Can I Put a Gaea's Cradle In a Mono Black EDH Deck?
Asked by Minathia 13 years ago
I know any mana generated outside of commander's colors are colorless. My question is whether the card is legal, or I have to Vesuva another player's card:Gaea's Cradle to get one in play under my control.
You would need to use Vesuva on someone elses' card:Gaea's Cradle because it has a green color identity (despite being colorless).
"A card's colour identity is its colour plus the colour of any mana symbols in the card's rules text. A card's colour identity is established before the game begins, and cannot be changed by game effects.The Commander's colour identity restricts what cards may appear in the deck."
September 22, 2011 1:04 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #3
Polaris and RKShepard are right. Also note that if an effect would add mana to your pool of a color not in your commander's color identity, it adds colorless mana instead, so your Vesuva copy of the cradle can only make colorless mana (it only matters in a select few corner cases, but it might as well be said).
September 22, 2011 1:07 p.m.
However that won't even work because card:Gaea's Cradle is legendary, so Vesuva 'ing it would cause it to go to the graveyard due to the "Legend Rule".
If you want a lot of mana in mono-black, are you using Cabal Coffers and Magus of the Coffers ?
Also, a follow-up question: Could you put a Watery Grave in a mono-black EDH deck. There is a blue mana symbol on the card, but it is in the reminder text only, and I believe I read somewhere that reminder text isn't counted for colour identity. Obviously there is no point in doing so since it couldn't produce blue anyway, it's just an academic question.
September 24, 2011 1:03 a.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #5
That's a good observation, but Watery Grave actually does have rules text containing a Blue mana symbol. The reminder text is a summary of the abilities given to the Grave by the Island and Swamp land types: "Tap: Add U to your mana pool" and "Tap: Add B to your mana pool".
If the mana abilities were written as regular ability text, then the land would actually have 2 copies of each ability, one given by the subtype and another from its rules text. This would actually cause it to respond differently to certain type changing and ability removing effects, and that would just be weird.
Compare Leechridden Swamp as another example of a land with a basic type whose mana ability is given in reminder text.
Polaris says... #1
You cannot include any cards with mana symbols other than black in your deck, so no, you cannot. For example, Obelisk of Alara can only be played in a 5 color deck, even though it can be plenty effective with only a few colors.
September 22, 2011 12:54 p.m.