Samoht, of course he was aware of the trigger.  How else could he "intentionally ignore" it.  Intent requires knowledge.

Copied over from the Rules Forum, where they apparently do not allow analysis of hypotheticals, I will make the argument that it is cheating:


This seems to apply.  LotusHead admits, for purposes of our discussion, that he intentionally ignored his own trigger.  There is no reference in this clause of the rule to the "observable impact" language that appears in the other rules regarding "forgotten" triggers.  This wasn't a forgotten trigger.  It was an intentionally ignored trigger.  That is cheating.

I will make the argument that it is cheating for sake of advancing the discussion:


This seems to apply.  LotusHead admits that he intentionally ignored his own trigger.  There is no reference in this clause of the rule to the "observable impact" language that appears in the other rules regarding "forgotten" triggers.  This wasn't a forgotten trigger.  It was an intentionally ignored trigger.  That is cheating.

In my mind, the best reason to play Drain as a 4-of has always been Workshop decks, especially Stax.  I experimented with cutting Drains (1 or 2) from Gifts in summer '04, but the surge in UbaStax here in the midwest made that a bad plan.  In an environment without as many 'shops it makes a lot of sense to shave a few Drains (or perhaps cut them entirely).

Do you think it could be dirt from the playing surface, as Rogers claims?  Because just about anything else, be it pine tar, spit, shaving cream, M16 residue, or whatever else, would be cheating.  The issue isn't identifying the material - we only have to determine that some substance is there.

I have no idea.  But I would be fairly confident that if if was on a pitcher's hand it would be a "foreign substance" within the meaning of Rule 8.02(4).

Regardless, I have no wish to debate you on this topic.  Each of us can evaluate the photographic evidence for themselves.  I find the idea that it is "dirt" from the playing surface to almost laughable myself; apparently you do not.

Re: pine tar

World Series Game 2


ALCS Game 3




Obviously, the BEST proof that Rogers was using pine tar would have been for the umps to check what was on his hand at the time.  But it is hard to ignore the photographic evidence.  The mark on his hand doesn't look like dirt (it's shiney, for one thing), and it is in the exact same place in both the ALCS and the Series.  When you combine this with his inconsistent statements to the press, the Tiger's 1st base coach saying his hand was "sticky" when he shook it, etc, it becomes a pretty clear picture. 

Of course, the other thing that has become clear is how common it is to use pine tar this way and how underenforced the rules against it are.  Julian Tavarez, an important part of the '04-'05 Cards, almost certainly used the stuff (he was thrown out of a game for a "dirty hat").  The Detroit closer, Jones, wrote an article for The Sporting News a few years back saying that he did it every game he pitched in Colorado.  Given that context, it isn't too surprising that La Russa and the umpires seemed less than shocked by the whole thing.

That isn't meant to take anything away from the 7 shutout innings he put up with a clean hand.  The Tigers clearly earned their one World Series win.

Wait, so you concede that your argument has no bearing on the actual merits of the decision, only on Gottlieb's statement?

What the hell are we talking about then?  Gottlieb's reasoning for the decision may have been horribly flawed, but that has absolutely no bearing on what should be done with Time Vault.  If that is what your article is about then it is at best useless and at worst deceptive, because your "argument" has no logical connection to your conclusion.

Steve, these are two seperate arguments.  Your argument is that the card should be returned to its pre-errata wording so FlameVault is functional.  My response to your argument can be found two pages ago when it was last seriously defended.  Moxlotus' argument is that WotC should have removed the time counter as part of updating the other errata.  Obviously, that argument assumes that the templating errata is going to be issued, so my response does as well.

I really don't care if morally justified hypocrisy exists.  I’m not a pacifist - I believe that violence is wrong but, but I also believe that sometimes it is necessary or justified.  I guess you would call that hypocrisy.

What’s more, the entire claim that this is hypocrisy rests on your tortured argument that this is somehow “new� power level errata in spite of the fact that it is exactly the same power level errata that has been on the card for over a decade.



Why is it good policy for Wizards to decide which power level errata to revoke based on the entirely unrelated factor of whether the card needs templating errata?  Your argument seems to be that it is required by their policy.  As we have seen, that isn't necessarily the case, but even if it were the case, if the policy required such an utterly irrational approach that would be a good argument to change the policy.

Or, at least as often, they look at a group of cards with similar abilities, decide how they want to template them, and change those abilities without rebuilding the card as a whole.

Regardless, my point is simply this: a promise not to errata cards for power level in the future is not the same as a promise to eliminate old power level errata.  You, or at least Moxlotus, seem to want to say that the decision to errata Time Vault some how makes the old power level errata, which was unchanged, "new" power level errata.  You would effectively impose a rule on Wizards that if they want to errata a card that has old power level errata they must eliminate the power level errata.  That's a bad way to manage a policy.  Either maintaining old power level errata is a bad idea, in which case it should all be eliminated, or it is a good idea, in which case it should be maintained even if there are other changes made to the card.

If your approach prevails then one of two things will happen.  One option is that WotC will continue to errata such cards.  In that case, power level errata will disappear on some cards and not on others pretty much randomly, because some cards will require other errata but others won't.  The other possibility is that WotC will simply decide that it should never errata cards that have power level errata.  If they do that then real problems in wording will be ignored because they occur on cards with power level errata.  Neither of these is a desireable result.

Power level errata always has that effect.  It's regrettable.  If you want to get rid of power level errata, make arguments on that point, but make them general, because there is nothing distinguishing the power level errata on Time Vault from that on Great Whale.

This is exactly why your argument carries so little weight.  When real people say it is wrong to miss school, they recognize certain circumstances may override that goal, including illness, perhaps a death in the family, and so on.  The statement is broadly aspirational.  If, after making such a statement, one misses school, it is either not hypocrisy or it is trivial hypocrisy.  Either way, it is not morally wrong.  As a matter of definitions, of course, you can define a term any way you like.  But if you choose to define hypocrisy as broadly as you do above you rob the term of its moral content by trivializing it.  In other words, you can call WotC and the school-misser hypocrites, but that doesn't make what they did wrong.

There is no reason to think of errata that way.  In fact, errata almost never wipes a card clean and starts from scratch.  Far more frequently WotC modifies a part of a card but leaves the rest alone.  In this case they took an ability that had a clear correct templating under currrent rules and applied that templating to that ability.  Its no different than the Oracle updates that made local enchantments into Auras.

WotC will never print another creature with Banding.  According to your logic if they want to errata a creature with that ability they have to eliminate the banding as part of the process.

There may have been a brief period where the cards were interpreted that way, but Mana Vault worked fine for most of that period.  I don't remember how the rules made it work, but the card did what it was supposed to.
No wording of Time Vault will perfectly capture how the card worked during Alpha, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't do what they can to make it closer.  In this case, the pre-existing power level errata and the fact that effects can't be played during the untap both keep the card from functioning exactly as it did 10 years ago, but the current errata gets as close as possible to that goal given the limitations that are in place.

Your absolutist position is really untenable.  You seem to be saying that if they can't do something perfectly it shouldn't be done at all.  For all we know Gottlieb has been expressly forbade from interfering with existing power level errata - at the very least he has a legitimate interest in leaving it there until the impact of removing it can be evalutated.

Well, you would run one Daze because you want people to worry about it being there and play around it, but you don't want to actually draw it.  Daze is a card where the threat is as dangerous as the execution a lot of the time.  If you play 4 Daze then your opponent's proper play is clear - play around Daze as much as possible.  If you only play a couple though, they are in a no win situation.  If they play around Daze then they get at most one dead card (and probably none) out of it and they effectively lose one of their lands.  If they don't play around it then you get a very efficient counterspell.

That being said, Daze is very good, and deserves to be a 3-4 of in this deck unless something really good can be found to take its place.

Congradulations on your eleventy-hundreth power win.  I was never really in the game against you at all - that deck owns Gifts.  First time I haven't made the cut with Gifts.

I played Joe in the second round.  He broke my 6-0 in games winning streak against IT, but I still managed to beat him 2-1.  He made an error vs. me as well, RFGing Ancestral instead of Lotus with a Coffin Purge when Will was on the stack.  He didn't seem impressed when I said I had a good record against IT, presumably because the versions I had played against were "misbuilt."

So, just to be clear Moxlotus, it is your position that if WotC erratas any part of a card with power level errata they are bound by their policy to abolish the power level errata or it is 'hypocracy'?  How far does this extend?  What about global templating changes like the adoption of the "aura" language or creature type changes?

wow, that's odd to have two in one week like that,

It looks like the buyer immediately flipped it for a cool 2k profit.

And remember:

LOL, of course it untapped multiple times before the errata.  Do you mean you thought that the original text unambiguously suggested the card should untap multiple times?  Then why have you said so many times that you think the card is ambiguous? - it would have been much more effective to argue that the new wording was wrong than to argue that it was one of several possible readings.

You don't just need to argue it is ambiguous, you need to win the argument.  It would make your argument more plausible if you could offer one reason that someone would actually beleive that the card should untapped multiple times a turn, based on its text.  The best you can argue is that, if you look at nothing other than the text, there may be two readings.  But we have offered affirmative arguments why our reading is the correct one.

Until you offer one good reason why a player would come to the conclusion that the card is unambiguously intended to untap multiple times, why should anyone believe that a substantial number of real players will come to that conclusion?

I have actually answered this, but I know that it is in your interest to keep the thread going in circles rather than have it conclude.

Edit:
Congratulations to you guys on getting what you wanted (presuming this thing is real).  Be interesting to see how it turns out.
Double Edit:
I guess it wasn't real.

Ah, I see.  You can claim that no one is made happy based on internet discussions, but when your argument is discredited based on those same discussions you don't like it at all.  In fact, as we have seen, people were made happy by this decision.  We still have no evidence that anyone legitimately thinks that the card unambiguously states that it can be untapped multiple times a turn.

The arguments that Time Vault is better read as untapping once a turn have been made more than once in this thread.  I really don't want to clutter the thread with repetition more than it already is, but here are a few:

-jpmeyer's recent argument
-the analogy with Mana Vault
-the tendency of old cards in general to have untap decisions on the upkeep

Why is custom an illegitimate basis for a decision?  A custom nearly as old as the game itself, given binding effect by over a decade of rulings and official text, seems a very good reason to make a ruling.  Especially when the custom in question is as well known and understood as how Mana Vault works.

Our legal system certainly gives a lot of weight to custom.

The people who agree with you think the card is ambiguous.  No one thinks that it is unambiguous and untaps multiple times a turn.

Wow, you are completely ignoring the point.  It doesn't matter if the card theoretically supports two wordings, because most players will still conclude that the best interpretation is the one we have now, or simply reach no conclusion at all.  Objective, ontological meaning doesn't matter.  What matters is the conclusions actual players are likely to reach.

I think I'm willing to stand by the proposition that if no one reads a card in a certain way it isn't a natural reading.  Call me crazy.

Answer me this: if the card is completely ambiguous, with no way to choose between the two readings, why does no one think that the card unambiguously untap multiple times a turn?  Why did you say in your article that, if you were focused on original intent, you would have made the same decision Gottlieb did?  Why, in short, does everyone seem to agree that on the first reading one possible meaning asserts itself more strongly than the other?

Right, you are going to argue with them until they realize that they liked the combo after all.

Well, if you want reasons particular people are happy, be prepared to have people tell you that they simply didn't like the combo and are glad it is gone.  Several people have said just that.  That's just as legitimate as your desire to play the combo at upcoming events.

Myself, I think the policy was made for the future of the game and I am always happy at anything that increases  the chances that this game will be around when I retire.

You are arguing about what people should think, but anyone who read this thread can tell you that not everyone is convinced by these arguments, and the fact that you are arguing at all suggests that your claim is far from self-evident.  All your article shows is that the language of Time Vault, when deconstructed by a trained lawyer with an axe to grind, can be made to appear ambiguous.  Fine, granted.  The fact remains that when read by players who are looking for the meaning of the card, not looking to obscure the meaning, many come to the conclusion that the most natural reading is the one now reflected in the errata.  So far as we know, none come to the opposite conclusion.

You make the point in your article that contention magnifies ambiguity.  This whole debate is almost certainly the most contentious thing that has ever happened around Time Vault, and the potential ambiguities in its wording certainly have been highlighted by this discussion.  In other contexts, however, those ambiguities will recede, and people will be looking for the most likely reading.  This errata ensures that they will be right more often than they will be wrong.

That card was just a printing mistake right?  Like Impulse?

Have we seen any evidence that there are ANY such players?  It seems to me that the outrage is all coming from people who, in retrospect, find the card ambiguous.  You have to think that if a significant number of players had always thought the natural reading was that the card could untap at any time at least ONE would have come forward and taken that position in the hundreds of posts that have been burned on this issue.  I guess I would concede that someone, somewhere, has probably read the card that way, but there is no reason to think that is a significant part of the population.

Remember, this thread is in response to your article, which was focused entirely on convincing as many people as possible that the card was ambiguous.  If the distribution is roughly 50/50 in this thread, you have to figure that among people who haven't read this article the tendency is even greater to find the current wording to be the natural one.

Steve, the player first encountering a Time Vault won't have read your article.  And he probably won't be a brand new player either, just someone running into Time Vault for the first time.  He will be applying his intuitions about how Magic cards work to the face of the card.  Some of these players will, as you say, conclude that it is ambiguous and move on.  But it appears that you, me, Mark Gottlieb, and a significant number of other players would be inclined to think that one untap per turn is the more natural reading of the card.  That was what I thought the card should do the first time I read it, and I have no reason to think that I will be the last or only person to come to that conclusion.

It doesn't matter if in some objective, abstract, ontological sense the card is ambiguous, because in the relevant, real world setting we are dealing with there is a best reading of the card.

Right, and your playing with a card you like is a paramount, overriding value.  This whole game is about "fleeting happiness."  If you think that the policy of making cards act like they look like they should act is a bad one, make an argument on that point.  Continuing to focus on one application of the policy is the equivilent of evaluating the 6th ed. rules by looking only at how they affected Mirror Universe.

:lol:

Steve: You "strong refutation" of that point in the article seems to be an two basic points:

1. Basalt Monolith raises questions about the "original intent" of Time Vault.

You are completely missing the point.  Many players expectations regarding this card were fulfilled.  The fact that you can make an argument that they are somehow "wrong" in their expectations is entirely irrelevant.  Obscure points about differences between Alpha and Beta aren't what guide people's interpretation of cards, they are guided by their larger experience of how the game works in general. For many people, those experiences lead them to believe that Time Vault should work as it does not.  In your article you even note that you would view the card the same way:
  The most your article can accomplish is convincing a subset of the people that read it that the card is ambiguous, but many people that come across the card are still going to react the way that you and I, and many of the people in this thread would.

2. The Delusion of a Naturally Intuitive Reading

This is a silly argument.  I will quote myself:
At the end of this section of your article you recognize this point:
I would agree with that, but I'm not sure it gets you anywhere.  How many reasonable interpretations are there?  I think in this case there is only one.

Finished my final and feeling much more right about life.  I've developed my thoughts a bit more on this issue.

My view of this issue is as follows:
1. WotC has a policy of working to make Oracle wording match the printed wording.
2. This policy is good for the game.
3. The errata to Time Vault was the best execution of this policy.

Discussion of these points:

#1 - This is clearly the case.  This is both stated WotC policy and reflected in their actual actions.  It isn't adhered to in cases of power level errata, because that wording has been "grandfathered" in to the modern game.  That is an inconsistency, but a justifiable one because of the problems these cards caused in unerrataed form.  If we want WotC to remove power level errata for good we should ask them to do so.

#2 - I think this is clear as well, but if there is anyone who disagrees this point can be explicated further.

#3 - This is the difficult point for many people.  Many arguments have been made with regard to this point.  Here is one more, and I think it is an important one.

The goal of WotC's policy is to have cards work in the way players expect them to when they read them.  There are two opinions on Time Vault's wording:

A. It clearly untaps only once a turn.
B. It is ambiguous whether it untaps once a turn or many times.

We can imagine a third position, but no one appears to be taking it:
C. It clearly untaps multiple times a turn.

In this thread, I would estimate that those that have expressed opinions are roughly half A and half B.  The exact proportion is irrelevant, but it is clear that there are a substantial number of people in each group.  There doesn't appear to be anyone in C.

If this is the case, then the wording chooseTn by WotC for the recent errata fits the expectations of a substantial group of people (in catagory A) and goes against the expectations of nobody.  The alternative wording fits with nobody's expectations.  The people in group A think it is the wrong wording and the people in group B think it is one of at least two possible wordings.

In other words, even if we credit the players who think that the wording is ambiguous, the wording chosen fits with the expectations of more players than the alternative.

-----------------------

On a different level, I think that the cost to the metagame is real, because I am sure that there were a lot of people messing with combo-Vault decks.  But I also think that it is the nature of big formats like this one for a new deck or card to fill the void.  Getting rid of a card can expand a metagame can broaden a metagame as easily as it can narrow it.  This isn't the core of my argument, because I think the decision should be evaluated as part of a coherent WotC policy, but it does seem worth noting.

Good luck.  I'm sorry I only got to meet you once, but I'm glad it wasn't never.

Cross: No doubt Fish's engine was dependant on men to get going, but Tog's was dependant on Moxes, which are substantially easier to kill.

The eventual downfall of the deck had nothing to do with Curious creatures being killed and everything to do with Tinker->Colossus, Forbidden Orchard/Oath, and Crucible of Worlds.  I guess there was a health dose of Workshop Aggro in there too, although that's now gone.  What deck plays creature removal?