Source: Inquest #23 (Mar 1997), p.31; author: Mike Ruff

"Magic's main objective is to kill your opponent by bringing their life total down to zero.  But what if your life total was so high that they just couldn't make a dent as it reached a hundred or more?  It's not that far-fetched with all the life-gaining spells out there.

The colour choices are fairly obvious: white and green, since all the best life-gaining spells are of those two benevolent colours.  Besides, many other life spells fit into the colour scheme nicely.  Plug in the Fyndhorn Druids, Onulets and Zebras and you've got a bunch of life-giving creatures.  Artifacts like Fountain of Youth, Soul Net and Elixir of Vitality combined with Living Artifact can keep your life total skyrocketing.  Taste of Paradise and Mangara's Blessing are great additions because of the large amounts of life they provide for little cost.  And Mangara's Blessing can even be more beneficial if you're forced to lose cards.

But any good deck needs some defense, and there are plenty of life-gaining defensive spells out there, like Reverse Damage for your opponent's big Fireballs or Exile for his big creatures.  Spirit Link also can dampen the spirit of one of your opponents big, white, flying, seemingly-unstoppable creatures by giving you life each time it does damage.  Divine Offering can take out those nasty artifacts and give you the life, and Truce may help you make friends by giving each player life or more cards.

So how do you win?  Save the Feldon's Cane to the end and hope you run the other mages out of cards, or hope that when they see your life approaching triple digits they'll give up."