This allowed legendary creatures to be used as removal spells under certain conditions. Now, if you cast Squee, Goblin Nabob in the previously mentioned scenario, both your and your opponent’s copy would leave the battlefield. The second iteration of the legend rule, introduced alongside the release of Champions of Kamigawa, required all copies of a legendary card to be moved to the graveyard should more than one copy appear in play. As you can imagine, this rule became quite frustrating for players to deal with. Your copy would essentially be stranded in your hand in this situation. If you cast Squee, Goblin Nabob and your opponent already controlled a copy of Squee, your card would go directly to the graveyard. In its earliest form, the legend rule only allowed one copy of a legendary card to be in play at a time. They have the supertypes “basic” and “snow.” Cards can have multiple supertypes, but not all cards have one. Snow-Covered Islands are basic snow lands. An Island is a land, but its supertype is “basic.” That makes it a basic land.
In case you aren’t aware, a supertype is sort of like a prefix to a word. That all changed when Champions of Kamigawa was released in October 2004, where “legends” went from being a creature type to a supertype.
“Legends” were originally a creature type, just like merfolk and elves are creature types. Legendary cards first appeared in Legends. The legend rule used to be wild and unpredictable, but the changes Wizards made were probably for the better. Remember when I said that you could cast your own copy of Jace, the Mind Sculptor to remove your opponent’s copy of it? Yeah, those were the days. Spark Double | Illustration by Eric Deschamps