Please turn Hixus into an enchantment

andrewvanmarle

Since support removal has become type targetted, the nasty ones, hixus in particular, are even harder to get rid of.

Please give those last ones, like hixus a type too.

please?


pretty please?

GrizzoMtGPQ

He's a throwback to the days when no supports had types. It's what makes Demolish such an unbelievably powerful card. Dem early days ...

I totally agree this needs to be done though!

Avahad

Non-specific planeswalker supports are a bit of a pain too (Teferi and Ob Nix to name a couple)

andrewvanmarle

also, it isn't just a nerf to cards like hixus: it's also a small buff: playing those cards doesn't enable constellation right now.

jtwood

I like the nostalgia of all the typeless supports, but there are some flavor fails. Like Andrew said, I played a deck with Hixus recently and needed two passes before I re-remembered that it wasn't an enchantment that would trigger my other cards.

andrewvanmarle

no type being a type is  a bit of a cop out i think.

if anything gve it a se[arate type, but honestly  i think most of them would just be enchantments

Magius

How do you get rid of Hixus anyway? Smash to smitherins?

Mburn7

Its probably because in paper, Hixus is a creature.  So he's not an artifact, enchantment, land, or planeswalker for typing in PQ.  Not saying he couldn't be an enchantment here (I don't think anyone would care, and he is from Theros where that would be possible anyway) but that's probably the reason why he isn't.

If you wanna kill him, you just need either untargeted support killing (Demolish is still solid), or enough white gem changing that you can match him quickly.

jtwood

And you should be able to exile Hixus after yesterday's update. Before that, if you exiled it, the disabling effect stuck around.

jtwood

It's not a knock on the game designers to have support removal with constraints on its use or applicability. Constraints make for more interesting competitive scenarios so that we aren't simply jamming Demolish into every red deck.

And Demolish hasn't always been a rock star. I recall a time on these boards when people were complaining that Storm the Vault put out too many support tokens, making it hard for a card like Demolish to hit it before it flipped. I know I definitely changed my support destruction strategy during StV's time in Standard.

jtwood

critman said:

jtwood said:

It's not a knock on the game designers to have support removal with constraints on its use or applicability. Constraints make for more interesting competitive scenarios so that we aren't simply jamming Demolish into every red deck.

And Demolish hasn't always been a rock star. I recall a time on these boards when people were complaining that Storm the Vault put out too many support tokens, making it hard for a card like Demolish to hit it before it flipped. I know I definitely changed my support destruction strategy during StV's time in Standard.

Constraints *would* be interesting if we didn't have Demolish to use, but we do.

Storm the Vault has always been too powerful. And didn't they change Demolish so it prioritises non-token supports?

You might very well be right about that. I missed that announcement, I guess, although I also cannot find it right now, either. But I do see some people making that same comment as you when searching old posts.

FindingHeart8

Oktagon has announced in the past and continuously pushed for making their cards more like the paper mtg originals, with only occasional exceptions.  While it is not out of the realm of possibilities to give hixus a support-type, it would be more probable that it is given a type that brings it closer to its paper mtg counterpart, not further.

Mburn7

critman said:

jtwood said:

It's not a knock on the game designers to have support removal with constraints on its use or applicability. Constraints make for more interesting competitive scenarios so that we aren't simply jamming Demolish into every red deck.

And Demolish hasn't always been a rock star. I recall a time on these boards when people were complaining that Storm the Vault put out too many support tokens, making it hard for a card like Demolish to hit it before it flipped. I know I definitely changed my support destruction strategy during StV's time in Standard.

Constraints *would* be interesting if we didn't have Demolish to use, but we do.

Storm the Vault has always been too powerful. And didn't they change Demolish so it prioritises non-token supports?

Its funny, the constraints were announced to make it easier to destroy supports like Hixus (since they let you go after a specific support you are expecting to see) but since Hixus doesn't have a support type in this case they seem pretty dumb.

Back in the days of white disable decks when standard had like 3 different disable supports, being able to only hit enchantments would have been super helpful (I don't care about your land, I want to hit Cast Down, for example).

But yeah, Demolish is probably the best right now as long as it avoids tokens and you aren't expecting to see a lot of vanguards.

Mburn7

critman said:

Mburn7 said:

critman said:

jtwood said:

It's not a knock on the game designers to have support removal with constraints on its use or applicability. Constraints make for more interesting competitive scenarios so that we aren't simply jamming Demolish into every red deck.

And Demolish hasn't always been a rock star. I recall a time on these boards when people were complaining that Storm the Vault put out too many support tokens, making it hard for a card like Demolish to hit it before it flipped. I know I definitely changed my support destruction strategy during StV's time in Standard.

Constraints *would* be interesting if we didn't have Demolish to use, but we do.

Storm the Vault has always been too powerful. And didn't they change Demolish so it prioritises non-token supports?

Its funny, the constraints were announced to make it easier to destroy supports like Hixus (since they let you go after a specific support you are expecting to see) but since Hixus doesn't have a support type in this case they seem pretty dumb.

Back in the days of white disable decks when standard had like 3 different disable supports, being able to only hit enchantments would have been super helpful (I don't care about your land, I want to hit Cast Down, for example).

But yeah, Demolish is probably the best right now as long as it avoids tokens and you aren't expecting to see a lot of vanguards.

It's not really to do with laser focusing the effect of your cards. You simply don't have room in your deck to include one card that deals with enchantments, one that deals with artifacts, one that deals with vanguards, one that deals with no-types, and one that deals with lands (and you really, really do need to deal with lands; leave 3 gates on the table for too long, and you've got yourself real problems).

If you did include 5 different cards in your deck to deal with all the support types, you'd end up with dead cards in a lot of fights.

Increasing diversity of support types, and the resultant creation of ever more niche cards to deal with them, is, in general, a bad idea. There's a reason why MTG has lasted for 25 years and been infinitely expandable, whereas Netrunner, another early game by WOTC, ran out of steam so quickly: The Corporation couldn't include an ever increasing variety of threats, because the Runner deck simply couldn't hold an ever increasing number of answers to deal with them.

Disagree with me if you like, and then go and look at just how many cards which deal with subsets of supports in MTGPQ there are that you never play with.

Interesting comparison to Netrunner, which is a game I love but absolutely agree that that is a big problem with it.

The point of niche support removal is to target something specific that you are afraid of.  If your deck can handle anything except a certain support but you don't care about the rest, then you want something more targeted.  There is no reason to have a spell to deal with each individual type of support, you might as well use the general stuff instead.  I think we're agreeing on this and just not expressing that clearly enough, to be honest lol.

Mburn7

critman said:

Mburn7 said:

critman said:

Mburn7 said:

critman said:

jtwood said:

It's not a knock on the game designers to have support removal with constraints on its use or applicability. Constraints make for more interesting competitive scenarios so that we aren't simply jamming Demolish into every red deck.

And Demolish hasn't always been a rock star. I recall a time on these boards when people were complaining that Storm the Vault put out too many support tokens, making it hard for a card like Demolish to hit it before it flipped. I know I definitely changed my support destruction strategy during StV's time in Standard.

Constraints *would* be interesting if we didn't have Demolish to use, but we do.

Storm the Vault has always been too powerful. And didn't they change Demolish so it prioritises non-token supports?

Its funny, the constraints were announced to make it easier to destroy supports like Hixus (since they let you go after a specific support you are expecting to see) but since Hixus doesn't have a support type in this case they seem pretty dumb.

Back in the days of white disable decks when standard had like 3 different disable supports, being able to only hit enchantments would have been super helpful (I don't care about your land, I want to hit Cast Down, for example).

But yeah, Demolish is probably the best right now as long as it avoids tokens and you aren't expecting to see a lot of vanguards.

It's not really to do with laser focusing the effect of your cards. You simply don't have room in your deck to include one card that deals with enchantments, one that deals with artifacts, one that deals with vanguards, one that deals with no-types, and one that deals with lands (and you really, really do need to deal with lands; leave 3 gates on the table for too long, and you've got yourself real problems).

If you did include 5 different cards in your deck to deal with all the support types, you'd end up with dead cards in a lot of fights.

Increasing diversity of support types, and the resultant creation of ever more niche cards to deal with them, is, in general, a bad idea. There's a reason why MTG has lasted for 25 years and been infinitely expandable, whereas Netrunner, another early game by WOTC, ran out of steam so quickly: The Corporation couldn't include an ever increasing variety of threats, because the Runner deck simply couldn't hold an ever increasing number of answers to deal with them.

Disagree with me if you like, and then go and look at just how many cards which deal with subsets of supports in MTGPQ there are that you never play with.

Interesting comparison to Netrunner, which is a game I love but absolutely agree that that is a big problem with it.

The point of niche support removal is to target something specific that you are afraid of.  If your deck can handle anything except a certain support but you don't care about the rest, then you want something more targeted.  There is no reason to have a spell to deal with each individual type of support, you might as well use the general stuff instead.  I think we're agreeing on this and just not expressing that clearly enough, to be honest lol.

Give me an example. You're playing the top node in Nicol Bolas HoD... what specific supports out of the ~560 or so are you playing specific, targeted subset support removal for, and what is the subset support removal card you are playing?

Look I haven't played in a while so I can't speak to the specific meta.  I will agree that nowadays there isn't a specific type of support that is problematic, which is basically what you're saying.  My point is that IF there was a specific thing that you were worried about (say Sandworm Convergence back in the day or Godsend or something now) you could include a specific killer to deal with it.

To use Netrunner as another example, its like including some cards that give Link in your runner deck because you are worried that any trace effects will ruin your plans.  Its useless most of the time, but in the specific times you need it you are happy to have it.

Barnabes

It isn’t that there aren’t any answers to it, there is plenty of support removal in standard that hits nonland supports and can take out Hixus. The issue bothering most people is that there isn’t a common catch all answer on the level of Demolish in other colors - and that when Hixus gets out of hand once in a while it is exceptionally obnoxious to play against. I’ve been there occasionally. 

I personally find that getting nailed like that by Hixus is happening to me fairly rarely so I don’t have a real qualm with the situation as it is (now that Teferi can exile it without locking my team out for good). Turning it into an enchantment feels like it would make it too easy to remove and would just discourage people from ever playing it, a solution I would rather avoid. 

FindingHeart8

Personally I don't mind if Hixus had a type but I would prefer it be something more appropriate to the original card than "enchantment."

Enchantment destruction is already pretty useful as is, with the two sets Theros and Eldraine being strongly enchantment-themed.

QuiksilverHg

The only way to make it close to original would be turn it into a creature. That seems like a bridge too far. Right now the card is more like “moat” than anything else, which is an enchantment 

FindingHeart8

QuiksilverHg said:

The only way to make it close to original would be turn it into a creature. That seems like a bridge too far. Right now the card is more like “moat” than anything else, which is an enchantment 

Yeah I get what you're saying.

So far, Oktagon has not made many changes to cards created during the Hibernum days.  Especially since it's an Origins card, I wonder if they'll even consider editing it.

Barnabes

QuiksilverHg said:

The only way to make it close to original would be turn it into a creature. That seems like a bridge too far. Right now the card is more like “moat” than anything else, which is an enchantment 

Actually, given that we now have Flash - making it a creature with flash that does what the support currently does should be exceptionally easy. And, naturally, would make it so easy to dispose of as to not he worth playing. 

Although i I suppose if it had low P/T you would be able to dissuade Greg from targeting it with removal by presenting  bigger targets, keeping him locked down. Or they can give it Hexproof, which would make it harder to kill but still more manageable. 

Either way, original Hixus is VERY easy to do with today’s mechanics. 

@FindingHeart8
They just recently edited it to reactivate your creatures if it gets exiled rather than destroyed. So they are definitely not ignoring the card. 

FindingHeart8

Barnabes said:

@FindingHeart8
They just recently edited it to reactivate your creatures if it gets exiled rather than destroyed. So they are definitely not ignoring the card. 

This is true, though I would throw that under the category of fixing glitches rather than actually changing the card abilities.