I love the math in this. You can pay 4 mana for 4 life, very *** deal. BUT wait good sir, I have another deal for you! If you ramp your mana, you can pay 12 (!) mana for... 8 life... so if you go to the difficulty of spending 12 mana in total, you get LESS for each mana, than when you only spend 4... I understand why this merchant died, I think it was the flavourtext author's comment on how *** this card is. Did it really need to come into play tapped?