Gold Mine is one of those cards players keep asking about. Here is, in plain words, what its official text says, the rulings published by Wizards of the Coast, and the combos players actually run.
Official card text
: Add
. Legacy —
Complete guide
Gold Mine is a unique utility land that offers immediate colorless mana or a limited reserve of colored mana through its Legacy ability. It features a track of five nodes that represent a finite resource, requiring careful management throughout your games. Because these marks are permanent, every decision you make with this card resonates across your entire Magic career.
How Gold Mine Works
Gold Mine has two activated abilities. The first is a standard mana ability that taps for one colorless mana ({C}). The second is a Legacy ability that allows you to tap the land and mark one of its five unmarked nodes to produce one mana of any color. A 'node' is a checkbox printed on the card itself; once a node is marked, it cannot be used again in future activations or even future games.
Resolution and Marking Nodes
When you activate the Legacy ability, you must tap Gold Mine and mark an unmarked node as part of the cost. Because marking the node is a cost, it happens immediately and cannot be responded to. If all five nodes on your physical card are already marked, you can no longer activate the Legacy ability to produce colored mana. Note that nodes remain permanently marked on the physical card even after the game ends or if the card moves to a different zone.
Common Mistakes
A frequent point of confusion involves copy effects. If another permanent becomes a copy of Gold Mine, but that physical card does not have nodes printed on it, the copy cannot use the Legacy ability because the cost of marking a node cannot be paid. Conversely, if a Gold Mine becomes a copy of another land, its nodes remain on the card, but it loses the ability to mark them unless it specifically retains the Legacy text.
Strategic Timing
Since Gold Mine only has five colored mana charges for its entire existence, you should prioritize using its colorless ability whenever possible. Save the Legacy ability for fixing your mana in critical turns where you lack a specific color for a high-impact spell. Once the nodes are gone, the card essentially becomes a Wastes that cannot be replenished.
Interaction examples
Command TowerIf you are playing a Commander game and have both Gold Mine and Command Tower, you should use Command Tower first for your colored mana needs. Command Tower provides any color in your identity for free, while using Gold Mine to produce the same color permanently consumes one of its five lifetime nodes.
Exotic OrchardIf your opponent controls only a Wastes and you need Red mana, Exotic Orchard will only produce colorless mana. In this step-by-step scenario, you would activate Gold Mine's Legacy ability, tap it, and mark a node to generate the Red mana required, as Exotic Orchard is restricted by what your opponents can produce.
Guide written with AI from the official text and rulings. Official English text prevails.
How it works : Gold Mine
Original English text — Wizards of the Coast / Scryfall
- #1· Wizards of the Coast
Nodes remain permanently marked on the physical card. They’re not removed as it becomes a new object or as the game ends.
No other card is named in this ruling.
- #2· Wizards of the Coast
If an object without nodes becomes a copy of an object with nodes, the copy has no nodes. A cost to mark one of its nodes can’t be paid.
No other card is named in this ruling.
- #3· Wizards of the Coast
If an object with nodes becomes a copy of another object with nodes, the nodes on the physical card that’s the copy will be marked if the legacy abilities it gains instruct you to mark a node. Thus far, this ruling applies only to the case where one Gold Mine becomes a copy of another Gold Mine.
No other card is named in this ruling.
Commentaires
- Sois le premier à commenter cette carte.
Read next
Meta decks with Gold Mine
No archived Top 8 deck with this card yet.