Dual Land Types - Temple of Enlightenment

Asked by gkosterjr 10 years ago

Ok, I am very new, and at FNM I could nt make sense of everybody's Land math and mana exchanges. They were not very friendly or forthcoming of answers so here goes. I play temple of enlightenment, it's tapped. Next turn, untap, then I can tap for either W or U. Let's say I choose W. Do I then lose temple of enlightenment? Do I lose the W mana on the next turn? Let's say it produces a W, then on the next turn (without laying another land), I can tap this one for another W, and so on indefinitely? If this is true and I have 4 of these (currently running mono white, but wanting to switch to W / U, or a W / B combination (Urborg land in that case). How many land would I then need. Due to having 4 of these do I drop my overall land from 24 to say 16? Thank you in advance to whomever sheds light on all of this for me.

erabel says... #1

Okay. Basics of mana, with Temple of Enlightenment as an example:

• Lands adding mana to your mana pool does not destroy your lands, but it does use the land up until your next untap step. That's what tapping the land signifies: you've used it up that turn.
• If you don't use mana before a change in step, phase, or turn, it empties from your mana pool (unless a card like Kruphix, God of Horizons says otherwise).
• Tapping Temple of Enlightenment for W on one turn does not prevent you from tapping it for W on any other turn, nor does it prevent you from tapping it for U on any other turn.

As for how many dual lands to use if you want to splash into a color, that depends on how many cards of the splashed color you want to run. That sort of question is better asked in the Deck Help forum (if you want advice on a specific deck), the Standard forum (for advice on land bases in Standard), or the General forum (for advice on land bases in general).

Hope this helps!

August 9, 2014 3:31 a.m.

erabel says... #2

Just saw something I want to touch on: Running lands that tap for more than one color should not be the grounds for running fewer lands. The amount of lands you run should depend mostly on how much mana you need to cast the spells in your deck. If nothing costs more than 2 mana in your deck, 20 lands works perfectly fine; in most other cases, you want to run 22-24 lands, leaning towards 24.

August 9, 2014 3:34 a.m.

gkosterjr says... #3

I will ask a further clarification sir, if I may. So, in my example again, if I tap for a W, do I lose that W at the end of the turn? Does the W vanish when the turn is complete or does it build. For example, I tap for W one turn, then on the next I tap for W again, therefore giving me 2 W to use from tapping Temple of Enlightenment?

August 9, 2014 3:44 a.m.

erabel says... Accepted answer #4

A turn in Magic is divided into several steps and phases. In order, they are:

1. Beginning Phase: Untap Step, Upkeep Step, Draw Step
2. Precombat Main Phase
3. Combat Phase: Beginning of Combat Step, Declare Attackers Step, Declare Blockers Step, Combat Damage Step(s), End of Combat Step
4. Postcombat Main Phase
5. End Phase: End Step, Cleanup Step

If you add mana to your mana pool (Say, by tapping a Temple of Enlightenment for white mana) in any part of a turn, and it goes to any other part of a turn (you "change steps" or "change phases"), the mana you generated disappears, unused.

Also, general thing, because you're new to this site (I noticed), to link cards like I've been doing, you use double brackets. So, for instance, [ [ Forest ] ], without spaces, becomes Forest .

August 9, 2014 4:06 a.m.

Rhadamanthus says... #5

After reading this, I think there might be something else going on here.

Lands and mana are two different things. Mana is the magical energy used to pay costs for spells and abilities, and lands are just the most common source of mana. There are some exceptions, as you'll find some lands that don't make mana (Maze of Ith , Glacial Chasm , etc.), and several non-land sources of mana (Elvish Mystic , Dark Ritual , etc.).

When you activate the mana ability of Temple of Enlightenment , it's just as if you were activating the ability of either a Plains or an Island (your choice). A long time ago, instead of having the big mana symbol in the text box of basic lands to represent this ability, it used to be written out in full. The change to the design was just to make the basic lands look nicer.

So let's say you want to cast Favored Hoplite . It costs W, so you need to get that much mana into your mana pool in order to pay for it. If you tap a Plains to add W to your mana pool, that will work. If you tap a Temple of Enlightenment to add W to your mana pool, that will also work.

Does that help?

August 9, 2014 8:43 a.m.

Gidgetimer says... #6

Link to show what the Old Lands looked like that Rhadamanthus is talking about.

August 9, 2014 9:06 a.m.