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If I have a Zhur-Taa Ancient in play and a Dictate of Karametra, do I get 3 mana or 4 when I tap a land?

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    Where would you get 4 mana from, both say add one, not double. 1 +1 +1 =3
    – Andrew
    Jul 16, 2018 at 15:16

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You get 3 mana. Neither of those cards actually double mana production, they both explicitly state that they add 1 mana per land tap, hence for each land you'll get 1+1+1 = 3 mana.

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    Might be worth noting what actual mana doublers look like: Doubling Cube and Mana Reflection are all I could find after a quick search.
    – Hackworth
    Jul 16, 2018 at 9:04
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    Interestingly, the wording has been completely clear since Alpha
    – JollyJoker
    Jul 16, 2018 at 10:34
  • @Hackworth, I'd add [mtg: Candelabra of Tawnos] and [mtg:Magus of the Candelabra]. They were staples in cloud post decks back in the day, and act as a doubler if another mana increaser is in play.
    – John
    Jul 16, 2018 at 12:56
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    @John I'd rather not. Don't conflate land untapping with mana production. Once you go down that route, you can include anything that untaps permanents, and the list gets pretty meaningless.
    – Hackworth
    Jul 16, 2018 at 12:59
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    This answer could be interpreted as saying that the land will produce 3 mana, which is incorrect. The land still produces 1 mana, and you have 2 other effects that trigger when you tap that land. It so happens that the 2 triggered abilities both have the effect of giving you 1 mana each.
    – GendoIkari
    Jul 16, 2018 at 18:37
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You get 3 mana total.

Note that both of these cards have a triggered ability, and they trigger in response to you tapping a land for mana, NOT in response to you getting mana.

These cards do not modify the amount of mana you get from tapping a land. Instead, they provide their own mana as a separate effect. The fact that the effect of the triggered ability is also to give you mana, similar to the effect of tapping the land, is incidental.

Consider the card Manabarbs. When a player taps a land for mana, each Manabarbs on the battlefield will trigger once. Zhur-Taa Ancient and Dictate of Karametra work the same; they just have a different effect (adding 1 mana).

603.3b If multiple abilities have triggered since the last time a player received priority, each player, in APNAP order, puts triggered abilities he or she controls on the stack in any order he or she chooses.

It is also worth noting that those triggered abilities are also mana abilities, so they do not use the stack.

605.1b A triggered ability is a mana ability if it meets all of the following criteria: it doesn’t have a target, it triggers from the resolution of an activated mana ability (see rule 106.11a) or from mana being added to a player’s mana pool, and it could add mana to a player’s mana pool when it resolves.

Note that this is different from a card such as Mana Reflection, which creates a replacement effect that changes the amount of mana produced by your lands. If you had 2 Mana Reflections out, then tapping a Forrest would cause that Forrest to produce 4 green mana.

But if you had 1 Mana Reflection and 1 Dictate of Karametra, then you would still only end up with 3 total mana, because the land would be doubled to produce 2 mana, and the Dictate would just produce another mana like normal.

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    Answer would benefit from contrasting with Mana Reflection, which is similar but works differently.
    – Arcanist Lupus
    Jul 16, 2018 at 18:21

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