Aether Vial
Mana Cost:
Type: Artifact
Oracle Text:
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may put a charge counter on this artifact.
{T}: You may put a creature card with mana value equal to the number of charge counters on this artifact from your hand onto the battlefield.
Power/Toughness: -/-
Rarity: uncommon
Prints: View all prints (1) →
Expansion: Mystery Booster 2
Price ( USD): $4.26
USD: $4.26 · EUR: €3.50
Public Decks Using This Card
No public decks are currently using this card.
Character Background
Aether Vial is a quietly brutal tool for tempo and creature-based strategies: drop it early, let it tick at your upkeeps, and then cheat in threats at instant speed equal to its charge counter total to outpace or dodge counterspells. Thematically it feels like a tether to the aether that materializes allies on command, and mechanically it best supports low-mana creature aggro or tempo decks (Humans/Merfolk-style lists), toolbox builds that want specific answers, and even creature-combo shells that need to assemble pieces outside of the stack. Deckbuilding tip: populate your deck with a dense suite of 1–3 mana creatures—lords, disruptive two-drops, and high-impact ETB or flash creatures—to match the vial’s natural progression, and include a couple higher-cost finishers you can wait for; protect the vial with artifact-recurrence or sideboard answers because a single piece of removal or sweeper can ruin your timing. Its strength is tempo and adaptability rather than raw card draw.
Generated using gpt-5-mini · Updated at 2026-05-16 18:20:47 UTC