Pattern Recognition #57 - Legendary

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

22 February 2018

1435 views

Hello everyone! My name is berryjon, and I am TappedOut.net's resident Old Fogey and part time Smart Ass. I write this series, Pattern Recognition, as a means to entertain, educate and something else that starts with an E. Apparently, that's supposed to be ... checks dictionary ... expound, but I'm not sold on that. Oh well, I'll see what's next in my thesaurus for next week.

Today's article is the result of a HELL YEAH! moment that came down from Wizards regarding the upcoming set "Dominaria". That being, Dominaria will be the first Legends-focused set since the Kamigawa block.

Now, while I've been spending my time dancing around in glee, I realized that not everyone has the same connections and connotations that I do, and that I should, perhaps, explain why this is a big deal.

Let's start with what being Legendary actually means in terms of the rules. The current version version of the rule is found in 704.5j of the Comprehensive Rules, and states: If a player controls two or more legendary permanents with the same name, that player chooses one of them, and the rest are put into their owners’ graveyards.

Legendary is also what is called a 'supertype'. That is, it is a card type that exists 'above' the normal types of "Creature", "Instant" and such. The only other two relevant examples of Supertypes in the game right now are "Basic" to describe Basic Lands, and "Snow" which ... I really should write an article about that. In the pile you go! Anyway, when writing down a card's types, supertypes and subtypes, Legendary always comes first. Although to be fair, the only time this has mattered in the whole game (so far) is Dark Depths. Which I wish was Modern legal, but it's quite format warping.

Now, there are three different 'eras' of the Legendary rule, where the rule was different. I just described the last version of this rule.

Before that, from the release of Lorwyn until Rivals of Ixalan, the rule was a little different in how it applied to Planeswalkers. You see, while Legendary permanents checked for the name of the card - you could have Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Thalia, Heretic Cathar on the table at the same time because while they were the same person in the lore, they had different names, and thus did not trigger off each other - Planeswalkers had a variant of the Legendary rule that actually checked for their type. This meant that you couldn't have Jace, Memory Adept and Jace Beleren in play at the same time because they were both Jace.

However, now this particular rule has been removed, and all Planeswalkers have been errated to be Legendary, meaning you can now have Nissa, Genesis Mage and Nissa, Voice of Zendikar in play at the same time.

But still, this is parallel to the real second era of the Legendary Rule. You see, from Kamigawa until Magic 2014, Legendaries would, as a state based effect, cause all copies of that Legend to go into their owner's graveyard if there were more than one in play. This meant if I had Mirri the Cursed in play, and you cast your own Mirri the Cursed, then they would both be discarded as a state-based effect.

An interesting, but very narrow way to remove a permanent from the field. Mostly for mirror matches.

But before even that, the first version of the rule, from Legends to Kamigawa was even more oppressive. You see, once a Legendary permanent was on the battlefield, no other copy of that card can enter play by any means. So, I had a Gerrard Capashen? Well, if you wanted to play yours, you couldn't! You would have to get rid of mine before you could play yours.

So today's version is pretty open, allowing for good variety of play, as well as not causing the Commander crowd to get up in arms if two decks had the same Commander.

Now, for the history of Legends. It may surprise you, but the Legendary supertype first appeared in the set "Legends". With 61 examples in the set, Wizards committed heavily to the experiment in card uniqueness, and I'm pretty safe in saying that it worked out pretty well.

Now, because of this degree of experimentation, we can see a few things in these initial legends that aren't true nowadays. The first, and most important is that every single Legend was multi-coloured. Back in the day, there were constant rumours about a mythical 'sixth colour' to be added to the game (there still are, I'm looking at you purple) and Legends was when this all came to a head.

Wizards had a small problem. As part of the initial design philosophy, all the Legendary creatures had to be multicoloured, and that meant that you couldn't put the same card frame found on a card of a pure colour and place it onto a card with multiple colours in it. The answer was to create a new card frame in the colour 'Gold' and apply that equally to all multi-coloured cards.

And it worked! Excellent solution, Wizards!

Now, the second thing was having Legends at uncommon. The Legendary Lands and the vanilla Legends were all printed at uncommon, a state of affairs that wouldn't be repeated until Kamigawa.

Wait, Vanilla Legends? Legends that had no abilities? What is this?

Yeah. Barktooth Warbeard, Jasmine Boreal, Jedit Ojanen, Jerrard of the Closed Fist, Kasimir the Lone Wolf, Lady Orca, Sir Shandlar of Eberyn, The Lady of the Mountain, Tobias Andrion and Torsten Von Ursus are all Legendary creatures that have no abilities to them. They're just horribly overcosted creatures.

Lady Orca gets much of my scorn, for being a pale precursor to one of my favourite Legends - Tsabo Tavoc.

I say this, not only because of the similarities in the faces of these two, but also in how Wizards treated Legends before Kamigawa. (And the less said of Empress Galina, the better.) To be more specific, Wizards treated Legends as their own Tribe, with benefits and drawbacks to it. Though this wasn't a big thing.

You know, I've been meaning to put together a Tsabo Tavoc Commander deck, but I'm not sure how well having a Commander that reads "Protection from Commanders", and ", : Destroy target Commander." would go over.

Then came Kamigawa. Oh, boy did Kamigawa ever do all in on the Legendary aspect of its design. Legends at uncommon, Legends that flipped over, Legends that weren't permanents....

Oh yeah, let me explain that. Epic was a keyword that prevented you from casting any more spells throughout the game, but in exchange, you would automatically cast that one spell each upkeep until the game was done. Interesting, but not really ground-shaking in its design. I may harp on some keywords not getting the love and support they need and deserve, but Epic is not one of them.

Coinciding with the change in the way Legends were treated, cards like Day of Destiny provided a poor man's Anthem for Legends, and Tenza, Godo's Maul, which had additional benefits if the creature was Legendary, and as well!

Now, here's thing. With the exception of Mirror Gallery, all these Legends were still under the auspices of the new Legendary rule, which meant that decently powerful cards, like Zo-Zu the Punisher or the banned-in-modern Umezawa's Jitte, all had the risk of being destroyed simply because your opponent was playing one as well. It was an arms race of sorts, to be able to get and maintain control over your legends without worry about your opponents.

(memories of mirror match Samurai decks go here. urgh)

Now, Kamigawa has seen some ups and downs over the course of Magic's history. Mostly downs, as even Mark Rosewater considers it a low-point in design. He even uses this as an example of one of his principles of set design: If your theme isn't at common, it isn't your theme. Coming in between Mirrodin and Ravnica: City of guilds did it no favours either.

However, while the mechanics behind the block can be rightly criticised as poor, I mean I did a whole article lambasting what happened to Ninjitsu, the theme and flavour of the block can be seen as a diamond in the rough. And with the introduction of Tamiyo, the Moon Sage to the cast of characters and affiliates of the Jacetus League, it is shown that while Wizards may not be willing to go back to Kamigawa anytime soon, they are willing to bring Kamigawa to the players.

The Legendary theme of Kamigawa has made this block one of the ones that I have seen Commander players long for a return to. I mean, when your entire deck is built around a Legendary creature, you kinda want to see more of them, and interesting ones to boot.

And I don't mind that at all. I think that Commander deserves all the support it can get for a variety of reasons. Except Tiny Leaders. That's not real Commander.

Now, there is something about Legendary creatures that I want to mention here, if only so that I can get you people back in the Time Spiral drinking game. How many of you remember the Grandeur mechanic? Yes? Good. You see, this was designed as a way to make sure that when you play with Legendary creatures, you still had something you could do with the extras in your hand/deck. Discard them for a big effect! Hey, isn't this just a hyper-specialized form of Spellshaper?

You know what? I can live with that.

Legends are the unique characters in the game. They have Names, not just titles or descriptors. In a game that has a story (sometimes), they are the story. They are the face of the game, and the ones that Wizards want you to identify with, if the prevalence of "What Planeswalker are you?" tests on the internet are any indication of.

Legends have become iconic in the game, to the point where the first spoilers for a new set usually involve at least one Legendary creature. And a Planeswalker, but who cares about those? Legends can make the game fun, so let's have some fun!

Join me next time when I talk about ... something. I haven't thought of a subject yet. Maybe Snow? Maybe not.

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream, and you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!