These are all pretty good cards that you want to be playing in your deck anyway, so slotting in Jafar to give them even more value is a no-brainer
The mana cost on Atraxa is a bit intimidating at , but you get a formidable 7/7 for your opponents to contend with
*Buy Stubborn Denial cards on TCGPlayer and eBay Red Interaction Red players have lived in the shadow of Deflecting Swat for years, but Bolt Bend remains a criminally underrated alternative that delivers similar results
The card now counts as 1 Ink you can use to pay for other cards
The 1 life lost per card is not to be discounted, but these are the colors to be in if you need to regain life
Decks that want to play counters are almost always control decks, and control decks would much prefer to gain life rather than cause opponents to lose life, so all things being equal they would have preferred to play with Absorb but there were other considerations that forced most of them down the black road instead