Doomed to Repeat It Repeat It

Ahh, Ixalan! A fresh new set on a brand new plane. New frontier, new horizons, all new experience to be had and a new world to be conquered.

Pirates in red! Merfolk in green! Vampires in white! Dinosaurs in something other than the junk bin! Yessir, it's a whole new take on everything you once knew. New abilities, new mechanics...

...and the same old mistakes.

Hold on a moment and take a close look at Hostage Taker. Cool card, right? It's flavourful, fits its colours and is a decent card to boot. But I mean a close look. Is it me or does it not say "another target creature"? So she can show up, take herself hostage, leave play, no longer be there to hold herself hostage, and then return... potentially to do it all again.

Well, that was a pretty easy instant-win combo right there. It's not hard to take advantage of infinite comes-into-play triggers.

Okay, so it's a wacky combo card that can maybe get you a fourth-turn win. Well, that's happened before. Felidar Guardian would still be Standard legal as we speak if it weren't banned for, er, doing the same thing. Maybe they thought the Standard environment could take it after all... Wait a minute. Take another close look at Hostage Taker. Notice how it doesn't say "you may exile target artifact or creature"?

So if you play Hostage Taker with no other legal targets in play, gameplay is immediately stuck in an infinite loop as she kidnaps and releases herself again ad neausuem. The game is declared a draw. Wow. Thanks, Wizards.

Ahh. So before the card was even released, they had to issue errata on it. Memory Jar is spinning in its... grave? Antique store? Well, that's quite an embarrassment. Still, can't catch 'em all, and there's a first time for everything. Although... having to issue errata because of infinite comes-into-play triggers... why does that sound familiar?

Oh yeah. They made the same doofus mistake just a few years ago. So is that it? Whomever's on playtesting just never thinks about something flickering itself? Any opportunity for an arbitrary number of triggers has been blindly stumbled into?

"You may." "Another target." I don't get it. This was literally released this year and yet they couldn't figure out how to do the same thing with Hostage Taker. Let's take a look back, here - have they been making that mistake since day one? What was the first creature to have that sort of ability?

Oh. Oh my.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, fifteen goddamn years ago they knew fully well to avoid this kind of trap but they can't figure it out today. Faceless Butcher is essentially the same card - 2/3 for 4 that exiles something until it's gone - but with fewer bells and whistles. Sure, it has the quirky dual triggers that can be played around with, but that was more a problem of how other cards interacted with it, not how it played in a vacuum. Hostage Taker literally cannot stand on its own. What is going on here?

Dark clouds gather, my friends. Wizards has long been making weird and clumsy errors, but it bodes especially ill for me when they can't even learn from their own mistakes. Is the playtesting department doing their job? Does R&D just spend all of its time running surveys on how much people like Jace rather than producing a functional product? I'm not sure what they intend to do about this, but the answer seems to be twofold - firstly, a dedicated playtesting team who has no part to play in development or design. They don't go into the playtest with preconcieved notions on how the cards are supposed to be used - they play with what they're given and they catch the mistakes the designers didn't think of. Secondly, some sort of team with an archivist's experience with the game. If you made a mistake four years ago, don't make it again.

Errata is supposed to be a last-resort solution and mostly exists for the realm of tournament play: it's a band-aid method that forever leaves us with cards that don't actually do what they say they do (even before they've been released!) which is a major problem for a physical game. When Toyota manufactures cars that explode when you sneeze on the steering wheel, they recall them. It's a massive financial loss and a major embarrassment. Wizards is likewise putting out a product for a (voluntarily) buying consumer base here. If the quality and integrity of said product has been dipping to the point where you can't play without an open internet browser on hand, then that consumer base may grow jaded and withdraw. Funny how the company blew so much hot air about spoiler leaks cutting into the integrity of the game while they're over here letting glaring errors waltz off the assembly line.

These kinds of mistakes are just patheitc.