Last One Standing – Battlebond MTG Card Review

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

“Last Man Standing” is a common stipulation in professional wrestling, where it’s often used as the climax to the most venomous blood-feud storylines. Consider, for example, the recent episodes of WWE Smackdown that featured A.J. Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura repeatedly kicking each other below the belt. Fittingly, Mayday’s Last One Standing is also on the soundtrack for the WWE 2K18 video game, and you may actually have time to play the song when you cast this card. In a game state or format that tends to have a lot of creatures on the table (basically any place you can play Thallids or Elspeth Tirel), it will take a long time to figure out which creature is going to stay. It’d be a lot easier to use on Magic Online, but most Two-Headed Giant is (as far as I know) played in physical card form. Quite the conundrum.

I think that Last One Standing could end up being a little more useful than it might look. While you can’t guarantee that the creature that remains will be yours, your opponent/s will be left with at most one creature, which is likely to be easier to deal with than what you’re facing when you cast it. Three mana is very tempting for an effect like this – witness people trying to exploit Bontu’s Last Reckoning – and besides, gambling is pretty quintessentially Rakdos anyway.

Constructed: 2/5
Casual: 3/5
Limited: 3/5
Multiplayer: 3/5
EDH/Commander: 3/5

A three-mana boardwipe, huh? With an interesting drawback, mind, but one that you might be able to work around. Keep in mind that the creature who lives is randomly chosen, and is chosen from among the entire board. So it could be a 1/1 Squirrel, or it could be a flying mass of tentacles. You could control them, or an opponent could. In a sticky situation, there’s a chance this might buy you enough room to breathe, and it’s definitely priced to move. It’s maybe not ideal for Legacy, even as a three-mana mass kill spell, as being able to surgically hit a creature is usually better; still, this is apt to be a casual all-star, thanks to its cheapness and ability to play politics.

Constructed: 2.25
Casual: 4
Limited: 3.5
Multiplayer: 4.25
Commander: 4