If I play Enchanted Evening and turn everything into an enchantment, and then play Grand Abolisher to disallow them activating abilities during my turn, can my opponents tap their lands during my turn (say, to make a payment for something)?
1 Answer
No they cannot.
From the rulings on Enchanted Evening:
This has no effect on those permanents other than letting them interact with things that care about enchantments.
Which Grand Abolisher clearly interacts with:
During your turn, your opponents can't cast spells or activate abilities of artifacts, creatures, or enchantments.
I think it's clear that lands have an innate implied ability, even if not printed of "Tap: Add 1 mana of the appropriate colour to your mana pool."
So all we need to know is that this ability is treated like any other:
CR 605.3. Activating an activated mana ability follows the rules for activating any other activated ability (see rule 602.2)
The exceptions listed don't apply to this case because Grand Abolisher is not countering the mana ability, it is preventing it from happening. Just because it's a mana ability doesn't make it special in this case.
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2I thought there was a weird exception for mana abilities, but I'm not sure; hence why I asked the question here– DForck42Jan 18, 2012 at 16:33
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DForck42: I think you're thinking of the longago (pre-6th edition) rules about Mana Abilities, which said that they couldn't be countered; IIRC this briefly covered even spells like Dark Ritual. Those changes are long-since gone, and now things that don't affect mana abilities explicitly say so, but effects like Null Rod's (or Grand Abolisher's, or Linvala's) aren't at all picky. Jan 20, 2012 at 18:22
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@StevenStadnicki 605.3b An activated mana ability doesn’t go on the stack, so it can’t be targeted, countered, or otherwise responded to. Rather, it resolves immediately after it is activated.– StephenJan 20, 2012 at 19:04
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@StevenStadnicki Grand Abolisher is preventing activating the activated mana ability per 605.3 but if the ability were activated, it could not be countered per 605.3b– StephenJan 20, 2012 at 19:05