Syphon Life MTG Card
2008-07-25 - Number 46
2013-06-07 - Number 100
| Card sets | Released in 2 setsSee all |
| Mana cost | |
| Converted mana cost | 3 |
| Rarity | Uncommon |
| Type | Sorcery |
| Abilities | Retrace |
Key Takeaways
- Syphon Life transforms extra lands into lasting life drain, providing consistent game advantage.
- While advantageous, its graveyard use requires card discard, potentially losing hand superiority.
- Its strategic flexibility compensates for mana cost, posing a threat in drawn-out matches.
Text of card
Target player loses 2 life and you gain 2 life. Retrace (You may play this card from your graveyard by discarding a land card in addition to paying its other costs.)
Leeches never tire of feeding.
Card Pros
Card Advantage: Syphon Life gives you a repeatable way to drain life from your opponent while replenishing your own health total. By capitalizing on the card’s retrace ability, you can cast it multiple times from the graveyard using land cards as fuel, ensuring a sustained source of benefit throughout the game.
Resource Acceleration: While Syphon Life itself doesn’t directly accelerate your resources, it indirectly aids in resource management. It offers a valuable sink for surplus lands in the late game. This allows you to transform extra resources, which might otherwise be dead draws, into a mechanism for whittling down your opponent’s life total and strengthening your own position.
Instant Speed: Syphon Life may not be cast at instant speed, but its retrace ability does grant you the flexibility similar to instants. You can choose to play it during your main phases whenever it is most strategically advantageous, given your resource state and the game’s pacing. This strategic flexibility enables you to keep applying pressure without compromising your plays for the turn.
Card Cons
Discard Requirement: Casting Syphon Life from the graveyard involves discarding a card, which can deplete your hand and reduce your flexibility, especially in game situations where maintaining card advantage is crucial.
Specific Mana Cost: Syphon Life’s mana cost demands one black mana, which means it can only be played effectively in black or multicolored decks, potentially limiting its versatility across the diverse MTG formats.
Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a cumulative total of three mana required to play Syphon Life, plus an additional three to return it from your graveyard using its Retrace ability, its mana efficiency is questionable when compared to other life drain spells or creatures that might provide a more immediate and impactful presence on the battlefield.
Reasons to Include Syphon Life in Your Collection
Versatility: Syphon Life offers a valuable source of recurring life drain that can be integrated into various deck builds, such as those focusing on life gain strategies or long-term resource depletion of opponents.
Combo Potential: Its retrace ability allows players to cast it from the graveyard by discarding a land card, opening up synergies with land-recycling mechanics or graveyard-based strategies that thrive on casting from unusual zones.
Meta-Relevance: In metas where games tend to stretch into longer battles of attrition, Syphon Life proves itself as a persistent threat, providing sustained advantage and keeping you ahead in life totals while whittling down the opposition’s resources.
How to beat
Syphon Life presents a unique challenge on the battlefield of Magic: The Gathering. It epitomizes the persistent grind, gently whittling away an opponent’s life while bolstering your own. This endurance-based strategy often outpaces control decks that rely on sustaining their life total and card advantage. To effectively counteract Syphon Life, players need to prioritize lifegain disruption and grave hate. Cards like Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void can efficiently negate the retrace ability of Syphon Life, eliminating the card’s capability to be cast from the graveyard.
Aggressive decks stand a good chance against Syphon Life, as they aim to close out the game quickly, outpacing the incremental life exchange Syphon Life offers. Furthermore, enchantment removal spells like Disenchant serve as precise answers to remove Syphon Life directly from the field. This tightens the window for your opponent to capitalize on its effects and swings the momentum in your favor. Keep in mind that timing is key; removing Syphon Life after it has been cast with retrace can prevent further life loss, preserving your position for a win.
Therefore, overcoming the obstacle that Syphon Life presents requires a proactive approach: hinder graveyard strategies, leverage swift aggression, and deploy targeted enchantment removal. By employing these tactics, you can tip the scales and secure victory against this relentless card.
Cards like Syphon Life
When exploring the unique effects of Syphon Life within Magic: The Gathering, we find there are a number of cards with similar life-draining abilities that players often consider. For instance, Exsanguinate is another popular spell that trades mana for life, but instead of returning to your hand like Syphon Life, it’s a one-time event with potentially a much larger impact. Syphon Life’s reusability through the Retrace ability enables repeated usage, making it a steady source of life drain and recovery.
Consume Spirit is another card that mirrors the drain-and-gain gameplay, where the life swing is directly tied to the amount of mana spent. Although it lacks the Recur feature of Syphon Life, it compensates with an unfettered approach to targeting, allowing damage to be directed at creatures or players alike. Meanwhile, Drain Life serves as a more basic form of this effect, with the limitation of dealing damage only to creatures. Syphon Life’s flexibility to target players makes it a superior option in matches where defeating your opponent directly is the game plan.
In summary, while there are several cards that offer the tantalizing prospect of weakening your adversary while bolstering oneself, Syphon Life’s enduring presence in the game through its Retrace ability sets it apart in the realm of sustainable life draining spells in MTG.
Cards similar to Syphon Life by color, type and mana cost
Where to buy
If you're looking to purchase Syphon Life MTG card by a specific set like Eventide and Modern Masters, 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 Syphon Life and other MTG cards:
- eBay
- TCG Player
- Card Kingdom
- Card Market
- Star City Games
- CoolStuffInc
- MTG Mint Card
- Hareruya
- Troll and Toad
- ABU Games
- Card Hoarder Magic Online
- MTGO Traders Magic Online
See MTG Products
Printings
The Syphon Life Magic the Gathering card was released in 2 different sets between 2008-07-25 and 2013-06-07. Illustrated by Dan Seagrave.
| # | Released | Name | Code | Symbol | Number | Frame | Layout | Border | Artist |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2008-07-25 | Eventide | EVE | 46 | 2003 | Normal | Black | Dan Seagrave | |
| 2 | 2013-06-07 | Modern Masters | MMA | 100 | 2003 | Normal | Black | Dan Seagrave |
Legalities
Magic the Gathering formats where Syphon Life has restrictions
| Format | Legality |
|---|---|
| Commander | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Paupercommander | Legal |
| Modern | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Pauper | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
| Duel | Legal |
| Predh | Legal |
| Penny | Legal |
Rules and information
The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Syphon Life card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.
| Date | Text |
|---|---|
| 2008-08-01 | A retrace card cast from your graveyard follows the normal timing rules for its card type. |
| 2008-08-01 | Casting a card by using its retrace ability works just like casting any other spell, with two exceptions: You’re casting it from your graveyard rather than your hand, and you must discard a land card in addition to any other costs. |
| 2008-08-01 | If the active player casts a spell that has retrace, that player may cast that card again after it resolves, before another player can remove the card from the graveyard. The active player has priority after the spell resolves, so they can immediately cast a new spell. Since casting a card with retrace from the graveyard moves that card onto the stack, no one else would have the chance to affect it while it’s still in the graveyard. |
| 2008-08-01 | When a retrace card you cast from your graveyard resolves, fails to resolve, or is countered, it’s put back into your graveyard. You may use the retrace ability to cast it again. |
