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Life Chisel

Artifact

Sacrifice a creature: You gain life equal to the sacrificed creature's toughness. Activate only during your upkeep.

CMC
4
Mana cost
{4}
Color identity
C
Rarity
uncommon
Set
Legends
Price
$2.46
EDHREC rank
#23339
Buy on TCGplayer
Life Chisel card art
Life Chisel turns any creature into a sacrifice outlet that pays you in life — at the cost of four mana and an artifact slot, you get repeatable insurance against board wipes and a combo enabler that pairs lethally with Outrider en-Kor. It's narrow, but in the decks that want it, nothing else does exactly this job.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern not legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Life Chisel is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but Legacy and Vintage have no meaningful shell for it — the formats move too fast for a four-mana artifact that requires a board state to function. Commander is its only real home, specifically in sacrifice or lifegain strategies that can exploit the outlet repeatedly across a long game. In Oathbreaker the same logic applies in miniature: it's only worth sleeving if your signature spell or planeswalker directly rewards the life or the sacrifices.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$2.46 cheap tier

At $2.46, Life Chisel sits at the low end of niche-combo territory — cheap enough to pick up on a hunch, not so cheap that it signals zero demand. The price is stable rather than climbing; it's held by a small, consistent audience of combo players rather than any broad appeal.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.