Tapping mana
Asked by WalzY 13 years ago
I'm a little unclear as to the rules on mana-tapping. For example, if I want to play a Loxodon Smiter and a Rancor on top of it.
Scenario a) I put Loxodon Smiter down on the table and tap 3 plains. I have no forest in play. Does the spell fizzle as I didn't tap a forest? (official rules not friendly takeback rules please) or do I take it back to my hand.
Scenario b) Same as above, but I have a forest in play, as well as 3 plains, but I tapped the plains
Scenario c) I have 2 forests and 2 plains. I'm eager to play a Rancor and Loxodon Smiter , so I tap all my mana and try to put them both down at the same time - is that ok?
Scenario d) I have 2 Sunpetal Grove and 2 Plains. My opponent is tapped out so won't have anything to respond to it (and no abilities on creatures etc.) I tap 2 sunpetal groves and a plains, and put down a Loxodon Smiter then quickly proceed to tap a plains and put down a Rancor . Overall, I have the mana to do both, but is the way I did it illegal? i.e. Because I tapped my 2 sunpetal groves (sources of green mana) for my loxodon and I only have 1 plains left for my rancor.. am I allowed? or is it ok because there's nothing interacting with my opponent and I'm doing this all on my main phase and have the overall mana base?
Epochalyptik says... Accepted answer #2
A) You can't begin to cast Loxodon Smiter . If you put Loxodon Smiter on the stack and realize you can't pay for it, you have taken an illegal action, and the game state is rewound to just before you attempted to cast Loxodon Smiter .
B) See above. You took an illegal action, so the game state is rewound. If you want to cast Loxodon Smiter , you must pay its full cost.
C) No. Now you're violating the timing restrictions of one of the cards. You may only cast creatures and enchantments on your main phase when the stack is empty. Additionally, if you control no creatures prior to Loxodon Smiter resolving, you have also cast an Aura without a legal target. In this scenario, the game state would be rewound to just before you cast the second spell.
D) See A. You took an illegal action, so the game state is rewound. If you want to cast Rancor , you must pay its full cost. In this case, you can't, so you aren't permitted to cast Rancor . You can't undo or swap out payments, so you're left with Loxodon Smiter and an untapped Plains on the battlefield and a Rancor in your hand.
dalinair says... #1
A) It doesnt really fizzle you simply cant cast it at all in the same way as if you tried to cast a 10 mana cost spell with 4 mana. Its like trying to drive a car with no wheels, its going nowhere.
B) Same as A, if you dont tap the mana the mana does not enter your mana pool so you cant use it cast a spell. Think of it this way, you have cards that create mana, once tapped that mana goes into a special pool where it lives until you cast something using that mana, merely having the type of mana generation as a card doesnt give you the ability to cast something until you actually create it.
C) There is something called the stack, it manages the order in which you do things which you might want to read up on, technically you cant do it at the same time since you need to have a resolved smiter on the board for the rancor to go onto, if you are wanting to do it correctly you should play them in the order you want to use them with a gap allowing for the smiter to resolve first.
D) No, its not technically legal since you are using the mana from the groves and plains to case the smiter, its then gone when you want to cast the rancor, in friendly games people will often let you do both at once but if you are wanting to do it properly you shouldn't.
February 14, 2013 6:15 a.m.