Your typical line of play begins with Ambers supportive characters, like Pongo Determined Father, who helps fetch more allies from your deck, ensuring consistent development
A handful of other gold cards are worth $2 or more, such as the double-faced Extus, Oriq Overlord , whose magecraft ability can rapidly restock the hand with non-legendary creature cards from the graveyard
In the singleton format of EDH, that function is even more important
Burn spells are the first thought, but Ruric Thar is lurking about somewhere
It's cool to give your next spell cascade, but I'd be hard pressed to find a time that I want to activate this rather than spend more mana on other cooler cards or abilities
The life gain played by normal decks to sure up their matches against agro decks has to minimally impact the deck in their other match ups however in decks that are really abusing life as a resource such as Necropotence you typically need some life gain just to enable the continued use of your effects