For Challenge # 031, now that permanents are allowed.

So, the idea here is that familiars are slightly better than lands; but you can only have one at once. Creatures can't attack them; (nor can they attack) but it's ALWAYS worth shooting them directly instead of the player holding them.

Replacement is intended to allow you to transfer equipment/enchantments, assuming the set that introduced these followed up with such a thing.

They can be thought of as 'limited playability strictly better lands' or as 'planeswalker light'

Nifty idea. It manages to seem different enough to any other card type to be almost worth the type. It's something like a World Land though (with of course different flavour). Except each player can have one, and they can be damaged...

Oh, dear. They can be damaged. What by? Are you proposing to errata Shock and all the thousands of other burn spells to say "target creature, player or familiar"?

Well, I gave it a toughness. I was assuming it'd be like planeswalkers - you can shoot them instead of a player, if you like.

Or maybe there'd just be plenty of familiar destruction spells in the set that introduced them.

I'm not sure what should be able to deal damage to familiars, but if the answer is "burn spells", presumably we'll use the same dodge of allowing direct damage to players to be redirected to familiars as well as planeswalkers (or to familiars and players simultaneously).

In fact, I wish wizards had been able to errata shock to be "creature, player or planeswalker" rather than fudge the comprehensive rules, although I assume they're right that it was the best compromise.

In fact, given what damage does (duplicated through the familiar) it might be better for me to just say "When you lose life, your familiar takes that much damage"