Targeting Planeswalkers

[Offler]

I am bit confused...

Planeswalker can be attacked with creatures. Technically it works like with any other player, but if there is a spell like Ghostly prison or Propaganda there is not necessary to pay mana for attacking a planeswalker.

But if there is for example Imperial mask... Owner of mask cannot be target of spells or abilities. I have shock on hand. Can i deal damage to a Planeswalker with it even when there is Imperial mask in play?

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Article.aspx?x=magic/rules/planeswalkers

I believe i cannot. Even when a Planeswalker can be directly attacked it cannot be directly harmed by magic. You must be able deal damage to the player and if you are able, you can deal that damage to a planeswalker instead.

Well i think it is strange - this makes quite a big difference ways how can be a planeswalker protected or damaged.

I think it should be better if those two ways of dealing damage to a planeswalker will be equal (magic or combat) when it comes to spells like Ghostly prison or Imperial mask. I just dont want to say which method is better.

[Adan]

Well, Planeswalkers are basically permanents. You can wreck them with Maelstrom Pulse, Vindicate, Oblivion Ring or Vampire Hexmage and Aether Snap.

But when it comes to damage, you first have to deal damage to the controller. If you would deal damage to a opponent, you have the possibility to redirect the damage that would be dealt to the opponent to one of his planeswalkers.

So, Ivory Mask and Imperial Mask protect Planeswalkers from direct damage but not from Vindicate and such.

I have no clue whether Ghostly Prison is only active for creatures attacking you, i guess it should also be true for creatures attacking the Walkers, but I'm not sure about that.

[Maveric78f]

As far as I can see, you're right in all your saying. That's not intuitive but that's how it works.

[Mayk0l]

Propaganda doesn't work for planeswalkers, you can attack them for free.

[parallax]

The reason is that Ghostly Prison says "Creatures can't attack you unless their controller pays :2: . . .". They can't attack you, but they can attack your planeswalker. Contrast with Moat, which reads "Creatures without flying can't attack.". They cannot attack you or your planeswalker.

[Offler]

Well the way how Propaganda and ghostly prison dont protect also planeswalker is really not intuitive, and from the opposite point of view the way how Imperial mask protect them is also not intuitive.

I believe that it might cause a lot of problems in my current metagame i play. Also people here believe that they know the rules about the cards, but when i read the rules topics here, and later i read the topics on the forum in my city i see a lot of differences between rules interpretations.

I am starting to believe that Type2 playing might cause poor rules knowledge for people who play too short and know only limited amount of cards which were not interacting each other during the T2 cycle. People who are playing Vintage or legacy here have a heck better knowledge about rules.

It was a suprise for me that Propaganda cannot protect Planeswalker from being attacked. Nobody here was aware of that.

This reminds me situation when i was the only one hereb who was aware that Counterbalance can counter even Splitsecond spells.

[Locutus]

The potentially unintuitive thing here is that Planeswalkers are permanents and not players, although they can be attacked like players. Shock reads "Shock deals 2 damage to target creature or player.". A planeswalker is neither a creature nor a player, so you can't target it with your Shock. You have to target the controller, then redirect the damage. If you can't target the controller, you can't harm the planeswalker. If there were a card reading something along the lines of "~bla~ deals X damage to target creature or planeswalker", you could target the planeswalker directly, even with an Imperial Mask in play.

[jimirynk]

Can you redirect the loss of life off cruel ultimatum to a Planeswalker?

[heroicraptor]

No. It's lifeloss. It's not damage.

[Offler]

I am getting headache from this :)

[Mayk0l]

The potentially unintuitive thing here is that Planeswalkers are permanents and not players, although they can be attacked like players. Shock reads "Shock deals 2 damage to target creature or player.". A planeswalker is neither a creature nor a player

I guess they had no choice in this, because otherwise all the burn printed before Planeswalkers would be useless in stopping them. They'd be overpowered.

[RogueMTG]

I guess they had no choice in this, because otherwise all the burn printed before Planeswalkers would be useless in stopping them. They'd be overpowered.

QFT, the only other real options are pretty messy.

I mean, I guess they could have done a sweeping errata to tack "or planeswalker" onto every direct damage spell that could ever hit a player... sounds like an awful idea though.

The inconsistency comes with how combat damage works, because while you can't shoot a planeswalker directly with a lightning bolt, you can send your guys directly at them.

Unfortunately, if combat was changed to match the "redirect" scheme, blocking decisions would become painfully hard, you wouldn't ever know whether they were hitting you or your walker.

Whether this is would be a good thing or a bad thing I don't know. My guess is that they probably tried it and found it unfun... oh well.