Talk:No mana

Name for this mechanic / "cost"?

Love the idea to make an actual page for this mechanic. How sure do you feel about the name? Specifically, I usually think of this as "not having a mana cost", because AFAIK (and based on the scryfall search in the infobox currently) the only part of any card where mana is expected but is sometimes not present is its mana cost. It is true that mechanically a few things might ask you to pay a card's mana cost without actually casting it, but in that case it is STILL explicitly referencing a mana cost anyway. As a name, this also causes confusion with "zero mana". Also with costs that simply have no mana within the cost but are totally normal and payable, like many ability activation costs; these costs even easier to confuse with "no mana" than with "zero mana", since they don't literally say , but they do contain no mana.

I propose considering one of these, or something similar:

• No cost - Simplest, takes the focus away from "is there mana" and puts it on "is there a valid cost at all", which is what actually makes a cost unpayable
• No mana cost - Focuses on the part of the card that is "missing" in all current cases of unpayable costs
• Unpayable cost - Succinctly explains the rules meaning of the "missing" cost, and is the phrase the CR uses multiple times to identify these costs

That's my thought on it. I don't see it as a huge deal, but yeah I do think one of these would create better clarity and a better distinction from "zero cost".

- jerodast (talk) 09:25, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

At the moment we have all mana cost article simply as mana. Like in Generic mana. There is an aregument to be made that putting in cost on these articles makes the name more precise as mana only exists in 6 types. - Yandere-sliver (talk) 13:59, 14 August 2025 (UTC)