Legendary

Legendary
Supertype
Rules	A player may not control two or more legendary permanents with the same name.
Statistics	2889 cards 0.7% 9.6% 8.7% 9.4% 8.8% 8.5% 4.4% 3.6% 3.6% 3.8% 3.8% 3.3% 2.9% 2.8% 3.3% 3.3% 12.3% 4.4% 2.8%
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type:"Legendary"

Legendary is a card supertype. Any permanent (artifact, creature, enchantment, planeswalker, and land) with the legendary supertype is bound by the "legend rule," which prevents multiple copies of the card with the same name from existing on the battlefield under the same player's control. Legendary may also appear as a supertype on non-permanent cards (instants and sorceries). The rules for these are different: you can't cast a legendary nonpermanent spell unless you control a legendary creature or a legendary planeswalker. Legendary cards are historic.

Description

From the glossary of the Comprehensive Rules (June 7, 2024—Modern Horizons 3)

Legendary

A supertype that’s normally relevant on permanents. See rule 205.4, “Supertypes.” See also Legend Rule.

Flavor-wise, legendary cards represent the key people, places, and objects of a set's story.

Typical Standard-legal expansion sets used to contain no more than ten to fifteen legendary cards, all carrying a rarity of rare or mythic rare.. This number went up slightly with Planeswalkers all being classified as Legendaries. That said, both of these rules were broken in later years, with sets like Commander Legends, War of the Spark (through planeswalkers), Dominaria, Dominaria United, Kamigawa block, and The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth used Legendary cards as a mechanical theme, with uncommon Legends to boost up the numbers in Limited play. Even outside of that, Legends, Amonkhet, Throne of Eldraine, Theros Beyond Death, Core Set 2021 and Kaldheim have had cycles and more of uncommon Legendaries for little more than worldbuilding.

Starting in 2023, R&D is lowering the average of legendary creatures in Magic IP sets. Universes Beyond, due to its nature, will still want a lot of legendary creatures as the named characters of an IP are a big draw.

The Commander format requires that a legendary creature be selected as one's commander. There are 22 Planeswalkers designed to be commanders, alongside 30 legendary enchantment Backgrounds matching "Choose a Background".

History

Legendary was first featured on several land cards in the set Legends (e.g. Tolaria). In contrast to these lands that were already supertyped, the similar creatures were all given the type "Legend" (e.g. Barktooth Warbeard). Stronghold introduced the first Legendary artifact.

Starting with Champions of Kamigawa the supertype "Legenary" replaced the creature type Legend. The set also introduced the first Legendary Enchantments (e.g. Honden of Cleansing Fire). The first legendary Aura (the called "Legendary Enchant Land" was Genju of the Realm in Betrayers of Kamigawa.

Legendary sorceries, capture extraordinary moments from characters' pasts, were introduced in Dominaria.. The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth debuted the first legendary instant card with Isildur's Fateful Strike. Legendary sorceries and instants can't be cast legendary instants unless you control a legendary creature or a legendary planeswalker.

Historically, before the release of Legends, the idea of the legendary supertype and its restrictions did not exist, nor did those restrictions have any functional equivalent printed on cards at the time. This, compounded with R&D's policy on avoiding intentional functional errata as much as possible, has caused cards that likely should have been printed as legendary (had the supertype and its associated rules existed since the beginning), such as Ali from Cairo, to stay nonlegendary. Although, the introduction of the supertype did not outright end the trend of flavorful legendary subjects being printed as nonlegendary on new cards, as seen with the rare utility tapland cycle from Zendikar, among others. Cards such as those are specifically designed with functionality over flavor in mind.

Legendary cards tend to have a rarity of Uncommon or higher. The only common legendary creature were printed in Homelands (Chandler Joven) and Modern Horizons 3 (Skoa, Embermage). The only common enchantments are the backgrounds of Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate.

Card frame

Legendary card frame, as of Dominaria

Starting with Duel Decks: Elves vs. Inventors and Dominaria, all legendary cards, except planeswalkers, have crown-like flourishes on the title bar of the card frame.

Legend rule

If a player controls two or more legendary permanents of the same name when state-based effects are checked, that player chooses one of those permanents and immediately puts the others into their owners' graveyards, without any player having an opportunity to respond. This does not destroy the other permanents, does not cause them to be sacrificed, and cannot be prevented by being indestructible or having regeneration.

This version of the rule has been in effect since the release of Magic 2014.

From the glossary of the Comprehensive Rules (June 7, 2024—Modern Horizons 3)

Legend Rule

A state-based action that causes a player who controls two or more legendary permanents with the same name to put all but one into their owners’ graveyards. See rule 704.5j.

From the Comprehensive Rules (June 7, 2024—Modern Horizons 3)

• 205.4d Any permanent with the supertype “legendary” is subject to the state-based action for legendary permanents, also called the “legend rule” (see rule 704.5j).

From the Comprehensive Rules (June 7, 2024—Modern Horizons 3)

• 704.5j If two or more legendary permanents with the same name are controlled by the same player, that player chooses one of them, and the rest are put into their owners’ graveyards. This is called the “legend rule.”

Currently, only a handful of cards circumvent the "legend rule":

• Mirror Gallery, Mirror Box and Sakashima of a Thousand Faces cancel the rule entirely.
• Cadric, Soul Kindler and The Master, Multiplied cancel the rule for tokens you control. Sliver Gravemother cancels the rule for Slivers you control.
• Brothers Yamazaki ignores the rule for itself as long as exactly two copies of the card are on the battlefield. The third will "kill" the two others.
• Aeve, Progenitor Ooze, Jace, Cunning Castaway, Jace, Mirror Mage, Ob Nixilis, the Adversary, and Osgood, Operation Double copy themselves and the resulting permanent isn't legendary, while thirteen cards can create copies of permanents with the same clause. Ratadrabik of Urborg makes nonlegendary copies of Legendaries that die, which is relevant if they return otherwise.
• Sakashima the Impostor, Olag, Ludevic's Hubris, Lazav, Dimir Mastermind, Lazav, the Multifarious, and Sarkhan, Soul Aflame can copy another legendary creature but keep their names, thus a player can have two legendary creatures with the same functionality.

Other versions of the legend rule

From Legends to Champions of Kamigawa

Originally, only one creature of the same name, with the creature type Legend, could be in play at the same time. For a while, they were even on the restricted list, meaning there could be only one creature of the same name in each deck. This was changed around the time of Ice Age.

Any person could play a Legend provided that that Legend wasn't already on the battlefield. If it was, that card was stuck in its owner's hand. They could cast it if they wanted to, but the newest one would immediately be put into the graveyard, so there was usually no incentive to do so.

This issue came to great prominence during the Masques block because Rebel decks centered around Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero were dominant at the time. The card was so key to the deck that when two Rebel decks played one another, the first person to get Lin Sivvi out had an unfair advantage. Tom LaPille laid out the various disagreements about the rules change in his article.

From Champions of Kamigawa to Magic 2014

The second version of the rule checked to see if any other legendary permanent of the same name existed on the entire battlefield (regardless of the permanents' controllers) and sent all of those permanents (including the one which initiated the situation) to their owners' graveyards. In effect, each legendary permanent served two purposes: its original purpose and the removal of all instances of that permanent already on the battlefield.

Planeswalker uniqueness rule

From the Comprehensive Rules (June 7, 2024—Modern Horizons 3)

• 306.4. Previously, planeswalkers were subject to a “planeswalker uniqueness rule” that stopped a player from controlling two planeswalkers of the same planeswalker type. This rule has been removed and planeswalker cards printed before this change have received errata in the Oracle card reference to have the legendary supertype. Like other legendary permanents, they are subject to the “legend rule” (see rule 704.5j).

From the glossary of the Comprehensive Rules (June 7, 2024—Modern Horizons 3)

Planeswalker Uniqueness Rule (Obsolete)

Older versions of the rules stated that a player who controlled two or more planeswalkers with the same planeswalker type would put all but one of those planeswalkers into their owners’ graveyards. This rule was called the “planeswalker uniqueness rule” and no longer exists.

Although different, planeswalker cards used to have a similar rule: If a player controls two or more planeswalkers that share a planeswalker type, that player chooses one of them, and the rest are put into their owners’ graveyards. This was called the “planeswalker uniqueness rule.”

Before the above update, the original rule acted as the legend rule did from Champions to Magic 2014 until this was changed at the same time the legend rule was; it looked at the battlefield and didn't care which player's control they were under. The most recent copy remained while all others were sent to the graveyard. This allowed, for example, someone to play Jace Beleren as a removal spell for Jace the Mind Sculptor as they shared the same subtype "Jace".

Starting with Ixalan, this rule was abandoned. All planeswalkers past, present, and future gained the supertype legendary and became subject to the "legend rule". Thus, if a player controls more than one legendary planeswalker with the same name, that player chooses one and puts the other into their owner's graveyard. This means for example that if you control Jace, Unraveler of Secrets and cast Jace, Cunning Castaway, both Jaces now can exist under your control.

The change was made to simplify gameplay.

Rosewater version

Mark Rosewater has stated multiple times that he considers legendary to be a mechanical downside that he would rather get rid of. If he was starting over he would make legendary a supertype with no rules baggage. He would create a keyword, called something like "unique", for things that needed for gameplay reasons to be restricted to having only one in play. The rest of R&D doesn't concur with Rosewater's idea, or feels it is too late for the change.

Legendary spells

From the Comprehensive Rules (June 7, 2024—Modern Horizons 3)

• 205.4e Any instant or sorcery spell with the supertype “legendary” is subject to a casting restriction. A player can’t cast a legendary instant or sorcery spell unless that player controls a legendary creature or a legendary planeswalker.

Legendary sorceries

Dominaria debuted legendary sorcery cards that capture extraordinary moments from characters' pasts. These powerful spells can be unleashed only with the assistance of a legendary creature or planeswalker on your side of the battlefield.

You can't cast legendary sorceries unless you control a legendary creature or a legendary planeswalker. Once you begin to cast a legendary sorcery, losing control of your legendary creatures and planeswalkers won't affect that spell. Other than the casting restriction, the legendary supertype on a sorcery carries no additional rules.

Legendary instants

Although covered by the rules for legendary sorcery cards, legendary instants were not featured in Dominaria. It would take another five years before the first legendary instant card was released as part of The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth — Isildur's Fateful Strike.

Legendary enchantment

The first legendary enchantments were the Honden cycle and Night of Souls' Betrayal from Champions of Kamigawa. The non-legal Heroes of the Realm card The Legend of Arena is a Legendary Enchantment - Saga.

Friendly to legendary permanents

White is the color that most interacts with legendary permanents. It can search the library for them and get them back from the graveyard, among other positive interactions.

Legendary matters

"Legendary matters" effects may appear in all colors. Examples:

• Arvad the Cursed ()
• Captain Sisay ()
• Sisay, Weatherlight Captain ()
• The Circle of Loyalty ()
• Kethis, the Hidden Hand ()
• Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God ()
• Reki, the History of Kamigawa ()
• Tiana, Angelic Mechanic ()

Megalegendary

Megalegendary was introduced on a test card in the Mystery Booster set (Your deck can have only one copy of this card.) If you're fortunate enough to have two copies of a megalegendary card in a Limited event, you can still put only one into your deck. The other remains in your sideboard.