I'll be honest with you, the amount of positive feedback I got for my last post (Spoils of Victory #1: Liliana) has increased my motivation to keep up this blog tenfold. Not that I considered turning it down in the near future but seeing that you boys and girls out there like it sure helps.
Sorry, you're here for Hixus I can imagine, so Hixus you will get!
Okay then, as you can see, the power/toughness hasn't been revealed yet, but since that's a pretty low factor for playability in EDH most of the time I still feel like we can get a good sketch on what you'll be able to do with the card.
Hixus, Prison Warden
Let me get to the most important part first: I don't think Hixus will be a great commander. Why? Because he is basically a mix of all the bad parts of the following three cards:
Yes he does exile like the Angel, but you will take the damage first, and while he does punish them for connecting - like Michiko - in the short run, "enters-the-battlefield"-abilites (ETB) are a major player in the format, therefor he's a value-machine for your opponents waiting to get abused like Dissipation Field. Ever played a game where someone had a Dissipation Field out, an opponent attacked him, bouncing his whole team, then playing Wrath of God ? Bad feeling, and the same way it works with Hixus, they won't even have to play their creatures again.
"Can one break Hixus, and if so how?"
The only cards that can make him somewhat playable as a commander still don't make him fantastic. And building a mono-white deck around a commander that needs 3 specific cards to work isn't the thing you'd want to do...
And those card (except the Containment Priest) don't even prevent the "Safe Haven"-into-Wrath-play... Doesn't look promising!
We've ruled out the "getting played as a commander"-part, but how about fitting him into some existing decks?
I was talking about how bad it could end up if you control Hixus, didn't I?! Attack with your team, flash him in after blockers were declared, give control to the player you attacked, et voilá! You'll only need a way to make Hixus leave the battlefield and you will get a bunch of creature entering the battlefield again. Are there good options.....?
All perfectly fine cards in a Zedruu-ETB deck. You can donate your ETB-creatures - which will have done their job once you got their ETB-trigger - to draw cards in your upkeep and then Capsize/Navigator to get them back for more value again. And with Capsize you have a quite funny loop of blinking your whole team with Hixus. Or you just exile him with Oblivion Ring and donate that one after you've got some creature to get exiled by him.
Now to make the mentioned Hixus-play work, you need a way to "donate" Hixus during combat since otherwise he is a potential blocker for your opponent. And while Zedruu is a way to do it, offering so much potential carddraw makes her hard to untap with.
Luckily those are all cards (except maybe Domineering Will) that normally get played in Zedruu-lists for obvious reasons. Confusion in the Ranks is of course the single best option for comboing with Hixus since you'll also get to steal a creature for good.
So what can we say about Hixus summing it all up? He's definitely not a highly exciting or relevant card for the format, and while he could have a place in some Zedruu-decks, I doubt that he will see much play outside of that in EDH, be it 1v1 or Mulitplayer.
Let's just hope the spoiler-season of Magic Origins reverts back to lilianaesque playability when it starts rather than what Hixus brings. And with this I'm going to end this entry...
See y'all 'round!
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