Roots of Life

Enchantment

As Roots of Life enters the battlefield, choose Islands or Swamps.

Whenever a land of the chosen type an opponent controls becomes tapped, you gain 1 life.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Premodern	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (7)

GutterbonesMan on The Big Eleventy-One

9 months ago

Roots of Life and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth go nuts together

king-saproling on Dina Lifedrain

2 years ago

You might like these: Polluted Bonds, Blood Artist, Fountain of Renewal, Lich's Mastery, Roots of Life, Falkenrath Noble, Blossoming Bogbeast, Trespasser's Curse (you can enchant yourself!)

Profet93 on Azusa, Lost But Seeking Fun (EDH Primer)

3 years ago

battle_jelly

Roots of Life - What's the point of this exactly, how does lifegain help you in a more competitive meta? Its nice with urborg, perhaps I'm missing something? Same question with Lifegift.

Seedborn Muse > Wilderness Reclamation? - Is the 1 mana more a deterrent or the fact that its blown up as a creature? I like how you can tutor for it since it's a creature

Tempt with Discovery - One of my favs but in a more competitive meta, don't they usually just strip mine whatever you tutor for?

How does Gravediggers cage and G-wave interact? Do you get the creatures from G-Wave or not? I know it's anti-synergy with Finale, but some of that is expected in a stax build.

Have you considered adding more interaction in the form of Kenrith's Transformation? It replaces itself, is cheap and shuts down commanders who cant interact with enchantments.

Nylea's Intervention - Not that you need even more anti-flying, but the land tutoring is nice. X=2-3 is a good mode and is fairly costed IMO. Helps you turn of field of the dead more consistently.

Replacing 8 forests with 8 snow-covered forests helps field of the dead turn online more quickly as well.

Yavimaya Hollow > Radiant Fountain

MichaelAYoung91 on Lifegain in Tasigur Control

5 years ago

My favorites are Lifegift and Druidic Satchel . Looking at your deck I'm unsure what would be the best option but the odds are in your favor to ramp or gain life with Druidic Satchel

• Angelheart Vial - comes to mind as a first pick if you are in a creature heavy meta.
• Bow of Nylea or Druidic Satchel - both have multiple uses, but the incidental life gain is fine.
• Elixir of Immortality - I put this in everything, kinda messes with seasons past though.
• Exquisite Blood or Polluted Bonds - these will get hate but have really good life gain potential.
• Retreat to Kazandu - for when you play lands.
• Lifegift - for when ANYONE plays a land. This card is super under rated in games of 3-4 players. especially against ramp decks.
• Ivory Tower or Ivory Crane Netsuke or Venser's Journal - trigger on upkeep, dependent on hand size venser is the better of the 3.
• Thoughtleech or Lifetap or Roots of Life - depends on your meta, i think there are more of these.
• Skullmead Cauldron - discard outlet on top of life gain.
• Tower of Eons - HUGE mana sink, but I have a special place in my heart for this card.

sonnet666 on None

6 years ago

A lot of old cards used to have triggered abilities that triggered when "target" opponent did something. Problem is, as the rules got more refined this didn't really work, since targets are chosen when an ability is placed on the stack, and trigger conditions don't have targets.

Cards that worked like this were later changed so they wouldn't have broken abilities. Roots of Life oracle text now reads:

As Roots of Life enters the battlefield, choose Island or Swamp.

Whenever a land of the chosen type an opponent controls becomes tapped, you gain 1 life.

It's always the oracle text (which can be found on Gatherer) and not the printed text that defines how a card functions.

Rhadamanthus on None

6 years ago

10/04/2004 was just a few weeks after Gatherer was officially announced to the public, so it's likely this ruling was made much earlier in real life but not back-dated when first entered into the system. If I remember correctly, the change from Roots of Life's printed text to its current Oracle text with no mention of the word "target" was part of a sweeping update that changed a lot of cards with similar text (but for some reason not all of them), possibly associated with the 6th Edition rules update back in 1999. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any hard evidence to back this anecdote up. Finding certain things on the main Magic website has been extremely difficult after it broke itself a while back (I've gotten the impression that some things may be lost forever).

As always, use a card's current Oracle text to determine the official way it works within the rules and interacts with other cards. According to its current text, Roots of Life doesn't target.

MythicalMythic on Om Nom Nath

7 years ago

Just voted this deck up - I'm known on MTGO as Poisonous currently, one of many aliases. I also just witnessed this deck handing the room it's asses in a free for all! lol That's why I'm here, and thank yooouuuu very much.

As I said in the game though, I'm definitely adding Winding Canyons and I wouldn't care about the 40 land thing, I don't make a deck in EDH without 40 lands, period. I should start posting my other builds on here for any suggestions, but I'm so conservative about it lol I only share when asked. Roots of Life + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth! Try it sometime maybe it will pull removal targets from opponents because of their value - as opposed to your other more essential perms. I'm also going to run Diamond Valley for another source in case the well is tapped, and Deserted Temple to mitigate that tapping out of prime lands.