June 1994
The third Magic Expansion, Legends is perhaps the most famous. Only enough Legends cards were printed to fill the preorders placed by a certain date, and the popularity of Magic was still climbing rapidly. Because of this, many stores sold out of Legends cards virtually the same day they arrived. Others doubled the price of their Legends booster packs and soon were able to get these prices as other stores ran out and players continued to demand the cards.
Part of the reason for the unexpectedly high demand was the size of the set. The first two expansions had been small and were sold in eight-card booster packs. One box of boosters might hold a whole set of the cards-or at least enough to trade for a full set. The Legends expansion, though, was huge; it contained more cards than revised had. It was packaged in fifteen card boosters, just like Revised, with one rare in each booster. Building a full set required more than three boxes of boosters. Just to get enough cards to trade one-for-one.
It wasn’t just collectors who drove up Legends price so rapidly, though. The set contained many powerful cards, some of which had a radical impact on deckbuilding and play strategy. Because they unbalance the game so much-Mirror Universe and Underworld Dreams-are to this day on the restricted list for Classic tournaments.
Legends added several new rules to Magic. First were the legends themselves: cards representing unique characters, only one of which can be in play at a time. Next, were multicolored spells. These spells cost more than one color of mana and were printed with gold borders to distinguish them from other cards. Both of these mechanics have become standard Magic rules and have been used in many other sets.
Legends also added two new creature abilities, “rampage” and “bands with other,” but they didn’t fare as well. Some creatures with rampage made it into the basic set, but it hasn’t been used as much. Bands with others was a bad idea and has been removed from Magic entirely.
Legends retreated from the story-focused approached used in the Antiquities set; instead, its cards formed a collage of pieces of the multiverse’s legendary past mixed with traditional fantasy elements. The Legends expansion was last to pepper its flavor text with lots of classical quotes.
