burn a planeswalker
Asked by jaggthemiller 9 years ago
so i recently discovered you can burn a planeswalker right when it enters the battlefield like drop down Kiora, the Crashing Wave and you can instant Shock it but you can +1 and keep it alive, my friend and i are confused on the details of HOW if planeswalkers ability activates as a sorcery and burn is an instant, can anyone help unravel this problem we are haveing in detail of saying how this works.
jaggthemiller says... #2
oh alright i get it thanks i will be sure to direct this information to my friend so we can clear this problem we are having as a missunderstanding
July 16, 2014 4:10 a.m.
Please remember to mark an answer as accepted once the correct one (Draugo's, in this case) is posted.
Draugo says... Accepted answer #1
There's a slight misunderstanding in timing here. What happens that when a player plays a Planeswalker (or any spell for that matter) when they are the active player then they receive the priority to act again when that spell resolves. Now since they are the active player, they have priority, the stack is empty and it's their main phase (since they just played a Planeswalker it has to be) they can activate one of the Planeswalkers abilities. The +x or -x printed on Planeswalker abilities is the cost for activating the ability (if you look carefully there's a : between it and the ability effect), so it's done as the ability goes to the stack. This means that the active player can play a Planeswalker, have it resolve and then activate one of its abilities before other players get to act, usually increasing the loyalty counter amount on that Planeswalker. Now when the ability is on the stack then other players can respond but the cost has already been payed so for example Kiora, the Crashing Wave can have 3 loyalty counters when other people get to act.
Notice however that if the active player does something else than activating the Planeswalkers ability, casting Divination for example then non active players can respond to that by casting a burn spell and redirecting the damage to the Planeswalker and the active player can't activate the ability in response. So you can Shock Kiora for example if they do anything else than activate the ability.
July 16, 2014 3:15 a.m.