Cosmos Elixir
Artifact
At the beginning of your end step, draw a card if your life total is greater than your starting life total. Otherwise, you gain 2 life.
- CMC
- 4
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- C
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Kaldheim Promos
- Price
- $4.79
- EDHREC rank
- #2608
Cosmos Elixir pays for itself in life and cards every turn your life total clears the threshold — the draw trigger alone justifies the four mana. Y'shtola Rhul decks hit that threshold routinely, making this a near-auto-include rather than a consideration.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Y'shtola Rhul
Y'shtola Rhul's ability to gain life on opponents' turns means Cosmos Elixir's end-step trigger fires consistently on every player's round, turning a single artifact into a repeatable card engine.
Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant
Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant cares about stacking life totals high enough to trigger win conditions, and Cosmos Elixir contributes incremental gain while converting that padding into card advantage.
Oloro, Ageless Ascetic
Oloro, Ageless Ascetic generates life before the game even starts, so Cosmos Elixir's 40-life threshold is trivially met — it becomes a reliable draw engine on top of Oloro's existing value pile.
Trelasarra, Moon Dancer
Trelasarra, Moon Dancer scales on life gain triggers, and Cosmos Elixir supplies both the incremental gain and the card draw to keep that engine fueled over a long game.
Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn
Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn wants life gain at end of turn to distribute counters, and Cosmos Elixir delivers exactly that while also replacing itself with cards when the life total is high enough.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Cosmos Elixir is a Commander card through and through — the 40-life starting total means the draw trigger is live from the very first end step, and multiplayer games give it multiple opportunities to fire each round. In Legacy, Modern, and Pioneer it's legal but essentially unplayed: 20-life formats rarely reach the threshold, and four mana for a conditional life gain artifact doesn't compete with those formats' efficiency bar. Oathbreaker shares Commander's life total, so the same logic applies and it sees fringe play in life-gain builds there.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$4.79 cheap tier
At $4.79, Cosmos Elixir sits at the low end of staple pricing — cheap enough that there's no real budget objection to running it. Demand is steady across life-gain archetypes, so the price is unlikely to erode further without a reprint.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Y'shtola Rhul
- Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant
- Oloro, Ageless Ascetic
- Trelasarra, Moon Dancer
- Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.