First Tradition and Unlock Phase

Good catch lol. The reason that it needs specified is so that we stop hand waving the mechanics of vtes and have things rigorously functional. Vtes is a game without rules and shit tons of rulings. That isn't at all good.

I'm not in the mood for equine abuse but...

My turn begins with untap. There is no when I would take my turn phase.

Be best to say in untap phase, before untapping or any other effects maybe

Here's how I interpret "when you would take your turn":

(1) There exists an opportunity for a player to choose to take their turn when First Tradition is in play between the end of one turn and the start of the next turn (before initiating the next turn's unlock phase).

(2) There exists an opportunity for a player to choose to take their turn when First Tradition is in play during their turn's unlock phase (before doing anything that normally happens in the unlock phase).

Note that (2) is technically not skipping the player's entire turn, but now we are getting into semantics. As far as I can tell, no illegal effect can happen by following (2). So any distinction between 1 and 2 is irrelevant. If this is wrong, "when you would take your turn" needs to be further clarified.

Kushiel wrote:

2) If your answer is, "They decide before their turn starts," that's a de-errata, re-introducing the apparently contentious issue of making decisions during a phase that doesn't exist. (I'm not actually sure why the text was ever changed from "While in play, each Methulselah must skip his or her turn or burn two pool," which is much clearer to me.)

There is a major difference. The old wording (pay 2 pool or skip your turn) would mean that first traditions stack when there are multiples in play. You would have to make the choice for each first tradition separately.

Whereas the up-to-date wording presented by Ankha (You may choose to skip your turn. Burn 2 pool during your unlock phase) means that if you skip your turn, none of the first traditions do anything since there is no unlock phase to burn pool in. This is the most likely cause of confusion with the card.

I much more like the current up-to-date wording. This problem of multiple first traditions has come up in our local games but we figured it out using the up-to-date wording.

ps. The perennial VTES issue of cards creating timing steps that don't exist is unfortunate, but I don't think this card can be made to work in any other way.