Pointed Discussion

This will be good with Proliferate. Let it sit and age for a bit, then when you need it, you can get quite a bit of life.

I say any artifact that costs only 1 mana is really good at this point. Activate metal craft while your Golden Urn charges to save your life... just in case.

I'd rather have the worst spellbomb to enable my metalcrafting. never less than the 23rd card in your deck.

It could be used as metalcraft enabler in limited... but i can't imagine how bad boosters need to be, to leave you without better alternatives...

I ended a limited game of scars with this out where I had 19 counters on it.
I'd only proliferated once or twice.

Doubt this will ever be good, proliferate or not. Even IF you draw it early on and play it during the first few turns, and even IF you live long enough to sac it later for 10 life or so... it still sucks. Lifegain is only good if it is a free addition on cards which are worth beeing played even without the lifegain. A card that does nothing but gain life has to suck. And this is horribly slow to boot. Even if you gain a billion life you can still lose. Not to mention if you draw this card late game, oh boy...

This is actually pretty decent. It's probably going to be a decent amount of life for one mana, and until then it enables metalcraft. I mean, sure, there are better cards, but this is still pretty useful.

This card could save you a lot. I mean It only costs 1 mana. And if you have a lot of proliferating cards in your deck (Like I do) then you can add a few extra counters every turn. I guess it won't fit in with every deck, but in some it could help a LOT.

Well, this is a fine wine indeed... Take so long to age and once you drink it it's no more.

Well it could be a useful card.

Aside from gaining life...it's a steady charge counter generator (especially with Paradox Haze and Proliferate). Add some versatility with Power Conduit and a nice possible finisher with Dismantle + Darksteel Reactor ...and suddenly this card has meaning.

The power of this card is his weakness! Put one or two in a Proliferate deck (with 4-5 other card at 1CMC (for exemple 3 or 4 Fume Spitter) - so you increase your probability to play a card at turn 1). If you can put it into the battlefield at turn 1 (or at turn 2-4), you will gain so many life!

Who will care about this card? Who will play a Shatter to destroy it, Revoke Existence to exile it, or target it with a Oxidda Scrapmelter? Nobody!! So, at turn two, you have a charge counter on it. Then proliferate, wait, proliferate, wait... and this one will grow... When it become large, your opponent will understand your possibility to gain 5-6-7 or more life!

Two things to remember: 1) His 1CMC (hello Trinket Mage!). 2) The free activation, only "tap and sacrifice". So it's "indestructible" because your opponent will never be able to destroy it...

At mid game, it's no very strong, but not horrible. Anyway, how many 1CMC winning card exist? For sure a very potent (common) card that allow you to survive one or two turn more in a proliferate-control deck.

3,5/5

I have a question. Could you sacrifice this card and gain life as an instant? Let's say, for example someone played a naturalize targeting this artifact, could you technically negate that spell and gain the life by simply sacrificing this card?

If you cast it in turn 1-2, it can make you gain 15-20 life. So why is it rated so low if it only costs 1?

And it's not only used for gaining life, but for advantage the metalcraft in other mirrodin cards.

Fantastic card to slip into an U/B Control Infect/Proliferate deck. Often ends up winning the game.

I would personally use Elixir of Immortality, but this card also has its uses.

Charles Urbach seems like a promising new artist :)

Erik's Random card 6/18/2011

A typical deck of cards used in a trick taking game such as bridge ranks the cards from 2 to ace. A 3 isn't strictly better than a 2, since maybe you need to lose the trick, or maybe you want to unambiguously play the lowest card to signal your partner. But overall, the aces are the best, and so forth.

This card is more like... the 2.

I might bring this in from my sideboard in a limited match if I had a nice metalcraft deck and was facing a very aggressive non-infect deck. It would help me get metalcraft early on, was something I could get with a trinket mage if I already had my better trinkets, and yes the life gain can matter when someone is trying to get the last few points of damage through.

But that is the exception. Usually I didn't play this card. While the card has some uses, it is weak. Much like the 2. That is its job; there is a range of strengths of cards, and this is one of the weaker ones.

If you count all the common artifacts in the set, including artifact creatures, there are 35. When you draft, you play just over half your picks in a 40 card deck. Some of those 35 aren't going to make your deck. Most of those are "sometimes it makes it", but this is one of the few that basically is not a starter.

We used to make a lot more such cards. I think it is right to have some, to define the bottom of the range, but not many. Each card does something. I know this role is somewhat controversial, but it seems to work.

lol this is an excellent combination with sanguine bond lol

Better than the lucky charm cards (kraken's eye etc) most of the time.

it would be better if the cost was to remove all the counters rather than sacrifice it. Pretty 'meh' card.

This card doesn't get enough credit. In Casual matches, that late-game massive health regen can often times turn a losing battle into a winning one, especially when you're struggling to get those last few hits in against a green creature deck.

This is a solid card. It costs very little, and if you get it early you can play it on your first or second turn helping you get metalcraft, and then sitting around accumulating charge counters for a big payoff in the end. If you are playing against a slow deck, this is going to wind up giving you a lot of life for very little mana.

Decent Metalcraft enabler, and can be saced late game for an emergency save. Pretty handy for a common. If you're running Mirran Pauper, grab a few.

I put this card into the earliest version of my pauper cube, before I really got a handle on what I was doing as a cube designer. One of the first things I learned: lifegain stapled onto another effect is pretty solid, but cards that gain life and do nothing else just don't cut it. This was probably the worst late-game non-land topdeck in my cube. Maybe I'd include it in a Mirrodin-themed cube where metalcraft and proliferate matter, but nowhere else.

better or worse than ajani's mantra? wadda ya say?

The World Cup.

It's basically a more comboable take on Serra's Hymn.

Not just because you can put it in any deck,
but also because charge counters are far easier to play around with than verse counters.

Fair pick in limited I'd say, where it has its use as Metalcraft enabler, and can be proliferated to increase its potential.

This was incredibly annoying in limited, especially when all the Infect went to other players :/

3/5 Stars

wonder who is in it