Pointed Discussion

When homelands was released, I tried to put this in any deck. I thought "0 mana? What a bargain! Great art too!". :P Actually the card is horrible of course. The only good thing is that 0 mana cards are often parts of combos, but there are better ones than this.

For such an intimidating-looking artifact, it does very little. I guess you can use it with Keeper of Tresserhorn?

Man, I just can't get ANY sense of scale on this thing!

Anyway, it sucks. It just sucks. Don't use it, don't buy it, old cards aren't always worth something, newbies.

Would combo with some thrulls, such as Necrite or mindstab thrull. That said, they'd still only give you 2 health, which for 0 CMC is great, except that it costs you a card. Meh...

Great against stall decks like fog engines when combined with sanguine bonds; or decks that revolve around damage mitigation, such as thunderstaff or the urza's armor. (Your no damage dealing creature is now gaining you life instead of doing nothing) The only minuscule issue I can see is the sacrificing.. Other than pretty decent card.

The 'oshi-' button it offers for any deck that uses 0 costing artifacts is nice as well.

Combo with Storm Crow.

I let out a little sigh every time I see this card in my older collection.

Is it possible to rate a card lower than 0.5?

Quite arguably the card with the worst art quality-card quality ratio,
or possibly even the worst card ever printed (in the worst set, at that. ouch.)
Its *only* saving grace is the 0 cc, and there are much better free artifacts out there.

@Weretarrasque (nice DD ref, btw)- the thing is huge, like a skyscraper-
notice the forked lightning at the top?

If it were small, those arcs would be much fatter and less forked
(sorry- special FX is my day job ;-) )

A relic of the era when life-gain on its own was considered devastating. Had this thing just given the target lifelink when sacrificed, it still would have been weak, but at least usable in some fashion.

Another victim of power creep: Darksteel Relic overclasses it!

Seriously, in the early days were made several cards for every basic game effect, and life gain is one of these. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the most useless of them.

Geez, this is painfully bad. Like, there is absolutely no use for this piece of crap whatsoever. Anything it could do, another card already does better.

Wow. I was going to use Sorrow's Path for firewood but I somehow like this card even less.

Must be one of the worst cards in the game.

Bad design.

A free artifact is always a good thing to keep around. Plus the "Is not blocked" clause can be pretty relevant if you go in for an alpha strike and your opponent smugly exiles your biggest card with a Path to Exile or the likes, since your creature won't be doing any damage from the graveyard or outside the game you might as well activate this sucker and gain the life you'll need to start over from your failed play.

I'd suggest it in a {R} {B} Megatog/Atog Artifact Sac deck with some Kill-Spells, Burns, and a few Disciples of the Vault. Ramp up your mana with some Myr and other trinkets, Smite down all their blockers and then sac artifacts like crazy and go in for a huge hit with one of your Atogs while leaving one of these on the field.
If the Atog hits, you win due to the combined damage from the attacker and the damage from your disciples, if they smite the Atog you can activate this sucker and gain a ton of life and use it to give you enough time to get another setup ready.

Not a terrible card, just a bit more situational than it ought to be.

I don't see what the deal is here. It's a free artifact, which helps any artifact deck, and can help you gain life when you need it. Serra Avatar, anyone? 4/5