Can Crucible of the Spirit Dragon mana used for Face down (Manifest) Dragon?

Asked by Rayenous 10 years ago

Can the 'Storage Counter' mana from Crucible of the Spirit Dragon be used to activate the "manifest" ability of a Face-down Dragon?

...My guess is that the answer is, "No", since the face down creature is not a Dragon while it is face down...

If Crucible of the Spirit Dragon said "... or activate abilities of Dragon cards.", then I would know for cure it could be used this way... I'm just not 100% sure (It could imply all dragon spells, permanents and cards). I would like to ensure my assumption is correct before coming across the situation.

A similar question would be "Can Crucible of the Spirit Dragon 'Storage Counter mana be used to pay for the 'Cycling' ability of Eternal Dragon?" - Similarly, it is a Dragon card, but is it a "Dragon" while in hand?

Rhadamanthus says... Accepted answer #1

You're right to think that a face-down creature isn't a Dragon (unless some other effect is giving it that type), but there's another issue with using Crucible of the Spirit Dragon with Manifest or Morph costs: Manifest/Morph isn't an activated ability. Activated abilities are always written out as "Cost : Effect". If Crucible said "Dragon card" then this still wouldn't work, because being face-down alters the characteristics of a permanent. It isn't a Dragon, so it isn't a Dragon card.

Cycling is an activated ability, but here we run into the "Dragon" vs. "Dragon card" problem. If an effect names a permanent type or subtype and doesn't also say "spell" or "card", then it only means a permanent of that type/subtype on the battlefield. You can't use Crucible mana to activate either of the abilities on Eternal Dragon. There's one exception to this: protection abilities are allowed to use "protection from (type/subtype)" to mean any object with that type/subtype in any zone.

January 13, 2015 3:30 p.m.