As I alluded to earlier, the life transaction isnt only in one direction
When I judge a commander for saga synergies, I keep these in mind: Sagas are enchantments, Sagas are historic permanents/spells, Sagas use lore counters, Sagas that reach their final chapters are sacrificed
It is rare that you construct a deck that can consistently take advantage of a cheap yet specific hard counter, the only guarenteed advantage of is that you will have spent half the mana your oppenent did
Blue decks that could certainly play prolonged, traditional control games, but could also just auto-win on Turn 5 by playing a powerful, hard-to-interact with creature that can block until it abruptly turns the corner with protection up
For the white-blue card, we were interested in focusing on the mechanic that the two share: embalm