A Vault of Problems

I was going to write a Dissension Prerelease warm-up for today, but then bigger things happened.

For any of you who don’t know, Wizards announced an errata on Time Vault that will make it’s zero-activation-cost untap ability usable only once per turn. On a slightly larger scope, Time Vault will no longer combo for an instant win with Flame Fusillade. That effects two formats, Legacy and Vintage, and not that many people given the whole world or even the Magic-playing part of it.

Most of you won’t care.

Even I really don’t care, but I see where it should be big.

I wrote Mark Gottlieb, Rules Manager for Magic: the Gathering, a letter, as many people have and as I encourage you to do as well if you have an opinion either way. I hope that by sharing this letter with you I will explain myself and generate some more discussion.

Hey man,

I have no problem with the errata on Time Vault. I understand that it was weird for the card to allow you to pay a turn that you may or may not get for an effect. Furthermore, I'd much rather see the card get errataed than banned or restricted, even though there wasn't really an unbeatable, degenerate combo to hose. And though it sucks for the people who bought pricy playsets of Time Vault for use in Legacy or Vintage or whatever format, the secondary market shouldn't really be a concern of Wizards ever. As long as you (the company) respect your collectors as much as possible, I'd much rather you handle cards this way than any other.

What I'm upset with, and it's really more disappointment than anything else, is how Wizards handled the situation.

"Ask Wizards" is a nice column that I read every day; it's great for learning little factoids and subtle nuances of the game. It's not a serious enough place to announce the errata of a card that's getting major notice in two formats. Many people would have preferred a full column on this--why, what happened, what all is involved, etc.

Beyond the explanation, though, we as players AND collectors (this is a Collectible Card Game after all) need some reassurance that this won't happen with other cards. This possibility is what has most Eternal format players up in arms. (I'm afraid Menendian'll kill someone!) We spend a lot on cards, and the idea of a market crash makes a lot of people very nervous.

It's like when Vice President Cheney shot that dude while they were hunting. It wasn't wrong; accidents happen in hunting--no problem, I can deal. The problem was that the the government waited to reveal it. The problem was that the situation was handled poorly.

It's the same sort of thing with this. Wizards did the right thing with the errata, but the way they revealed it to the public was wrong. It makes them look suspicious, like they're trying to hide something from the public. Like they wanted to get away with something, when all they really had to do was let the public know and have their say so it wasn't such a surprise.

I hope in the future you (Wizards again) will try to be a little more faithful to your fans when you have to handle something like this.

Thanks for your time. I look forward to hearing more from Wizards on this in the future.

Sincerely,
Nat Moes

So that’s it. It’s a communications issue.

Wizards of the Coast and their management of Magic effects a lot of people, and the players and collectors (which, unless you play only non-MGTO digital formats or only collect and do not play, is all of us) need to feel like they A) Have a significant voice about the game and B) Are in the loop regarding decisions made about the game.

I’m not sure how Wizards should have gotten us involved in the errata process, but they needed to. Honestly, I don’t even think they needed to listen to us in the end. They just needed to do something to recognize our importance.

I don’t think the Magic community will lose a lot of participants over this, though there will undoubtedly be those conservative hardliners who will quit for a couple years and come back. However, if this sort of situation comes up more often in the future, Wizards will definitely experience some blowback more serious than just letter writing and grousing on message boards and blogs.

Really, we’re just lucky it was something like Time Vault that, in the big picture, is so inconsequential. It’s not a format or even a major archetype defining card. Flame-Vault, wether a Stax or Stasis variant or a more combo-control variant, is the only deck that would use more than one Time Vault, and it’s not exactly tier one. It’s one win condition in some Vintage Gifts builds, so the combo takes up all of two slots in there. Eternal Magic will adjust quickly.

It’s not like they errataed Bazaar or Workshop or Drain, and we should be glad of that. At the same time, we should recognize that this sets up a scary precedent for Wizards to errata something like Bazaar or Workshop or Drain.

Lastly, though I feel sincerely for the people who bought Flame Vaults hoping to win some tournaments or sell them at a higher price as the see more play, that really isn’t Wizards’ concern. It’s nice that Wizards really does consider the secondary market when they reprint or don’t reprint cards, but they make zero dollars on any cards that have rotated out of the Standard environment. Their business interests in keeping the Eternal formats alive is that Eternal format players still buy new cards when they come out. Legacy picked up a lot of aggressive creatures (among other things) from Ravnica and Guildpact, and though innovation takes a little longer in Vintage that format will get more as well.

In short, I think Wizards did everything right and everything they had to do in this situation except for the presentation, which was underdone and therefore inappropriate.

The most exciting theory I’ve heard surrounding this event, and one that segues nicely into tomorrow’s Prerelease, is that Wizards errataed Time Vault recognizing that there’s some even more broken combo coming out in Dissension that had to be neutered before it entered the Legacy or Vintage arena. If that’s true, we should be glad.

If that’s true, I’m going to find it tomorrow.

(I thought for a minute it might be Elemental Resonance, but unless the spoiler I’m reading is wrong, that’s not it. Maybe next time.)