Cast Out and Hixus -- which is right?

bk1234

Hixus says when it pops all disabled opponent creatures are enabled. 

Cast Out says as long as it's on the board, creature stays disabled. 

Does a popped Hixus enable a Cast Out creature or does the Cast Out ability override the Hixus ability. 

How is this type of conflict handled in paper?

   

Mburn7

In paper this wouldn't really exist, since both cards exile until they leave, not tap (disable in PQ).

Based on the paper version of Hixus, though, he should read the same as Cast Out.  The current wording was probably done as a shortcut for the effect when he was the only card that worked like that.  If that's the case, than this really is more of a change than a fix, since it technically wasn't broken (just lazy coding)

wereotter

Considering you can enable your creatures from Cast Out using Vizier of Tumbling Sands, then Hixus should also enable your creatures.

However I can also see the argument used when it came to popping Hixus with Claustrophobia or another similar card was in play that it should enable your first creature, and Cast Out technically creatures a static effect of being disabled for whatever creature it hit for as long as it's in play. However if this is the direction they're going, then Vizier of Tumbling Sands should be adjusted to no longer work, and Cast Out should have its shield count lowered.

Brakkis

Hixus popping should enable any creature that has been locked down with Cast Out or any other temporary disable effect.

The only thing that should stay disabled following a Hixus break is the creature stuck behind Desert's Hold and/or Suppression Bonds.

csonic

I believe this is being fixed in 2.7 being released next week.

The Fix:
"Creatures are no longer enabled, when Hixus, Prison Warden is Destroyed, while Cast Out is on the gem board in Battle"

bk1234

csonic said:

I believe this is being fixed in 2.7 being released next week.

The Fix:
"Creatures are no longer enabled, when Hixus, Prison Warden is Destroyed, while Cast Out is on the gem board in Battle"

It seems the exact opposite to me. They are "fixing" something that is working as it is intended. When Hixus is popped it should enable Cast Out creatures. They are making it so it doesn't. 

ninjark

It could fall under one of the Golden Rules of paper Magic:
 101.2. When a rule or effect allows or directs something to happen, and another effect states that it can’t happen, the “can’t” effect takes precedence.

Enygma6

Hypothetical situation: Greg has managed to disable all 3 of your creatures with Desert’s Hold (slot 1), Cast Out (slot 2), and Hixus (slot 3).  
You destroy the Hixus (without causing a crash), which if any of your creatures are to be enabled?  

Currently, at least slots 2&3 will be enabled, Desert’s Hold might keep slot 1 on lockdown.  
With a fix, I would expect slot 3 to be enabled.  
From the wording in the release notes, none of them might be enabled because there is a Cast Out in play, even though it only hit one of your creatures.  
This is something we will need to keep an eye on when the next build comes.

stikxs

I had posted this in the other thread before I saw this one:

When Hixus is popped it "does" enable the Cast Out victim, but Cast Out is persistent until destroyed (which hasn't always been the case up to now admittedly) so it would immediately re-disable. I wonder if Combat Celebrant's exert will work the same since Brigby specifically named Hixus. Cast Out is basically Desert's Hold with targetting and an extra shield for almost triple cost.

Enygma6

And I posted here before I saw your comment in the other thread  
It will be interesting to see if the fix was to Cast Out to make it persistent (and counter attempts by Celebrant/Vizier to re-enable), or if the change was only to Hixus to ignore victims of Cast Out.

bk1234

Enygma6 said:

Hypothetical situation: Greg has managed to disable all 3 of your creatures with Desert’s Hold (slot 1), Cast Out (slot 2), and Hixus (slot 3).  
You destroy the Hixus (without causing a crash), which if any of your creatures are to be enabled?  

Currently, at least slots 2&3 will be enabled, Desert’s Hold might keep slot 1 on lockdown.  
With a fix, I would expect slot 3 to be enabled.  
From the wording in the release notes, none of them might be enabled because there is a Cast Out in play, even though it only hit one of your creatures.  
This is something we will need to keep an eye on when the next build comes.

@Enygma6

Currently all three would be enabled. 

With the fix, Slot 2 will remain disabled, per Brigby's clarification in the release notes thread. 

(But as you pointed out, it doesn't matter because your game just froze when you popped Hixus -- no fix for that.)

Sirchombli

This kind of conflict is exclusive to this game. In paper both hixus (which is a creature ) and cast out exile and the exiled permanents are tied exclusively to the thing that exiled them for the purposes of the cards . Either hixus needs to affect creatures disabled by both cast out and the bevy of cards that do the same thing as claustrophobia , or none of them . I don't really get why this is changing now, since cast out rotates with the update in question. I thought that the way it worked was the way it was intended .

Dodecapod

Tl;dr - See statements in bold, and possibly the last section

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There isn't necessarily a precise analogue between paper MtG mechanics and enable/disable effects here, but these seem to be the 3 primary classes of cases for comparison based on the current cardpool (i.e. excluding anything new we might see in Dominaria), although there are a lot of other niche scenarios where disabling has been used on individual cards outside of these classes (e.g. as a surrogate for "counter the first spell each turn" on Glyph Keeper):

(A)  Disabling creatures can mirror "can't attack or block" effects; in this case, there is no clear precedent for how Hixus should interact that I'm familiar with, as paper has no (frequently printed?) analogue of enabling where "until end of turn/beginning of next turn" instant and sorcery effects are concerned (e.g. with Alchemist's Vial), and enabling in the case of permanents like Cast Out would generally be accomplished by removing the permanent or the permanent's abilities, not by directly contravening the permanent's "can't attack or block" restriction.

(B)  Disabling creatures can mirror "tap target creature" effects; in this case, Hixus should logically enable creatures disabled by Cast Out, because the analogue of Hixus' enable clause would be "untap all tapped creatures your opponents control", which unless otherwise specified doesn't care about how those creatures originally became tapped or whether those creatures would normally untap during their controllers' untap phases.

(C)  Disabling creatures can mirror "exile target permanent until [cardname] leaves the battlefield" effects (with "[cardname]" being Hixus or Cast Out here); in this case, the precedent is ambiguous, because MtGPQ seems to have specifically avoided reproducing temporary exile effects verbatim other than Siren's Ruse (which provides little guidance here), and Hixus' enable clause could reasonably be interpreted in (at least) 3 different ways:

1. "Return all creatures in the exile zone that your opponents own to the battlefield under their owners' control", which should enable creatures disabled by Cast Out (among other things), although paper MtG doesn't have any effects exactly like this as far as I'm aware
   
2. "Return all creatures exiled by Hixus to the battlefield under their owners' control", which shouldn't enable creatures disabled by Cast Out (and incidentally should enable creatures that were stolen by Hixus' controller and remain disabled, although that's a separate issue); this is the closest template to what paper MtG typically uses for these types of effects, but it would differ from Hixus' implementation both before and after v2.7
   
3. "Return all creatures exiled by Hixus that your opponents own to the battlefield under their owners' control", which is closest to what Hixus' implementation will be after v2.7 and represents a middle ground between 1 and 2
   

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Overall, it's difficult to tell what should happen based on paper MtG, largely due to the inconsistencies in MtGPQ; if given the choice, these are the adjustments I'd propose, depending on what the devs wanted to establish as the intended functionality:

1.  Template Hixus and Cast Out consistently, no matter what

Both of these cards are derived from paper cards that exile a permanent until they leave play, and in this game both of them disable creatures until they're destroyed; there's absolutely no reason why Hixus should read "when this is destroyed, enable all your opponent's creatures" and Cast Out should read "until Cast Out is destroyed" for exactly the same trigger condition under "normal" circumstances (i.e. when only one disabling effect occurs at a time).  (I can't emphasize enough how crucial this is for clarifying what should happen for an uninitiated player, hence the oversized bold text; having 2 cards that do the same thing with different wordings or different things with the same wording can be incredibly confusing, and this game has numerous examples of both situations.)

2.  Change Hixus to read "Enable all of your opponent's creatures that were disabled by Hixus" if Hixus shouldn't affect Cast Out or any other (less commonly played or yet-to-be-released) disable effects.

This would reflect a categorical change in what Hixus does when any concurrent disabling effects take place, e.g. Imaginary Threats, Lunarch Inquisitors, Cast Out, and so on; this might or might not be a broader change than v2.7 actually intends.

3.  Change Cast Out to read "creatures disabled by Cast Out cannot be enabled by other supports (or other creatures and supports, or other cards, etc., as the case may be)" if the intent is to have Cast Out represent a "stronger" disabling effect than Hixus, so that it will override Hixus' enabling clause (and perhaps other cards' enabling clauses as well) without affecting most other interactions more broadly than intended.

On the surface, this seems similar to the intended adjustment, but this method would avoid the clumsiness of dealing with each new interaction on a case-by-case basis and would provide a consistent template for any similar situations that may arise in the future (or that have already arisen but haven't attracted the same amount of attention as Hixus and Cast Out specifically).  One of the advantages of this approach is that it would help with reporting bugs, as the wording on each card would clarify the intended behavior when multiple disabling/enabling effects interacted together.

4.  Either change Hixus to read "Enable all of your opponent's creatures, unless those creatures are also disabled by Cast Out" or change Cast Out to read "Creatures disabled by Cast Out cannot be enabled by Hixus when Hixus is destroyed" if the intent is to change only the interaction between Hixus and Cast out specifically, without altering any other interactions or clarifying the broader precedent.

This is the narrowest and most awkward adjustment, but if the current functionality is going to change without making the rules more transparent in general, then Hixus will no longer do what it says it does (namely enable the opponent's creatures when it's destroyed, independent of any other conditions), and one or both of the card texts in question should be brought in line with the new interpretation.  From the standpoint of making the game more intuitive, this might make sense, as most players initially seem to find the current behavior surprising and many tend to interpret it as a bug, but as written, what happens now is also most likely what should be happening logically, so a rules change, however minor, should be treated differently from a bug fix as far as card texts are concerned.

This also potentially touches on a more fundamental templating distinction between continuous slot-disabling effects (e.g. Desert's Hold, Suppression Bonds, and Claustrophobia) and temporary or creature-specific ones (e.g. Hixus, Deadlock Trap, and Skyline Cascade) which isn't clear at all based on the current wording and in-game rules tooltips available on various cards (even the "Disable" keyword itself varies between showing up in plain text, showing up in bold text with no tooltip, and showing up in bold underlined text with a tooltip), so adjusting which template Cast Out adheres to and/or clarifying the in-game language used to differentiate between a creature and a creature slot might be relevant somehow as well.

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Regardless of how the Hixus/Cast Out change is implemented, confusion along these lines tends to highlight some of the ambiguous language and inconsistent templating that sometimes pervade this game; given the turbulence of the last year or so and the transition from one developer team to another, leaving some of the ambiguity unaddressed until now is understandable, but at this point, a comprehensive rules and templating overhaul is sorely needed in the long run in order to preserve even a basic level of accessibility as far as complexity is concerned (among other sources, Mark Rosewater, the head designer for paper MtG, touches on that issue in this article and this blog post; while some of the specifics might differ in MtGPQ, similar principles would apply in terms of ensuring players can realistically understand what their cards do and can reliably distinguish between bugs and features on a regular basis).

Hopefully future releases will tend to emphasize improving consistency and clarity for newer (or ideally all) players; in the meantime, it'll be interesting to see what Dominaria holds in store for the new Standard environment, including whether it has any new disabling supports of its own that might have helped to inspire the upcoming changes.

Kinesia

Thank you @Dodecapod for the excellent summary of the situation and possible options.

asm0deus

Cast out would be in legacy anyway. Would this even matter when the coalition events are for standard only?

stikxs

Not for coalition events, but the real underlying point is consistency and setting a precedent for how things are handled and transferred from paper I believe.

Tilwin90

If it existed in paper, let's assume disabling exists, so it's just another characteristic of the card (say like its creature types):
Hixus: Whenever a creature an opponent controls deals damage to you, disable it until Hixus, Prison Warden leaves the battlefield.
Cast Out: When Cast Out enters the battlefield, disable target creature an opponent controls until Cast Out leaves the battlefield.

Normally when we are dealing with two continuous effects, we apply the timestamp order. This is relevant if the effects are conflicting. (this is something referred to as the layer system, about which you can read more in the comprehensive MTG rules (see paragraph 613. Interaction of Continuous Effects) or read this superb, though a bit outdated, article).
In this case however, the two effects apply the same effect, that is to disable a creature. Therefore, when either Hixus or Cast Out leave the battlefield, one of the continuous effects stops happening. But that does not negate the second effect that continues to act on the creature. In our example, assuming there are no other effects involved, if Hixus leaves the battlefield, all creatures other than the creature disabled by Cast out will no longer be disabled. The Casted Out creature continues to stay disabled.

Example:
Player 1, Turn 1: Play Hixus
Player 2, Turn 1: Play Ahn-Crop Crasher, Boumat Courier, Brazen Scourge, deal damage with all, Hixus disables all three creatures.
Player 1, Turn 2: Play Cast Out, disable Boumat Courier.
Player 2, Turn 2: Cast Demolish, destroy Hixus.

Result: Ahn-Crop Crasher & Brazen Scourge are no longer disabled since Hixus left the battlefield. Boumat Courier continues to stay disabled because of Cast Out.

Continuous effects are not yet properly implemented in MTGPQ which leads to a lot of bugs and issues. It's a very complicated area, so a very strict set of rules is necessary to simplify the coding rules behind-the-scenes and make things crystal clear for the players. (yes, I go back to those rules MTGPQ lack right now!!!).

asm0deus

I might consider disable similar to "does not untap" in paper magic. Cast out is basically a local enchantment placed on a creature that would not allow it to untap as long as it is on the creature. Hixus is more like a global enchantment that prevents untapping but would allow it when it leaves the battlefield. So when hixus leaves, any creature without cast out on it can untap.

Tilwin90

@asm0deus
It's precisely the reason why I preferred not to use the tap-untap example here, although it would seem more relevant this way (and it's much closer to disabling than say, exile). Because a tapped permanent gets to untap naturally at the beginning of a user's turn, while disabling does not, I preferred not to mix the two.

You could see Hixus/Cast Out as a combination of Overwhelming Splendor and Darksteel Mutation. Both are enchantments, so it's not an instant or sorcery effect to complicate things even more... One affects all creatures (splendor) while the other one affects a specific creature (Darksteel Mutation). So if Splendor leaves the battlefield, the unit affected by Darksteel Mutation does not go back to its original power and toughness. 

Mburn7

Like I said, this issue is more lazy coding than anything else.  In Origins, there were only 2 white cards that could disable, and 1 auto-targeted the first creature.  So to make Hixus work, they wrote it so that it would enable all creatures and figured that Suppression Bonds would still work properly, since it would just re-disable the first creature.  This was probably easier to code than figuring out which creatures were disabled by Hixus and only enabling them.

Since all the white disable cards that came out after Origins also auto-targeted the first creature this workaround still worked for a while, and the introduction of Dovin didn't change much since most of blue's disable stuff was also first-only (with 1 or 2 exceptions that didn't see enough play to be an issue and only lasted 1 turn anyway, reducing the chance that the issue would be noticed).

Cast Out was the first multi-turn targeted disable card to exist in the game, and as written its interaction with Hixus worked perfectly.  The problem is, this isn't how they are supposed to work in theory.  The issue isn't a bug per se, but an unintended consequence of the lazy coding for Hixus when Origins came out years ago.  All Oktagon is doing now is changing it to work as it should have done originally.

rafalele

Also Cast out when returned by Nyx does not allow to select a creature and it is auto casted if there is no creature on board, so Cast out has more issues than Hixus enabling the targeted creatures when leaving battleground.