Flame Fusilade + Time Vault no longer functional on Monday, 4/24/06

[The Atog Lord]

I wonder if everyone bitched this hard about Abeyance when that card clearly didn't work the way it's supposed to.

Abeyance, as I recall, works now just as it did when it was released. Unless my memory is wrong, Abeyance became suddenly amazing through a shift in the rules that lumped tapping a land in with other "activated abilities." Before that, I believe there was a rule stating that lands could not be prevented from tapping for mana. In other words, Abeyance was restored to what it did when printed.

This is not the case for Time Vault. When Time Vault was printed, you could live the dream and cast Animate Artifact on it, then Instill Energy. Now it is a card completely different from how it was worded when printed, and from how it has been played for years too. Desite what Wizards may say, Time Vault isn't any closer to the original wording now than it was a month ago. It is still a different card from the monster that it was printed as.

[Mr. Type 4]

It just seems absurd to issue more needless errata to a card so swamped in errata that it is difficult to keep track of it all.  And on top of it, this errata completely changes the old errata.  This is nothing like adding "the" to Whipporwill.

Honestly, errata used to be about making things right for the players.  Do you know why Winter Orb doesn't work when it's tapped?  Because people wanted it to work that way, and Wizards listened. they knew they were goingto change some rules, but it was okay to leave some thing work the way the used to so that players could continue to enjoy them.

[AngryPheldagrif]

This wording clarifies it as you are giving up a resource: in this case your next turn. The concept of debt was referring to the potential to skip an arbitrarily large number of turns which you probably didn't have, as opposed to a single one which you are in fact likely to see in an average game.

Compare this to Final Fortune. Final Fortune allows you to effectively give up every other turn you will ever have in exchange for one extra.

The key difference is in the concept of debt versus the trade of resources. Many magic cards allow you to trade one resource for a boon in another. See Rakdos guild for a billion examples. Each card lets you trade a definite ammount of resources for a definite reward. Even potentially open-ended trades such as Channel are limited by your life total since you cannot legally have infinite life, and thus cannot indefinitely pay life. Final Fortune does in fact trade a defined resource, that being your ability to win after the next turn.

Time Vault breaks this rule because it allows you to give up an undefined and potentially unlimited quantity of a resource. While this could have been irrelevant since the built-in reward gives you no reason or reward for doing this, cards printed many years later, namely Lodestone Myr and Flame Fusillade, do.

I do believe that the errata was a perfectly logical and reasonable move. I also believe that the timing could not possibly have been worse short of making it the night before a SCG or something. As we are not privy to Wizards' inner workings, we cannot know what ulterior motives, if any, they had for making this change. Perhaps it is related to a future set. We will not know until it comes out. Still, despite the poor timing, I think a lot of this thread is grossly overreacting. Those who are absolutely appalled over possibly losing a bit of money on Vaults need to remember that by purchasing the cards they assumed the risk for them even if they were absolutely dead certain they were going to stay unrestricted etc. Hasbro could go bankrupt tomorrow and make all our cards nosedive and that would suck, but I doubt we'd be whining about how unfair it is for us. Actually, on second thought, we probably would be.


Summary for the tl;dr: Magic has a concept of tradeoffs but not of debt. Live with it.

[Eddie]

This wording clarifies it as you are giving up a resource: in this case your next turn. The concept of debt was referring to the potential to skip an arbitrarily large number of turns which you probably didn't have, as opposed to a single one which you are in fact likely to see in an average game.

Compare this to Final Fortune. Final Fortune allows you to effectively give up every other turn you will ever have in exchange for one extra.

The key difference is in the concept of debt versus the trade of resources. Many magic cards allow you to trade one resource for a boon in another. See Rakdos guild for a billion examples. Each card lets you trade a definite ammount of resources for a definite reward. Even potentially open-ended trades such as Channel are limited by your life total since you cannot legally have infinite life, and thus cannot indefinitely pay life. Final Fortune does in fact trade a defined resource, that being your ability to win after the next turn.

Time Vault breaks this rule because it allows you to give up an undefined and potentially unlimited quantity of a resource. While this could have been irrelevant since the built-in reward gives you no reason or reward for doing this, cards printed many years later, namely Lodestone Myr and Flame Fusillade, do.

Your amount of turns is limited. It's not an unlimited resource. It is limited by the size of your deck and the time in the round.

[AngryPheldagrif]

This wording clarifies it as you are giving up a resource: in this case your next turn. The concept of debt was referring to the potential to skip an arbitrarily large number of turns which you probably didn't have, as opposed to a single one which you are in fact likely to see in an average game.

Compare this to Final Fortune. Final Fortune allows you to effectively give up every other turn you will ever have in exchange for one extra.

The key difference is in the concept of debt versus the trade of resources. Many magic cards allow you to trade one resource for a boon in another. See Rakdos guild for a billion examples. Each card lets you trade a definite ammount of resources for a definite reward. Even potentially open-ended trades such as Channel are limited by your life total since you cannot legally have infinite life, and thus cannot indefinitely pay life. Final Fortune does in fact trade a defined resource, that being your ability to win after the next turn.

Time Vault breaks this rule because it allows you to give up an undefined and potentially unlimited quantity of a resource. While this could have been irrelevant since the built-in reward gives you no reason or reward for doing this, cards printed many years later, namely Lodestone Myr and Flame Fusillade, do.

Your amount of turns is limited. It's not an unlimited resource. It is limited by the size of your deck and the time in the round.

How many turns can you skip with Time Vault (before Monday)? If you have a limited ammount of turns then Time Vault is indeed letting you skip turns you don't have.

[Implacable]

Frankly, Eddy, that seems like a rather arbitrary restriction that really doesn't have a place in Type 1.  There's no way to predetermine the amount of turns that a player can have before a round, and there are several cards that immediately come to mind which eliminate decking to an extent. 

[emidln]

This wording clarifies it as you are giving up a resource: in this case your next turn. The concept of debt was referring to the potential to skip an arbitrarily large number of turns which you probably didn't have, as opposed to a single one which you are in fact likely to see in an average game.

Compare this to Final Fortune. Final Fortune allows you to effectively give up every other turn you will ever have in exchange for one extra.

The key difference is in the concept of debt versus the trade of resources. Many magic cards allow you to trade one resource for a boon in another. See Rakdos guild for a billion examples. Each card lets you trade a definite ammount of resources for a definite reward. Even potentially open-ended trades such as Channel are limited by your life total since you cannot legally have infinite life, and thus cannot indefinitely pay life. Final Fortune does in fact trade a defined resource, that being your ability to win after the next turn.

Time Vault breaks this rule because it allows you to give up an undefined and potentially unlimited quantity of a resource. While this could have been irrelevant since the built-in reward gives you no reason or reward for doing this, cards printed many years later, namely Lodestone Myr and Flame Fusillade, do.

Your amount of turns is limited. It's not an unlimited resource. It is limited by the size of your deck and the time in the round.

How many turns can you skip with Time Vault (before Monday)? If you have a limited ammount of turns then Time Vault is indeed letting you skip turns you don't have.

I'd challenge that with the right Doomsday stack you could take a arbitrarily high amount of turns that could satisfy the potential debt to Time Vault before the errata.

[dicemanx]

Magic has a concept of tradeoffs but not of debt. Live with it.

Their decision is not devoid of logic. But it still is arbitrary.

We still have the concept of debt cards in Magic, like Meditate, or Chronatog for example. While perhaps inelegant, you can't just pretend that something like Meditate doesn't exist. And while Meditate and Chronatog give up only one turn, who's to say you even have that one turn to give up? Since it is allowable to give up your next turn, how about the next four turns. If I cast my meditates, can I cast all four in a turn? Of course I can. Am I bothered that I'm paying with something I don't have? Of course not. If I have 4 Chronatogs in play, and 4 Clones, and 4 Dance of Many, and cast 4 Meditates, is it illegal for me to skip my next 16 turns? How about 20 with Time Vault to kill my opponent with Myr or Fusillade? Before this errata was issued, did you toss and turn at night bothered by the fact that such inconsistencies existed, and you were making payments with resources not in your possession? Hardly. After this errata, will the concept of debt cards continue to exist? Of course it will.

All WotC did was make an arbitrary decision based on logic that you're wholeheartedly accepting. However, if they decided not to issue the damaging errata (apart from the mere shift of payment of a turn from before the colon to after the colon), it would be just as arbitrary and just as logical. So given a choice of 2 possible decisions, they chose the one that would severely piss off many Eternal players. Why? As quoted earlier, Aaron presented a very clear relationship: intent is subordinate to player happiness and playability of a card. Why didn't they adhere to this?

[Matt]

I've preserved the discrepancy between Darkpact and its Oracle text that MaGo references here, so this will still make sense come Monday.

[Juggernaut GO]

I know that I have lost many matches because of this cheasey 2 card combo that is super easy to put together in gifts.  I believe time vault deserved this erratta, and that it should have been changed back when ravnica was released.

However, the bad news is, all the people that started playing gifts with time vault are now going to play control slaver again.  Sad times in New England :<   However, the "oops, I just won the game because I have 4 mana" factor is gone from the gifts matchip.  If the charlbelcher/mana severence kill is brought back in its place, I won't be dissapointed.  It was always easier to deal with then flame vault.

[Matt]

I wonder if everyone bitched this hard about Abeyance when that card clearly didn't work the way it's supposed to.

Abeyance, as I recall, works now just as it did when it was released. Unless my memory is wrong, Abeyance became suddenly amazing through a shift in the rules that lumped tapping a land in with other "activated abilities." Before that, I believe there was a rule stating that lands could not be prevented from tapping for mana. In other words, Abeyance was restored to what it did when printed.

When Mirage was released, Cursed Totem forced a definition in "activated ability" (if there wasn't one already) that included the ability on, say, Forest. I'm not aware of any such preexisting rule (NOW thy have many rules about mana bilities: they can't be countered, they can't be responded to, etc. They CAN be shut off course - [card]Null Rod[/card]). Abeyance should have always said "nonmana" because they didn't realize that lands' mana abilities were activated abilities, just like how [card]Impulse[/card] never should have had "shuffle your library" on it. For a more recent example, see [card]Grip of Chaos[/card].

Following up on Impulse, I don't think it's a stretch to say that Time Vault never should have been activate-able without first skipping a turn. That is what prompted the "time counter" errata, and it's what prompts this change: you have to skip a turn to untap it. Not "promise to skip a turn later" but actually follow through on skipping that turn. It even says right on the Alpha card: "to untap it, you must skip a turn."

[sean1i0]

Following up on Impulse, I don't think it's a stretch to say that Time Vault never should have been activate-able without first skipping a turn. That is what prompted the "time counter" errata, and it's what prompts this change: you have to skip a turn to untap it. Not "promise to skip a turn later" but actually follow through on skipping that turn. It even says right on the Alpha card: "to untap it, you must skip a turn."

But even as it will worded come Monday, you will still have to essentially promise to skip a turn later; you very well may lose the game on your opponents next turn and never would have had the turn you skipped.  I really don't see any way good way to make so that you're not using a resource you don't have (a.k.a. not using "debt"), but I also don't really see it as something that begs of being fixed.

[jpmeyer]

I work for Wizards of the Coast.

So I am really getting a kick out of most of these replies.

Some of you guys are very good at making it sound like you know what you are talking about.

But trust me.... You don't.

I think you just want to make yourself sound smart, when in reality you don't know what you are talking about.

This is how bad info gets passed around.

If you don't know about the topic....Don't make yourself sound like you do.

Cuz some TMDers will believe anything they read.

[Prometheon]

I think the best possible wording that would keep it in line with the original 'intent' (and nerfed it) would have been.

Time Vault    2
Artifact
Time Vault comes into play tapped.
If Time Vault would untap, instead it doesn't unless you skip your next turn.
Tap: Take another turn.

None of this 'time counter' or 'only during your upkeep' bullshit.

[Godder]

I think the best possible wording that would keep it in line with the original 'intent' (and nerfed it) would have been.

Time Vault    2
Artifact
Time Vault comes into play tapped.
If Time Vault would untap, instead it doesn't unless you skip your next turn.
Tap: Take another turn.

None of this 'time counter' or 'only during your upkeep' bullshit.

Personally, I have no problem with updating the original wording to modern templates (no time counters) and banning and restricting it in Legacy and Vintage respectively. Modern templating wouldn't do anything during the Untap Step, incidentally – "At the beginning of your Upkeep" is the way it's done now.

[TheWellknownBrownie]

This wording clarifies it as you are giving up a resource: in this case your next turn. The concept of debt was referring to the potential to skip an arbitrarily large number of turns which you probably didn't have, as opposed to a single one which you are in fact likely to see in an average game.

Compare this to Final Fortune. Final Fortune allows you to effectively give up every other turn you will ever have in exchange for one extra.

The key difference is in the concept of debt versus the trade of resources. Many magic cards allow you to trade one resource for a boon in another. See Rakdos guild for a billion examples. Each card lets you trade a definite ammount of resources for a definite reward. Even potentially open-ended trades such as Channel are limited by your life total since you cannot legally have infinite life, and thus cannot indefinitely pay life. Final Fortune does in fact trade a defined resource, that being your ability to win after the next turn.

Time Vault breaks this rule because it allows you to give up an undefined and potentially unlimited quantity of a resource. While this could have been irrelevant since the built-in reward gives you no reason or reward for doing this, cards printed many years later, namely Lodestone Myr and Flame Fusillade, do.

I do believe that the errata was a perfectly logical and reasonable move. I also believe that the timing could not possibly have been worse short of making it the night before a SCG or something. As we are not privy to Wizards' inner workings, we cannot know what ulterior motives, if any, they had for making this change. Perhaps it is related to a future set. We will not know until it comes out. Still, despite the poor timing, I think a lot of this thread is grossly overreacting. Those who are absolutely appalled over possibly losing a bit of money on Vaults need to remember that by purchasing the cards they assumed the risk for them even if they were absolutely dead certain they were going to stay unrestricted etc. Hasbro could go bankrupt tomorrow and make all our cards nosedive and that would suck, but I doubt we'd be whining about how unfair it is for us. Actually, on second thought, we probably would be.


Summary for the tl;dr: Magic has a concept of tradeoffs but not of debt. Live with it.

As neatly as Wizards has tried to tie this issue in with red herrings (Islandfish Jasconious indeed), let's just not even pretend that switching the turn-skipping to be part of the ability rather than the cost (which, until you errata Izzet Guildmage-Twincast-Meditate to be illegal, should function within the rules of the game however many times) is the issue here. The issue is turning it into a triggered ability at the beginning of your upkeep, with nothing to support such an intention or change other than a twelve year old errata to Mana Vault which was explicitly done for power reasons rather than reasons of intent, and which Wizards has promised not to repeat; the reason Grim Monolith doesn't have the same ridiculous clause.

[Bram]

I agree with the theory that WotC invented a card purely to sell off Time Vaults. They most likely figured that after half a year, the price would hit it's peak. At that point they could sell the Time Vaults for maximum profit.
(...)Is it just a coincidence that it just "happens" to work ONLY with a card printed exclusively in Alpha, Beta and Unlimited? Watch out MtG players. It's all a scam which is disgusting.
(...) Maybe somebody can check on E-Bay to see if 2-3 members were buying all of the Time Vaults up for bids.
(...)Thats right, MAGIC THE GATHERING HAS SOLD OUT.
(...)
IF ANOTHER CARD FROM ALPHA BETA OR UNLIMITED SKYROCKET IN PRICE DUE TO AN INTERACTION WITH A CARD FROM A NEW SET, DON'T BUY INTO IT. PEOPLE ON THE INSIDE WILL STOCK UP ON THOSE CARDS AND SELL THEM BACK FOR 4-5 TIMES THE VALUE BEFORE WIZARDS "CARES ABOUT HOW THE CARD WORKS."

Normally, I'd just laugh at your little conspiracy theory, but when you actually start accusing people with NO PROOF WHATSOEVER, I have to ask you to refrain from further comments. I mean, I like a psychotic narrative as much as the next alien elvis, but there's no reason to make the boards look bad.

[Bob The Builder]

The Fox entered the chicken den.
Some chickens died, some survived.
It is the way nature works.

Players are chickens, WotC is the Fox.
It is the way magic works.

[Methuselahn]

I'm special.

You guys are all dumb.

More lack of content.

TMDers will believe anything they read.

[Anusien]

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

[CCClark]

Well, I guess one good thing came out of it sadly.   Those people like myself can finally get a good mint copy of Time Vault for their sets without too much trouble.   I've been hunting a nice one for a beta set for a long time. 

[jpmeyer]

I agree with the theory that WotC invented a card purely to sell off Time Vaults. They most likely figured that after half a year, the price would hit it's peak. At that point they could sell the Time Vaults for maximum profit.
(...)Is it just a coincidence that it just "happens" to work ONLY with a card printed exclusively in Alpha, Beta and Unlimited? Watch out MtG players. It's all a scam which is disgusting.
(...) Maybe somebody can check on E-Bay to see if 2-3 members were buying all of the Time Vaults up for bids.
(...)Thats right, MAGIC THE GATHERING HAS SOLD OUT.
(...)
IF ANOTHER CARD FROM ALPHA BETA OR UNLIMITED SKYROCKET IN PRICE DUE TO AN INTERACTION WITH A CARD FROM A NEW SET, DON'T BUY INTO IT. PEOPLE ON THE INSIDE WILL STOCK UP ON THOSE CARDS AND SELL THEM BACK FOR 4-5 TIMES THE VALUE BEFORE WIZARDS "CARES ABOUT HOW THE CARD WORKS."

Normally, I'd just laugh at your little conspiracy theory, but when you actually start accusing people with NO PROOF WHATSOEVER, I have to ask you to refrain from further comments. I mean, I like a psychotic narrative as much as the next alien elvis, but there's no reason to make the boards look bad.

My favorite part of this is that I've "interviewed" Randy Buehler (Wizards policy states that people on Magic R&D can't write for Magic websites other than mtg.com) about the recent Type 1 tournaments that he played in and he would occasionally say things like "I had to proxy Old Man of the Sea because nobody at Wizards had any".

[jcb193]

I personally couldn't care less about the flame combo.
 I don't care about the value of my beta vault (welcome to T1 kids, where values do change!)
When I started playing (unlimited), we assumed that a twiddle could untap a vault.

The only thing that I think makes sense about this decision is that players can no longer do infinite things with Time Vault without the combination of another card.  Previous to this, you could lose infinite (x) turns (which obviously hampers design for the future).  I just wish they had explained it from this reasoing, not the other reasoning which obviously contradicts Mana Vault. 

JB 

[wardo]

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

jpmeyer thinks you're cool.

[Razvan]

First, to the folks that say $200 isn't much... GIMME!

Secondly, did anyone... ANYONE... ever whine about how FF and TV are too strong? So this isn't a response to an overwhelming majority of whining, (like it was with Trinisphere). It's completely and totally random...

I mean, and this might have been said, the reasoning is that you cannot give up ressources you don't have, which it still does anyhow, and other cards, like diceman pointed out, still do that... so that's obviously not it.

So (and my apologies if it was asked), what IS the reason for this? Assert muscle? Just fuck up things randomly?

ps1: ok, so another reason might be the complexity... what??? Is the combo difficult to understand? Not since the alphabet was invented.

ps2: i have a nice minty foil flame fussilade for sale. cheap. used once.

[dicemanx]

It's meant to make things more clear to players "down the line" in the interest of T1.

"Yes, I know that the text doesn't mention charge counters,but, umm...they are there...trust me!"

"What, why doesn't Mana Vault have a charge counter too? Uhh...um...because I said so?"

[dicemanx]

I think that there were only something like 15,000 ABU rares ever printed (5,000 A/B and 10,000 UL).  If WotC had every single Time Vault ever printed and sold them all for $100 (UL) and $200 (A/B) they would've made a grand total of...$2,000,000.  That's if they had EVERY SINGLE ONE THAT EVER EXISTED.  Which means that they would've had to have been planning this THIRTEEN YEARS IN ADVANCE.

False. Are you not aware that WotC secretly has printing presses that allow them to print older cards and sell them for profit?

[Tha Gunslinga]

I think that there were only something like 15,000 ABU rares ever printed (5,000 A/B and 10,000 UL).  If WotC had every single Time Vault ever printed and sold them all for $100 (UL) and $200 (A/B) they would've made a grand total of...$2,000,000.  That's if they had EVERY SINGLE ONE THAT EVER EXISTED.  Which means that they would've had to have been planning this THIRTEEN YEARS IN ADVANCE.

False. Are you not aware that WotC secretly has printing presses that allow them to print older cards and sell them for profit?

They actually just print hundred-dollar bills.  After all, the WotC bigwigs have to light those Cuban cigars with something.

[jpmeyer]

But if they have printing presses, why light them with $100's when you can light them with Lotuses?

[Machinus]

But if they have printing presses, why light them with $100's when you can light them with Lotuses?

You know, this is actually kind if interesting. If some rogue employee did manage to print and cut a sheet of lotuses, they would almost certainly be identified as "fakes." The criterion for determining authentic power are based (among other things like wear and general properties of magic cards) around the irregularities of a printing process that is already a decade old. In order to really make new "lotuses," they would have to spend some time making the finished product have the same characteristics of the original print runs, which I would imagine would be difficult even if higher managament was involved.

But back on topic, people already buy a million zillion boxes of whatever crap they want to print (magic or not), so these ideas are just really ridiculous.