If your commander has an ability to untap card and you use it for untapping Mana, can you use it to pay for 6 Mana while there is only five in your pool.it was Estrid, the Masked untapping an enchanted land.
Asked
Active
Viewed 4,721 times
12
-
19You don't "tap Mana." You tap Lands, which produce Mana. – BJ Myers Jan 27 '19 at 17:05
-
7I've rolled back the edit that fixed the conceptual mistakes in the question. Those conceptual mistakes are materially relevant to answers here so that we can guide the querent onto an accurate conception of how the game works. Correcting those mistakes is something to do in an answer, not in an edit. Leaving those present in the question allows us to do this accurately, editing them out is sorta brushing them under the carpet when they need addressing. – doppelgreener Jan 28 '19 at 13:57
-
Technically, you can't use it to pay 6 Mana when there are 5 in your Mana pool; once you use it, you now have 6 Mana in your Mana pool. I'm not sure whether this is enough of a misconception to be included in an answer. – Acccumulation Jan 29 '19 at 17:58
3 Answers
23
Yes, you can tap a land for mana again in the same turn if it becomes untapped.
When you can tap a land for mana, it always has some variation of "{T}: Add ..." as its ability, where {T} is the tap symbol. That is an activated ability. Activated abilities always follow the "cost: effect" pattern. Generally, you can activate an activated ability as often as you want, as long as you can pay its cost every time.
When you tap a land for mana, the mana it produces goes into the "mana pool", a temporary storage for your mana. Then, when you untap that land, you can pay the cost of its mana-generating ability again (i.e. tapping the land), and you will get another mana.
That means, if you have 5 lands, tap them for mana, and untap one of the lands, you can tap that land again to get 6 mana total.
602.1. Activated abilities have a cost and an effect. They are written as “[Cost]: [Effect.] [Activation instructions (if any).]”
602.1a The activation cost is everything before the colon (:). An ability’s activation cost must be paid by the player who is activating it.
106.4. When an effect instructs a player to add mana, that mana goes into a player’s mana pool. From there, it can be used to pay costs immediately, or it can stay in the player’s mana pool as unspent mana. Each player’s mana pool empties at the end of each step and phase, and the player is said to lose this mana. [..]
-
3Part of this confusion cames from the fact that most lands don't have the "{T}: Add [whatever] to your mana pool". For a newbie, it is quite easy to play for quite a bit without being aware that this is a implicit text for lands. When teaching MTG to one of my kids, I printed a couple of important notes like this one for lands, or how regeneration, fly and initiative works, or that you could use planeswalker's effects once a turn and put then in the relevant card's sleeves, as "trainers". It is helping her a lot, and she can even clear some doubts from other newbies using them, now. – T. Sar Jan 28 '19 at 11:16
-
A minor point of clarification: Lands actually have "mana-abilities" (a specialized subset of "activated abilities", though non-basic lands may have both). MOST of the time this point is irrelevant, but it's the reason you can't [[Stifle]] someone tapping their lands or creatures for mana. See 605.3b. – Raven Dreamer Jan 28 '19 at 14:10
-
@SableDreamer That is correct but I wanted to keep the answer simple. Explaining what a mana bility is would not have added anything helpful for the answer, given the basic level of the question. – Hackworth Jan 28 '19 at 14:36
-
@T.Sar and another common newbie mistake about the mana pool, believing you tap as part of paying the cost, not before paying the cost to 'float' the mana. – Andrew Jan 28 '19 at 15:57
-
In older editions, the "{T}: Add [relevant color mana] to your mana pool" was explicitly on the land's text, rather than just the big symbol (or whatever it is these days). – ConMan Jan 29 '19 at 03:38
-
It might be worth pointing out that the mana pool empties between steps and phases. So if you have an "untap at start of end step" effect you need to wait until the end step to tap the land for mana, then untap, then tap more land. – Tim B Jan 29 '19 at 12:14
-
@TimB If you read my rules quotations, it says so right there in 106.4 – Hackworth Jan 29 '19 at 12:15
-
@Hackworth Yes, I meant explicitly pointing it out in your last paragraph before the quote block. i.e. "so long as you do so before the mana pool empties at the end of the step or phase" – Tim B Jan 29 '19 at 12:16
15
First we need to clarify what lands and mana are, because you're getting these mixed up.
The land cards you lay out in front of you are merely Lands. They are not mana or your mana pool. Lands are tapped to acquire mana, which then acts as a currency to pay for spells, as you'd be familiar with. The “mana pool” does not actually physically exist anywhere on the table, it's purely conceptual as a way to think about your mana.(note)
This means when you tap a Forest you get {G} (one green mana), and you spend that {G} to cast a spell. Other cards such as Llanowar Elves can also give you mana, although they are not lands. Some cards such as Cascading Cataracts can give you more than one mana.
You can absolutely untap a land and then tap it again to obtain more mana. In fact this is why cards like Arbor Elf or Blossom Dryad exist: they let you untap a land so that you can tap it again for more mana.
If you had five basic lands (let's say 2 plains, 2 islands, 1 forest) you can tap each of them for mana. Then, yes, you can use Estrid's ability to untap the one that's enchanted, and tap that again for one more mana. You would then have six mana.
Note: The “mana pool” concept no longer gets referenced on new cards, as of Dominaria. Cards printed in and after that set only reference adding mana, but without referring to a mana pool when they do so.
doppelgreener
- 24,520
- 15
- 96
- 170
-
The mana pool has very much not been retired. It just isn't used in wordings any more. – Hackworth Jan 27 '19 at 17:37
-
@Hackworth Oh hey, looks like it's still used in the CR. I'll revise that note. Thanks for the comment. – doppelgreener Jan 27 '19 at 18:02
1
YES, you can.
A land really has the implicit text "Tap: Add [land_specific mana] to your mana pool". So, the cost to activate this mana-producing ability is to TAP the land.
Other mana sources require tapping (for example, Llanowar Elves, or Mox artifacts), others require sacrificing (for example, the "Black Lotus" from the alpha/beta edition), and so on. As long as you can meet the cost, you may activate the ability.
So, if you activate your lands to add the mana to your pool, THEN activate the loyalty ability from the planeswalker to untap all the enchanted permanents you control, and some of these enchanted permanents happen to be lands, sure, you can tap them again to add their mana to your pool once more.
However, you need to keep in mind that you may only activate a Planeswalker's Loyalty ability as a Sorcery (and only ONE such ability par turn and per planeswalker. Also, if the number on the ability is positive, you gain that much loyalty on that planeswalker, but if the number is negative, you need to have enough loyalty on the planeswalker to "pay" for the ability.)
This means that you CANNOT use the planeswalker's loyalty ability WHILE casting your spell, and getting the mana. That's not a mana-providing ability, it cannot be played as a fast effect, only as a sorcery. You need to do so BEFORE you cast your spell.
Kzwix
- 11
- 2
-
You can't use any ability, fast or not, while casting a spell. Casting a spell consists of paying the cost and putting the effect on the stack, all instantaneously. – Acccumulation Jan 28 '19 at 16:11
-
To clarify that, you cannot activate most activated abilities while casting a spell, but you can activate mana abilities, like the ones on lands. – murgatroid99 Jan 28 '19 at 17:30