In a recent blog post on Blogatog, the Head of Design at MTG, Mark Rosewater, says he is trying to get rid of the Legend Rule but has so far failed.
The revelation dropped when Rosewater answered the following question from an MTG player on his blog:
Question: Given that you have good reasons to print large numbers of legendary creatures but players also have good reasons to want to play with multiple copies of cards unless there is a design reason for uniqueness, wouldn’t this be a good time to finally get rid of the “legend rule”? Perhaps you could start by using your authority as un-Rules Manager to nix the rule for silver-bordered games.
Answer: Trust me, I’ve tried.
And that isn’t a power I have as the Un-Rules Manager.
Mark Rosewater via Blogatog
This isn’t the first time that Rosewater has expressed his desire to remove the Legend Rule from the game. Ten years ago he also stated on his blog the reason why the rule is prohibitive, and why MTG is having a hard time getting rid of it:
I would keep legendary as a supertype. I just wouldn’t have it having any rules baggage, especially only negative rules baggage. The reason we can’t make the change, and I tried, is that we’ve used the rule too much over the years as a development tool.
Mark Rosewater via BLOGATOG
For those unfamiliar with the “Legend Rule”, it’s been a part of the game for over 30 years but has changed over time. The original idea of the rule is that legendary creatures are “named” beings and therefore it wouldn’t make sense for multiple copies of them to be on the battlefield.
The Original MTG Legend Rule of 1994 – 2004:
The first MTG Legend Rule came into existence in 1994 with the introduction of legendary creatures in the aptly named set Legends. The rule read as follows:
420.5e If two or more Legends or legendary permanents with the same name are in play, all except the one that has been a Legend or legendary permanent with that name the longest are put into their owners’ graveyards. This is called “the Legend rule.” In the event of a tie, each Legend or legendary permanent with the same name is put into its owner’s graveyard. (If two permanents have the same name but only one is a Legend or is legendary, this rule doesn’t apply.)
MTG Comprehensive rules – 1994 to 2004
For a brief period in 1994 – 1995, the Legend Rule also restricted Legendary cards to 1 per deck.
The original rule caused a lot of problems for players. I started playing during this period and if an opponent had their legendary creature in play already, it meant you effectively couldn’t get your copy into play.
This rule created games where it was simply a race to play your legendary creature first. If you didn’t, it ended up being a dead card in your hand for most of the game. Because legendary creatures were not as common as today, the rule was frustrating but sometimes irrelevant.
What was a minor inconvenience; however, was about to become a huge inconvenience with the release of Champions of Kamigawa, a legend-themed set released in late 2004. This release prompted the first major change to the Legend Rule.
The Updated MTG Legend Rule From 2004 – 2013
In 2004, with the release of Champions of Kamigawa, MTG knew the Legend Rule had to change. Players were frustrated they couldn’t play their legendary creatures if an opponent already had the same one in play.
With Kamigawa being heavily themed around legendary creatures, MTG decided to make a key update so that legendary cards in hand wouldn’t become dead cards. The new rules read as follows:
420.5e If two or more permanents with the same name have the supertype legendary, all are put into their owners’ graveyards. This is called the “legend rule.” If only one of those permanents is legendary, this rule doesn’t apply.
MTG Comprehensive rules – 2004 to 2013
The updated rule meant that if you play your legendary creature, rather than it going to the graveyard if an opponent controlled one before you, both creatures are destroyed instead.
It still kept the theme of the game of only one legend in play at a time, but stopped people from holding dead legendary cards they can’t cast.
While this fixed the problem somewhat, players started to get annoyed by one of the ramifications. If a player cast a clone spell like Phantasmal Image, it entered as a copy of the legendary creature and that caused both creatures to die.
Instead of clone-type creatures being used for their intended purpose of copying, they were employed as efficient removal spells. In addition to this, more legendary creatures were being printed than ever before.
Finally, MTG decided to make the most drastic change to the Legend Rule as a result.
The Current MTG Legend Rule From 2013 – Present
Recognizing that people want to play with their cards more than be restricted by thematically imposed rules, MTG made the most drastic change to the Legend Rule in over a decade in 2013.
The new change they imposed allowed players to have a legendary permanent in play even if an opponent controls the same card. The only restriction being, a single player cannot control more than one copy of a single legendary card.
They also did an update to allow players to control multiple Planeswalkers of the same subtype (such as Jace), so long as they were not the same name. IE, you could now control a Jace Beleren and a Jace, the Mind Sculptor at the same time.
Here’s the new rule as updated in the Magic 2014 Core Set Rules Preview:
The “legend rule,” rule 704.5k for those of you following along at home, is changing. Under the current rules, any time two or more legendary permanents with the same name were on the battlefield, they would all be put into their owners’ graveyards as a state-based action. Under the new rules, any time two or more legendary permanents with the same name are controlled by a player, that player chooses one of them and the rest are put into their owners’ graveyards as a state-based action.
Magic 2014 Core Set Rules preview
The rule ended up being written as follows:
704.5k 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. This is called the “legend rule.”
MTG Comprehensive RUles
Why Does MTG Want to Get Rid of the Legend Rule?
So why does the Head of MTG Design, as well as MTG players, want to get rid of the Legend Rule?
The answer is that the game is evolving. No longer are legendary creatures a small part of the game. Creatures are being printed as legendaries simply to bring new cards into the Commander format.
The Commander format has become so dominant, it is warping the way Standard creature cards are being printed as a result.
According to data compiled by Magic Data Science, the number of eligible Commanders, AKA (mostly) legendary creatures, has doubled in just 4 years vs the entire 30-year history of the game.
Many, if not most, of the new legendary Commander creatures are being printed in new Standard sets. While they help increase the card pool for Commander, they create a problem for Standard and other 60-card-constructed formats.
In those formats, you can only play with one copy of a legendary creature at a time. With many of the good creature cards being legendary, this is starting to restrict deck building potential, as players become stuck with dead copies of legendary cards in their hand (as they already have them in play).
This wasn’t a problem back in the 90s or early 2000s before Commander was a popular format. Back then, a very few percent of the total creatures printed were legendary.
This leads us back to Mark Rosewater’s Blogatog comment this week, where he cited his desire to end the Legend Rule.
As we already mentioned, even though the Legend Rule is causing difficulties for today, it’s not an easy rule to remove from the game. There is simply too much, “Rules Baggage” as Maro says.
Will MTG ever change the Legend Rule despite the baggage and in-game implications? For now, the answer is no.
