This is all about poking and land destruction. Ideally, it could cripple development of larger creatures and take out what little could make it into play. The little bit of life gaining could extend a game if the start was less than stellar. There are certainly more ways to take any of the features of this deck, and I am not sure the balance here is best, but perhaps it was right for what was available at the time. The 13/5/12/5/4 curve has a gap at the 2-spot, but that is not such a big problem if I can use the 1-spot effectively. It is really the 3-spot that is critical, though. While not cheap at an average of 2.54, it is reasonable for what it does.