Back in Magic: The Gathering's days of yore, when the Legends we remember fondly today were still being written, the 'legendary' supertype was more of a drawback than anything else. While it evolved over time to allow both players to control the same legendary creature, it still restricted you to one copy of a particular legend in play at a time, making them more difficult to build around than their less well-known peers.
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With the advent of singleton formats like Commander, however, that all changed: when you can only include one copy of a given card anyway, the legend rule no longer matters. Factor in a huge amount of legendary support cards, and a deck built around a legendary theme becomes more than viable.
Tutor effects, or cards that search up other cards from your deck, are great in every Magic format, letting you circumvent the inherent randomness of a deck-based game and play your key cards more consistently. This is especially true in Commander, where you only have a one-in-a-hundred chance of drawing the specific card you need each turn.
Most tutors are priced highly, according to their high worth, but Captain Sisay is an exception. For just four mana up front, you can tutor up a legendary creature every single turn, giving you easy access to the majority of your deck if you're building to a legendary-matters theme. The fact that she can grab other legendary permanents, including lands and planeswalkers, just solidifies her status as a true legend among legends.
Building a wide board then buffing it up for a swift kill is a tactic as old as time in Magic, though not one you'd necessarily associate with the traditionally-expensive world of legendary creatures. The modern game is full of legends at low mana costs, however, which makes Arvad's built-in Anthem effect particularly effective in the right deck.
For just five mana, Arvad gives you a 3/3 creature with two solid keywords, and, more importantly, a +2/+2 boost to all your other legendary creatures in play. This allows you to build a kind of 'Legends Aggro' deck, swarming the board early with the likes of Zurgo Bellstriker and Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful, and taking out an opponent on turn five when Arvad drops his buff.
It's hard to think of a card that does more for your legendary creatures than Bard Class. Not only does it grant them an additional +1/+1 counter, it also reduces their cost by up to two, and allows you to 'draw cards' off the back of casting them. It's an enchantment that can single-handedly serve as the engine for your deck, provided its colour composition lines up right.
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Since the most powerful part of this card, the cost reduction that comes on level two, requires creatures with red and/or green in their mana costs, Bard Class is most at home in a Gruul or five-colour build. In such a deck, with the Class fully levelled up, you'll be able to tear through your deck at a pace your opponents will be unable to comprehend, let alone handle.
Despite her relative obscurity among Magic's rogue's gallery of villains, Geyadrone Dihada is one of the oldest, most powerful evils the Multiverse has to offer. This is reflected perfectly in her planeswalker incarnations, particularly Binder of Wills, which provides stellar support for decks composed primarily of legendary creatures and permanents.
Most of the time, Dihada will alternate between buffing one of your legends in play and drawing you more legends from your deck, creating Treasure in the process. In rare instances, however, you'll get to use that juicy-looking ultimate, and enjoy the full arch-villain experience as you seize control of every nonland permanent in play. A long, drawn-out cackle is mandatory if you ever pull this off.
While only including one copy of a given legendary creature in your Commander deck does avoid the inherent drawbacks of the supertype, it presents a new drawback in the process: one of fragility. With only one of each legend at your disposal, your opponents will only need to deal with a card once to all but remove it from the game. Thankfully, Champion's Helm makes doing so much more difficult.
The Helm provides a nice +2/+2 buff, as well as the crucial hexproof keyword, protecting a given legend from most forms of interaction. This is one of the best options for keeping a key creature alive, since the extra stats also increase your chances of surviving damage-based board wipes, one of the few ways to get around hexproof as a means of protection.
'Panharmonicon' is fast becoming part of the wider Magic vocabulary, representing any card that doubles specific triggers from your other cards. Gandalf the White is the latest in this distinguished line, letting you double the enters-and-leaves the battlefield triggers of all your legendary permanents, and artifacts to boot.
It's a suitably powerful effect for the most iconic Wizard of all time, and it opens up a mind-boggling array of deckbuilding possibilities, especially when you factor in his ability to grant your other legendary permanent flash. In addition, Gandalf comes with flash himself, meaning he can arrive on the battlefield precisely when he means to.
If you look beyond the bizarre type line of 'Dinosaur Thopter' here, you'll find one of the best sources of mass protection for legendary creatures available. While ward two isn't quite hexproof, it's functionally very similar, especially in the early stages of a game. You can deploy your Thopteryx on turn two, then follow it up with key legendary creatures, safe in the knowledge that they can take refuge from removal under its broad bronze wings.
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Its effectiveness does fall off later in the game, as more mana and more cards become available to deal with it, but it provides you with a crucial window of opportunity early: a window that can allow you to snowball into a win if you play your cards right.
'Mox' is effectively a sacred word in the language of Magic: The Gathering, calling to mind some of the most oppressively powerful artifacts the game has seen. Mox Amber doesn't quite reach the same degenerate heights as its Alpha ancestors, but it does perform an admirable imitation, especially in Commander.
Since it relies on having a legendary creature in play to function, Mox amber is more likely to serve as a mana fixer and minor tempo boost in the mid game, rather than provide the explosive starts other Moxen offer. As the game progresses, however, its capacity to produce multiple colours lets it surpass the other Moxen, keeping your mana smooth and your legends flowing.
Lands that provide perfect colour fixing for specific archetypes are nothing new in Magic, but Plaza of Heroes has to be one of the most stacked entries in the genre. It gives you whatever mana you need to cast a legendary creature, then lets you leverage the legends you have in play to fix your mana for other spells.
On top of that, it also packs an emergency protection button, letting you cash it in to keep a key legend safe for a turn. While it's expensive to use, and a bit counter-intuitive, it can win you the game in the right scenario, and you'll always feel better having the option open.
One of the most terrifying stat-scalers Magic has seen, Jodah's effect can get out of hand quicker than artifacts in an affinity deck. With Jodah in play, every legend you control ramps up the stat boost he provides exponentially, and Jodah himself counts towards, and benefits from, this boost.
This means that, with just five legendary creatures in play, Jodah will grant +5/+5 to each: 25/25 in total stats. This would be powerful enough on its own, but his second ability, which effectively gives your legendary spells a form of cascade, lets you build your board up quickly, creating boosts that will overwhelm even the most well-prepared opponents.
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