List of Cards that freeze the game

Ampmp11

Thought it would be good to have a list of cards that freeze the game so that players know to not play them. If you know of others feel free to add.

Known freezes:
Season's Past
Fathom Feeder
Sigarda, Heron's Grace

Mainloop25

When does Sigarda freeze the game? I have it in a lot of decks and I've never had it freeze on me.

Morphis

Mainloop25 wrote:

When does Sigarda freeze the game? I have it in a lot of decks and I've never had it freeze on me.

Most likely Sigarda does freeze the game when:
- spawn more than one token in a single move(multiple gem match or match 4/5)
- spawn a token in conjunction with other effects that prompt something(fevered vision card draw, other token spawn, etc...)

This is what I noted usually leads to the problem.

Lagartha

When you have three creatures on the battle field and then cast a token creature, it will freeze the game if you try to replace a token with another token.

I know that's not specifically a card, so I'll delete from the post if you'd like.

octal9

Lagartha - perhaps it's related to tokens from Activate only? I've only seen this freeze with Sigarda and Call the Bloodline.

Lagartha

octal9 wrote:

Lagartha - perhaps it's related to tokens from Activate only? I've only seen this freeze with Sigarda and Call the Bloodline.

I just dug through my screen shots and I have one from a month ago that was using Saheeli's (old) first ability and trying to replace a moon token with her thopter.

alextfish

Lagartha wrote:

When you have three creatures on the battle field and then cast a token creature, it will freeze the game if you try to replace a token with another token.

I don't think that still happens? At least I don't think it still happens when replacing Eldrazi Spawn with Thopters from TSN.

Ampmp11

It's fine you can use this space for anything that freezes the game. It's best to know what situations and cards to avoid.

It seems like tokens and activate gems are the biggest culprits though

Alatortilla

Please fix Seasons Past for gods sake.

At first I didnt think they would. It's too powerful a card and is probably detrimental to the game.....then I looked at Koth

Hibernum_JC

Regarding Seasons Past, we have a bit of an issue - we are unable to reproduce it, sadly.

What would really help in fixing it is if someone could come up with exact steps that make the game freeze 100% (even if it freezes 80% of the time, it would help put us on the right path).

This is true of any card that freezes the game (or does something unintended) - reporting "This card freezes the game" is good because we become aware of the problem, but not having specifics on what happens when it freezes or a sequence of events that make the game freeze it can sometimes be very difficult to pinpoint.

Patavian

I play with season's past. Never had it lock up the game on me. If it ever does, i'll be sure to be back with a very specific critique

nerdstrap

Very specific - cast a card with transform. Transform the card. Destroy the transform card while in the transformed state. Then use Seasons Past or Liliana to return the card from the graveyard. Freeze. Every time.

Alatortilla

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Regarding Seasons Past, we have a bit of an issue - we are unable to reproduce it, sadly.

What would really help in fixing it is if someone could come up with exact steps that make the game freeze 100% (even if it freezes 80% of the time, it would help put us on the right path).

This is true of any card that freezes the game (or does something unintended) - reporting "This card freezes the game" is good because we become aware of the problem, but not having specifics on what happens when it freezes or a sequence of events that make the game freeze it can sometimes be very difficult to pinpoint.

What he said with the transform cards. For me, it's when I play Startled Awake in the same deck as Seasons Past. The condition in which it freezes seem random, but I know every event I play I have to exile Seasons Past so I don't cast it.

octal9

nerdstrap wrote:

Very specific - cast a card with transform. Transform the card. Destroy the transform card while in the transformed state. Then use Seasons Past or Liliana to return the card from the graveyard. Freeze. Every time.

This will not freeze the game.

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Regarding Seasons Past, we have a bit of an issue - we are unable to reproduce it, sadly.

Hi JC, I can give you direct steps.

I highly suggest a deck with Seasons Past, Reclaim, and Kessig Prowler.

1) Cast two of the same card with transform ability (I suggest Kessig Prowler, as the transform mechanism is Activate and won't the card won't flip back).
2) Transform that card.
3) Kill that creature. (This is why I suggest Reclaim)
4) Cast Seasons Past.
5) Cast Seasons Past again. This is where you'll find your freeze.

Speculation: It's freezing when it attempts to bring back the second copy of flipped card, but the card is flipped and it can't handle this edge case.

Morphis

As posted above(and specified in other instances) the main problem with SP is if the creature dies while transformed.

On a side note I've heard of problems with bounced creatures while transformed(mostly bounce to top of the deck) even if I never reproduced it.

I will do an effort and test this.

The same effort, you know, someone paid for could do.

Nitymp

Gonna do this now and record it.

Edit: Guess I don't need to now

Hibernum_JC

octal9 wrote:

nerdstrap wrote:

Very specific - cast a card with transform. Transform the card. Destroy the transform card while in the transformed state. Then use Seasons Past or Liliana to return the card from the graveyard. Freeze. Every time.

This will not freeze the game.

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Regarding Seasons Past, we have a bit of an issue - we are unable to reproduce it, sadly.

Hi JC, I can give you direct steps.

I highly suggest a deck with Seasons Past, Reclaim, and Kessig Prowler.

1) Cast two of the same card with transform ability (I suggest Kessig Prowler, as the transform mechanism is Activate and won't the card won't flip back).
2) Transform that card.
3) Kill that creature. (This is why I suggest Reclaim)
4) Cast Seasons Past.
5) Cast Seasons Past again. This is where you'll find your freeze.

Speculation: It's freezing when it attempts to bring back the second copy of flipped card, but the card is flipped and it can't handle this edge case.

This is exactly the type of info we're looking for.

Thanks to this, we have identified the exact source of the problem are we are in the process of fixing it! Unfortunately I do not have an ETA as to exactly when this will be pushed live (it requires a full client change and it very most likely won't be in the next version since it's already been sent out) but you can rest assured that it will be fixed!

As an aside, if you have bugs that you want us to look at, this is by far the best way to do so. If we have clear, precise steps to reproduce the issue, we can very easily identify the problem and work towards a resolution.

Mainloop25

Hibernum_JC wrote:

octal9 wrote:

nerdstrap wrote:

Very specific - cast a card with transform. Transform the card. Destroy the transform card while in the transformed state. Then use Seasons Past or Liliana to return the card from the graveyard. Freeze. Every time.

This will not freeze the game.

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Regarding Seasons Past, we have a bit of an issue - we are unable to reproduce it, sadly.

Hi JC, I can give you direct steps.

I highly suggest a deck with Seasons Past, Reclaim, and Kessig Prowler.

1) Cast two of the same card with transform ability (I suggest Kessig Prowler, as the transform mechanism is Activate and won't the card won't flip back).
2) Transform that card.
3) Kill that creature. (This is why I suggest Reclaim)
4) Cast Seasons Past.
5) Cast Seasons Past again. This is where you'll find your freeze.

Speculation: It's freezing when it attempts to bring back the second copy of flipped card, but the card is flipped and it can't handle this edge case.

This is exactly the type of info we're looking for.

Thanks to this, we have identified the exact source of the problem are we are in the process of fixing it! Unfortunately I do not have an ETA as to exactly when this will be pushed live (it requires a full client change and it very most likely won't be in the next version since it's already been sent out) but you can rest assured that it will be fixed!

As an aside, if you have bugs that you want us to look at, this is by far the best way to do so. If we have clear, precise steps to reproduce the issue, we can very easily identify the problem and work towards a resolution.

So would you say that this is better than submitting a ticket to Zendesk?

Hibernum_JC

Specifically for this type of bug, yes. It gets to us way quicker.

octal9

JC:

Awesome. Happy to help; I'm glad you guys got the root cause!

Question: do you guys have a sandbox environment where you can set which interactions to test, or do you have to do it like we do (by just playing the game) ?

I ask because there are some other interesting bugs that can be difficult to test (1 [I think you guys already know about this one], 2 [this one I cannot replicate because it's SO specific], 3) without a sandbox.

Hibernum_JC

octal9 wrote:

JC:

Awesome. Happy to help; I'm glad you guys got the root cause!

Question: do you guys have a sandbox environment where you can set which interactions to test, or do you have to do it like we do (by just playing the game) ?

I ask because there are some other interesting bugs that can be difficult to test (1 [I think you guys already know about this one], 2 [this one I cannot replicate because it's SO specific], 3) without a sandbox.

I have a special environment where I can pretty easily do whatever I like. Add any card to any deck (even out of color), give them mana, draw whenever I want, reshuffle the board... If anything I can also make special cards to do any sort of interaction I want also.

As for these 3 bugs - all three of them are in our bug database. I sorted them out this week actually!

I'll give you more detail once I get in the office later today, but essentially we're working on them. The infinite loop one with Geier Reach Bandit I know my very talented and awesome co-worker who works with me on cards and card bugs was working on it this week, and it's a pretty complicated issue that is difficult to resolve without having a possible massive side effect on other things, so we need to make sure we're not breaking anything while fixing it. The other two I'm not 100% sure of their status but I know they are in our database.

Thanks a lot!