I'm not sure if any of you guys have noticed, but Champions of Kamigawa has a lot of Legends in it. OK. Who am I kidding? Of course you've noticed. I'm not even sure if the most dense of players could ignore such a fact. Regardless, that leaves some new things to be discovered.

What needs to be discovered? They're just legends right? Well, yes and no. They are legends, but there is more to it than that. The fact that there are a lot of legends can lead to some interesting conflicts. At the same time, the "new legend rule" further complicates these matters.

Actually, I guess that sounds a little cryptic. Let me be more direct. Take deckbuilding, for instance. Well, let me stop myself. Let's look at some of these cards more directly. I think that will help reinforce some of my points that I'm going to try to make.

Let's start with:

Eight-and-a-Half Tails is a pretty decent creature. If you are playing a white weenie style deck, these are the type of creatures you look for when deckbuilding. It's only two mana to cast. It's a 2/2 creature. This is a highly efficient power to cost ratio. On top of all this, it comes with a useful ability. To further push home the point, it comes with two ability, and both are cheap to activate.

In most cases, this is a card that you would play four copies of. However, one simple word changes all that; Legendary. I'm not saying that it makes the card good or bad. I'm just saying that things are a bit different.

In a weenie style deck, you want to be able to play a creature on each of your first few turns to put pressure on your opponent. So this guy sort of gets in the way if you draw more than one. After all, you can play more than one at a time. Looking at the set though, white weenie might be making a comeback. One of the things you have to start thinking about then, is whether or not you want to play enough to use their "Legend rule ability" to kill other copies that your opponents might be caught playing. I don't think you want four of this guy in your deck, but I could see two of them. If there was a lot of white being players in your area, I would increase that number to three because of its ability.

Let's look at another:

This guy is just a great all around blue creature. It's ability is definitely one fit for a legend. I would start any decklist with three of these if I was seriously going to be in blue anyway. Well, if I was building a blue control style deck. The fact that it's activation only requires one blue is key as well. With the strength of a card like this, you may want to include one or two more (whatever difference brings you to four) in your sideboard. The reason is that a creature like this is amazing in the mirror match. You can use it to outright kill your ooponent's copies that are already in play. And at the same time, you can use it to stop all the spells in their deck, as you will have the same spells.

Here's another one:

I'm not sure how you want to play this creature. A creature like this is simply a better sideboard card than a maindeck card. Against slower deck like u/w this card is great. They are utilizing spells such as Wrath of God and Wing Shards as creature kill, but they don't target creatures. This makes Hirobi's drawback less severe. However, I don't think it merits more than two copies. This is one of those creatures that probably would be treated the same with or without being a legend.

Let's try this one:

This one is a bit different, because it's not even a creature. So, having a legendary enchantment of this card is strange because the nature of the card is so important. You obviously need to have multiple shrines to make this worth it, so you are likely playing multiple colors. So something like this, you probably don't want more than two of in your deck as you will need two copies of the others. I'm sure there is a way that you can make use of one of each shrine in a deck, but even then, only one or two copies would be needed.

And then there are guys like this:

OK, let me say that this guy has some cool art. It's like the old man on the mountain in old adventure stories. Anyway, back to business. A guy like this may just as well never make your deck as well. If there were several control decks, I might just play one or two of this guy maindeck. But I do think this guy is definitely worth some sideboard slots. There's not much else to say about this card. I think it's stock will be devalued a bit because of Nature's Will.

But just from these cards, you can see how they each make you think differently when deck building. Legends tend to be a bit stronger than the average card at their cost (or in their color even). This makes you really want to play them. You can't just to getting slap happy and throwing a bunch of copies of every good legend in your deck. You have to factor in the odds of your opponents playing them. You have to decide how scary they are for your deck to play against. And sometimes you have to simply figure out how strong the ability is in each matchup.

If nothing else, all these legends are going to teach us a few legends. Some of them may even change the way we play. But for certain, they will change our perspective on things. These guys will easily make Confucius proud.

Until next time,

DeQuan Watson

a.k.a. PowrDragn

PowrDragn at Pojo dot com