All things considered, probably a stronger card than Mirrex, but the life cost isn’t nothing. I won’t be surprised if control decks start using this.
No idea why this isn’t legendary. Cards that depict unique individual creatures always are, but lands get a pass (cf. the Castle Ardenvale cycle).
They (mostly) stopped with Legendary lands because of how they played worse. Missing a land drop is much worse than not being able to cast another permanent spell since it’s less likely to be removed and more important for playing nonlegendary cards.
Lore wise it’s explained that you can have multiple leyline connections to a single place, though that didn’t stop the Kamigawa lands from being Legendary
The justification for the NEO channel lands was that they were special enough and you at least had an alternate use for them if you already have a copy on the battlefield.
Yeah, gameplay wise they have a use even if you have a copy on the field. And mana wise they’re no better than a basic land so you don’t really care to run multiples. Lore wise I’m just unsure how they differ from other legendary places with nonlegendary lands
Seems like the easy solution is to run fewer copies of the legendary lands. (I’m sure you’re right about the reasons; this complaint is directed at WotC, not you.)
![[BLB] Fountainport](https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/6/5/658cfcb7-81b7-48c6-9dd2-1663d06108cf.jpg){kind=link}