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

Asked by Rayenous 9 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.