After being Taken Hostage, Creatures occasionally commit suicide rather than fight. [Investigating]

octal9

Sometimes, a creature stolen with Hostage Taker ("HT") will destroy itself immediately upon being cast from HT's owner ("the player").

Bear with me as I'm still testing this to figure out the exact conditions, but I know it will happen when all of the following conditions have been met:

1) The stolen creature is at least the second one taken by by HT.
2) The player's hand is already full when HT takes opponent creature hostage - condition can only be met via Bolas or L3 utilizing their Third/First ability, respectively (this condition I'm not certain of and will test further).
3) The player moves the stolen creature to the top of their hand, fills it with mana, and hard casts it.

Expected result: the creature casts and stays on the board.
Actual result: the creature casts and immediately gets destroyed.

Video: https://youtu.be/ytRv8Vdqib8

//Edited Title -Brigby

octal9

Update: video added

Froggy

I’ve only noticed this occur on token creatures that were stolen. I stole Tezz2’s contstruct token. It showed as being destroyed from his battlefield, but then showed up in my hand, empty of mana, but no mana counter cost of it. It filled with what I believe is one mana point (or maybe loyalty?) and when I cast it, it destroyed itself right away.

That’s what I observed. Haven’t tested it too long as I just pulled he card

Enygma6

Stolen tokens which explode when cast also do not count toward "Cast X or more creature" goals in the Race to Orazca Event.  
Probably because they shouldn't have gone into a hand to begin with

octal9

Please note: this happens with non-token creatures as well (as shown in the video I’ve posted). 

Enygma6

Saw another instance of this tonight.  Managed to make 2 steals with Hostage Taker in one game.  

In case the extra data helps, here's what happened:

Race to Orazca event, Blue node.
Saheeli Rai, level 60.
Using Omniscience, stolen creature is cast on the same turn in which it is stolen.
Hand is NOT full when creature stolen (no 7th card situation).
No token creatures involved.
First stolen creature, Cryptic Serpent, destroyed upon casting.
a few turns later:
Second stolen creature, Fleet Swallower, placed on the battlefield as normal.

andrewvanmarle

I have this happen with Vraska. i play HT, there is a free cardslot for the creature but the stealing animation does damage as if playing a destroy. The card does go to hand but will selfdestruct when played.

Gilesclone

In my last game with Hostage Taker, every single creature I captured died on casting.  None were tokens.

Tilwin90

Please note that Hostage Taker destroys a creature Greg controls instead of putting it into Hostage Taker owner's hand, if Greg's hand is full. This suggests a full hand size check done on the wrong player. 

octal9

Tilwin90 said:

Please note that Hostage Taker destroys a creature Greg controls instead of putting it into Hostage Taker owner's hand, if Greg's hand is full. This suggests a full hand size check done on the wrong player. 

This can be seen in the video posted, as well. Looks like you might have root-caused the Suicide-on-cast.

@Brigby ^

Brigby

Hi Everyone. I'm compiling a comprehensive list of all Ixalan bug reports to be sent to the development team today. I will be sure to include this issue on that list as well. Thanks for the info!

joerginger

Kiora vs. the Nissa heroic encounter - in two matches Outland Colossus remained on the battlefield after being cast, Mage-Ring Responder, however, committed suicide in a different match.

RandomID

Is this one still being looked at - remains an issue for me and is not mentioned in the 2.6 Release Notes, thanks

Brigby

@RandomID If it wasn't mentioned in the release notes, and I haven't changed the tag on this thread, then that means the issue is still being investigated. Thanks for your patience!