "dead." Life is a resource which typically needs to be tracked on a piece of paper or a life counter.

Life loss
Loss of life can occur from damage by unblocked creatures and direct damage from spells. Black will sometimes just make players lose life straight up without a drain effect. Examples of these include Blood Tribute, Burden of Greed, and Shadow Slice. Other black cards force one or more players to lose half their life total, or for a spell's caster to pay life as part of the cost of a spell or ability. Black also has numerous cards, such as Disciple of the Vault, that trigger life loss if a given action happens. R&D experimented during Dominaria to shift away from life loss, in favor of direct damage, to trim out unnecessary complexity. Black reverted to life loss in 2019, with the last clear damage example being Serrated Scorpion.

There are spells that can prevent damage, but so far only Platinum Emperion can prevent the loss of life (although it also prevents paying life). To pay life is the same as losing life, and damage causes loss of life.

Life as a resource
Intentional life loss occurs when life is used as a resource. Famous examples of this include the Necropotence deck and Phyrexian mana.

Life gain
Life gain directly opposes the game's primary win condition. The earliest "life gain" spells include Healing Salve, Lifetap, and Stream of Life</c>. Stream of Life is notable for being the first gain X life spell. There were also 5 artifacts printed (dubbed the "Lucky charms") which would give you 1 life each time a spell of the appropriate color was cast if you paid 1 (e.g., Ivory Cup</c>).

Life gain occurs most prominently, and in all card types, in white. Green is number two in life gain. Green's life gain is mostly either through sorceries (with the occasional instant) and creatures. Life gain in black is restricted to Drain Life-types of spells. Blue and red have not had life gain in their color pie for twenty years, but previously had odd designs such as Illusions of Grandeur</c> or Collapsing Borders</c>.

The biggest single-colored life gain spell (not ) is the card Heroes Remembered</c> (gain 20 life) from Planar Chaos. The biggest multicolored life gain spell (not ) is Ajani, Mentor of Heroes</c>'s ultimate ability (gain 100 life) from Journey into Nyx.

Rules
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Starting Life
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