i have had over 40 mana in a game with this. it works amazingly with anything that provides charge counters and provides an early game mana ramp if you need it. i play with 3 of them in my deck.
Posted By:
rinoh20
(11/17/2010 7:03:34 PM)
This card is the heart of my proliferate deck. With trinket mages to help get out several copies from the deck and plenty of cards that just let me proliferate at my leisure, I typically end up with 40+ mana that I can use for just about anything, even busting out a Dark Depths (the hard way, not the Vampire Hexmage way) in a single turn.
Posted By:
Asmodi0000
(3/30/2011 8:09:48 PM)
Gets me to that Contagion Engine quickly then just gets better from there!
Posted By:
PhyrexianFryCook
(5/25/2011 6:12:23 PM)
I love how powerful this card is (I'd play it even if I could only cast it for 2 colorless), but I hate how unclean the card reads. Costing this at XX would be slightly better, but in any case and in Maro's words, this card uses up a lot of "complexity points" in the set.
Posted By:
Gabriel422
(7/10/2011 11:48:05 AM)
Meltdown says hi.
Posted By:
Ideatog
(12/2/2011 12:20:00 AM)
Much of this card's power is related to coming into play untapped. You only lose x mana the turn you play it, where x is the number of counters. There are many turn 3's and turn 5's where you want to play a 2 drop or a 3 drop. In general you should wait for a turn that you can play it efficiently. Better 1 counter and a creature than 2 counters and a wasted turn.
Increase your odds of of playing efficiently by putting artifacts that cost 
or 
in the deck, for example:
Bonesplitter, Flayer Husk, Arcbound Worker, Arcbound Stinger, Contagion Clasp, Porcelain Legionnaire and Vault Skirge.
Posted By:
kiseki
(3/1/2012 3:30:21 PM)
Good Card, but if you don't have a lot of mana to charge it with, it's not nearly as good. you , might be better off with Sol Ring.
Posted By:
asskicker123456789
(9/8/2012 2:51:50 PM)
This is a pretty good card and its unfortunate how people over look it wanting it to be some type of super ramp card allowing super huge spells to be cast. The reason why it received so much play is that it allowed decks that don’t run any type of ramp to get a nice acceleration of mana without any huge draw backs.
Reasons it’s a good card
-There a no clear disadvantages of running 2-3 in a deck
- It becomes better than most ramp spells on turn 4
- Its not a creature, the are thousands of ways to kill off creatures and they are usually main boarded so i would think twice about replacing this with a 2/2 myr wouldn’t be the best idea if you looking for ramp.
Posted By:
xBattlemagex
(11/14/2012 5:35:51 AM)
On turn 2, it ramps you 1 - that's not terrible, and is on par with other mana rocks like Prismatic Lens, Myr and Signets. And of course, this just gets better with more mana to multikick it, and if you actually have a way to consistently spend extra mana - like an X spell or ability - it just gets even better. Also has great synergy with proliferate, or anything that grants extra counters.
@AssKicker - I *love* that you compared this card, a very balanced yet powerful card that's legal in pretty much every format except standard, to Sol Ring, one of the most absurdly powerful mana rocks that's banned in the majority of formats, and restricted to one copy in any format it is playable in.
Posted By:
JaxsonBateman
(12/20/2012 6:30:25 AM)
Surprised the mana cost wasn't just X;X, which would have achieved the same thing.
Guess the flavour of it is cooler however. Its empty, and the multikicker is what fills the chalice or what not.
Posted By:
spiney
(5/13/2013 7:39:29 AM)