A friend had the land Mobilized District on the battlefield. He was activating its ability to change this land to a 3/3 Citizen creature. When he activated this ability, he also tapped Mobilized District to add one more mana to pay the costs of this activated ability. Now, when this land becomes a creature, does this creature untap or does it stay tapped because he also tapped this land to produce an additional mana?
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4 Answers
The creature will still be tapped because nothing has untapped it.
Tapped vs untapped is one of the four categories of statuses that a permanent has. Status is not affected by permanent type, and changing permanent types does not make the permanent a new object. See the relevant rules:
110.1. A permanent is a card or token on the battlefield. A permanent remains on the battlefield indefinitely. A card or token becomes a permanent as it enters the battlefield and it stops being a permanent as it’s moved to another zone by an effect or rule.
110.6. A permanent’s status is its physical state. There are four status categories, each of which has two possible values: tapped/untapped, flipped/unflipped, face up/face down, and phased in/phased out. Each permanent always has one of these values for each of these categories.
110.6c A permanent retains its status until a spell, ability, or turn-based action changes it, even if that status is not relevant to it.
Your friend will have a tapped creature, so it's not a really useful course of action. The tapped/untapped state of a permanent doesn't get 'reset' somehow when the permanent type changes.
answered May 11, 2019 at 11:44
It remains tapped.
An object's type is one of its characteristics.
109.3. An object’s characteristics are name, mana cost, color, color indicator, card type, subtype, supertype, rules text, abilities, power, toughness, loyalty, hand modifier, and life modifier. Objects can have some or all of these characteristics. Any other information about an object isn’t a characteristic. For example, characteristics don’t include whether a permanent is tapped, a spell’s target, an object’s owner or controller, what an Aura enchants, and so on.
Changing the characteristics of an object doesn't cause the object to become untapped. If it did, Giant Growth would untap its target, and Savage Surge would have redundant text.
110.6. A permanent’s status is its physical state. There are four status categories, each of which has two possible values: tapped/untapped, flipped/unflipped, face up/face down, and phased in/phased out. Each permanent always has one of these values for each of these categories.
110.6c A permanent retains its status until a spell, ability, or turn-based action changes it, even if that status is not relevant to it.
Similarly, changing an object's characteristics doesn't cause it to change zones. For example, it doesn't cause enters-the-battlefield and leaves-the-battlefield abilities to trigger.
tl;dr- Some cards (e.g., 1, 2, 3) do untap lands when those lands become creatures. However, these cards specify the untapping. By contrast, Mobilized District doesn't state to untap.
As the other answers have said, a land doesn't automatically untap upon becoming a creature. If a card intended the land to become untapped, it'd state it.
Here are a few examples of cards that specify untapping a land when it becomes a creature:
Koth of the Hammer has the ability:
+1: Untap target Mountain. It becomes a 4/4 red Elemental creature until end of turn. It's still a land.
Nissa, Vital Force has the ability:
+1: Untap target land you control. Until your next turn, it becomes a 5/5 Elemental creature with haste. It's still a land.
Nissa, Who Shakes the World has the ability:
+1: Put three +1/+1 counters on up to one target noncreature land you control. Untap it. It becomes a 0/0 Elemental creature with vigilance and haste that's still a land.
Note: Found these cards by searching Gatherer for cards that contained the text becomes, untap, land, and creature.
By contrast, Mobilized District doesn't specify untapping the land when it becomes a creature.
