Planeswalker Redirection Rule - Magic The Gathering

Currently in Magic the Gathering, Planeswalkers are a bit of a shoved into the gameplay card. This means that the functionality of older cards were rigged together to work with them. Things like dealing damage to target player and creature combat damage to players.

So as of right now, spells that deal damage to a target player can hit a planeswalker, if you target the player that controls the planeswalker and upon resolution of the spell, choose to redirect the damage to the planeswalker. This is the Redirection rule. This allowed cards like Lightning Bolt to work with this new card type and mechanics.

Coming soon with the set release of Dominaria, it seems that Wizards of the Coast will be changing the rule, and therefore technically changing all the text on cards that deal damage to players to say, "target creature, player or planeswalker". Some cards might change functionality because of this if they are chosen not to upgrade.

For example, Crackling Doom, does 2 damage to each opponent, and the update to that might have to be "2 damage to each opponent or one planeswalker they control". This can be a very wordy update across the entire magic library.

I say that because the current rules means that Leyline of Sanctity currently protects your planeswalkers and unless that cards also gets an upgrade (along with witchbane orb and all other player hexproof cards), it will stop protecting planeswalkers. This will be a very critical update for Superfriends decks (planeswalker focused decks), and could result in an overall huge reduction in power for planeswalkers (which, quite honestly will be a good thing, since their powerlevel is quite high).

Other redirection damage spells that could be upgraded are things like Electrolyze. This cards can split 2 damage among any number of creatures and players. With this upgrade, the wording could allow for 1 damage distributed among two planeswalkers. This would be a huge upgrade for the spell since it currently can only do 1 damage to a planeswalker and a creature or 2 to a planeswalker, but it can not do 1 to a player and 1 to a planeswalker.

Dominaria releases in late April (27th) and we'll see what the full ramifications of this rules change will bring, but I think it will fix a huge issue that has existed with Planeswalkers and in some cases will severely lower their power level in some builds. A lot of these changes are speculation based on what they might do to make the spells work mostly how they have before. We'll be getting a full update closer to the release date over a month from now.