Vivid Pools
Asked by DarkMagician 9 years ago
So I made a play today that I am 99.87% positive works but my opponent heavily disagreed with. I had a Reflecting Pool and a Vivid Grove with no charge counters on it. Since the Vivid can produce any color mana I tapped my Pool for black. My opponent believed that since the Vivid didn't have any more counters on it it's second ability couldn't be activated which in turn meant it couldn't tap for anything but green and therefore neither could the Pool. I told him that removing the counter was part of the activation cost and so the ability was still there but was simply inaccessible thus allowing the Pool to still tap for any color mana. So who was right, me or him?
DarkMagician says... #2
I really should start checking gatherer first lol. Thanks
November 5, 2014 1:29 a.m.
julianjmoss says... #3
haha yeah I am often suprised by the fact that wizards thinks of these random scenarios and adds them
November 5, 2014 1:30 a.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #4
They try to add notes like that if certain cards are probably going to be played together fairly often. Since Reflecting Pool was printed in Shadowmoor and Vivid Grove etc. were in Lorwyn, that meant the cards were going to be legal in Standard at the same time, so it was worth adding the Rulings note to the Gatherer entry for people who needed to know the interaction.
julianjmoss says... Accepted answer #1
Oh! so i checked the gatherer page and they specify for you:
Reflecting Pool checks the effects of all mana-producing abilities of lands you control, but it doesn't check their costs. For example, Vivid Crag says "T, Remove a charge counter from Vivid Crag: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool." If you control Vivid Crag and Reflecting Pool, you can tap Reflecting Pool for any color of mana. It doesn't matter whether Vivid Crag has a charge counter on it, and it doesn't matter whether it's untapped.
November 5, 2014 1:24 a.m.