Pointed Discussion

I am not impressed with this card. its not horrible, but it only fits in a very limited number of decks. if you have a Well of Lost Dreams/Searing Meditationdeck, add this card to it. otherwise trade it to the guy who DOES have that deck.

This card is terrible. Because the most likely situation your just gaining one life then you just wish you had something with renforce and in the unlikely situation that you are gaining a whole bunch of life at once and you power up a creature. It just gets terrored and right to the grave yard it goes. Or they will just bounce the powered up creature to your hand. Make your improvements usuless. Pawn this card off on some one else as quick as you can

What are you guys talking about. This card works well you just have to think LIFE GAIN and not direct damage. It is a life gain card. Just put it in a deck with some lifelink creatures, or spirit loop, and continually put the counters on to the lifelink creatures. Throw in an oldschool card like Worthy Cause and you're golden.

I don't know what you people are thinking giving this card bad ratings?! My friend played this card on me with a +2/+2 equip that gave trample and lifelink on a 2/2 creature with its own exalted bonus and by the time he finally beat me he had a legitimate 40/40 creature and some absurd amount of life. Plus this was just a draft tourney of 7 people with 4 boosters each not a deck he put lots of effort and money into. This card is amazing!!!

I don't know why more people don't like this card, it's synergizes great with cards like Wall of Reverence (for one example), and lifelink is a no-brainer. Turns the often-bland lifegain mechanic into a scary exponential pumping machine. Obviously, bounce is killer against counters, but that's always been the case.

That card isn't as bad as you could think. Here is a nice combo that work well with this card:

Mayeal's Aria (Enchantement that cost RWG) (when a creature you control have power 5 + give +1/+1 to all creature, THEN when a creature have power 10+ gain 10 life THEN if a creature have a power of 20+ you wint he game)
Urils The miststalker (Creature that cost 2RWG)(Cannot be the target of spell or abilities controled by your opponents Gain +2/+2 for each aura) 5/5

Bring your Uril to at least 9 attack power (by waiting 4 turn or by giving him auras or what ever the way you want to do it) then wait your upkeep your Uril will receive a +1/+1 counter since you have a creature with power 5+ (if your Uril is only at 7 you can use a giant growth to bring him at 10) Now you have a creature with power 10 and your still resolving your Mayeal's Aria spell so you gain 10 life. Pay the cradle cost to put 10 +1/+1 counter on target creature (Urils). Now you have a creature with a power of 20 so you win the game. Grats You started your upkeep with a non treathening creature (a 9/9 who can be blocked by a 1/1) and before the end of your upkeep you won the game

What are the option for your opponent: he can't path to exile, terror, terminate or any other targeted instant creature removal on your Uril since your Uril can't be targeted by spell controled by your opponents. He could Naturalize your Mayael's Aria or your cradle, but he most do it before you start resolving it, since after the first +1/+1 counter is given, the abiliti is on the stack and will resolve no matter what. I would really doubt that he would use a oblivion ring on his turn since this combo can be hard to see if not explained. And people (at least those with who I play) seems reluctant to the idea to use a ring of oblivion on a enchantment.

I know this combo is not that much godly, and can be broken (by using naturalise on Mayael or on the cradle) but if you are so scared of that happening you can alway use the enchatment that give shroud to all other enchantment and to enchanted creature, just make sure you do not give an enchantment to Urils (equip him with an equipement that give +4 attack power^^)

I got one question can i pay more than once?
Combo for naya:
2 mayaels aria, cradle of vitaly, spearbreaker behemot or uril mistalker, giant growth in hand 3 mana on table. Spearbreaker gets +2/+2 he is 7/7 giant growth he is 10/10 you gain 10 live pay 2 on cradle and give spearbreaker+10/+10 and you win the game. Naya got nice mana acceleration so it should work in 5-6 turn.

This card deserves a solid 4. It's high quality but only one part of a good combo(granted there are many ways of taking advantage of it). If it were a 2 drop or less I would say 5, but the majority of decks have 0 life gain capabilities.
Also the first ruling is wrong.-10/1/2008 You choose a target when the ability triggers. You don't choose whether to pay until the ability resolves.- The card states if you pay the target a creature. This could be important in some cases where e.g. one player couldn't pay the . According to the current ruling the ability triggers to target a creature, and if say there were a Crystallization in play it could remove a(once again e.g.) Godsire/Royal Assassin/... from the game and make or brake everyone.

Sorxores: Your Uril, the Miststalker combo is flawed. The second part of the ability that let's you gain 10 life if you have a creature with power 10 or greater will only trigger the Cradle's ability after the entire Mayael's Aria triggered ability has finished resolving. You noted that your opponent can't disenchant the enchantment or destroy Uril to stop the combo while the ability is resolving, and that is correct because players don't receive priority while spells and abilities are resolving. For that same reason, you won't be able to pay 1W to put 10 +1/+1 counters on your creature in order to win the game from the third part of the ability until after Mayael's Aria's ability has finished resolving.

Thus, suppose you had a 9/9 Uril at the beginning of your upkeep. Because you control a creature with power 5 or greater at the beginning of your upkeep, the ability will trigger. If you still control your 9/9 Uril when the ability resolves, then he will gain a +1/+1 counter for the first part of the ability, then you will gain 10 life for having a creature with power 10 or greater, then the third part will do nothing. Then the Cradle's ability will go on the stack because you gained life, and if you have the mana, you can get your 10 +1/+1 counters on Uril, making him a 20/20. You will have to wait for your next turn to win via Mayael's Aria. If you had 2 Mayael's Aria's, though, you would be able to win that turn, because the Cradle's triggered ability will go on the stack on top of the second Mayael's Aria triggered ability, letting you get the 10 +1/+1 counters before the second Mayael's Aria ability resolves.

Overall, though, I do think that Mayael's Aria is a fun card. I am always a fan of ridiculous win conditions, and this one pretty much requires you to have a creature that is capable of winning in order to win with it, which is quite ridiculous in itself. It's a Johnny and a Timmy card, both at once.

So what is wrong with this card? Even if it isnt used in that combo you can still use it with wall of reverence. Gain five live and spend some mana to give 5 +1/+1 tokens to make something beastly. Whats wrong with that?

Huh. Interesting. So if my 13/13 double-strike Divinity of Pride (with Light from Within and Battle Mastery) deals its first strike damage and I pay 1W, it suddenly doubles in power. Amusing!

Great synergy with Wall of Reverence, even outside of life gain decks. You could double a creeatures P/T for 1W, or give your small guys a boost.

Very underrated card - though of course, you need to have some way to gain life to use it at all. I've recently built my own version of the monowhite control deck with a lifegaining theme (good thing those Baneslayers have lifelink!), and Cradle is one of my most potent weapons. It combos very well with Wall of Reverence, as each counter you put on a creature means you get potentially more health at the end of the turn, which then leads to more potential counters. It also works well with Baneslayer - 5 damage to the opponent, 5 life for you, and 5 extra power and toughness for next turn for higher health gains.

Essentially, it's just another win condition you can put in a deck with a few forms of life gain.

Got both Cradle of Vitality and Mayael's Aria within a day of each other. Saw this combo and decided why not. Turbo fog, Uncounterable, low mana cost fatties, and cards like soul's grace. turn 4 if your god, turn 6-7 average. Either way, you could make it to turn 10 without a problem with this deck, even if your opponent is running heavy removal, or control. you only need a creature on the field for one turn.
Even if all 4 of your Aria's hit the graveyard, you still have monsters swinging at 20/20 plus, easy, and with green, not hard for them to have trample
5/5
great synergy card.

robinhood3000, actually it is not a flawed but he must have other, power of 5-9, creatures to top it off and wait for his next turn to gain ten life and in-order the cradle's effect to work.

Yeah this card is nuts with celestial mantle.. you double your life then pay 2 mana to add all that in counters to your creatures. One pride of the clouds or an unblockable phantom warrior with celestial mantle attached = all your creatures became massive in one turn. Also really nuts with ajani vengeant, felidar sovereign, and nissa revane. Nissa particularly, you put a bunch of elves in play, then gain life from your elves, and use the cradle of vitality to make all your elves big.

I like how this card is simple yet is a great card to build decks around. As noted elsewhere if you can get a creature to 10 power tied with mayael's aria it gives +10 counters to any creature per turn if you spend 2 mana. It's also not broken in the sense that you have to at least be gaining life for it to work, or it simply doesn't do anything.

Devastating with Wall of Reverence. It creates a killer geometric loop. Combine this loop with Woolly Thoctar or something to kick start the loop and you will have enormous creatures in no time.
(Woolly starts 5/4, end of turn gain 5 life woolly becomes 10:9, gain 10 life, woolly 20:19... etc)

Personally I really like using Martyr of Sands to create a huge boost to one of my creatures for 2W.
Have a birds, martyr and cradle out and seven white cards in hand. Sac martyr turn birds into 21/22 flyer and gain 21 life.

3, because I like cards that turn life gain into offensive power.

This and Wall of Reverence mean you can effectively double the size of any creature every turn. A bit costly, perhaps, but I think this would be fun to put in a Modular deck, no?

Makes the meek strong and the strong stronger .

Great Card to add a punch to any life gain deck.

With Sunspring Expedition and Rest for the Weary your turn 5 could easily turn a small creature into a big fatty. Add Wall of Reverence and Felidar Sovereign for crazy shenanigans.

I use it to turn Doubtless One into Solarion.

I use this card in my flying deck with three archon of redemptions. I want to get more of these, but as of right now, I just have one.

Can I just say? Full Transcendent Master + This = 9, 18, 36, 72, oh, you scooped?

@goaty1 you are wrong, the ruling is correct. the card says "whenever you gain life, you may pay 1W. if you do, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature for each life gained." you target a creature when you gain life, then if you pay the 1W it gets counters.

This card is just ok. The problem with this card is that it is slow and clunky. It's got some good combos, but it generally results in loss of tempo to profit. I tried it with my lifegain deck and it just didn't flow well. It works as a great backup plan/alternative. Now, I limit myself to 1 in my life gain deck and that works just fine. Overall, great flavor, but average card 3/5.

Cradle of Vitality + Boon Reflection + fully leveled-up Transcendent Master = A life-link indestructible creature that triples his power and toughness every turn, all in only one color. Add in a Sanguine Bond and you got an overkill right there, even if the opponent blocks.

A great card for a win-condition in life-gaining decks, and it really goes well with any lifelink creature. Gain a bit of life, add the counters to one of your weak lifelink creatures and any opponent with no way to remove it will fear as the little creep doubles in power every turn. If you want to make them regret of wanting to remove your growing creep, you can keep some Fling or cards alike to deal huge damage before it dies.

Cradle of Vitality + Battlegrace Angel + Ajani's Pridemate = Good times.

Obviously Mix with lifelink to dubble the power of a creature each combat. But also combo with souls grace to possible you your opponents creature size as a sudo-fog that pumps your creature huge. best situation I was was a 40+ mycoloth swinging at a 1/1 soul warden and the player souls gracing the mycoloth to pump his creature 1 larger then it, good times. also as above use wall of reverence and for an example of a interesting to pump lifelink why not Mistmeadow Skulk.

Many conditions have to be right for this to work more to your advantage than if you had spent the mana to cast the card and use its activated ability on something else, but depending on how much life you gain and what creatures you have on the battlefield, it could pay off.

I'd rather use the six mana to do something else though, like cast Darien, King of Kjeldor.

OMG! this and baneslayer :O

With Beseiged now 'Infecting' white you'd have to think it wont be long before we see some killer lifegain tricks to boost up p/t on somebodies poisoned creatures. This card could be a staple in decks like that.

Who else is thinking this would be really fun to use in a deck based on Lifelink, or better yet, while using a creature with Celestial Mantle equipped? That's doubling your life total whenever it attacks, and then you can give a bonus of +YourLifeTotal/+YourLifeTotal to any creature you control. Especially in lifegain decks, where your life total will be something like a couple hundred before very long.

Anybody who complains that this is only good in a life gain deck needs to actually think about what they just said.

In related news, Jace, the Mind Sculptor is only good in decks playing blue, 0.5/5.

Here's a nice combo for a life-gain deck with plains out the wazoo:
Cradle of Vitality
Boon Reflection
Swords to Plowshares/Worthy Cause
Landbind Ritual (or pretty much any life-gain card)

Use the landbind ritual to give yourself 4 life per plains you have (usually 2 per plains, but boon reflection doubles it), place the counters on a creature like usual, then either cast worthy cause or swords to plowshares on it, gaining double its power or toughness respectively, allowing you to place double the counters you just lost, and then some, onto something else. If you used worthy cause, you can possibly even keep going by paying extra for its buy back cost. Just doing this a few times will land you a massive life total, and an insanely powerful creature, and if you have a way to give it trample and shroud (loxodon warhammer and lightning greaves work well for this), you have a game ender right there.

fun for multi. Cradle of Vitality with Triskelion in play and use my fave muli life gain spell Congregate

I'm suddenly reminded of Phantom Nishoba.

I give this card 4/5. If used properly, you can use this card to make a white weenie/lifegain deck stay in the game much longer than if would be able to with out it. My favorite combo with this card is Wall of Reverence and Ajani's Pridemate. If you have your pridemate out for a few turns before you get your Cradle,(which you probably will) then you can assume he is at least a 5/5 by then. (that should hold true even in a slow life gain deck) Then your cradle will just feed off of your wall of reverence and you can effectively double the attack of your pridemate.(or any other cards you might have in a deck like that, like a knight of meadowgrain) Because you can add so much fire power to your small weenies, they wont get run over by someone running a control deck with big drops in it. You can survive into turn 10 and beyond without losing your advantage. Great card, but only usable in certain deck types.

While this is good with Mayael's Aria, you still have to wait a turn for the combo to finish working. This doesn't take effect until after the Aria has finished resolving. So it'd go something like this:
Turn n: You have a creature with 9 power. At the beginning of your upkeep, Mayael's Aria triggers, and boosts it to 10. Then, the second ability triggers, and you gain 10 life, which puts the trigger for Cradle on the stack. Then, the Aria checks if you have a creature with 20 power, sees that you don't, and finishes resolving. Then the triggered ability for this resolves, you get to pay your , and give your creature 10 more counters.
Turn n+1: You have a creature with 20 power. At the beginning of your upkeep, Mayael's Aria triggers, boosts it to 21, gives you 10 more life, and wins you the game.

Of course, surviving that last turn shouldn't be too hard, if you just gained 10 life and have a huge creature.

Here's a question: if you have a creature that deals damage to more than one creature at a time, and that creature has lifelink (for example, Oros, the Avenger), do you gain the amount of life all at the same time? The same can be said about any card that does something similar (i.e. causing opponents to lose life at the same time while you gain it).

Simple combo with anything Lifelinked. Serra Ascendant is one of my favorites.

This card was the main card in a combo that led to one of the strongest plays in Commander I've seen yet.

I was already on 156 life (wrong, I know). Had the Cradle in play, plus Blazing Archon and True Conviction. Dropped Beacon of Immortality, and for 2 mana put 156x +1/+1 counters on the Archon, then swung for lethal.

White has some of the most insane stuff out there, IMO.

I devised a deck that revolved around this card and the interaction of it's lifegain trigger and First Strike. With this enchantment on the board a creature like Baneslayer Angel with both Lifelink and First Strike can take advantage of the trigger during combat. Attack with Baneslayer and Vampire Nighthawk, Baneslayer deals First Strike damage, Cradle of Vitality triggers, put counters on Nighthawk, then Nighthawk hits and Cradle triggers, put counters onto Baneslayer. You get exponentially growing creatures and sneaky combat tricks. Here was the deck I used to make it happen:

Creatures (18)
4 Baneslayer Angel
2 Felidar Sovereign
4 Perimeter Captain
4 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Wall of Omens

Other Spells (18)
2 Consuming Vapors
2 Cradle of Vitality
3 Day of Judgment
2 Gideon Jura
1 Grim Discovery
2 Oblivion Ring
2 Path to Exile
4 Survival Cache

Lands (24)
2 Bojuka Bog
4 Marsh Flats
6 Plains
5 Swamp
3 Tectonic Edge
4 Terramorphic Expanse

Sideboard
1 Day of Judgment
4 Duress
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Path to Exile
4 Pithing Needle
4 Vampire Hexmage

Perfect enchantment for my Trostani, Selesnya's Voice EDH deck!

I don´t like playing too many fatties, and pumping up my weenies just makes a hell lot of fun. The art and flavor on the card is very nice too, IMO. I just wonder why it`s not a green/white card? It just seems so greenish to me... However, I also feel like, that this is what makes this card kinda special and only more interesting, somehow.

I can understand that it´s not a card for every deck, but in the right deck it can be very effective. And it may not be an enchanment, as good as a Luminarch Ascension, for example, but I also always consider that this makes it only more less of a target for any removal spells. Plus it really has some great synergies.

It´s a preference thing, I guess, but I totally give this card a 4,5/5.

I'd like to add War Report to the suggested cards list... and Rhox Faithmender

Love how it makes the simple ligain instants and sorceries way more useful.

I use this in a combo with Rhox Faithmender and Elixir of Immortality Works great!