The legend rule is stupid

[DirkGently]

This isn't really so much an actual attempt to change anything, so much as a pointless rant.

So I feel like legendariness was a really neat idea conceptually, that wotc has had a hard time making work gameplay wise, and as a result they've stripped it of so much meaning that it may as well not exist.

So for starters, clones and legendaries make no sense. Cloning a legend, one would assume, would cause absolutely no problem. It's a CLONE. How would that create any kind of paradox? The point is that it's a copy.

Then you've got different versions of the same character being totally fine. Alternate reality versions, like red and white akroma, fine. Two different pirate jaces from the exact same story, though....come on. I always took the planeswalker uniqueness rule as a way to basically do the legend rule in a way that made sense, to avoid the silliness that came with having earlier/later versions of the same character. But nah, they chucked that because god forbid there's a limitation on running all the planeswalkers your heart desires. Gotta flog those flagship characters. Now they've got these totally pointless character tags hanging out on their type lines for nearly no reason whatever. Blurg.

And who knows why it's fine to have the same guy on two different sides of a battlefield (or even on the same side but controlled by your ally, I suppose, in 2hg) but as soon as both are under the same person's control, whoopsies, suddenly there's a problem.

Idk, maybe there's some lore %$#%$#% to make this all "make sense" but I think the rules as they are now are pretty freaking stupid. For my money, I prefer the way SWCCG did it back in the 90s, where unique characters were functionally restricted. Makes a hell of a lot more sense than the versions magic has gone through.

[folding_music]

I still mess this rule up, just so used to the new one burying the old one when I was really playing frequently! At least Spark Double has promising templating for future clones?

[pokken]

What I hate about the legend rule is it makes stupid rules advantages happen. For example:

The other day I cast a sculpting steel cloning golos, tireless pilgrim. The steel died, triggering scrap trawler and since the sculpting steel clone of Golos was 5 CMC, it could return itself (3 CMC) sculpting steel to my hand.

Without that I need a sac outlet to make that work. The sharuum, the hegemon + steel/metamorph combo works the same stupid way.

Turning legendary + clone into their own sac outlet is stupid.

That said, some legends are clearly balanced based on this. If I can clone elesh norn, grand cenobite everybody gonna have a bad time. Some planeswalkers are similarly balanced I'd think.

But I'm not sure about that. There are surely some pretty bonkers non-legends who scale out of control with clones, e.g. tidespout tyrant and nyxbloom ancient. So maybe it'd be fine.

Y'know the more I noodle on it the less I think it's that big of an issue. It would nerf some cards like Sakashima and Spark double, but it'd clean up a lot of dumb stuff in the rules.

[Mookie]

The way I see it, cards are made legendary for one of three reasons:

• Limiting factor for cards that effects which are problematic in multiples - Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is probably the most notable example, but I'll point to Anax, Hardened in the Forge and Torbran, Thane of Red Fell as examples in Standard.
• Balancing factor for cards that are significantly above-rate - see Geist of Saint Traft and Isamaru, Hound of Konda. These cards are strong, but you don't run them as a 4-of due to them being legendary.
• Flavor reasons - 'this card is extra-special' applies to a lot of cards, including anything designed for Commander.

I will agree that the legendary-as-downside conflicts with legendary-as-upside - there is some tension between 'we want to weaken the card by making it legendary' and 'we want to make this card legendary because it's sweet'. That said, I do prefer uniqueness being enforced as a mechanic to uniqueness being enforced as a deckbuilding restriction, as it is in some other games. Not a big difference for EDH due to it being singleton, but having legendary cards as a 3 or 4-of in other formats is a significant boon in terms of consistency.

But yeah, given how many iterations the legend (and planeswalker uniqueness) rules have been through, I wouldn't be surprised if there were another iteration at some point. Although if they mess with the rules and add a 'unique' tag to cards retroactively, that would sort of be a massive headache.

[DirkGently]

I mean, gameplay-wise I guess the rule is OK? If legendary didn't have any flavor baggage and was just used to slightly nerf some permanents, it'd be alright I guess, if pretty insignificant.

It's mostly the total flavor fail of the rule has annoys me. The rule is barely comprehensible in terms of what it's trying to signify anymore.

[Dunharrow]

It's a tough situation because good gameplay trumps flavor.

As far as gameplay goes, I like where it is now. I thought the old planeswalker rule was fine, but I think it made sense to make it the same as the legendary rule. Maybe it was needed to open the door to making a card with two walkers on it.

As far as clones go - an obvious flavour fail for when you clone your own creature. But there is no clean fix. Spark Double will hopefully be the way they do it from now on.

[gilrad]

Considering how Wizards have been all over the place with Legendary mechanics over the life span of the game wrt mechanics versus flavor, I'd wager they've had a tough time reconsiling the two themselves.

Old rule: only one allowed on the board at a time between all players, very few legends printed total. Strict mechanical effects, small impact overall, heavy on the flavor since they were generally the Frontline characters to the block's story arc.

The old Planeswalker rule combined with the old Legendary rule was pretty spot-on with flavor. I could see an alternate timeline where Wizards decided to errata all legends to something similar and print all legends with a legendary suptype from then on (Legendary Zurgo Creature - Human Warrior)

Then there was that whole Zendikar-era experiment where they didn't like the mechanical restrictions of legendary lands but they still wanted powerful lands from major locations of the world. So they ignored flavor completely in favor of making the mechanics work the way they wanted it to.

From a pure game design perspective, the whole mechanic probably really sucks though. From the designer's perspective, it was likely one of those things that is usually not a downside at all, but sometimes a really big downside, and when you're trying to design a set, that kind of variability is probably quite infuriating.

I suspect what really caused the pendulum to swing towards excising the mechanical elements of Legendary was the surge in Commander popularity. Without Wizard's control, the identity of legendaries went from downside (some of the time), to potential commander. The hype around each new printed legendary probably also encouraged Wizards to print more Legends per set.

Just some of my rambling thoughts.