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Kedar wrote:

Actually, it does make sense. It's a replacement effect. It doesn't involve a currently-unpayable cost that might let you get a different color. It involves a replacement effect.

As an example...

A Vivid land can, at any time, produce mana of any colour. You might not have the counters on that land, but when you tap it, you have two options: Remove a counter for any colour, or don't. Since you can't choose the impossible cost of removing a counter, you don't, but you still had the option, so it still COULD produce any colour at the exact same time it COULD produce its natural colour.

River of Tears, however, is a different story. When you tap it, you're not choosing what colour you add. It's not 'I'll add when I tap this because I played a land this turn, instead of .' It's 'Because I played a land this turn, the only possible mana I can add is .' The difference is that when you tap River of Tears, it doesn't give you the option of adding or ; it adds one mana of a certain colour based on what you've done so far that turn.

Let me see if I can be more concise...

A Vivid Grove has this:

": Add to your mana pool."
AND
", Remove a charge counter from Vivid Grove: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool."

The 'and' means it can do either one at any time.

River of Tears, however, has this (not worded as such, but this is the effect):

": Add to your mana pool."
OR
": Add to your mana pool."

The 'or' means it never has both abilities at the same time, so at any given time, it'll only produce one colour--and so Reflecting Pool can only produce one colour.

but in both cases there is a dependency...

Vivid Grove can always produce
but its ability to tap for any colour is dependant on paying the cost
(ie tapping and removing the counter)
whereas
River of Tears is dependant on the game state
if a land was played it produces and if not it produces

if Vivid Grove had no counters left it could no longer play any colour mana
if I played a land this turn River of Tears could no longer play blue mana

what is the difference?

NereusRen wrote:

Gemstone Caverns also has a replacement effect, so Reflecting Pool takes it into effect in the same way. You can only get colors from Reflecting Pool if the Caverns do have the luck counter. (You can tell it has a replacement effect because of the word "instead.")

while I am inclined to agree with you, I am sure this fact is confused by the bulleted rulings on the reflecting pool gatherer page. http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDet … x?&id=4936

# 10/4/2004 Any replacement effects are considered by Reflecting Pool when determining the types of mana a land can produce.

# 10/4/2004 It checks for types the land could produce under all possible conditions. For example, if a land can only produce mana if you pay a cost or if some condition is met, Reflecting Pool can still generate mana of that color.

Wouldn't that condition be a luck counter?

These two rules seem contradictory to say the least.