Question about producing Colorless Mana in Commander
Asked by Onion_duck 9 years ago
Oath of the Gatewatch has added a new mana symbol which may only be paid with Colorless mana. Now it has been established that a creature such as Birds of Paradise cannot produced colorless mana. However in Commander the rules specify:
"903.9. If mana would be added to a players mana pool of a color that isnt in the color identity of that players commander, that amount of colorless mana is added to that players mana pool instead."
So my question is Can I use a creature such as Birds of Paradise to produce mana outside my commander's color identity to produce the colorless mana I need to cast these new spells?
Epochalyptik says... #2
Yes. You aren't prevented from activating Birds of Paradise and choosing a color that isn't in your commander's color identity. If you do so, the ability will produce colorless mana instead. You'll be able to use that colorless mana just and you would any other colorless mana.
January 18, 2016 11:36 a.m.
What? This doesn't make any sense. We need to make sure we're talking about colorless ( the <> mana) and NOT generic (
). If this rule isn't errata'd then ramp-based EDH decks can super easily integrate the new colorless mana (<>) while other lists will be at a severe disadvantage. This seems really wrong because, like I said above, this was written prior to colorless (actual colorless mana) being introduced, and if it were written today would say generic instead of colorless.
January 18, 2016 11:46 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #4
Incorrect.
Colorless mana has always existed. It's just that, prior to the 
symbol, it wasn't really differentiated from generic mana in any way.
Generic mana is not a kind of mana you can produce or have. It's a way of representing a cost that can be paid with any kind (one of the five colors or colorless) mana.
Colorless mana is mana that has no color. You can produce it and have it in your mana pool. Until recently, there were no costs that explicitly required colorless mana.
When an effect would produce off-color mana in Commander, it produces colorless mana instead. That means . You can spend it just like mana produced by Wastes or Sol Ring.
January 18, 2016 11:59 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... Accepted answer #5
Well, scratch all of that. The RC just announced that rule 4 (the one that used to convert off-color to colorless mana) is now obsolete. Apparently you can now produce off-color mana, meaning Birds of Paradise can no longer be used to produce colorless through the loophole.
You'll need to have an effect that allows you to actually produce colorless, it seems.
January 18, 2016 12:13 p.m.
Ahh makes sense, thanks for clarifying that Epoch.
Edit: That's what I was thinking would happen...
alulien says... #1
If I had to guess, since colorless is the absence of color (cannot be generated by BoP) I don't think it will mess with color identity. The rule was written prior to the introduction of actual colorless mana, and everyone used colorless interchangeably with generic to describe
costs. The rule will be rewritten, to be sure.
January 18, 2016 11:30 a.m.