After Kaldheim’s The World Tree was previewed last week, many players asked why it wasn’t legendary. Gavin Verhey explains why it isn’t in today’s episode of Good Morning Magic.
The last legendary lands in Standard-legal sets were in 2016 with Inventors’ Fair and Geier Reach Sanitarium. But lately, lands like the Castles from Throne of Eldraine and even much older lands like the named lands from Zendikar like Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and the guild lands from Ravnica: City of Guilds like Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree have went without the legendary type.
The quick and clean answer for why Wizards of the Coast (WotC) doesn’t make more lands legendary is because they don’t play very well. And unlike legendary creatures, your lands don’t tend to go away that easily, making them useless cards stuck in your hand. The problem is multiplied when a legendary land is good enough that you need four copies, highlighted when a player draws exactly one copy compared to a player drawing multiple copies of it. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and Gaea’s Cradle are some rare exceptions to this.
With regard to questions over The World Tree being a flavor fail for not being legendary, Verhey explained that when you play out a land, you’re establishing a mana bond with the leylines of that land and you can have multiple mana bonds with the same land, even if it is a one-of location.