Elixir of Immortality MTG Card


Card setsReleased in 7 setsSee all
Mana cost
Converted mana cost1
RarityUncommon
TypeArtifact

Key Takeaways

  1. Elixir of Immortality prevents decking out by shuffling your graveyard and itself back into your library.
  2. It functions as resource acceleration, allowing you to reuse spells and creatures throughout the match.
  3. Its instant speed activation offers flexibility in response to graveyard disruptions or optimizing turns.

Text of card

, : You gain 5 life. Shuffle Elixir of Immortality and your graveyard into your library.

"Bottled life. Not as tasty as I'm used to, rather stale, but it has the same effect." —Baron Sengir


Card Pros

Card Advantage: The Elixir of Immortality offers a subtle but vital edge in managing your library. Once activated, it shuffles itself and your graveyard back into your library, effectively negating the threat of decking out and giving you another chance at drawing your best cards. This is especially beneficial in longer games where maximizing your resources is key to victory.

Resource Acceleration: Its ability to recycle your graveyard can be equated to a form of resource acceleration. Although it doesn’t directly add mana, it replenishes your library with valuable spells and creatures that you’ve already used, ensuring that all your resources can be leveraged multiple times throughout the match.

Instant Speed: The Elixir can be activated at instant speed, offering a versatile response to graveyard disruption or enabling you to wait until the last possible moment before committing to reshuffle. This flexibility allows astute players to maximize their turns without having to forego the opportunity for other important plays.


Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Elixir of Immortality does not directly require discarding cards, however, it is worth considering the opportunity cost of holding a card that may not impact the board immediately.

Specific Mana Cost: While its casting cost is universally payable with any type of mana, the activation cost demands two colorless mana, which requires careful resource management, especially in a multicolored deck.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: Considering both the initial cast and the activation cost, the total investment of five mana could be seen as high for an effect that only shuffles the graveyard into the library and gains a nominal amount of life.


Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Elixir of Immortality is a flexible addition to any deck that seeks life gain or wishes to protect key cards from graveyard hate. Its ability to shuffle itself and the graveyard back into the library ensures a defense against mill strategies and enables endless cycling of key resources.

Combo Potential: This artifact excels at enabling combos with cards that care about life gain, count artifacts, or both. It can also serve as an essential piece in decks looking to loop spells or effects by repeatedly accessing the same cards.

Meta-Relevance: In metas where games go long and control decks prevail, Elixir of Immortality offers a repeatable source of life and graveyard recursion. Its presence can swing fatigue battles in your favor and make it a staple sideboard card in enduring matches.


How to beat Elixir of Immortality

Elixir of Immortality stands out as a unique artifact in Magic the Gathering, offering players a chance to shuffle their graveyard back into their library and gain life. This ability can be particularly frustrating for opponents employing mill strategies or relying on diminishing your library as a path to victory. To counteract the Elixir’s resilience, strategies that focus on exiling it or denying its activation can be effective. Running artifact destruction like Naturalize or Shatter can remove the Elixir from play before its ability is used.

Control decks can keep the Elixir at bay with counterspells such as Negate or Dispel, targeting the activation of its ability. Additionally, employing graveyard hate cards like Relic of Progenitus or Tormod’s Crypt can remove the target graveyard before the Elixir’s effect is applied, nullifying its purpose. It’s essential to time these disruptions after the Elixir is played but before its ability activates, as it can be activated in response to removal attempts. Patience and strategic spell timing are critical when dealing with this persistent artifact.

Ultimately, overcoming the challenge of Elixir of Immortality requires a combination of foresight, resource management, and an understanding of your opponent’s potential responses. By disrupting the artifact and its ability effectively, you can nullify the Elixir’s advantages and maintain control over the game.


BurnMana Recommendations

The strategic depths of MTG are vast, with cards like Elixir of Immortality serving as linchpins for nuanced deck construction. Embracing its capability for graveyard recycling and life gain can be a game-changer, especially in drawn-out battles. If the Elixir aligns with your gameplay style or you’re curious about its applications in different deck archetypes, there’s a plethora of insights to gain. Dive deeper into strategies that can optimize this artifact’s potential and explore the synergies it holds with other cards. If you’re ready to harness the full power of Elixir of Immortality and enhance your collection, let us guide you on this journey. Take the next step and enrich your MTG prowess with us.


Cards like Elixir of Immortality

Elixir of Immortality stands out amongst the artifacts in Magic: The Gathering with its unique life-gain and graveyard recycling abilities. It shares a thematic link with other artifacts like Feldon’s Cane, which also provides a way to shuffle your graveyard back into your library. Unlike Elixir of Immortality, Feldon’s Cane doesn’t offer the bonus of gaining life, making Elixir a more defensive option for the players looking to prolong the game and stabilize their health.

Next up is Perpetual Timepiece, another device that targets the player’s graveyard. While it steadily mills cards into the graveyard, it later allows you to shuffle any number of target cards from your graveyard into your library — a selective approach compared to the Elixir’s all-encompassing effect. Additionally, while Perpetual Timepiece is more of a set-up artifact for strategies involving the graveyard, Elixir of Immortality can be a surprise element, potentially disrupting opponents’ tactics that rely on graveyard depletion.

The flexibility and surprise factor that Elixir of Immortality brings to the table can be pivotal. Although it may not directly fuel graveyard-based strategies as well as some other artifacts do, its dual purpose as a life buffer and graveyard refresher cements its place as a valuable card in the right deck settings within Magic: The Gathering.

Feldon's Cane - MTG Card versions
Perpetual Timepiece - MTG Card versions
Feldon's Cane - Antiquities (ATQ)
Perpetual Timepiece - Kaladesh (KLD)

Cards similar to Elixir of Immortality by color, type and mana cost

Glasses of Urza - MTG Card versions
Wooden Sphere - MTG Card versions
Sol Ring - MTG Card versions
Iron Star - MTG Card versions
Library of Leng - MTG Card versions
Black Vise - MTG Card versions
Urza's Chalice - MTG Card versions
Ivory Cup - MTG Card versions
Brass Man - MTG Card versions
Mana Vault - MTG Card versions
Soul Net - MTG Card versions
The Rack - MTG Card versions
Helm of Chatzuk - MTG Card versions
Obelisk of Undoing - MTG Card versions
Feldon's Cane - MTG Card versions
Ivory Tower - MTG Card versions
Meekstone - MTG Card versions
Triangle of War - MTG Card versions
Throne of Bone - MTG Card versions
Crystal Rod - MTG Card versions
Glasses of Urza - Fifth Edition (5ED)
Wooden Sphere - Seventh Edition (7ED)
Sol Ring - 30th Anniversary Edition (30A)
Iron Star - Fourth Edition Foreign Black Border (4BB)
Library of Leng - Unlimited Edition (2ED)
Black Vise - Revised Edition (3ED)
Urza's Chalice - Masters Edition (ME1)
Ivory Cup - 30th Anniversary Edition (30A)
Brass Man - Foreign Black Border (FBB)
Mana Vault - 30th Anniversary Edition (30A)
Soul Net - Fifth Edition (5ED)
The Rack - Fourth Edition (4ED)
Helm of Chatzuk - Fourth Edition (4ED)
Obelisk of Undoing - Rinascimento (RIN)
Feldon's Cane - Pro Tour Collector Set (PTC)
Ivory Tower - Pro Tour Collector Set (PTC)
Meekstone - World Championship Decks 2000 (WC00)
Triangle of War - Visions (VIS)
Throne of Bone - Eighth Edition (8ED)
Crystal Rod - 30th Anniversary Edition (30A)

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Elixir of Immortality MTG card by a specific set like Magic 2011 and Magic 2012, there are several reliable options to consider. One of the primary sources is your local game store, where you can often find booster packs, individual cards, and preconstructed decks from current and some past sets. They often offer the added benefit of a community where you can trade with other players.

For a broader inventory, particularly of older sets, online marketplaces like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and Card Market offer extensive selections and allow you to search for cards from specific sets. Larger e-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon also have listings from various sellers, which can be a good place to look for sealed product and rare finds.

Additionally, Magic’s official site often has a store locator and retailer lists for finding Wizards of the Coast licensed products. Remember to check for authenticity and the condition of the cards when purchasing, especially from individual sellers on larger marketplaces.

Below is a list of some store websites where you can buy the Elixir of Immortality and other MTG cards:

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Printings

The Elixir of Immortality Magic the Gathering card was released in 7 different sets between 2010-07-16 and 2021-04-23. Illustrated by 8 different artists.

#ReleaseNameCodeSymbolNumberFrameLayoutBorderArtist
12010-07-16Magic 2011M11 2062003normalblackZoltan Boros & Gabor Szikszai
22011-07-15Magic 2012M12 2082003normalblackZoltan Boros & Gabor Szikszai
32012-07-13Magic 2013M13 2042003normalblackZoltan Boros & Gabor Szikszai
42013-07-19Magic 2014M14 2092003normalblackZoltan Boros & Gabor Szikszai
52019-11-07Mystery BoosterMB1 15782003normalblackZoltan Boros & Gabor Szikszai
62020-09-26The ListPLST M11-2062003normalblackZoltan Boros & Gabor Szikszai
72021-04-23Commander 2021C21 2432015normalblackZoltan Boros & Gabor Szikszai

Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Elixir of Immortality has restrictions

FormatLegality
CommanderLegal
LegacyLegal
ModernLegal
OathbreakerLegal
VintageLegal
DuelLegal
PredhLegal
PioneerLegal

Rules and information

The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Elixir of Immortality card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.

DateText
2010-08-15 Paying the activation cost of Elixir of Immortality’s ability doesn’t cause it to leave the battlefield. If you have a way to untap it, you can activate the ability multiple times in response to itself.
2011-09-22 As the ability resolves, you’ll shuffle Elixir of Immortality into its owner’s library directly from the battlefield, if it’s still there.
2011-09-22 If Elixir of Immortality is in your graveyard at the time the ability resolves, you’ll still wind up shuffling it into your library because you shuffle your entire graveyard into your library. If it’s anywhere else by that time, including in another player’s graveyard, it remains where it is and you shuffle just your graveyard into your library.
2011-09-22 If you gain control of another player’s Elixir of Immortality and activate it, the Elixir of Immortality will be shuffled into its owner’s library and the cards in your graveyard will be shuffled into your library. You are considered to have shuffled each affected library (even if, as a shortcut, each player physically shuffles their own library).

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