http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/ar ... -mechanics



Sad-face.

Oh well. Guess they got tired of people going "why can't I have both?". Will this destroy Magic as we know it? Is this the end times? Nah. Just another day at the office.

Ugh planeswalkers were the thing I hated most about standard. Probably won't nug modern TOO badly (but negate is looking like a stronger sideboard card)

So what does this actually change? That two players can have a jace but only one each? I honestly dont remember how walkers worked.

Theoretically, with this change, you, as a player, could have one copy of each Jace card out on your side of the battlefield.

it means planeswalker subtypes don't do anything rules-wise anymore, for the most part.

you can have multiple jaces at once as long as they all have different names

It should be noted that, at least for the time being, you still cannot use planeswalkers as Commander generals unless they specifically state they can be used as Commander generals.

Apparently Mirror Gallery just sold out everywhere. Captain Sisay just had a spike in demand. Lay Bare the Heart just got worse.

But at least Empress Galina got better.

Ew. I mean, I knew it was coming, but it's still an ugly typeline. And if it was done for Jace... it wasn't strictly necessary. "... except the copies aren't Jaces" may read weird, but would have worked, I'm 99% sure.

It's an odd change. I thought it would be more likely that the legendary rule would be scrapped entirely than that its use would be expanded to cover planeswalkers. Aesthetically, I really don't like the change.

oh yeah, doy

I think they probably discussed scrapping both rules, but that a faction of Development argued successfully that the Planeswalker Uniqueness rule carries an important chunk of the work of balancing individual Planeswalker cards. So they decided to fold them together.

Having one rule is much better than having two. I'm agnostic as to whether they kept the better rule.

But wait, there's more!

Wow. Now that's a big deal. Saying it's "a chunk" of errata is putting it very mildly.

The redirection rule has always been a kludge, but it was deemed the least bad solution due to just how massive the errata would be (and messy, with cards like Blightning; would it be unable to hit planeswalkers, would it just fail to cause the discard on a planeswalker, or would it say "Blightning deals 3 damage to target player or planeswalker. That player or that planeswalker's controller discards two cards."?). The more cards they printed, the more errata would be needed, so I'm surprised that they've changed their mind on this.

Yeah, there was a reason they essentially said "lol no" to errataing back when planeswalkers were first released. Also, it means that any burn they print that hits players going forward also needs to hit planeswalkers. Otherwise we have tons of spells that look the same, but aren't.

(How would something like Acidic Soil look? "~ deals damage to each player or one planeswalker that player controls equal to the number of lands he or she controls."?)

One thing to note is that the card in the image says "target opponent or planeswalker", so it can now hit a planeswalker you or a teammate controls. So they aren't directly replicating the current redirection rule. This makes sense. It also means they might change interactions in other ways.

If "target opponent" becomes "target opponent or planeswalker", maybe "each player" becomes "each player and each planeswalker"? Variable damage cards like Acidic Soil would still need a "that player or that planeswalker's controller". And it would change the power level of all those cards.

I think it's more likely that they'd just leave off planeswalkers from those and have the errata affect only targeted damage. Having the choice to redirect or not be made on resolution is a big part of the weirdness of the current rule, so I don't think they'd want to keep that if they can avoid it.

My best guess would be that stuff like Sizzle will no longer be able to hit planeswalkers.

On one hand, I think this will clean up the gameplay of hitting planeswalkers with burn (no more "I bolt you, does it resolve? Okay, redirect"), and if you're only using new cards, it makes things easier to understand. This is great for online gameplay and eventually for standard, but the way this will affect old cards feels really messy and weird. Even in the simplest case, it'll be easy for someone to compare 2018 Lightning Strike with 2015 Lightning Bolt and conclude "one of these can target planeswalkers and the other one can't."

Indeed. And that level of errata is pretty unprecedented. The rules change that sparked this thread has the potential for the same confusion ("these old planeswalkers must not be legendary"), but that's unlikely to actually cause confusion: planeswalkers are all mythic and all represent specific characters, and they were always legendary-adjacent, so it's unlikely that people will think you can have multiple of the same old planeswalker on the battlefield.

The one rules change they made with big errata implications was the introduction of the tribal card type, but that also didn't cause that problem, since it worked in the opposite way. That is, while the removal of the planeswalker redirection rule will mean that old Lightning Strike looks like it can do less than it actually can, the introduction of tribal just meant that some old tribe-affecting cards look like could do more than they actually could, and only in nigh-irrelevant ways. At worst, you'll think you can sacrifice Boggart Shenanigans to Airdrop Condor for 0 damage.

Please Wizards do it and do it as soon as possible.