What does it mean to add one plain to my mana pool?

Question

This seems kind of obvious but I was wondering... When I have a mana that says Tap: Add one Plain to your mana pool.. Does that mean that I add one from my hand or is it like some kind of temporary land? If it's temporary then whats the point of tapping a land just to put another one down thats going to disappear?

Answer 1

It's not a "plain", it's a white mana.

Tapping a Plains adds one unit of (invisible) white mana to your (invisible) mana pool. This mana can be used to pay for spells and abilities. To play something with the cost of WW (two suns) you would need to tap two Plains.

If you don't use up the mana in your mana pool by the end of the phase, you get one point of damage for each mana. This is called mana burn.

The card itself is a Land. It *produces* mana (one per turn). It is not mana in itself.

Answer 2

njaa is right, just to clarify

u can play one land per turn only.

lands in play are permanents. they stay in play untill they are afected by an outside source (spell, effect, etc.)

lands are not spells.

lands untap during ur untap step.

when u tap a land it adds one mana to your mana pool

the mana must be used to play a spell or pay something before u change a phase or it will burn u, deal 1 damage to you that canot be prevented.

phases are untap, unkeep, draw, main, combat, 2main, end,

lands can be tapped any time.

plain, swamp, forest, mountain, iland are the names of the cards (lands) , the ability of this cards is tap add one mana to your mana pool of their respective colors.

oh and stuff does not disapear unless it fizzles and even then it has a space in "the stack" untill its resolved or otherwise.

the point of lands is as the game progreses u can have more, one per turn if able and so acumulate the amount of mana u can draw from them to pay for more powerful spells.

hope this helps