Does anything lower the cost of activated abilities?
General forum
Posted on April 1, 2015, 11:53 a.m. by ICEMAN762004
If I have an artifact (such as ruby Medallion) that makes spells cost less does that count toward activated abilities or no? Some activated abilities can be great but also mana costly.
Also, in particular for Artifacts there is Power Artifact.
April 1, 2015 12:03 p.m.
GoldGhost012 says... #4
If you control a Ruby Medallion, it will not decrease the cost for an activated ability. Spells are not abilities. Only cards that specify decreasing an activated ability's cost, like the aforementioned Training Grounds and Power Artifact, will decrease that cost.
April 1, 2015 12:07 p.m.
merrowMania says... #5
Hearthstone and Training Grounds are the only creature-ability reducers in the game so far.
April 1, 2015 1:01 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #6
Spells and abilities are different things. Effects that interact with spells with specifically say "spell", and likewise for effects that interact with abilities. Ruby Medallion will reduce the cost to cast Jaya Ballard, Task Mage when you play her, but it won't reduce the cost to activate any of her abilities.
Right now, the only cards in the game that reduce the cost of activated abilities are Power Artifact, Heartstone, and Training Grounds. Also note that an activated ability is always written in the "Cost : Effect" format. This is the only kind of ability affected by these cards. An ability that starts with "when/whenever/at" is a triggered ability, and anything else is some kind of static ability.
April 1, 2015 1:06 p.m.
Well of course Hearthstone lowers the cost of activated abilities. I don't think its activated abilities have a cost. If they even have activated abilities, I don't play so I don't know...
April 1, 2015 7:57 p.m.
ICEMAN762004 says... #8
Thanks for the help in clarifying and the idea on the cards that do work, I hadn't seen them before as I'm still fairly new to the game.
April 1, 2015 9:21 p.m.
For some reason people need to give the exact same answer 4 times in the same thread... maybe they just can't read the previous comments?
Anyway, Training Grounds is definitely what you're looking for.
Ramz-E says... #2
Depending on what format you are playing will have a large bearing on the answer to this question, but there are cards like Training Grounds which do what you are asking.
Might be worth searching on Gatherer with a rules text filter of activated abilities cost less or something along those lines.
April 1, 2015 12:01 p.m.