Oloro from the new commander cycle looked like a fun commander to play around with, and the original deck also had a small artifact subtheme. This deck is the evolution of the oloro deck to a lifegain/artifact-matters hybrid.

For one reason or another, Alara had many artifacts that dealt with gaining life, and over the course of magic's history, there have been more instances where they overlap. This deck tries to capitalize on this fact.

One of the cards that immediately made this a much better deck was the trading post. This card does everything the deck wants to do, between drawing cards, gaining life, making the occasional goat and recurring artifacts. I recommend getting that for your own Oloro deck if the lifegain is still there.

I notably kept several cards out, and skimped on the manabase. There's no academy ruins, nor is there vivid lands or expensive duals. The deck doesn't really use all that many colored spells to begin with. Several cards are rather weak for what this deck could be. Ajani's pridemate, tower gargoyle and even divination are all in the deck to reduce the deck's power level. If you want a much more potent version of this, these cards can easily be replaced by other cards like Thirst for knowledge, wurmcoil engine and baleful strix. I chose not to in order to keep my deck on the level of my opponents. Also, in this deck thirst is frequently worse than divination. The deck is very mana hungry, so discarding mana sources is generally a bad idea.