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My opponent attacks with Angelic Visitor which he then discards to search his deck for Peter. Is Peter protected from discard and capture?

Current precedent is that he would be, based on AUtO>Gideon.

Re-reading the definition of immune/protect in the REG, though, I'm not entirely sure why.

Immune and protect abilities target the cards that gain the immune or protected status.

Targeting defaults to play so by default I don't think AUtO/AV can protect cards in deck/discard. Unless there's a component of targeting a group that is constantly updating the targets of the protect if someone from the group enters/leaves play, which would explain AV but not AUtO.

Strictly speaking, AUTO (and AwtSN, with regards to Samson's Site Access) target AFTER the exchange.

An ongoing ability, depending on the targeting of the particular ability, updates its targets while it remains ongoing.

At a minimum, that should mean group targeting updates as new members are introduced - which covers Peter in this scenario.  You could even argue that applies to Gideon/Samson, since there could be multiple on the table (not necessarily yours).

Hey,

In the New Rulings thread, number 13 is:

If an instant ability is prevented, it cannot later activate if the prevention is negated.  Ongoing abilities will activate if the ability preventing them is negated.

That is the change to gameplay resulting from the far more general systematic change described on page 5 of REG 3.0.0 under Ongoing Ability:

An ongoing ability, depending on the targeting of the particular ability, updates its targets while it remains ongoing. If an ongoing ability is prevented ​from activating, but the ability that stopped it from activating is later negated​, then the ongoing ability activates and updates targets at that moment.

We said for years that all abilities declare targets only at the instant they were played.  We then made exceptions for a couple abilities and looked the other way on a couple of abilities that didn't actually get played that way.  We have now made things more consistent and declared that all ongoing abilities declare targets dynamically.

What this means for the ruling in question; the protect ability on Angelic Visitor is ongoing and remains active even after Angelic Visitor is discarded.  When Peter enters battle he becomes a valid target for the protect ability, the protect ability updates it's targets to include Peter, and Peter is protected for the rest of the turn.

Tschow,

Tim "Sir Nobody" Maly