But what if I control one of each Return to Ravnica Guildgate, and tap all of them as I cast Ultimate Price<\/a> — without saying anything else? \u00a0What colors of mana are left in my pool, and whose responsibility is to clarify this situation?<\/p>\n As it turns out, there\u2019s a rule that covers a player\u2019s obligations in these situations, and the obligation is entirely on the player with extra mana. \u00a0Whenever you pay a cost or pass priority with extra mana \u201cfloating\u201d in your mana pool, you have to announce how much is still there, including the color. \u00a0This is important for three major reasons.<\/p>\n First, clear communication is always important in tournament Magic, especially when the results of your actions are invisible or ambiguous, as is sometimes the case with mana.<\/p>\n Second, it prevents me from gaining extra information by retroactively \u201cdeciding\u201d what mana is left after seeing how my opponent responds. \u00a0Going back to the above example, suppose I had Loxodon Smiter and Counterflux in my hand. \u00a0If you have a counter for my Ultimate Price, I\u2019d love to Counterflux it; but if you don\u2019t, I\u2019d prefer to cast my Smiter. \u00a0In this scenario, it\u2019s impossible to tap just two lands for Ultimate Price and still have both UUR and 1GW available for later — and this rule ensures that the same is true if I tap all five of my lands while casting Ultimate Price, by forcing me to declare up-front which colors of mana I have left.<\/p>\n Third, it prevents unscrupulous players from baiting \u201ctaxing\u201d counterspells like Izzet Charm<\/a> by pretending to be tapped out. \u00a0If I tap all five of my lands to cast Ultimate Price<\/a>, I might fool you into thinking I\u2019m unable to pay for your Charm\u2019s counter mode. \u00a0But because the game forces me to say \u201cI cast Ultimate Price<\/a>, and I have three mana (of these colors) floating\u201d, both players have a fairer, more complete understanding of the game state.<\/p>\n If a player violates this rule accidentally, the penalty is a basic Game Rule Violation, with a Warning and a potential rewinding of the game.<\/p>\n If a player intentionally violates this rule to gain an advantage, that\u2019s a serious problem and could result in a Disqualification for Fraud at Competitive events like a Grand Prix.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Today’s Rules Tip written by Paul Baranay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Your mana pool is arguably the most important concept in all of Magic — but most of the time, it\u2019s completely invisible. \u00a0If I tap four and three s for an , it\u2019s pretty obvious what color of mana each of my Gardens is making, and whether the Vents are making red or blue usually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[148,29,70,13],"tags":[],"language":[1196],"class_list":["post-2918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abilities","category-casting-playing-a-spell-ability","category-mana-abilities","category-tournamentrules","language-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2918","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\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2918"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4651,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2918\/revisions\/4651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2918"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=2918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}