Omniscience and X costs
Asked by acbooster 12 years ago
If you have Omniscience on the field and you cast a spell with X in it, do you still have to pay X, or do you just declare X as something and then not pay it? For example, playing a Nimbus Swimmer and calling X as 10 billion, then not paying it because of Omniscience .
Going along with this, are you able to play something for its overload cost without paying it with Omniscience ?
Epochalyptik says... #2
When you cast a spell without paying its mana cost, you don't pay any X values in the mana cost. Therefore, you can't declare what X is for spells with X in their mana costs, and X defaults to zero.
Additionally, casting a spell without paying its mana cost means you can't cast the spell for another alternate cost; only one alternate cost can be paid. You can't overload the spell.
Both of these questions are answered on the Gatherer page for Omniscience .
February 21, 2013 8:51 a.m.
Don't know why I didn't think of looking on Gatherer, lol. Guess my brain was still sluggish, it was early for me when I asked this.
Absinthman says... Accepted answer #1
If you look up Omniscience on Gatherer, you can see the answers to your questions belowthe card.
You must follow the normal timing restrictions of each nonland card you cast.
If you cast a card "without paying its mana cost," you can't pay any alternative costs (such as overload). You can pay additional costs such as kicker costs. If the card has mandatory additional costs, you must pay those.
If the card has X in its mana cost, you must choose 0 as its value.
February 21, 2013 8:51 a.m.