The Legendary Creature Problem...

Here I muse over the number of legendary creatures in Standard sets...

[@yurisei6732]

The word Legendary by itself isn't a problem imo, in a way it's kind of nice that the legend rule means less doubling up on the same power cards. The problem is that legendary creatures are increasingly being designed to be "value-added" commanders. Instead of doing interesting things, they say "when the designated synergy event happens, draw a card and/or make a treasure". Thunder Junction had iirc something like 35 of these commanders that in some way gave you card or resource advantage. MTG has been streamlined to the point where these two things are really the only things that matter now, and value-added commanders just make this process happen faster while leaving no memorable impact of themselves.

[@Ragnasorcerer]

Completely agree. The problem is not the amount of legendaries, but the amount of lazy designed for commander cards. Legendary cards are important not only for the game balance through the legendary rule, but also to bring the story characters into the game. They keep the story moving making it more interesting. Also, I love how this comment has half the amount of likes the video has

[@Jbcblack]

Judging cards by “the 99” is such a commander player mentality

[@Boatanga]

Lmao yeah the people that play the format commander think about the format commander “ thinking about common cards, such a popper player thing to do” like what are you talking about bro

[@Jbcblack]

@@Boatanga too many legendary creatures is literally a problem caused by commander players and now yall are complaining about it

[@LongKestrel]

@@Jbcblack Commander players didn't cause shit, nobody asked for more legends, someone at Wizards decided more legendaries means bigger profits, there have been nothing but complaints about skewing MTG towards commander FROM commander players

[@bool1195]

legends don't exist solely for commander, skrelv is legendary because having multiple on board would be awful.

[@0zzmium]

Yeah it would be awful, awfully amazing. I fucking love multiple mother of rune effects on board at the same time, can't get enough of em. Need a few more for my taxes list honestly.

[@pyrefox]

Legendary as a balance tool died as soon as Commander started driving the sales. But you're right, it CAN be used as a balance tool... it just isn't anymore.

[@Enja_Near]

​@@pyrefoxResponding to a comment pointing out that Skrelv uses legendary as a balancing tool with "They don't do that anymore." Yeah it's rare, but clearly they still sometimes do it.

[@hircenedaelen]

The balance purpose of the legendary super type is to stop 1 player from having multiple of it at the same time (ik there are ways around it now, but that was the point). If an effect isn't so power that it would be game breaking to have multiple, the creature shouldn't be legendary. To look at it from another direction, characters getting made into creatures should do things you wouldn't want on non-legendary cards. There are 'legendary' creatures who make 0 appearances in any story with almost no relevance to the wider lore, so their design space would better fit a normal card

[@nicholasworsham7187]

It's weird watching magic become fully focused on commander. I think the legendary commons are cool because they are the few times that legendary creatures matter in limited.

[@nickd6303]

Some cases you could argue that some things are legendaries to reduce the chances of being copied, but wotc has been making cards to ignore that restriction.

[@Morpline]

It's hard to balance Legendaries, because while they can act as Commander, they are also playable in Standard and other sets, just as a card that only one of can be on the field.

[@ruttokyrpa3472]

"oh you are a irrelevant once mentioned side character in the latest standard sets story? You get a legendary card!"

[@NightOfCrystals]

I think RNA having 8 legends is totally fine. There is such an extreme excess of legendary creatures now that they could print sets with 5-8 legends for years and as you said, there are still thousands to choose from. I think ~10 legends per set is a decent balance, but they need to be interesting and worthwhile.

[@TheKreve]

I just like legendaries for flavour. This is a character not just "one of many".

[@andrewpost91]

One thing to note is that the 9 isn’t counting the precon commanders or backups. There’s actually 27 legendary creatures from the set to choose from Edit: I think all the searches are just pulling up the base sets and not the commander product

[@BlobThoughtsMTG]

Yep. I purposely searched only the base sets since every commander deck set has the same number. The Commander decks are another reason to lower the number of base set legends, because some of the coolest designs are often from there.

[@launchpadmcquack24]

15:52 DMU had a big spike in legendaries because it was specifically a legendary focused set, with historic being a major mechanic

[@mr.whistler6114]

I may be mistaken, but back in old school MTG, not every character appearing in the story arc of the set had a legendary card designed for. But today, you have a card for every main and minor characters, a card for those same characters with a cowboy hat, a card with again those characters but in peculiar situations, etc. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think more and more cards of the same characters should be designed to showcase a narrative, on the contrary. I looked for the Odyssey and Onslaught blocks (wich also combines Judgment, Torment, Scourge and Legion) and the research gave me only 30 legendary creatures for the two blocks combine. Some have been way long forgotten since then but other legendaries in these blocks are still seeing play in today's decks, wich is proof that they were well designed cards with unique mechanics even to this day. Mind me, unique doesn't necessarily means complexe. And in this block of two sets, only 1 or 2 characters appeared twice on different cards, but not in the same set, displaying their progress through the story. I think that in comparison, Lotr edition really bloated out with, as you said, 5 different legendary cards for each character. I feel like it was just a way for Hasbro to make profit by serializing cards in mass. But again, we also have 14 Jaces, 19 Chandras and 12 Lilianas. To me, this is the root of the problem. P.S. I also looked at the first Kamigawa block and there seemes to be a lot of uncommon legendaries. But this was a block that tried to bring legendary tribal deck as a valid strategy.

[@explodinglab]

I just don’t get the point of this video? Legendary isn’t meant only for commander, like if creatures like satoru wasn’t legendary it would be a lot better in modern. Also since Jodah the Unifier exists and is tier 3-4 in historic, every legendary creature in standard set just helps it

[@avatarofcloud]

Its just Commander Creep, nothing to really talk about.

[@andrewruoff4687]

I think Duskmourne had an apt amount of legends honestly. Some of the ones you could “cut” have some backstory that makes them more interesting and I like having specific characters in a set to like. There is also a slightly higher amount of legends that could have been walkers previously because of the desparking as an aside

[@pyrefox]

1) More Legends = More commander product, which is what they care about at the moment. No, they don't care for Standard. 2) More Legends = less opportunity to 4x everything in Standard = more creativity? So actually, is it really a bad thing? 3) More Legends = higher power level, because if the Legends suck, nobody will pick them as commander, and item 1) will fail. So, is it back to being a bad thing? I think it depends on which of 2) and 3) weight more on the game. I think 3) probably weights more, but I don't think the only solution is to lower the number of Legends... I think it is to lower the overall power level and ban more stuff.

[@pyrefox]

I bet that graph of # of legends spikes up right after Commander starts being a higher sales propeller than Standard.

[@westinrick802]

I disagree with your decision that because nobody would run it as a commander it shouldnt be legendary. Legendary creatures are not solely designed for commander. The video is still interesting. I do agree that there should be less legendaries as well.

[@KyleTremblayTitularKtrey]

We basically need 8 new ones. For the commander precons. Thats it.

[@Trinity0941]

Even as someone who loves using legendary creatures and have made decks that use exclusively legendary permanents (excluding lands), 19 legendary creatures per set still sounds like too much.

[@sparkierss3189]

I know that with absolute statements there's always going to be an exception, but I fuck with Beza, bounding spring hard- it's so nice to not think about trying to out-attrition your opponents and just focus on control and blinking general good stuff calamity, galloping inferno definitely is a rehash, but so is the Jolly Balloon Man. They all have somewhat different play styles and I appreciate that. For example- calamity can focus a lot more on having minimal board presence before hitting the ground running with two immediate copies of a creature with a burn ETB trigger. something like kiki jiki will lean a lot more into combo-y type decks and it's nice to not be associated with that play style

[@TheDirtyPineapple]

I used to collect all legends. Then, it became legendary creatures with promo stamps. Now, I just get what I get. Simply too much product to collect.

[@jaceg810]

I think that If the sets gimmick is "oops all legends" like legends, kamigawa or war of the spark, its oki, similarly to an artifact set having a suspicious amount of artifacts. What bothers me is that post war of the spark, its buckets of legends every set

[@Badassest]

All decks are or are becoming "goodstuff" decks. It's inevitable. Personally I don't mind. It's not about powercreep- it's always been about player desire to seek power ramp.

[@GolgariFungus]

There are too many legendaries, but judging based on if they belong in the 99 is not a good criteria at all. Judging cards based on commander is also the reason why Magic has so many issues nowadays too. Nadu was changed because they only playtested MH3 as commander, and not for Modern.

[@tinfoilslacks3750]

Commanders having to be legendary is the dumbest shit in the world when it's a singleton format. Just get rid of the concept.

[@im7254]

Or having to be creatures. I'd never use a creature if given a choice

[@MIKAEL212345]

as someone who doesn't play commander, why does your commander even have to be legendary? Seems like it would be more for everyone if any creature, or maybe any planeswalker too, could be your commander. Is it just a legacy rule? Or is there a good reason?

[@andrewruoff4687]

Hey that was my ask :)

[@Laevateinn-]

uncommon legendaries shouldn't exist

[@Laevateinn-]

the same suggestion is true for planeswalker