Scourge of Valkas multiple boost?
Asked by Liszt 9 years ago
Can I tap as much mana as I want for the ability of Scourge of Valkas? I'm pretty sure I can since it doesn't cause the dragon to tap. But then again: Why are there abilities that say "Tap X mountains and deal X damage" as in Flameblast Dragon? Just for the convenience of abbreviation?
The abilities are completely different.
Scourge of Valkas has an activated ability. It is written in the form of "cost:effect". You may activate the ability as long as you can pay the cost. The cost of the ability is always before the colon, in this case it is 
. If you have one mana in your mana pool of that color, you can activate the ability.
So, if you have 20 red mana in your pool, you can activate the ability 20 times.
Flameblast Dragon has a trigerred ability. They are sentences that begin with At, When, Whenever. In this case, whenever the dragon attacks (the so called "trigger"), you may pay 
. If you do, you get the benefit of the ability. If you don't, you miss your chance to benefit from the ability.
So, if you have 20 mana in your pool when the dragon attacks, you may pay for X=19 and deal 19 additional damage.
Note that mana in your mana pool may come from lands such as Mountain, but it is not necessary - lands and mana are separate things. One just happens to produce the other.
March 27, 2015 8:35 a.m.
JexInfinite says... #3
You can activate Scourge of Valkas unlimited times, given you have the mana for it. If you had to tap it, that would be pointless, because then it couldn't attack.
Flameblast Dragon has a different ability, being that whenever you attack, you can pay to deal X damage to target creature or player. can be payed with any colour of mana, including colourless mana.
Scourge of Valkas requires you to pay to give it +1/+0 until end of turn. While it may result in the same amount of damage being dealt to the opponent as Flameblast Dragon, the abilities are both different in that Flameblast must be attacking, and Scourge can be used whenever you could cast an instant.
March 27, 2015 8:36 a.m.
Alright, thought so. Thanks for the answers. I will quickly ask another question. Does the mana produced by Dark Ritual count as "controlled" by me? So can I combo Dark Ritual + Doubling Cube and Corrupt? I kind of want to build a deck around it since used mana also counts as a swamp for my Corrupt but I'm not sure if it works as I want it to.
March 27, 2015 8:45 a.m.
Please ask separate questions in separate threads. Corrupt cares about the permanent swamp, which is a land, not mana. Doubling cube and Ritual interact with mana in your mana pool. Again, lands and mana are separate things. One may produce the other, but that is it, no other connections between them.
That said, exchange corrupt for Drain Life and you are good to go with that interaction.
BlueScope says... Accepted answer #1
Scourge of Valkas has an activated ability that you can activate as many times as you can pay it's cost. So, if you can produce 10 red mana, you could give him +10/+0 until end of turn, potentially.
Flameblast Dragon has a triggered ability that triggers when you declare him as an attacker. You may pay the cost only once, meaning with 10 red mana, you could deal up to 9 damage to target creature or player, but never 3 damage to a creature and 5 damage to another creature, for example, as you only get to pay the cost when the ability triggers - and it triggers only once every combat at the most.
March 27, 2015 8:26 a.m.