Eternity Vessel MTG Card

Mana cost
Converted mana cost	6
Rarity	Mythic
Type	Artifact
Abilities	Landfall
Released	2009-10-02
Set symbol
Set name	Zendikar
Set code	ZEN
Number	200
Frame	2003
Layout	Normal
Border	Black
Illustred by	John Avon

Key Takeaways

Eternity Vessel provides a life-restoring mechanic, creating a durable defense line for players.
Its landfall trigger offers strategic timing, crucial in responding to on-field threats.
The six-mana cost demands substantial resources but promises impactful game turns.

Text of card

Eternity Vessel enters the battlefield with X charge counters on it, where X is your life total. Landfall — Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may have your life total become the number of charge counters on Eternity Vessel.

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Eternity Vessel ensures an ongoing advantage through its life-reset mechanic. Upon landing a land card, your life total becomes the number of charge counters on the Vessel, essentially negating previous damage and offering you a cushion that can be repeatedly leveraged.

Resource Acceleration: While not directly accelerating resources, the Vessel enables a different form of acceleration. It allows players to aggressively utilize life as a resource, knowing they can regain it. This means investing in high-cost spells or life-exchanging effects with less risk.

Instant Speed: Though Eternity Vessel itself doesn’t operate at instant speed, its interaction with new lands coming into play can be as timely as an instant. This is because lands can be placed on the battlefield at instant speed through various card effects during any phase of a turn, allowing strategic refreshes of life points in response to threats.

Card Cons

Specific Mana Cost: Eternity Vessel has a specific mana cost that requires six of any type to cast. For players running multicolored decks, generating the necessary mana can be a challenge, potentially delaying the card’s deployment.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With its six mana casting cost, Eternity Vessel is a card with a high mana investment. This can be cumbersome early in the game when players need to establish their board presence more efficiently.

Discard Requirement: While Eternity Vessel itself does not have a discard requirement, its high mana cost can indirectly lead to disadvantages. For instance, holding onto such a card might force players to discard other potential plays during the hand size cleanup step of each turn.

Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Eternity Vessel offers a unique angle to your deck’s life stability. When it lands on the battlefield, it locks in your life total, allowing you to explore strategies that manipulate life without the usual downsides.

Combo Potential: With the ability to reset your life total upon each landfall, this artifact pairs brilliantly with land ramp effects, enabling you to recover from even the brink of defeat in a single turn.

Meta-Relevance: In environments where life total is a heavily contested resource, the Eternity Vessel shines by providing you a reliable way to maintain a healthy life total against aggressive strategies, ensuring longevity in drawn-out matches.

How to beat

Eternity Vessel is a unique artifact in Magic: The Gathering that can be a real game-changer with its ability to reset its controller’s life total. When it lands on the battlefield, it stocks up on life counters equal to your life total at that moment, and every time you crack a land, you’re right back to that total. To tackle this powerful card, the best strategy focuses on removal. Artifact destruction spells like Naturalize or Shatter are direct ways to send Eternity Vessel packing before it can become a major threat.

Alternatively, controlling when your opponent can play lands is also effective, so land destruction or denial strategies can prevent the trigger from ever occurring. Keeping the pressure on with a fast-paced, aggressive deck can help you finish the game before Eternity Vessel begins its life-resetting shenanigans. And if the artifact has already made an impact, modifying life totals outside of combat, with spells like Sorin’s Vengeance or Exsanguinate, can circumvent the life-gain loop and help seal your victory.

Ultimately, adapting your tactics and including versatile answers in your deck will enhance your ability to combat Eternity Vessel, ensuring it doesn’t become an insurmountable obstacle on your path to victory.

Cards like Eternity Vessel

Eternity Vessel is a unique artifact in MTG, offering life stabilization that can come in handy in long-drawn matches. When comparing it to other life-centric artifacts, one can look at Sun Droplet, which provides incremental life gain each turn, restoring health over time. Although Sun Droplet’s effect is more consistent, Eternity Vessel’s ability to set your life total to the number of charge counters it has, typically upon landfall, can have a more immediate and powerful impact on the game.

Alhammarret’s Archive is another piece that can be compared, giving a boost to life gain by doubling it. While not offering the reset mechanic of Eternity Vessel, it scales up the value of any life you gain from other sources. On the flip side, Eternity Vessel’s life-setting feature is a one-time reset triggered by lands, making it a potential game-changer in decks particularly built around the landfall mechanic.

In evaluating these options, Eternity Vessel stands out in decks that can consistently play lands to leverage that reset ability, potentially swinging games back in your favor. Its unique reset function emphasizes large, one-time life gain possibilities, distinguishing it in the spectrum of life-gain artifacts available to players.

Alhammarret's Archive - MTG Card versions

Cards similar to Eternity Vessel by color, type and mana cost

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Eternity Vessel MTG card by a specific set like Zendikar, 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 Eternity Vessel and other MTG cards:

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Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Eternity Vessel has restrictions

Format	Legality
Commander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Vintage	Legal
Duel	Legal
Predh	Legal
Penny	Legal

Rules and information

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

Date	Text
2009-10-01	Eternity Vessel’s landfall ability cares only about how many charge counters are on it, not what its controller’s life total was as it entered the battlefield. The number of charge counters may be changed by other spells and abilities.
2009-10-01	For your life total to become the number of charge counters on Eternity Vessel, you actually gain or lose the necessary amount of life. For example, if your life total is 4 when Eternity Vessel’s landfall ability resolves and Eternity Vessel has 12 charge counters on it, the ability will cause you to gain 8 life. Other cards that interact with life gain or life loss will interact with this effect accordingly.
2009-10-01	The landfall ability triggers whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control for any reason. It triggers whenever you play a land, as well as whenever a spell or ability (such as Rampant Growth) causes you to put a land onto the battlefield under your control. It will even trigger when a spell or ability causes another player to put a land onto the battlefield under your control (as can happen with Yavimaya Dryad’s ability, for example).
2009-10-01	When a land enters the battlefield under your control, each landfall ability of the permanents you control will trigger. You can put them on the stack in any order. The last ability you put on the stack will be the first one that resolves.
2010-06-15	In a Two-Headed Giant game, your life total is the same as your team’s life total, so Eternity Vessel enters the battlefield with a number of charge counters on it equal to your team’s life total. When its landfall ability resolves, it causes its controller to lose or gain the appropriate amount of life, and the team’s life total is adjusted by the amount of life the player gains or loses as a result of this ability. Suppose Eternity Vessel has 15 charge counters on it when its landfall ability resolves, and its controller’s team has 11 life. That player’s life total is 11, which becomes 15, for a net gain of 4 life. The team’s life total becomes 15.