Bloom Tender and colors of permanents.

Asked by Pheardemons 7 years ago

If I have Elves of Deep Shadow and Bloom Tender on the battlefield does Bloom Tender tap for mana symbol gmana symbol b? Or does color only matter in the CMC of a card?

acbooster says... Accepted answer #1

When determining the color of a card, you look only at its casting cost and/or any color indicators. An Elves of Deep Shadow is just green, but Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord would be black and green. For an example with color indicators, Dryad Arbor has a color indicator denoting it as green.

You're confusing color with color identity, which is similar but different. Color identity is only used when determining what cards are legal in a commander deck. Color identity is determined by any colored mana symbols or color indicators anywhere on the card. The exception to this is reminder text, which was something that had to be clarified when Extort came out as a mechanic.

August 1, 2016 4:50 p.m. Edited.

TheRedMage says... #2

A small exception to what acbooster was saying: when determining the color of a card, you look at its casting cost, its color indicators (and, to give an example, a color indicator is a colored dot that appears on the typeline, like in Pact of Negation) and/or color-setting characteristic-defining abilities of the card.

At this moment no card exist with a characteristic-defining ability that sets the color to anything but colorless. Examples of this are Ghostfire and cards from the Battle for Zendikar block that have the ability "Devoid", like Vestige of Emrakul.

What I wanted to point out is that if you control only Vestige of Emrakul and Bloom Tender, the latter will still only tap for mana symbol g and not mana symbol gmana symbol r. The color identity of Vestige of Emrakul is mana symbol r, but it has no actual color because of devoid.


Terminology nitpick: you asked if color only matters in the converted mana cost of a card. The converted mana cost of a card (CMC) is just a number, usually equal to the total mana necessary to cast that card (with some additional rules for X spells, split cards and mana symbol 2b mana symbols, but let's not get into those now). For example, the CMC of a card that costs mana symbol 3mana symbol gmana symbol g is 5.

What you are referring to in this scenario is simply called the "mana cost" of the card, as opposed to the CMC.

August 1, 2016 7:44 p.m.

acbooster says... #3

Ah yes, I forgot about the Devoid cards and the like. Thanks for pointing it out!

August 1, 2016 7:51 p.m.

Pheardemons says... #4

Thank you for the descriptions and answers.

August 1, 2016 10:10 p.m.

This discussion has been closed