Time Vault and its relationship with activating abilities.

[Jhaggs]

I think I might have this down but I haven't been able to find a concrete definite yes.  

Here is what I believe to be Time Vaults new errata:

Time Vault 2
Artifact
~this~ comes into play tapped.
~this~ doesn't untap during your untap step.
Skip your next turn: Untap ~this~ and put a time counter on it.
,Remove all time counters from ~this~: Take an extra turn after this one. Play this ability only if there's a time counter on ~this~. [Oracle 2001/08/24]

Because of the colon after "Skip your next turn", this by definition is an activating ability.  Basically in order to put a counter on Time Vault I need to activate its cost, which is to skip a turn.  Knowing this, I could then keep activating Time Vault and put an infinite number of counters on it thus makign my opponent take an infinite number of turns.

Is this correct?  Is my reasoning correct?

Thanks in advance.

[Matt]

Yes. Time Vault+Lodestone Myr is an infinitely large creature, for instance.

[Jhaggs]

Yes. Time Vault+Lodestone Myr is an infinitely large creature, for instance.

LOL...indeed.  I am currently trying to figure out if time vault is a preferred kill condition over chronotog in a stasis/rootmaze deck I'm constructing.

Thanks matt.

[DavidHernandez]

Time Vault was chosen over Chronatog in some of the original Stax builds because of all of the available Creature Hate.

With all of the new Artifact Hate (Oxidize, Naturalize, all the removal in White, the removal in Red, etc), be careful about taking an near-infinite loop only to find that you give your opponent a bunch of turns to kill you.

This happened to someone in at the Waterbury Tournament in January, and there is a report about it in a thread that dealt with "...what was your best play of the day..."

EDIT: John Galt Novelist 1779-1839. Galt was born in Irvine on 2nd May 1779. See: http://www.slainte.org.uk/scotauth/galtjdsw.htm

dave.

[Jhaggs]

Thanks Dave, I'll look for that post.  I've been batting this deck around for a while now but I haven't bothered posting it until it is at least functional.  I think I have introduced some new tech that may make this thing work....but I'll have to run some playtest to know for sure.