Countering a Planeswalker

[GuudBooi]

Is it a good idea to have planeswalker effects be able to be casted even no matter if you try to remove them with an instant ?
Certain effects can be deadly in some cases like the mill one of Jayce because you cannot even try to remove him before he uses his activation ability cause he can cast the ability on top of your removal.
Shouldn't some planeswalker effects be casted only as a sorcery so they would need a better planned hand to counter possible removals from their planeswalker ?

I was playing a game that went long enough to the point we had low cards in our deck and the opponent would have milled himself if the game countinued as normal cause his deck was full on control, but they simply played 2 jayce one after another and milled me for 30 having total 0 counter for it.
Now i think i didn't have an instant in that situation to kill a planeswalker so i would have lost regardless in those situations, but in other instances where i would have wanted to overcome it there would be simply no way of getting out from it since i can't counter it with a removal.

If i could counter with a removal like Get lost and the opponent was forced to play some counter spell, fine it is reasonable and they planned it beforehand but without these cases i am simply left at their mercy no matter what, isn't that a bit unfair ?

[Argstein]

you can use a counterspell to stop them from hitting the field
if you let them hit the battlefield though the controller then gets priority back to cast one of their planeswalker abilities before you can remove them with a spell
in the case of certain strong abilities this can be really crazy but otherwise planeswalkers should be fairly easy to deal with
there's even a card called blood on the snow that can destroy all planeswalkers at once

[Tom the Mime Artist]

It's no more unfair than a creature, artifact or enchantment having an enters effect. This is one of the reasons people play countermagic.

Planeswalker abilities can only be activated at sorcery speed anyway, except in fringe cases like The Wandering Emperor and Teferi, Master of Time You don't get a chance to respond because there's generally nothing that gives you priority between the planeswalker spell resolving and the activation of the planeswalker ability.

[Jeysie]

Basically, once something goes on the stack, it stays there unless you make the conditions necessary for the effect somehow stop existing.

Simply removing the source of an effect after it's been fully cast never removes the effect on its own. Something which seems to trip up a lot of people (especially since I know of other card-based games where removing the source does stop the effect).

So in order to adjust this they'd basically have to either completely change how the stack works or make an exception just for this, both of which I feel are probably more confusing than useful.

[Winter Wolf]

*most* planeswalker abilities only activate on your own turn when no other abilities or spells are on the stack. This means they typically can't just respond to your Get Lost (or whatever) by using the ability.

However, priority is an important thing to remember. WIth priority a player who successfully lands a planeswalker, will get to activate it before you can remove it because they retain priority naturally without having to even claim it (via the control button toggle).

This is not particularly unfair, as it is inline with M:TG rules. That said, there are certainly anti-planeswalker advocates who think PWs are unfair because they add a relatively hard to interact with angle to the game. Less so now than when they were first introduced. (And the rules about how they are interacted with has changed since then. "Direct damage" must now be targeted at them instead of their controller for example.

But now that there are a number spells/abilities that address them, most people just accept that they add another dimension to M:TG strategy and leave it at that. Yes, Jace the Millfiend is certainly an annoying card because mill tends to get under people's skin (as another hard to interact with wincon.) And he might be unfair in that sense. However, thankfully mill is typically not a good competitive strategy and most players don't bother with it. Unlike say discard or toxic.

[ice]

blue is overpowered wow what a shocker

[Leonaras]

Since i was dropped on my head as a baby i only recently realised that remove counter mechanics and proliferate mechanics interact with planeswalker loyalty.

Lots of things can help against plainswalkers, board pressure, hard removal, counter removal , counter spells, discard or direct damage. Same with anything in magic if you dont have a response and they are able to set up its often game over.

[Berserkr]

Цитата допису Tom the Mime Artist:

Planeswalker abilities can only be activated at sorcery speed anyway

Which is why I never got the concept of their ability being able to be played before an instant can kill them, instant should beat sorcery, anyway don't bother trying to explain why it is this way I just always thought it was stupid
Same way in eternal someone can put a weapon on a unit before you can kill the unit with a dmg spell when it was killable before the weapon got on it, fast spell should beat out attachment but it doesn't

[GuudBooi]

Цитата допису Winter Wolf:

*most* planeswalker abilities only activate on your own turn when no other abilities or spells are on the stack. This means they typically can't just respond to your Get Lost (or whatever) by using the ability.

However, priority is an important thing to remember. WIth priority a player who successfully lands a planeswalker, will get to activate it before you can remove it because they retain priority naturally without having to even claim it (via the control button toggle).

This is not particularly unfair, as it is inline with M:TG rules. That said, there are certainly anti-planeswalker advocates who think PWs are unfair because they add a relatively hard to interact with angle to the game. Less so now than when they were first introduced. (And the rules about how they are interacted with has changed since then. "Direct damage" must now be targeted at them instead of their controller for example.

But now that there are a number spells/abilities that address them, most people just accept that they add another dimension to M:TG strategy and leave it at that. Yes, Jace the Millfiend is certainly an annoying card because mill tends to get under people's skin (as another hard to interact with wincon.) And he might be unfair in that sense. However, thankfully mill is typically not a good competitive strategy and most players don't bother with it. Unlike say discard or toxic.

I mean I like planeswalkers, even lore wise the feeling of an actual protagonist coming to help feels very flavourful and from the planeswalker i have met they are fairly balanced since most to reach their final power which is usually the stronger, they need more than one turn or even in the case of vraska oneshotting with 18 poison counters she stills needs the enchantment on board set to level 3 before so you have counterplay.

Jayce seems the only outlier which works on it s own and has a finisher immediately accessible.
Basically the control deck without him is set to a natural disadvantage cause if we both go late i have basically a countdown on my head.

Basically my enemy was able to play bl2 jayce in a turn cause we were increadibly late and i got mille by 30 cards, when decks have generally 60 cards and games go late there is basically nothing you can do.
If I was able to counter him with a destroy effect before he had the ability to activate it s final power it would be fine cause again he seems the only one able to come off by his own and set a lethal.

Maybe I csn rush the enemy down maybe not but it depends more to the cards we get cause generally i also tend to not go incredibly aggro from the get go, and it was a deck with enough removals and so on.

The only argument seems to be for counterspell, but it still seems incredibly weird as a problem problem cause generally counterspell seems to be mostly colour specific and i in this case play blue so possibly i could put some, but what other colour combinations do in this case, hope and prayers ?



Jayce seems the only one so problematic from the planeswalker i have seen cause thr rest have access to only their normal powers mostly and even if it goes through before getting destroyed it still is a somewhat fair effect in terms both of impact and cost effectiveness.

Getting 2 jayce in the same turn and getting milled for 30 is just nuts, i have not met much situations like this to the point of needing to specifically countering it with counterspells but this fact aside that seems kinda bonkers idk

[Winter Wolf]

There are a number of situations that are hard or impossible to counter if you let them succeed. The ditch a portal to phyrexia and reanimate for 5 mana combo comes to mind. It is not quite an instant win but if you lack an answer you lose to its inevitability. Part of the game is countering your opponent's attempt to make an inevitable game state.

[ʍolɟ ǝɥʇ ǝsɹǝʌǝɹ]

Play glissa and I'm sure your matchups will drop to 0

[Rincewind]

Yea Jace the miller's bastard offspring should be drawn and quarterd.

Then we can defecate on his disgusting corpse.

And i play golgari superfriends

[The_Dybbuk_King]

Цитата допису GuudBooi:

isn't that a bit unfair ?

no

https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Timing_and_priority