Official word that this is an intended change.
Hexproof is intended to make it immune to target from ANY source.
Basically it works like shroud in magic.
Is it also intentional that you no longer can replace hexproof creatures? I run Sphinx of the Final word as a response to how much removal player decks run, but now if I want to replace an existing creature with a new one, I can’t.
I’ve been able to track this back to being hexproof from when I’ve had some creatures with the ability and some without, and I can only select to replace creatures without hexproof. Not letting me buff a hexproof creature, while I don’t love it, I can understand, but at least let me replace them. If we can’t suddenly a lot of creatures are a lot less valuable.
This is me practically on my knees: please revert that change, please. The efficient creature control now available to every color makes a lot of powerful creatures much less powerful by virtue of the simple fact that after charging a 24 mana creature, it’s likely to be immediately destroyed by grip of desolation, to the slaughter, unholy hunger, smite the monstrous, humble the brute, turn to Frog, imprisoned in the Moon, inner struggle, scour from existence, etc.
Hexproof is strong, but defenders are commonly available and equally strong, as are options for giving the ability to block to your creatures. Add to that the multitude of non-targeted options such as silverstrike, Gideons reproach, etc, creature sweepers like rolling thunder, Chandra’s ignition, etc, and also take into account that suppression removes the hexproof, allowing it to be destroyed or bounced as easily as any other creature.
Currently, there are only a handful of hexproof creatures, and half are mythics. For those who have weak card pools in certain colors, a runaway carriage or plated crusher might be one of the only cards to build a competitive deck around, and even then it’s essentially just a boosting strategy.
There are times, especially during events, where I absolutely need the option to have a creature that I can keep on the board for more than a few turns. And for 10 mana, it has one toughness, meaning a single eldrazi scion spells doom. The crusher costs 18, 7/6, and is in my experience just expensive enough to offset the benefit of the hexproof.
One final note, I honestly can’t remember any occasion since the carriage was nerfed where it was more than a minor nuisance. If the a.i had the ability to plan ahead and utilize the hexproof effectively, it would be different. But the only hexproof creatures that are possible game changers are the mythics: rattlechains, sphinx, gaea’s revenge. And they’re all powerful, as they should be, but entirely manageable. Ask any player which card they dread seeing more: a rattlechains, or an Olivia. Obvious answer, of course.
So please, revert this change. Thank you.
This change sucks. Hexproof was just fine how it was. Do not go looking for new trouble to cause. Fix real bugs! No one asked that hexproof be fixed. This is just terrible!
In paper MTG shroud came first and they realized it sucked to not interact with your own creatures. Then they introduced hexproof and I was happy . This backwards game does the opposite. This is a sad sad day.
The RC meta-shock was enough to get people thinking about defenders and vigilance. Haunted cloak is an always-include in all of my decks ever since. I can give any troop vigilance if I need to block, and at the same time it gives trample to push through lame chump troops. It’s never really a dead card with all the other discard mechanics around as well.
Did we need to nerf hexproof this hard? I mean, it’s an honest question because I’ve never really felt the need to run hexproof at all. If it was really that powerful then I would be auto-including it (eg. Runaway carriage) in all my decks. Instead, I just run powerful combo troops and just live with them getting bounced and removed.
I included Sigarda in almost all of my decks because of black and blue decks that ran heavy removal. Ulrich and Grace Champion is a great combo that is very hard to deal with, especially when the hexproof remained after Sigarda died. Unfortunately they nerfed her also.
I ran Sphinx of the Final Word for similar reasons. Mostly because I didn’t link banking up 20 mana in blue to cast a good creature only to have to die to Inner Struggle or Scour from Existence as soon as it hit the field.
The changes now handicap my blue decks to the point that if I play the sphinx, I can’t ever replace a creature unless somehow the sphinx dies. It’s especially a problem if I had a creature imprison in the moon or turn to frog before the sphinx came out.
The hexproof issue wasn’t anything anyone playing the game was complaining about, nor was it a broken mechanic. I think there’s a general consensus here that it was a bad idea to change and needs to be reversed. There were already ways around hexproof with reach, berserker, and non-targeted disable effects to make thus change completely unneeded.
I have to say I always disliked MtG’s shift from shroud to hexproof, it makes me sad that shroud is dead. Shroud always seemed fairer. Hexproof plus auras always felt cheesy to me.
That said, it’s pretty annoying for people who’ve built decks around a particular interaction to have it taken away on a whim. I don’t recall any hexproof cards that anyone’s complaining about either, it’s not like it’s a nerf that anybody was asking for. That 16/9 shroud haste green creature is pretty ridiculous, but it’s hardly even affected by this nerf, it didn’t ever need spells cast on it.
In this game you end up with an odd sort of a mix on the whole, since there’s a lot of “first creature” effects which work around hexproof from either direction.