{"id":1936,"date":"2012-03-30T09:00:50","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T14:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/?p=1936"},"modified":"2015-02-05T16:05:14","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T00:05:14","slug":"the-extra-mana-you-pay-because-of-thalia-guardian-of-thraben-doesnt-count-for-anything-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/2012\/03\/the-extra-mana-you-pay-because-of-thalia-guardian-of-thraben-doesnt-count-for-anything-else\/","title":{"rendered":"The extra mana you pay because of Thalia, Guardian of Thraben doesn’t count for anything else."},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>
\nSimple enough: Does Thalia, Guardian of Thraben<\/a> increase the converted mana cost (“CMC”) of your spells because she makes them cost more? Easy answer: No! CMC -never- changes. The sum of all the symbols in the top right corner of a card is the CMC.<\/p>\n

The only<\/strong> time CMC can change is with X spells. Everywhere except the stack, X is treated as being zero. But on<\/strong> the stack, X is whatever you choose for it as you cast it. So in your hand, Green Sun’s Zenith<\/a> has a CMC of 1. One colored symbol + 0 from the X means a total of 1. But if you were to cast Zenith with X=6, then on the stack it has a CMC of 7. You’ll have to pay 7G to cast it thanks to Thalia, but X still equals 6.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t matter what you pay for the spell. If I cast Ponder<\/a> from my hand while you control Thalia, it might cost me 1U to play, but the CMC is still 1, and it’s still a legal target for Mental Misstep<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even if you could cast a spell without paying any mana for it, Thalia still asks you to pony up 1 extra mana to pay for it. That means if you cast Gut Shot by paying 2 life, Thalia still requires a payment of 1 on top of that, and if you reveal an instant or sorcery for Galvanoth<\/a>, you still have to pay 1 to cast it.<\/p>\n

Today’s Rules Tip written by
\nTrevor Nu\u00f1ez, Level 1 judge from Roswell, NM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simple enough: Does increase the converted mana cost (“CMC”) of your spells because she makes them cost more? Easy answer: No! CMC -never- changes. The sum of all the symbols in the top right corner of a card is the CMC. The only time CMC can change is with X spells. Everywhere except the stack, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[29,38,26],"tags":[678,261,676,585,677,675],"language":[1196],"class_list":["post-1936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-casting-playing-a-spell-ability","category-characteristics","category-costs","tag-galvanoth","tag-green-suns-zenith","tag-guardian-of-thraben","tag-gut-shot","tag-mental-misstep","tag-thalia","language-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1936"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4743,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936\/revisions\/4743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1936"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=1936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}