Marble Chalice MTG Card
| Mana cost | |
| Converted mana cost | 3 |
| Rarity | Common |
| Type | Artifact |
| Released | 2008-10-03 |
| Set symbol | |
| Set name | Shards of Alara |
| Set code | ALA |
| Number | 18 |
| Frame | 2003 |
| Layout | Normal |
| Border | Black |
| Illustred by | Howard Lyon |
Key Takeaways
- Marble Chalice offers card advantage by improving draw capabilities, boosting strategic depth.
- Enhanced mana resources and instant speed activation make Marble Chalice a game-changer.
- Despite its utilities, its specific mana needs and discard requirement can be limiting.
Text of card
: You gain 1 life.
The cup was a gift from the sphinx Tameron, who hoped that those who drank from it would live long enough to decrypt the sphinxes' wisdom.
Card Pros
Card Advantage: The Marble Chalice shines when it comes to providing long-term card advantage. This card enables you to draw additional cards throughout the game, thus enhancing your strategic options and outpacing your opponent’s hand.
Resource Acceleration: Beyond its card-drawing capability, the Marble Chalice aids in resource acceleration. By possibly granting you extra mana, it helps in casting more significant spells earlier than usual, altering the pace of the game in your favor.
Instant Speed: Part of the Marble Chalice’s versatility is its ability to be activated at instant speed. This flexibility allows you to respond to an opponent’s actions or end-of-turn situations, maximizing your mana efficiency and keeping your strategies unpredictable.
Card Cons
Discard Requirement: Players must discard another card to harness Marble Chalice’s ability, posing a challenge when your hand is already dwindling.
Specific Mana Cost: Marble Chalice necessitates a particular blend of mana, demanding both colorless and white, which could complicate its integration into multi-colored or colorless decks.
Comparatively High Mana Cost: Requiring a total of three mana, Marble Chalice may be seen as a costly investment for its life-gaining effect, especially when compared to other lower-cost options in the game.
Reasons to Include Marble Chalice in Your Collection
Versatility: Marble Chalice fits seamlessly into a variety of deck archetypes. Its simple life-gain ability is beneficial for decks looking to stabilize against aggressive strategies or supplement life payments for high-impact spells.
Combo Potential: This card offers great synergy with life-gain triggers and can be a key component in combos that revolve around increasing life totals. Additionally, it can interact with cards that capitalize on gaining increments of life, empowering those strategies.
Meta-Relevance: In a meta where aggro decks are prevalent, the consistent life bump from Marble Chalice can be a game-changer. It also holds its own against slower, more controlling environments where sustaining life totals is critical for long-term success.
How to Beat Marble Chalice
Marble Chalice is an artifact card that can prove a subtle yet steady advantage to MTG players by providing a lifeline of incremental life gain. While the chalice may not stand out amidst more aggressive cards, its consistent life gain can outpace certain strategies, particularly in longer games where its effects compound over time.
Overcoming the advantages gained from Marble Chalice involves applying pressure and leveraging efficient card removal. Cards with abilities to destroy artifacts, like Disenchant or Naturalize, can remove Marble Chalice from the battlefield before its life-gain ability becomes a substantial benefit. Direct damage spells and aggressive creatures can also shift the balance, nullifying the chalice’s effects by dealing more damage than the incremental life gain can recover. In decks that struggle against constant life gain, include artifact removal in your sideboard to ensure you can respond to your opponent’s Marble Chalice effectively.
By focusing on controlling the pace of the game and maintaining aggressive maneuvers, players can diminish the impact of Marble Chalice. Prioritizing the destruction of key artifacts and applying relentless pressure is essential to counteract the steady accumulation of life that Marble Chalice provides.
Cards like Marble Chalice
Marble Chalice stands out in the pantheon of life-gain artifacts in Magic: The Gathering. It’s similar to another classic card, Pristine Talisman, which also allows players to gain life with each activation. Marble Chalice, however, trades the colorless mana production of Pristine Talisman for a more straightforward life gain. Where Pristine Talisman fits seamlessly into decks requiring mana fixing, Marble Chalice serves a purpose in decks that prioritize life total as a resource over mana versatility.
There’s also Fountain of Renewal to consider in this space. The Fountain, much like our Chalice, is a card geared towards steady life accumulation. But the Fountain offers the additional benefit of drawing a card at the cost of sacrificing it, a trade-off some players might prefer for the late-game advantage. Nonetheless, Marble Chalice offers a continuous and unconditioned life gain without sacrificing itself, providing sustained support for strategies revolving around life manipulation.
Assessing Marble Chalice in relation to its counterparts, it is evident that it holds its own within its niche. Its reliable life gain can be crucial for decks that thrive on high life totals or that activate abilities based on life gain triggers, maintaining a steady presence in MTG strategies focused on endurance and resilience.
Cards similar to Marble Chalice by color, type and mana cost
Where to buy
If you're looking to purchase Marble Chalice MTG card by a specific set like Shards of Alara, 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 Marble Chalice 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
Legalities
Magic the Gathering formats where Marble Chalice 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 Marble Chalice card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.
| Date | Text |
|---|---|
| 2008-10-01 | The only difference between a colored artifact and a colorless artifact is, obviously, its color. Unlike most artifacts, a colored artifact requires colored mana to cast. Also unlike most artifacts, a colored artifact has a color in all zones. It will interact with cards that care about color. Other than that, a colored artifact behaves just like any other artifact. It will interact as normal with any card that cares about artifacts, such as Shatter or Arcbound Ravager. |
