Pointed Discussion

How I do wish to use this card in my Fungus Time Spiral Standard Deck *sigh* come on Essence Warden you'll have to do.

Why did green get the short end of the stick with this one? This is honestly...so bad...

Its the only one that having multiples is useful.

Generally more useful than black Leyline... Except in a side board.

Not impressed at all. This has nothing on the other Leylines. I'd be disappointed if I pulled this in a booster.

I see this working in a jank GW lifegain deck. Using Serra Ascendent, Ajani's Pridemate and this.

Turn 0 - Leyline of Vitality
Turn 1 - SA for a 1/2 (21)
Turn 2 - AP 3/4 (22), SA attacks AP turns into 4/5 (23 life)

Not terrible...?
Getting a 4/5 for 2, turn 2 could be ok.

The only green creature in the set this can move out of bolt range is Wall of Vines, that just seems odd for some reason.

Ehhhh...
This isn't a bad card, but it gets a bad rep because it's not as 'flashy' as the rest of the cycle.

The thing to consider with the leylines is that they're all meant to be silver bullets.
Tom Lapille mentioned in one of his columns was the intent for the cycle to be used to force decks with linear strategies to fight on normal conditions once again.

In this case, this card acts in much the same vein as Leyline of Sanctity in that it hoses red decks in particular.
Higher toughness makes it harder for Ball Lightning, Hell's Thunder, and Hellspark Elemental to take your life total down.
And the life gain on top of that makes winning for them all but impossible.

Very well designed card overall.

Also of interest, the entire cycle is based of one of the artworks for a basic land in the set.

Catmurderer- Why not just play Leatherback Baloth? Pretty easy considering the amount of ramp in green.

I think this is the weakest of the Leylines. Black shuts down Vengevine or anything that uses the graveyard, white shuts down so many cards, blue's leyline is unfair, casting anything you want for instant speed (e.g. DoJ), and red counters lifelink and protection's biggest tidbit. Green...just give your creatures a small boost and a little of life, which the red leyline prevents.

Would've been better if it gave trample to creatures you control. Now THAT'S green.

It actually is pretty good and does protect many of your creatures! Not against lighting bolt but against Forked Bolt, and against the sparkmage dude. Having your Birds, and Cobras, and such at 2 toughness sounds like an awesome deal!

The synergy with Mitotic Slime amuses me.

worst leyline of all, i think that blue leyline is the best? because it gives like so many unfair advantages, obl ring, ect.

Anyone who thinks this card is bad hasn't actually looked at the card. It's the only leyline that's good in multiples, its awesome for gw life gain (obstinate baloth, momentous fall, pelakka wurm, ajani's mantra, serra ascendant, baneslayer angel, felidar sovereign, survival cache, kabira crossroads), and it hoses red. You get two out on turn one and play a bird of paradise you have a 0/3 that gained you 2 life.

Here's another fun combo.. mitotic slime, 4/5 that splits several times to give you huge life gain, splinter twin on top of that for more life gain than you can shake a stick at. Anything that produces repeating tokens is also amazing.. mycoloth, ant queen, dragon broodmother, awakening zone, and etc. It makes protean hydra indestructible to burn and combat damage. It makes garruk's companion into a 3/3 as well. It gives ajani's pridemate an immediate +1/1, and then another +1/1, if you have two out or more life gain.

You can basically view this enchantment as turn 1 soul warden in enchantment form that also gives +1 toughness. Of course you could simultaneously play both and then gain 2 per creature, or that new soul warden functional reprint, "soul's attendant," in rise of the eldrazi.

the wost of the leylines in my opinion. I like the old green leyline better because it fills a niche. this just... meh

...interesting. This card gives Gaeas revenge just enough of a boost in order to take out a bankslayer.

Hello Force of Savagery.

Funny how this card gets dismissed over the other Leylines, probably for having life gain. Life gain is USEFUL people! Just think of it as control vs burn that can stack with other effects that turn life gain into something more, however in this instance red players would be running Leyline of Punishment so that is unfortunate. As for the other effect, +1 toughness is good for creatures like Fauna Shaman, Garruk's Companion, Sacred Wolf, Birds of Paradise, Lotus Cobra, Awakener Druid, Elvish Archdruid and wolf tokens that are all vulnerable to Pyroclasm and Infest-like effects. Plus as others like OutlawD1 have mentioned it is the only one in the Leyline cycle that can stack with itself. Mitiotic Slime is of course brilliant with it as Artscrafter pointed out.

Overall this is a great sideboard defense for mono-colour decks against black (at least as far as limited goes), that covers some of green's inherent weaknesses against that colour, especially with the additional help of Autumn's Veil. 4 Autumn's Veil, and 4 Leyline of Vitality would be a step in the right direction for protecting your humble creatures from black, which is always a difficult colour for Green. Would want to side them out against white however, as the Leylines of Vitality will do you little good against Day of Jugement, and War Priest of Thune.

I like this for casual.
G/W Kitchen Finks/Heartmender deck would be good fun.
RDW hoser for monogreen that works about as well as the white one, due to the massive amount of played creatures. tho this can't stop door to nothingness :(
Still, the +1 toughness actually does make a difference. Revenge stomps baneslayer with this out.

Much better than you might think. A two-drop Protean Hydra becomes a menace.

Not the best of the M11 Leyline cycle, but not the worst, and definately the second most playable in limited.

This must be compensation for Primeval Titan. We got the best titan, so we get the worst leyline.

This is good for Eldrazi spawn and other token decks.

Definitely better than the other M11 leylines in at least one key way—this one stacks with other copies of itself. In other words, one can run four copies of this much more confidently, as it greatly increases the chance of getting one in the opening hand and doesn't turn three cards into dead draws.

Green/White can make a pretty mean lifegain/weenie deck with this, Soul Warden, Soul's Attendant, and Ajani's Pridemate.

Fun in casual, but definitely the worst of the latest cycle of Leylines. This does very little to disrupt your opponent's strategy. The other leylines, sideboarded in against key decks can completely destroy your opponent's strategy.

The bane of any player using black decks using Blood Seeker.
lol saves Rhys from dealing massive damage to you when you use his double ability.

A very underrated card. This card, unlike many of the other leylines actually stack when there are multiple copies. Second, this can stabilize the player's life early on in the game, giving him a buffer room so that it's much easier to maneuver. Also this card can be used with Ooze Garden for an awesome effect:

Turn 0: Leyline
Turn 1: Forest, Llanwar Elves/Birds/Arbor Elf
Turn 2: Forest, Force of Savagery
Turn 3: Forest, Ooze Garden, Ooze Force of Savagery into an 8/9.
Turn 4: Forest, Smash for 8, play another creature (such as Garruk's Companion or Groundbreaker) and ooze that too.

Rinse and repeat.

Up to turn 3, this happens almost every game in my Ooze Aggro deck.

This card deserves at least a 4 overall. I'm giving it a 5/5.

@Larbness

Completly agreed.

This is amazing for zoo decks too. makes ur Kird Ape, Wild Nacatl, and Loam Lion's 4 toughness instead of 3, bringing them just outside of bolt range. Also, helps absorb the early loss of life from zendikar fetchlands into either duel or shock lands, a must combo in Zoo and this negates it. Not only that, like Larb said, if u have 2 in ur opener its a great thing instead of making u consider a mulligan. And you have the option of throwing Force of Savagery in the deck as well.

in my opinion, the best leyline. I have three of these in my mono-green deck

Leyline of Vitality + Howl of the Night Pack + 7 Forest = 7 life ??

Certainly a solid Leyline. As others have mentioned, it's not as flashy as, say Leyline of Anticipation (see what I did there?) or as potentially gamebreaking as Leyline of Sanctity. But along with Anticipation, it's really about the only one that you could put in any number to just about any deck, against any deck, and feel good about. (Of course having extra copies of Anticipation is no bother if you need Force of Will fodder.)

It really surprises me how many people seem to judge this card without giving much thought to how it interacts with the rest of the environment. This puts green's staple 3 toughness creatures out of Bolt range. 4 toughness creatures used to ruin red burn/aggro, until Flame Slash came out. Guess what Leyline of Vitality does to those formerly nightmarish X/4s. And with the current metagame basically being a quick race down to 0 life, buoying yourself up while keeping alive the creatures you have time to get out all for free is a huge benefit. It keeps your 2-toughness cards out of Pyroclasm range; having two keeps your Llanowar Elves out too. And with how quickly green can ramp up and lay down creatures, this goes a long way to keeping your investments safe and keeping you from getting burned down before you have time to overrun your opponent. And it makes non-mill decks that rely on Echoing Truth, Evacuation, or Dissipation Field cry.

There's a few more niche uses for the card too. Your chump blockers can much more easily hold off weenie aggro decks when your Llanowar Elves, Saporlings, and Elidrazi Spawn are X/2 (or even X/3). Your living weapons' Germ tokens will survive being unequipped, and you can get full use from your Fertalid and other creatures while retaining the creature. And, as LiXinjian mentioned, then there's Force of Savagery, which becomes an 8/1 trample for 2G. Yeah, it doesn't make you win faster unless you're using something like Force of Savagery, but neither does Leyline of Sanctity. And I don't see anyone saying that card's too weak. Sure, Sanctity does a much better job, but only against some decks, and it also illustrates the point that cards that make you not lose aren't automatically bad. (Worship, Moat, and Platinum Angel would like a word with anyone who says otherwise.)

Sure, it doesn't make some decks fail miserably like Sanctity, Leyline of the Void, or (possibly) Leyline of Lifeforce, it doesn't ramp up particular decks as well as Leyline of the Meek, and it doesn't open up as many possibilities and strategies as Anticipation. But it's still a very nice card that you can justify as a 4-of, meaning you're very likely to have one (or more) on turn 0, and it really helps give you some extra breathing space as you ramp up your mana engine and creatures. 4/5 for playability, if not for style.

(Also, it's too bad that a lot of the more constructive comments here are getting downrated by people who just rate anyone who realizes this card isn't trash .5.)

I know of 2 different hard lock combos that this serves a purpose in, so you've gotta give it credit there. Plus while 1 toughness may seem negligible, in play it really isn't. Asumming bowth you and you opponent have the same power to cost ratio's things that would once be trades are now just wins. And while an 8/9 that gives you one life may not seem that much better than a 8/8, but 10 1/2's that grant you one life each is a great deal better than 10 1/1's. Its obviosly ment for a swarm, but it's really quire useful in the play field, at the very least in casual.

this card is beast with elves in ur deck

this is sooo good in elf decks, especially with Rhys the Redeemed

is it just me or does this leyline seem a lot more white than green?

Fun with Ant Queen

In a Doran deck, this is basically +1/+1.

I played this in my Landfall deck when this was in Standard (Bird tokens!), and it was great out of the sideboard against the Boros aggro decks of the day. Made combat math much less terrible for me, and gave my life total lots of wiggle room. And you can't Lightning Bolt it!

Funny how amazing the opposite of this card would be... Creatures opponents control get -0/-1, when a creature enters the battlefield under an opponent's control, that player loses 1 life. Start with 1 of those in your hand is GG against a lot of creature decks.. and playing it naturally would be great too.

Force of Savagery, yeah.

I use it in my Fungus deck. You think it's bad when there's no lifegain and you have to deal with 1/1s all over the place being sac'd for Deathspore Thallid and things? It's much worse to deal with craptons of 1/2s (among the 4/5s the thallid lords are) that are pumping up your lifetotal by ridiculous margins.

Not to mention how much trample damage this helps eat. Seriously powerful with swarms, especially when those swarms are utility creatures that come out for free. <3 fungus.

The Leylines are particularly nice now that Theros has touched down; the extra devotion is fantastic, particularly in Green where much of devotion is put toward ramping up into bigger threats (Karametra's Acolyte and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx) and bringing the gods online faster.