Over the past few years, legendary creatures have slowly become one of the biggest talking points in Magic. With the meteoric rise of Commander, the supertype took on a whole new level of importance, and Wizards started pushing it harder in turn. While it has dialed things back in recent mainline sets, the newfound prominence of Universes Beyond has more than made up for it.
Since each Universes Beyond set needs to represent a ton of different named characters, we’ve naturally seen a lot more legends printed recently. This includes legendary creatures printed all the way down at common, something that was once unthinkable for MTG. TMNT has thrown this issue into sharp focus, with many players on social media clamoring for change, prompting a response from Magic’s design team.
Legendary Overload
The biggest issue with MTG printing legendary creatures at common is the mechanical awkwardness it causes. At a common rarity, it’s extremely easy for players to unavoidably pick up multiple copies of the same Legend in Draft and Sealed. This means players are more likely to run afoul of the legend rule, creating clunky Limited experiences. As many players have pointed out on social media, this is a pretty significant problem.
While less concrete than the gameplay issues, players are also just finding the sheer number of legends in recent sets a bit much. So many legendary cards, especially when they represent the same characters, are creating feelings of redundancy and overload. Common legends aren’t totally responsible for this, of course, but opening up the rarity has certainly exacerbated the issue.
The Rosewater Defense
Amid all of the controversy surrounding TMNT, the designers of MTG have weighed in on the legendary-creatures-at-common debate. Mark Rosewater, in particular, has stepped in to defend the uptick in legends on his Blogatog, with his main points concerning Universes Beyond sets as player experiences.
“The number one advantage is more people get to open up a pack with a card of their favorite character. […] Being in common, also means the character is relevant in limited in a lot more games.”
Mark Rosewater, via Blogatog
As he notes in a post from earlier this week, printing well-known legendary creatures at common allows them to play a bigger role in Limited. This is the main way many new players engage with the game, especially through Prerelease, so it makes sense to “give people what they want” in terms of iconic characters.
“We can make legendary creatures (even at common) slightly more powerful than normal because you can’t (usually) have multiple copies of them in play.”
Eric Engelhard, via Wizards of the Coast
Joining Rosewater’s defense of common legendary creatures, Eric Engelhard‘s main point was a power balance one. The ability to power up a card design with a drawback gives players more exciting cards to play with, and Wizards more room to stretch design space. This is particularly exciting for Pauper, which never used to get legendary creatures at all.
On top of defending Wizards’ current legendary usage, Engelhard’s article also made a strong case against switching to a new system. While many players have suggested something like this, including the removal of the legend rule entirely, such a move comes with significant baggage. Players are used to the rule now, for one thing, so changing it will require a period of re-education. The legendary problems facing Universes Beyond sets also don’t really apply to in-universe Magic sets, so such a change could impact them negatively.
The Days To Come
Moving forward, it’s unclear how exactly things will turn out with regards to legendary MTG creatures at common. Based on Engelhard’s article, it seems unlikely that we’ll stop seeing them altogether. As he notes there, Wizards already made a bunch of named TMNT characters into generic non-legendary cards in the set, which, in theory, should help the issue. We still saw a ton of them, however, which points to common legends becoming the new norm for Universes Beyond.
While we may not see less common legends going forward, we could see a change to how legends in general are handled. Engelhard’s article also mentioned the possibility of including non-legendary named characters at common, so players could play with Leonardo in Limited without running into the legend rule. It also mentioned the possibility of introducing a new “term or symbol” which would let you use a creature as a Commander, but again dodge the legend rule.
Though Rosewater is reportedly on board with these ideas as well, so far, the rest of R&D remains unconvinced. Unfortunately, given that he’s reportedly tried multiple times over the years to make such a change, we’re unlikely to see it any time soon. For better or worse, it seems we’ll be dealing with common legendary creatures for the foreseeable future.
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