Time Vault – MTG Review

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

Time Vault has a long and bizarre history, mostly related to power level errata. There was a period of the 2000s where the turn-skipping effect replaced any other kind of attempt to untap it. During those years, it came as close to doing nothing as was possible for a Magic card. Now we’re back to something quite close to its original printing, which means that infinite turns are back on the table, and Twiddle Vault is back in 93/94 Old School. You’d really never play it outside of a combo like that, as it’s strangely mediocre without Twiddle or other untapping cards, but when you do, it’s as close to an “I win” button as possible for a Magic card.

Constructed: 5/5
Casual: 3/5
Limited: 2/5
Multiplayer: 4/5
Commander: 5/5 (though it’s banned. Like Lutri)

Time Vault is a card that is far more busted than might be immediately apparent. The concept is simple (skip a turn, take an extra turn later), but the mechanism of it (tap it to take the extra turn, but it only untaps by skipping a turn) is what makes it giga-broken. If you have a way to manually untap it, you can take all of the turns and make sure your opponent does Nothing for the rest of the game. It’s predictably banned everywhere but Vintage because of how easy it is to manually untap it, and it’s restricted there to try and keep it from completely reaming the format.

Constructed: 5 (good enough to be limited to a single format, and restricted to 1 copy in that format)
Casual: 4.75
Limited: 2.5 (I don’t think Vintage Masters offers the cards needed to break this wide open)
Multiplayer: 4.75 (if you resolve this, you should take all of the turns afterwards, so who cares?)
Commander: N/A (banned in Commander, but it would definitely be a 5)

Phat
Pack
Magic
YouTube

Hello everyone and welcome back to Pojo’s Card of the Day! It’s the last day of the stim-check week and while I procured this card a while back for my cube this amazing artifact has dipped in price (I’m seeing LP versions hanging around the $500 mark!) this card is an amazing addition to any collector’s vault!

So let’s take a look at Time Vault, the card is pretty straight forward, you skip your turn which essentially gives your opponent an additional turn, and then you can tap it to give yourself another turn. To help it from being a colorless timewalk, it comes into play tapped so you have to give your opponent another turn first.

…Or do you?

Now this card is great in dedicated artifact decks in Vintage with plenty of ways to manipulate the card into getting infinite turns but the real place you’re going to use this card is in Powered Vintage Cubes where winning the 1v1 is all that matters!

Cube is the perfect place for old obscure cards like this that have insane power level opportunities, now to support this card you also have to build in a few ways to let it untap. First that comes to mind is the classic combo Voltaic Key, which has been upgraded to Manifold Key, but another card I’ve added to my cube is Kiora’s Follower which acts as a dude, untaps Time Vault, or can ramp mana! Thereby giving a little more ammo to the UG deck running artifacts.

This card is simply one of my favorite reasons to play Powered Vintage Cube, a format where you can go as high as you want with old powerful cards. If you want to see it in action check out these two videos. A cube draft vid and a vid featuring the Time Vault Combo!

Draft Vid     Esper Artifacts vs Mono Red

Constructed 5/5 – You’ll only really see it in classic vintage but it’s a great deck so it works.

Casual 5/5 – For when you want to bring out the nukes in your Casual Kitchen Table Magic arms race.

Cube 5/5 – This card is in the realm of Power 9 in first pickability, you try and first pick this and live the dream with a follow up key.

Phat Pack Magic is a channel dedicated to Magic: the Gathering and creating awesome coverage of local events for formats like Cube, rare pack drafts, and now FNM Pioneer videos! Check it out at https://YouTube.com/PhatPackMagic