While his stats are beefy, hes still a vanilla card with no effect, so hes not very popular among players, but he does still get some fringe play in certain Steel decks because, at the end of the day, big stats are big stats, and its nice to have a big dude to play if the game goes long
This doesnt even take into account the volume of decks in Modern and Legacy where a Chalice on one is extremely problematic
When we had a brainstorming meeting about what elements the set needed to have, monsters were at the top of the list
If you have some Secret Plans out, you are casting creatures and drawing cards for zero mana
Check out how many two-for-ones are just card-advantage mechanisms attached to generally uninspired cards
Thought Vessel is a decent mana rock, but the deck already has quite a few mana rocks, and having an unlimited hand size doesn't seem like it's all that useful