When it comes to Equipment, equip costs are
almost (if not more) as important as the actual
casting cost when determining the value. Four
mana for a mere +3/+2 is a disappointment,
something you'll only bother equipping when it's
late game and you're out of cards to play anyway
but still have bodies on the field. But legends
can pick up the sword for free, which is pretty
huge.
I suspect that this card is Fate Reforged's
token bone to throw at Commander format. In any
Commander deck, this card is basically "your
commander gets +3/+2" and any rumors you may
have heard about other creatures wielding it are
unsubstantiated at this time. In any other
format, you'd need quite a few legendary
creatures to make this a worthwhile inclusion,
but if you've got them, this could be an
excellent addition.
This is the most recent incarnation of the
"equipment that wants to be used by a major
character" concept, and while it's perhaps not
the most spectacular version, I wouldn't say
it's a disappointment. It seems like overkill to
argue that it should grant abilities,
considering how many abilities legends tend to
have in recent sets, and it's hard to argue with
attaching it to a creature for free. That may
not quite be enough for competitive play, but
it's not nothing.
Today's card of the day is Hero's Blade which
is a two mana equipment that gives +3/+2 for an
Equip cost of four and whenever a Legendary
creature enters play under your control you may
attach it to them. This is a bit too
situational for most formats, but will be an
absolute staple of Commander as a Legendary will
almost always be available.
In Limited this is quite weak without some
Legendary creatures to reliably use it as the
zero cost effect only kicks in when one enters
play and there are only fifteen currently in the
block with all of them Rare or Mythic. It
is safe to pass in Booster even though it can be
used in every deck it is a weak pick and
terrible topdeck. For Sealed it is usually
best to have it in the sidedeck, but if the pool
is off balance it can be played to help fill the
deck and has at least some use as a power
increase for an evasive threat.
The benefit of equipment is that they stick
around even after the creature wielding it is
gone. The drawback is that you have to pay both
its casting cost AND its equip cost before you
can ever use it. A lot of times, this is just
too much mana to invest before you actually see
a benefit.
This difficulty has been addressed in a couple
ways - living weapons from New Phyrexia, was one
- and the other is like this: to make the equip
cost cheaper based upon some criteria. Ghostfire
Blade has seen some play because of it's cheap
cost with colorless creatures, and Hero's Blade
may see some play with a deck of lots of
legendary creatures. The truth is, it's just not
an efficient cost to put this on a non-legendary
creature, so you want to make sure you have
plenty of legendary targets. The Commander
format comes quickly to mind, where you know
you'll always have at least 1 legendary creature
to attach it to, and you could certainly add a
lot more if you wanted to.
Once you get it equipped (hopefully for free),
how useful is it? +3/+2 is pretty nice, but is
it valuable enough to jump through the hoops
needed to get it on the cheap? I think that's
questionable, but it might be.
You're unlikely to have enough legendary
creatures in limited to use this efficiently,
but its cost isn't quite as far out of the
reasonable range if you have to use it on
non-legendary creatures.
