Can Colorless be Paid with "+1 Mana of Any Color"?
Asked by concherino9k 8 years ago
I want to add an Eldrazi Displacer so I can abuse Filigree Angel 's EtB in my Artifact Alchemy deck.
I want to use Glimmervoid to pay for the Displacer's colorless mana ability. Glimmervoid says: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
I know that: 203.2d If a player is asked to choose a color, he or she must choose one of the five colors. Multicolored is not a color.
My question is: can I pay with Glimmervoid? Am I being "asked" to "choose a color"? Thanks :)
iBleedPunk says... #2
I do believe this should be in Rules Q&A maybe?
And Colorless mana (
) is just that, devoid of color. So "Add one mana of any color" can't produce due to it not containing "color"
Someone correct me if I'm wrong please?
August 16, 2016 12:30 a.m.
There needs to be clarification of the whole colorless mana to pay for colorless cost like Mirrorpool, made to people.
For example on my land destruction deck, several experienced, knowledgeable players kept telling me WRONGLY, that only lands like Rogue's passage, Karplusan Forest, where can tap for specifically colorless mana to pay for Mirrorpools colorless mana cost, and that I needed colorless lands to produce colorless mana, and that I could not use basic lands, Dual lands to pay for mirrorpool.
That's BS, because:
Take a Eldrazi, that has say a 6 colorless mana cost.
You can pay for that colorless mana with any basic land, Dual, etc, that produces colored mana to pay for the colorless cost.
Another example:
Say you want to cast Ulrich, which cost 3 colorless, 1 red, 1 green.
You could tap 1 land for 1 green, another land for 1 red, and ANY other 3 lands to make ANY colored mana, whether it be colored, or colorless, to pay the 3 remaining 3 colorless cost of Ulrich.
This applies to ALL spells, since ALPHA, including Mirrorpool.
This is how magic has always done it since ALPHA, back in 92,93,94.
I asked a friend of mine who is, was a official judge, and he agreed with me.
Both me, him, have played since revised, ice age. Fallen Empires, Chronicles, 4th edition, back in 94,95,96.
So if I want to pay the 2 or 4 colorless activation cost to activate Mirrorpool land, all I need to do is tap 2 to 4 forest, or 2 to 4 mountain, or 2 to 4 Stomping ground, or mixture of 1 forest, 1 mountain, 1 Stomping ground, 1 colorless mana land, to pay the 2 to 4 colorless cost.
That's no different then tapping 2 forest, 1 Stomping ground, 1 Mountain to pay the 3 colorless portion of the 5 cmc cost of Ulrich.
And that's been true ever since ALPHA in 92,93.
August 16, 2016 2:30 a.m.
MikealDH1 what you are referring to is generic mana, not what is now colourless mana.
The difference between COLOURLESS (<>) mana and GENERIC (1) mana is that Generic mana can be paid for by anything, but colourless needs to be produced by a utility land that says "add (1) to your mana pool". This has been errata'd to say "add (<>) to your mana pool", because cards like Mirrorpool require actual colourless mana.
August 16, 2016 2:43 a.m.
Well leave it to WOTC MTG to change something they have been doing for 20 years.
For ABOUT 20 years GENERIC, AND COLOURLESS MANA WAS THE SAME THING.
There wasn't 2 different symbols like 2 (1), and 2 (<>), there was just 2 (1), that EVERYBODY called, including WOTC, MTG, judges, players, stores, etc, called COLORLESS MANA.
So SHIVAN DRAGON didn't cost 4,5 GENERIC MANA, plus 1,2 red. It costed 1,2 red, plus 4,5 COLORLESS mana that could be paid with mana from ANY land
The (4) symbol wasn't called GENERIC. It was NOT Generic. It was COLORLESS, payable by any land, any mana.
Leave it to WOTC MTG, HASBRO, ETC, to totally change it, which altho is totally their right to do, is still stupid, confusing to a lot of both old school players, and new school players alike.
Chalk this up to like changing enter into play, into enter into battlefield, which was also stupid
Just stupid to me.
August 16, 2016 3:06 a.m.
Technically, there has always been a difference between generic and colorless mana. However, it wasn't until recently that WOTC decided to actually differentiate between the two with the introduction of the colorless symbol. MaRo wrote about it in an article before OGW came out that might help.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/solemn-oath-part-1-2015-12-28
August 16, 2016 3:44 a.m.
MikealDH1 First off calm the fuck down bruh. The game has to change and evolve or it won't survive. Wizards CLEARLY explained the different between colorless and generic mana when they released the idea between the two. They also explained how even though they cannot change every card physically, gatherer and all oracle text of all cards that produce colorless mana was changed to the colorless mana symbol. Further more just because you and your friends and a couple people from wizards called it colorless mana in the past does not mean that was its official name. Many people I know including myself learned the game calling the original generic mana, generic mana just because you played since WHO-FUCKING-CARES-WHENEVER doesnt mean that what you did in the past is law. Get the fuck over it you're an adult and just read the fucking oracle text.
August 16, 2016 3:45 a.m.
Souljacker says... #9
MikealDH1, the difference between generic and colorless has always been there. You can use any mana to pay for 
, hence the cost is generic. The cost is not colorless, because you can use a colored mana source to pay for it. Cards like Sol Ring that produced 
, can't be used to pay for colored mana costs, because the mana they produce is colorless.
Now Wizards wanted to make cards that require colorless mana to be cast, to fit with their identity like Eldrazi. But they couldn't enforce that with the previous symbols, because a card that costs 
can be paid with all colored sources. Therefore they introduced a symbol for colorless mana, , to differentiate between the 2 and enable colorless cost requirements. Now they can make cards like Kozilek, the Great Distortion that actually require you to use colorless mana.
August 16, 2016 4:20 a.m.
If you swap your Streams and Hollows for UW/UB Painlands you can use the colourless mana they produce to activate the Displacer, or you can run cards like Mind Stone
EmblemMan says... Accepted answer #1
Colorless is not considered a color so if it says choose a color it must be red blue green white or black.
August 16, 2016 12:30 a.m.