Discussion: Abandoning the Legendary supertype

[Raystar]

You guys are worried by 4 Thalia's? Can you imagine what 4 Tabernacles would do to any creature based deck?

[iatee]

I think Karakas is literally the only case where a deck runs 3 when it would otherwise run 4 because of the legend rule. And if the rule disappeared, Karakas would also become a marginally better card.

I honestly don't think this would affect much beyond Thalia in legacy. Nobody plays Geist anyway and one Geist kills your opponent, you don't need two on board at once. Nobody's playing 4 Cliques.

I am not a huge flavor person and I don't think much would be lost - the rule is kinda weird and leads to people being occasionally punished for making the right decision to play 4 copies of their best cards. 2 Geists doesn't feel more out of flavor than my-Jace fights your-Jace.

But still...multiple Thalias would lead to a lot of oppressive non-games.

[iatee]

Heh okay yeah multiple Tabernacles would be pretty gross and that would definitely be a thing. 4-Tabernacle Pox probably becomes a T2 deck nobody can actually afford and Lands probably becomes a little too good.

[Raystar]

Heh okay yeah multiple Tabernacles would be pretty gross and that would definitely be a thing. 4-Tabernacle Pox probably becomes a T2 deck nobody can actually afford and Lands probably becomes a little too good.

I would build a GWb Lands version with 4 Tabernacles in main and 4 Thalias in side...

[Jamaican Zombie Legend]

Hmmm, multiple Sanctums or Cradles in play, simultaneously, sounds extremely stupid. No thanks.

Gotta echo the ire directed towards MaRo's musings. The hatred for cards with drawbacks is annoying and leads to a lot of untapped design space. Instead of new Negators or Ernhams that invite interesting deckbuilding solutions to get around the drawbacks we'll just get more and more CITP-value creatures like our savior Siege Rhino (PBUH) and broken Blue crap.

[Finn]

4 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Cabal Coffers
52 stuff

Sure would get people to stop complaining about Terminus.

[Raystar]

4 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Cabal Coffers
52 stuff

Sure would get people to stop complaining about Terminus.

Oh yeah...that would be insane...

[Raystar]

4 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Cabal Coffers
52 stuff

Sure would get people to stop complaining about Terminus.

Add 4 Eye of Ugin and a couple of eldrazi to close the deal...

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Legendary cards are designed specifically with both the flavor and power level of the single copy rule. There is a thing as too much sacrificed in your quest to dumb the game down to the least common denominator.

I see this as a long-term problem associated with Hasbro buying wotc. There are profit requirements calculated quarterly that don't exist in a much smaller company. This sort of thinking does not leave any room for the profits down the road for having a game that is excellent, and sure as hell do not have any of us in mind. All they can manage with such a short time frame is bringing up profits with decisions that have an immediate impact. This shitty thinking may not ruin the game in one or two strokes, but the continued hollowing out of what makes Magic special will eventually lead to the same shit we get for movies, music, television, and to some extent video games. Suits who answer to money and not art make creative decisions for everything. It turns entertainment into bland sameness which can only exist in a world where your target continually changes which in turn only exists because advertisers seek the attention of teenagers above all else, and they have aged out before they realize that they have been consuming soulless regurgitated unoriginal resequenced shite because market research says that new players prefer the kicker family of abilities over spells that cause them to learn how the stack works.

Whoa...I got all worked up. At any rate, I have always feared this happening to Magic.

This was one of the most brilliant rants on recent MtG design that I ever read.

I am not a huge flavor person and I don't think much would be lost - the rule is kinda weird and leads to people being occasionally punished for making the right decision to play 4 copies of their best cards.

So you dislike that ppl need to think about deck design in a Deck: the Designing card game? Hmm, hmm...

[iatee]

No, you missed the point entirely. It has little to no relevance in deck designing. If your deck is dependent on Thalia it is correct to play 4, because you need to maximize your chance of drawing at least one. If you're playing a modern Geist list you play 4. Sometimes you get punished for drawing multiples of your best creature because that creature is called 'Geist' or 'Thalia' and not 'Goyf' or 'Young Pyro', even though the first two aren't more powerful cards.

[Barook]

You guys are worried by 4 Thalia's? Can you imagine what 4 Tabernacles would do to any creature based deck?

Can you imagine what a high demand 4xTabernable would do to any wallet?

Legendary cards are designed specifically with both the flavor and power level of the single copy rule. There is a thing as too much sacrificed in your quest to dumb the game down to the least common denominator.

I see this as a long-term problem associated with Hasbro buying wotc. There are profit requirements calculated quarterly that don't exist in a much smaller company. This sort of thinking does not leave any room for the profits down the road for having a game that is excellent, and sure as hell do not have any of us in mind. All they can manage with such a short time frame is bringing up profits with decisions that have an immediate impact. This shitty thinking may not ruin the game in one or two strokes, but the continued hollowing out of what makes Magic special will eventually lead to the same shit we get for movies, music, television, and to some extent video games. Suits who answer to money and not art make creative decisions for everything. It turns entertainment into bland sameness which can only exist in a world where your target continually changes which in turn only exists because advertisers seek the attention of teenagers above all else, and they have aged out before they realize that they have been consuming soulless regurgitated unoriginal resequenced shite because market research says that new players prefer the kicker family of abilities over spells that cause them to learn how the stack works.

Whoa...I got all worked up. At any rate, I have always feared this happening to Magic.

Quarter reports where they must deliver aside, Hasbro lets Wizards pretty much do what they want, for better or worse.

IMHO, Maro's New World Order is one of the worst things to ever happen to the game gameplay-wise. They now dumb down the game more and more to the lowest common denominator. Just as Hollywood shits out new sequels and reboots all over again, or the videogame industry going "We want the Call of Duty audience". "Hollowing out the game" is probably the best term for it. We already live in a world of shitty sequels where we get recycled blocks of bland shit that can't hold a candle to the original, simply because it sells by name/nostalgia alone and doesn't have much risk involved. The art direction is goddamn awful because they made new, stingy contract conditions where many of the our beloved artists jumped ship, leaving us with worse, cheaper artists and their terrible CGI art.
It hurts to see interesting new design space like the new colorless "color" or experience counters getting thrown under the bus for "Yet-another-kicker-mechanic" or "+1/+1 Counter Mechanic 2: Electric Boogaloo". Questionable design decisions are made where e.g. Wrath effects get moved up to 5+ mana or Mana dorks to 2+ mana because they're suddenly too strong after 20 years into the game. It feels like Maro is trying to fix mistakes that were never mistakes to begin with - just like his madman's rant about the Legendary rule.

As for growing the game with sheer masses, we've already passed the zenith, as it seems. Wizards took revenue hits twice in a row in the last two quarter reports. And BFZ doesn't look too hot, either, considering all the hate it gets for being weak AND contributing to the pretty much most expensive Standard ever - which sounds like ideal conditions for another drove of players quitting.

Let's just hope we'll never get to the point where the game gets too bland in the quest for more profit. But given how Wizards' peers at Hearthstone's insane revenue, I wouldn't bet on it.

[jrsthethird]

4 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Cabal Coffers
52 stuff

Sure would get people to stop complaining about Terminus.

64 cards.dec

[Bed Decks Palyer]

No, you missed the point entirely. It has little to no relevance in deck designing. If your deck is dependent on Thalia it is correct to play 4, because you need to maximize your chance of drawing at least one. If you're playing a modern Geist list you play 4. Sometimes you get punished for drawing multiples of your best creature because that creature is called 'Geist' or 'Thalia' and not 'Goyf' or 'Young Pyro', even though the first two aren't more powerful cards.

But deck design goes further than "I need to draw Thalia". It also includes the risk-reward evaluation, e.g. is it worth the danger to play the XY number of Card Whatever, if that means that I'll be stuck with it and unable to use it. It's similar to any otehr evaluation, just that Leg rule adds another facet to the game (other than "my Bolts can't counter shit, thus I won't play 40 of them in UWr Control"), a facet that Maro would like to remove. I don't see any appeal in this proposed change and I don't see how it wold improve the game in any way. You might differ and tell me that the mere fact that a guy won't be stuck with a useless Thalia/Teeg/etc. is an improvement, but imho it isn't. Shall we start a flamewar over gusto? Surely not.

Lets remove all the barriers, then. After all, they're ust arbitrary things that make ppl unhappy coz they cannot play their shit. Lets remove manacost. Lets remove upkeeps.

Thing with Thalia is that she's got her drawback intentionally, for YHWH's sake. It's a damned 2/1 first striker for 1W with an opressive ability. There's a reason why Glowrider's cmc is set to three. Comparing her to vanilla beatnik (although one as broken as Goyf) makes little sense, as Goyf's got no other role than to tap. If you'd allow four-of tables of Thalias (orGrand Arbiters or Tabernacles, or w/e leg shit is there available) you're definitley in a world of trouble that should be fixed somehow. So the bans would come, or a general overhaul of game rules or w/e else. Why do this? So that one dickhead from WotC that cannot properly design a 200-cards set of children's cardgame might come to a happy ending?

This is stupid.

WotC should do something about the ever more crappy design, about the RL chokehold, about the unispiring art, about literally anything else than tinkering with the basic design.

If Maro's main trouble is that he cannot play 25 Jaces, he and his casual group might simply start the game with a Mirror Gallery token in play and be done with the thing. We're not interested in his jackshit.
edit: or maybe he can go the Alpha League road...

[maharis]

IMHO, Maro's New World Order is one of the worst things to ever happen to the game gameplay-wise. They now dumb down the game more and more to the lowest common denominator. Just as Hollywood shits out new sequels and reboots all over again, or the videogame industry going "We want the Call of Duty audience". "Hollowing out the game" is probably the best term for it. We already live in a world of shitty sequels where we get recycled blocks of bland shit that can't hold a candle to the original, simply because it sells by name/nostalgia alone and doesn't have much risk involved. The art direction is goddamn awful because they made new, stingy contract conditions where many of the our beloved artists jumped ship, leaving us with worse, cheaper artists and their terrible CGI art.
It hurts to see interesting new design space like the new colorless "color" or experience counters getting thrown under the bus for "Yet-another-kicker-mechanic" or "+1/+1 Counter Mechanic 2: Electric Boogaloo". Questionable design decisions are made where e.g. Wrath effects get moved up to 5+ mana or Mana dorks to 2+ mana because they're suddenly too strong after 20 years into the game. It feels like Maro is trying to fix mistakes that were never mistakes to begin with - just like his madman's rant about the Legendary rule.

The annoying part is they break their dumb rules all the time and make the game worse. Consider:

-They got rid of 1cmc mana dorks because they said it pushed 3 cmc green cards too much. But green midrange still dominated the Standard season and they still ended up with a format warped around Gideon, Hangarback, and JVP.

-They decry complexity and especially monkeying with the exile zone, but came up with the processor mechanic which goes against both of those tenets.

But god forbid we get a Smokestack or Smallpox type effect.

I really think Maro is losing it and should be transferred to marketing or comms or something and someone else needs to take over design for a while. I respect that he has devoted his life to this game, and I understand that he's not making decisions unilaterally, but it's his interpretation of the directives from on high that set the direction of the design department and they just are giving us nothing. And I don't just mean in Legacy.

With regard to the Legend rule, there is 20 years of momentum behind the concept of legends being unique, which lets you print a 2 cmc sphere effect on a stick, or something like Brimaz that is the only monocolor 3 mana 3/4 without a drawback. Having one on each side is fine because it's flavorful for wizards battling in the aether to create a "mirror match." But does it really feel as bad to have a second one in your hand as it does to be mana screwed/flooded or not draw the answer you need? Why not give up the resource system or the 4 of rule if the goal is for no one to ever feel bad?

I don't think this change will be made, but this is what I'm getting from the lead designer? Unreal.

[iatee]

But deck design goes further than "I need to draw Thalia". It also includes the risk-reward evaluation, e.g. is it worth the danger to play the XY number of Card Whatever, if that means that I'll be stuck with it and unable to use it. It's similar to any otehr evaluation, just that Leg rule adds another facet to the game (other than "my Bolts can't counter shit, thus I won't play 40 of them in UWr Control"), a facet that Maro would like to remove. I don't see any appeal in this proposed change and I don't see how it wold improve the game in any way. You might differ and tell me that the mere fact that a guy won't be stuck with a useless Thalia/Teeg/etc. is an improvement, but imho it isn't. Shall we start a flamewar over gusto? Surely not.

I agree about Thalia and I don't think multiple copies of Thalia in play makes magic more fun for anybody. Even D+T players need to earn their wins.

But the 'risk-reward' evaluation in deck building is such a minor facet here because:
- It's almost always right to play 4 when they card is really good. Once in a while you play 3, like Zurgo in Standard or something. This 'risk-reward' decision is pretty easy, and for mainstream decks is discovered by consensus pretty quickly.
- They don't generally design legends to be cheap powerful creatures, they design them to be splashy expensive creatures, so they're not often 4 ofs in older formats regardless.

Maro cares about Magic design. He cares a LOT. He is a creepy dude who spends his time writing dialogues where the color Green argues with the color Red. However, that doesn't mean he's always wrong. The idea of 'legends' is not some deep elegant part of the rules, it was designed by people who were throwing shit at a wall. It was designed by the same people who designed 'Seafarer's Quay', one of the worst lands of all time and also 'Karakas', a card that completely neutralizes every large creature in the set they designed, for almost no cost. And they tossed them both in the Uncommon slot.

The rule has been a wart on the game and gone through all kinds of iterations and the current one seemed better than anything else, so sure, why not. But it is not an elegantly designed rule. It adds variance to the game without adding interesting game play in return for the variance. From a design perspective it's pretty obvious why you wouldn't want that in your game.

Maro cares about this for the same reason he tells everyone and their brother that instant spells should have flash, not because he wants to appease stockholders or whatever. Hell, the people who created legends were probably one of the best things that ever happened to the game financially, as the largest and most dedicated casual format completely revolves around the concept. Casual players have a use for new janky rares from every set, and every legendary card has someone building a deck around it right now.

Wizards tried to do something interesting with legends in non-casual formats in Kamigawa and it went down as one of the biggest failures to date. This was not some conspiracy to make people hate legendary cards, it was probably just due to the fact that...they do not work well with the base rules of the game. They just don't. At this point it is way too late to change that. But I think any talk of Maro doing this for anything other than his kinda creepy dedication to the purity of magic gameplay is crazy. The dude wants people to enjoy playing magic, losing games cause you don't get to play your cards doesn't make people enjoy playing magic and the only thing the legend rule really adds to constructed magic is 'sometimes you can't play your cards'.

[Dice_Box]

You guys are worried by 4 Thalia's? Can you imagine what 4 Tabernacles would do to any creature based deck?

Oh gods Thespian's Stage... I love you so much already...

[iatee]

With regard to the Legend rule, there is 20 years of momentum behind the concept of legends being unique, which lets you print a 2 cmc sphere effect on a stick, or something like Brimaz that is the only monocolor 3 mana 3/4 without a drawback. Having one on each side is fine because it's flavorful for wizards battling in the aether to create a "mirror match." But does it really feel as bad to have a second one in your hand as it does to be mana screwed/flooded or not draw the answer you need? Why not give up the resource system or the 4 of rule if the goal is for no one to ever feel bad?

Brimaz was barely played even in standard so I think having more than one 1ww 3/4 on each side probably wouldn't break much.

It doesn't feel as bad to have a second one in your hand as it does to be mana screwed/flooded, but it still feels bad, and the goal is to minimize the amount of additional feel bads they're throwing at us, especially when we're not getting anything interesting back in return. The goal is to create a deep and interactive game where even when you lose you felt like you got something out of it cause you played an interesting game, and not a game where sometimes you win and still leave the table annoyed that you kept drawing the same card again and again.

[thecrav]

In before thread lock due to complaining about WotC

I think the legendary rule as previously implemented works best for the flavor they're trying to go for. Sure, anyone can summon a knight or a soldier but there is only one Thalia, Grisselbrand, etc in the universe. Having two in play, whether that's between multiple players or for a single player, makes absolutely no sense.

Also, they might be able to "get rid of" the rule by not implementing it any more but they'd have to do some serious acrobatics with errata and rules to make old legendary cards work as they were intended, or at least work in ways that aren't completely busted (like the 4x Thalia or 4x Tabernacle examples)

[Jamaican Zombie Legend]

But the 'risk-reward' evaluation in deck building is such a minor facet here because:
- It's almost always right to play 4 when they card is really good. Once in a while you play 3, like Zurgo in Standard or something. This 'risk-reward' decision is pretty easy, and for mainstream decks is discovered by consensus pretty quickly.

This seems like more of a complaint about the state of Magic in the era of mass communication via the internet. Most decisions become trivial when millions of minds are put to the problem on Reddit/Salvation/Source/TMD/wherever.

In practice it might not amount to much, but in principle the Legend rule does make for interesting decisions; more powerful effects come with a chance of dead draws.

the only thing the legend rule really adds to constructed magic is 'sometimes you can't play your cards'.

It's a tremendously useful tool for development. Some card are simply busted in multiples, and instead of clunky "If X is in play, you can't play cards named X" on 20+ text boxes, they can elegantly solve this via use of the Legendary Supertype (or Planeswalker Subtypes) with an easy-to-grok rule. This opens up tons of design space that couldn't otherwise be explored. I don't suspect something like Liliana of the Veil (or other "good" Planeswalkers) could see print without some form of the Legendary Rule; they'd be too busted in multiples. Instead, we'd just get Living Guildpacts, Tibalts, and Chandras.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Retroactively dropping Legendary rule is probably not the best idea, Thalia and Cradle being played in multiples sounds actually miserable, especially when those cards where made and balanced around that concept

W/e if they just decided to use unique instead of legendary going foward and just acting like legendary doesn't exist.