Too many legendary creatures.
General forum
Posted on April 16, 2022, 11:40 p.m. by legendofa
I get that the Commander community wants options, and it's the largest (semi-)official format. In my opinion, though, there are far, far too many new legendary creatures being added, and it's diluting their special-ness. The following list shows the number of new legendary creatures per Standard-legal block or set, starting in Mirrodin and omitting core sets.
Mirrodin block: 5 (outlier)
Original Kamigawa block: 98 (not including flip cards, outlier, block had a Legendary theme)
Original Ravnica block: 20
Time Spiral block: 45 (outlier, included references to and reprints of many past legends)
Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block: 21
Alara block: 15
Original Zendikar block: 16
Scars of Mirrodin block: 13
introduction of Commander preconstructed decks
Innistrad block: 12
Return to Ravnica block: 20
Theros block: 27
Tarkir block: 24
introduction of two-set blocks
Battle for Zendikar block: 13
Shadows over Innistrad block: 15
Kaladesh block: 14
Amonkhet block: 16
Ixalan block: 16
introduction of single-set blocks
Dominaria: 44 (outlier, set had a Legendary theme)
Guilds of Ravnica - Ravnica Allegiance: 16 (combined)
War of the Spark: 16
Throne of Eldraine: 19
Theros Beyond Death: 27
introduction of Commander sets tied to premier sets
Ikoria: 23
Zendikar Rising: 18
Kaldheim: 33
Strixhaven: 22
Forgotten Realms: 30
Midnight Hunt - Crimson Vow: 33 (combined, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben reprinted)
Neon Dynasty: 32
Streets of New Capenna: +/-20 revealed to date
From Mirrodin to Ixalan, ignoring the outliers, there were usually 4-8 legendary creatures per set. Now, it's regularly pushing to 30+. This is twice as many legendary creatures per set than there were in each three-set block. Again, the list doesn't include supplementary sets, including Commander sets.
The average number of legendary creatures per set (lcps) in this sample is 11.47. With the outliers removed (which I admit is eyeball work, not statistical analysis), the average is 10.21.
The average number of lcps in the single-set era is 22.20. In the two-set block era, it was 7.40 lcps, and in the three-set block era, it was 8.54 lcps. If I remove the ones I marked as outliers, the single-set era averages 20.64 lcps, the two-set block era averages 7.40 lcps still, and the three-set block era averages an even 6 lcps. The sets in Standard at the time of posting (Zendikar Rising - Neon Dynasty) average a full and even 24 lcps, higher than the single-set average including Dominaria. The rate of legendary creatures per set and per year, starting around War of the Spark, is skyrocketing. If there's going to be a Commander supplement for every set going forward, the trend is going to skew even higher.
Maybe I'm just grumpy, better-in-my-day sulking, and since I've never been deep into Commander, maybe I'm just missing the appeal. But the way I see it, the sheer numbers of legendary creatures being printed now dilute the uniqueness of the card type and characters, and it's harder to get excited about them. To break out an old adage, when everybody's unique, nobody is.
TypicalTimmy Of course, I enjoy the creation forum, and I know that new legendary creatures are popular there. I've happily put together a good few myself. But there's a difference between a fan site and official company policy, and right now the official company policy seems to be to create a potential commander for every niche and specific ability, and a few broad ones to cover all the bases. This makes a lot of the official ones, the ones most likely to be seen in the wild, either hyper-specific (Jorn, God of Winter Flip, Satsuki, the Living Lore) or generically useful (Kenrith, the Returned King, Volo, Guide to Monsters). And that's not touching the non-Commander-focused legendary creatures (Lurrus of the Dream-Den).
I'll poke at the numbers with your outlier suggestions, but I don't think it will change the trend of legendary creatures per set jumping. First, though, I need to correct for the Thalia, Guardian of Thraben reprint in Crimson Vow.
April 17, 2022 12:36 a.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #4
If you'd really like to pad your numbers and showcase the true weight behind these trends, I'd recommend including appropriate Precon sets as they are still technically representative of their core, parent releases.
April 17, 2022 12:57 a.m.
Treating Kaldheim and Neon DYnasty as outliers:
Average lcps across sample: 11.47
Average lcps across sample excluding outliers: 9.32
Average lcps of single-set era total: 22.20
Average lcps of single-set era excluding outliers: 18.67
Excluding Kaldheim and Neon Dynasty, there are still twice as many lcps per set on average (18.67) being printed during the single set era compared to the average for the whole sample excluding outliers (9.32).
April 17, 2022 1:07 a.m.
TypicalTimmy I'll save that for later. But as a starting point, we have 73 different new legendary creatures so far in 2022, between Neon Dynasty, New Capenna, and their respective Commander sets.
https://scryfall.com/search?as=grid&order=name&q=%28type%3Acreature+type%3Alegendary%29+%28set%3Asnc+OR+set%3Aneo+OR+set%3Ancc+OR+set%3Anec%29+is%3Afirstprint
April 17, 2022 1:16 a.m.
Another metric I need to check is the proportion of legendary cards per unit. The single sets are generally smaller than the two- and three- set blocks, so I expect the proportion of legendary creatures to also spike. As one example, the original Ravnica block has 636 cards, 20 of which were legendary creatures, for a proportion of 3.14%. Ikoria has 389 cards, of which 23 were legendary, for a proportion of 5.91%.
Objective fact: There are more legendary creatures being printed now than pretty much ever before.
Opinion: That's way too many. Dial it back a little, WotC.
April 17, 2022 1:36 a.m.
Correction to my last post, then I'm stepping back for a bit. Ikoria has 274 unique cards; I forgot about alternate arts/borders/whatever. The legendary creature proportion in Ikoria is 8.39%.
April 17, 2022 1:46 a.m.
I do think that wizards can, at times, struggle with not understanding too much of a good thing. People like green creatures? Look at green creatures now. Artifacts seem really powerful? Mirrodin. Commander really popular? Let's soak that sponge.
That being said, I'll absolutely give them credit for making decent and interesting commanders at uncommon in recent sets.
April 17, 2022 7:59 a.m.
FormOverFunction says... #10
“To break out an old adage, when everybody's unique, nobody is.” This alone deserves a thumbs up. As a start I think they should revert to the old rule where if Jayce comes into play, sacrifice any other Jayce on the battlefield. That would at least start to reel it on a little bit. Make those special characters more special.
April 17, 2022 6:02 p.m.
yeaGO or another mod, there's a post here that looks like a spam account. It posted a link apparently looping back to this thread, but with a typo. I haven't interacted with the link.
April 18, 2022 9:25 p.m.
Agreed. Also, the whole point of commanders being Legends is the flavor, so making Legends that don't have significant lore defeats the purpose of making them for Commander.
April 25, 2022 4:34 p.m.
Stardragon says... #13
Im commander almost exclusively and I find most "Legendary" creatures lackluster and samey with a few true gems amidst stone and feel over 3/4 of the legendary creature (not just the uncommon ones which i can appreciated partially for budget deck) can just lose the legendary status and lose anything from it. So are there too many now being printed... as a commander player I'm inclined to say no as even if they are similar to other legendries they can be cheaper for less wealthy player but i do your point and also kinda think there too many and if they do make them they should make them more interesting and unique (I mean come on we have too make sacrifice/aristocrat Jund commanders with only Yurlok of Scorch Thrash being truly unique different discussion though)
TypicalTimmy says... #2
The same holds true for the creation forum. People just like power and creativity and flexibility. You cater to your masses. As a company, they must cater toward their largest format and fan base first, EDH, and their second largest - Draft, second. While it can be argued that Standard is the next largest, that may be in part due to confirmation bias from exposure toward sanctioned events. But by in large more people pick up a few packs at their LGS to Draft than buy into Standard.
At least, from all of the data I've seen, read and watched online.
But essentially this is the newest form of power creep. You can have stronger cards without breaking the game as much because you're (typically) only allowed 1 per boardstate. So you can have something with multiple abilities and interactions, which draws the appeal of the game, rather than cobblestone together some shambling wreck that falls apart when a single piece is removed. And why it is true that the legendary permanent being removed is more damning than a combo piece, it is equally true that you recover that much faster when you only need the one piece back out.
But, from a lore perspective, it is a tad silly to believe so many "legendary" beings exist within the same condensed arch.
April 17, 2022 12:14 a.m. Edited.