Older cards read t: Add one colorless mana to your mana pool, whereas the current standard is (and has been for a while) t: Add 1 to your mana pool. 1 was only used in mana costs, not mana abilities, because 1 was generic mana. This change is actually entirely due to one card printed in Odyssey: Nantuko Elder. Its mana ability as-printed read t: Add 1G to your mana pool. R&D didn't realize that this card said to add generic mana to your mana pool before the set was released, and the rules at the time didn't allow this thus making its ability dead, so the rules team scrambled to make t for 1 a thing.
Now here we are, 15 years later, replacing 1 with C. Check Nantuko Elder's printed text versus its Oracle text. The link in the previous sentence takes you to the Gatherer page for it rather than using the card tag for your convenience.
Edit at below: you quoted me before I was fast enough to edit that part out, having realized your interpretation is right.
Edit at Mistermind: this is pretty pedantic, but lands aren't colorless. They're what we've now keyworded as Devoid.
No, lands are indeed colourless. With the exception of Dryad Arbor, of course. No land has Devoid.
202.1b Some objects have no mana cost. This normally includes all land cards, any other cards that have no mana symbols where their mana cost would appear, tokens (unless the effect that creates them specifies otherwise), and nontraditional Magic cards. Having no mana cost represents an unpayable cost (see rule 117.6). Note that lands are played without paying any costs (see rule 305, “Lands”).
202.2. An object is the color or colors of the mana symbols in its mana cost, regardless of the color of its frame.
No mana symbols, no colour indicator, thus lands are colourless.
I'll try and end this debate with some good old compromise...
Colorless mana should be considered a SIXTH MANA. Not a COLOR. This satisfies the need for newbies to understand that it's not a sixth color, and satisfies the need for people to consider it as a sixth something when deck building.
Also, since it is a sixth mana, does this finally give use for karoo and the other lands such as that? Since it no longer taps for 1W and instead for CW.
I like this idea. When C was first leaked in all of two cards for the latest set, I was all on-board the OMG SIXTH COLOR MAGIC RUINED bandwagon. Then I came to my senses when I saw that Wastes is a basic land without a basic land type.
Older cards read t: Add one colorless mana to your mana pool, whereas the current standard is (and has been for a while) t: Add 1 to your mana pool. 1 was only used in mana costs, not mana abilities, because 1 was generic mana. This change is actually entirely due to one card printed in Odyssey: Nantuko Elder. Its mana ability as-printed read t: Add 1G to your mana pool. R&D didn't realize that this card said to add generic mana to your mana pool before the set was released, and the rules at the time didn't allow this thus making its ability dead, so the rules team scrambled to make t for 1 a thing.
Now here we are, 15 years later, replacing 1 with C. Check Nantuko Elder's printed text versus its Oracle text. The link in the previous sentence takes you to the Gatherer page for it rather than using the card tag for your convenience.
Edit at below: you quoted me before I was fast enough to edit that part out, having realized your interpretation is right.
No, lands are indeed colourless. With the exception of Dryad Arbor, of course. No land has Devoid.
No mana symbols, no colour indicator, thus lands are colourless.
Colorless mana should be considered a SIXTH MANA. Not a COLOR. This satisfies the need for newbies to understand that it's not a sixth color, and satisfies the need for people to consider it as a sixth something when deck building.
Also, since it is a sixth mana, does this finally give use for karoo and the other lands such as that? Since it no longer taps for 1W and instead for CW.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)