Does Magic Have Too Many Legendary Creatures?

The Legendary card type has had an interesting history in Magic: The Gathering. Going as far back as the set that shares a namesake, Legendary Creatures were designed to be representative of heroic and mythical characters. Over time however, the form Legends take has shifted in mechanics, flavor, and frequency. It’s no surprise that R&D and Wizards as a whole is more focused on the Commander and kitchen table markets, and a sentiment shared between new players and casual players is the desire to have more Legendary Creatures to play with- after all, in Commander formats that Legendary Commander slot serves as a starting point for what the ‘theme’ of the deck will be. This, however, has led to a push back against the printing of more Legendaries. More enfranchised and lore-focused players feel as though the abundance of Creature - Legendary cards cheapens the experience of these cards: both when they are pulled from packs or played on boards.

What does printing more Legendary cards do, mechanically? Well, depending on what rarity the legends fit into, these cards can impact draft choices when signpost uncommons sport that flashy typeline. A good example would be from Ahmonket draft- where your mono-color monuments were also Legendary. Even if you were running a 1-to-2 color deck, the Legendary typing would disincentivize you from taking multiple monuments, while the uncommon rarity ensured there would be many of the monuments available. The Legend rule is a powerful thing in constructed formats too (even more so before the Legend rule was changed to prevent all Legendary creatures from being kill-spells for themselves, forcing players to run copies of meta threats in the sideboard to hose decks running those threats). Sheoldred, The Apocalypse is an effect that is necessary in the mono-black shell currently in Standard, but the Legendary tag introduces some baggage. Deckbuilding becomes a balance of “How many of these do I run so I can ensure I draw into it?” versus “How many dead cards can I suffer in my hand from drawing TOO many of this?”. As such, lists fluctuate between one, two, or three copies of the card. Of course, this isn’t even mentioning how Commander thrives off of Legendary printings to enable new deck concepts or riffs of existing concepts. How many Boros “Equip things, accrue value” Commanders are running around now?

And that flows into some of the problems people have with this many Legendary Creatures. Yes- extra Legendary cards introduce interesting decisions in both drafting, deckbuilding, and gameplay, but it also can be the same. It can be stale. Detractors of the current swath of Legendaries being printed every set complain that without scarcity, these cards don’t feel Legendary. Plus, with these cards being printed at Uncommon, we see these supposed mythical figures and artifacts and spells often in boosters and drafts. It dilutes the essence of a Legendary typeline, even before we mention the Vorthos players who feel like current Legendary creatures lack any lore or story or flavor. After all, when every set has 30+ Legendary cards… how much story or lore can they all get? Commander players aren’t exempt from this either. It feels bad that the pet Commanders you brew and spend so much time with really don’t exist much outside snippets of lore that you need a wiki to find. With more and more types of cards receiving the Legend treatment, it can feel like the moniker is less of an impactful decision and more of a tacked on addition to facilitate gameplay in Commander formats or a weak tie-in to a story spotlight.

There is another side to this though- some cards NEED to be legendary for balance reasons, as the technology of the Legend subtype and rule 420.5e enable the ability to soft restrict effects on board. There’s a sizeable chunk of the Legacy players who wish Karakas was Legendary. There are interesting ways to make Legendaries matter- after all it is a "tribe" by subtype. And outside of a vague sense of it “feeling” off, there’s no reason a set can’t have lots of Legendaries to facilitate the many different formats that a set caters to. There are characters in the lore that people enjoy and would love to see in a Legendary card frame. Sets like Commander Legends function with lower-rarity Legendaries to make interesting draft environments. While it’s a vocal majority, people do still love seeing new Commanders printed for the themes they like. Opening a Legendary does feel more memorable to new players, even if older players feel like opening that same Legendary card takes something away from it. Hell- I got back into Magic and Commander through opening a Ghalta, Primal Hunger from Ixalan. I wouldn't be writing articles if it wasn't for a Legendary card. We won’t be seeing less Legendaries from Wizards any time soon, as we’re still deep in the Commander era, but there are still interesting discussion to be had about the influx of Legendary creatures and what it means for the function and flavor of Magic: The Gathering.