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Jul 3, 2012 -- 1:04PM, Qmark wrote:

Jul 3, 2012 -- 12:37PM, Qilong wrote:

I would respond to Qmark -- again -- but at this point I do not think he's taking my posts into account in his/her responses.

Your inteneded purpose is covered by several things already and thus isn't needed, and the logic, reason, and mathematics Dragon_Nut laid out above illustrates why a "destroy target planeswalker" probably shouldn't be printed.

At this point, I am sure you have chosen to ignore what I wrote (up to and including not having read it). My argument is not that there should, but that there could, and that it helps solve a fundamental problem. As I mentioned -- in agreement with you -- Oring helps solve this little predicament. Similarly, that fact that WotC continually prints cards that specific PWs on them shows that they recognize a need to point out the fact that cards need to clarify to players, especially new ones (to with the Core Set commons are initially pointed at) that Planeswalkers are permanents, and that they are vulnerable to a variety of cards. It isn't intuitive that they are vulnerable to these things, despite the fact that we are 4 years down the road from their initial printing.

Jul 3, 2012 -- 1:26PM, Dragon_Nut wrote:

I figure it's worth noting that flavoring a card as "Destroy target Planeswalker" is challenging because of the flavor difference between a Planeswalker and a Legendary Creature. If I summon, say, Memnarch , I'm not actually summoning the real Memnarch. I'm summoning the idea of Memnarch.  The essential essence of Memnarch. It may look like Memnarch, but from a flavor standpoint it's actually just a mana construct that is separate from the real deal. (This idea is discussed in some depth near the beginning of the Ice Age novel, incidentally)

On the other hand, when you summon a Planeswalker, the idea is that they're actually stopping whatever they were doing to come help you out for a bit. You are actually bringing Chandra Nalaar to come party with you for a little while. They'll leave if you make them put up with too much abuse, or if you don't adequately protect them, but ultimately you're bringing in the actual Walker.

Indirect flavor breaks are standard in Magic. You can equip eighty swords on a River Boa or give Flight to a Steel Wall . That said, direct flavor breaks are rare. Actually printing a card that destroyed 'Walkers would be a direct flavor break. It's one thing that Bramblecrush happens to work on 'Walkers, because that can be passed off as an indirect result of the complex system of the game. If you are destroying a 'Walker, you are creating a card with the sole intent and purpose of murdering a being of the same power as the player supposedly have. That would have to be something on the level of Door to Nothingness .

You can change it from 'Destroy target Planeswalker' to 'Remove all loyalty counters from target Planeswalker' but at that point you may as well print 'Remove all counters from target permanent' because it's more elegant and has more flexibility.

Sorin, Lord of Innistrad destroys planeswalkers. If he can do it, why can't you? =p

Jul 3, 2012 -- 2:14PM, Qmark wrote:

Jul 3, 2012 -- 2:10PM, TobyornotToby wrote:

That's like saying the baseline cost to destroy an artifact is 3 ?

Almost.
It's like saying, "Why the hell would it cost more than Hexmage?"

But without Shatter or Smelt , we wouldn't know the true baseline for "destroy target artifact". It helps to have a ceiling, 'it will be less than this', but it could get more specific.

Jul 3, 2012 -- 6:55AM, Dragon_Nut wrote:

I'm against Planeswalker specific removal for a very simple reason: Let's say you make "Destroy target Planeswalker" an uncommon. (Targeted single permanent type destruction tends to be common , but for 'Walkers we'll do a rarity bump)

One out of every 8 boosters contains a Mythic. One out of every 3 mythics in M12 was a Planeswalker. Net total that means that one out of every 24 boosters (On average) has a Planeswalker. There were 63 uncommons in M12. 3 out of them were in any given booster. Let's say one of them is our destroy target 'walker card. The odds of pulling it is 1 minus the chance of not pulling it or 62/63*61/62*60/61 or .0476 which means 1 out of every 21 boosters on average contains our destruction card.

In other words, there would be more copies of the destruction card than there would be things for it to destroy.

I'd just like to note that this argument didn't work for Angel's Herald and friends. There are far more Angel's Herald than there are Empyrial Archangel for it to find. Even working on the assumption that you might want 4 Heralds in a deck for just 1 of the mythic, there are too many.

I agree that "destroy target planeswalker" shouldn't be printed yet, and probably not until the block where there are a bunch of uncommon planeswalkers. The flavour is wrong. You could probably word it "Target planeswalker loses all loyalty" for a more flavourful version, but that'd lose the nice cycle-ness.