Life Stat

The Life Stat determines how many damage counters a creature can sustain before being destroyed. It is essentially the value of the creature maximum life.

It is important to note that creatures do not have a first-class concept of "current life". The have a fixed number of damage counters and their maximum life, which is just referred to as "Life". If a creature receives a "+1 Life" bonus, the number of damage counters it has does not change (which means that their effective "current life" increases).