Great Designer Search 2 - Essay 04: Remove An Existing Rule

R&D has recently been looking at rules in the game that aren't pulling their weight. If you had to remove an existing rule from the game for not being worth its inclusion, what would it be?

If I were to remove an existing rule it would be the most troublesome rule I see: the way damage spells work with Planeswalkers. I would eliminate the current rule about non-combat damage and Planeswalkers.

Currently, the rule is that you may redirect non-combat damage from a source you control to a planeswalker that player controls. So if you want to use Lightning Bolt to damage a Planeswalker then I must first target the player who controls the Planeswalker. Then the Bolt must resolve. Then the Bolt’s controller (me) must choose to redirect the damage.

There are several problems with this rule. It’s clunky. It’s not intuitive. It’s the only Magic rule (not counting specific combinations of cards) where you target one thing so that you can affect a different thing. The player controlling a Planeswalker doesn’t chose when to redirect the damage, only the person causing the damage. Casual players often forget they can redirect damage or stumble over how to do it. It also creates a guessing game for the player being targeted: if my opponent controls more than one Planeswalker he not only doesn’t know if I will redirect the damage but also doesn’t know to which Planeswalker.

I would replace this rule with a new rule that allows spells and abilities to treat Planeswalkers as players for targeting purposes. This makes things much simpler, clearer, and is the obvious solution. Now if I want to damage a Planeswalker with Lighting Bolt I cast the spell targeting the Planeswalker I want to damage. This might also lead to an errata of spells such as Lightning Bolt reading “…3 damage to target creature, player, or planeswalker.”

At least one other GDS2 entrant argued in favor of mana pools not emptying until the end of the turn (instead of at the end of each Step) which didn't occur to me at the time of my essay but which I also think is a great idea.