Nostalgia Part 3: The Ultimate Showdown Of Ultimate Bizarreness

We can't possibly leave nostalgia behind, for now at least, without going through my favorite Card effect ever: Last Turn. Aside from being the cover Card for Legacy of Darkness, Last Turn also has a lot of effects, it ignores rules, it has enough power to be Forbidden, and it also has Win Conditions. It probably has more functions than a PS3. And similar to Relinquished, when you see that game designers release such bizarre Cards before even reaching the 10th expansion for the TCG, you know they are up to no good. And when the rulings of the Card itself tell you that:

•"Last Turn" is a very special Trap Card with very special and unusual rules.

You are pretty much doomed to follow them. It even features an uncensored Hino-Kagu-Tsuchi. What else can you ask for?

This card can only be activated during your opponent's turn when your Life Points are 1000 or less. Select 1 monster on your side of the field  and send all other cards on the field  and in their respective owner's hands to their respective Graveyards. After that, your opponent selects and Special Summons 1 monster from their Deck  in face-up  Attack Position and attacks your selected monster. (Any Battle Damage from this battle is treated as 0.) The player whose monster remains alone on the field  at the End Phase of this turn wins the Duel. Any other case results in a DRAW.

As expected, we crash into a massive wall of text. If you think reading through all of it should win you the Duel alone, then you are probably right. Let's break it down little by little:

This card can only be activated during your opponent's turn when your Life Points are 1000 or less

These are the Trap Card's activation requirements. There's also a hidden requirement of controlling at least 1 Monster, but that's pretty evident once you move on with the text. Of course, since having 1000 or less Life Points is just an activation requirement, you could increase your Life Points and Last Turn would still resolve properly.

Let's move into the actual effect. Since Last Turn does A LOT of stuff for a mere Normal Trap Card, it's worth mentioning that it actually has four effects, which laugh at the face of whoever tried writing a comprehensive Rulebook:

Select 1 monster on your side of the field and send all other cards on the field and in their respective owner's hands to their respective Graveyards.

This is the first effect of Last Turn. As usual, obvious sentences have not-so-obvious implications: Since this is part of Last Turn's effect, selecting your monster does NOT target it, as you perform this selection during the resolution. This is awesome because your opponent doesn't get to know which monster you will choose (you can even change your mind and choose a surpising face-down monster at resolution!), and also because you can choose monsters that aren't friendly with Cards that target like Obelisk the Tormentor or Spirit Reaper. Then, every other Card is sent to the Graveyard. This is all that Last Turn does when it resolves. Yup, that's right. We are only halfway through the Card text, and the Card is done resolving. What do we do know? Break the existing rules, of course!

So far, you have activated Last Turn, and when it resolved, you will select your monster and send all other Cards to the Graveyard. Then, apply any effects that are pending (such as Sangan being sent to the Graveyard by Last Turn). Once all pending effects have resolved, we keep resolving Last Turn. Remember it having four effects? Well, it wouldn't be any fun if they were all contained in a miserable chain link, right? After everything is said and done, Last Turn proceeds:

After that, your opponent selects and Special Summons 1 monster from their Deck  in face-up  Attack Position and attacks your selected monster. (Any Battle Damage from this battle is treated as 0.)

Your opponent then picks any monster from his/her Deck and Special Summons it in face-up Attack Position. It can be any monster that can be Special Summoned from the Deck. This is the second effect, and from what we have gathered so far, this did not happen when the Card initially resolved. This is the loophole that allows you to activate Last Turn even while controlling a monster that prevents Special Summons, such as Jowgen the Spirituallist or Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo. Sadly, since Last Turn's text does mention Special Summoning a monster, Royal Oppression can negate its effect. Curse you, vague wordings!

Once again, you wait until all pending effects are over, and you proceed with the third effect. This effect actually creates a special Battle Phase in which monsters can't inflict Battle Damage, only the monster Summoned through Last Turn can declare attacks, and only the selected moster is an elligible attack target (if it can't be attacked, the Summoned monster won't battle). Now, think about it for a second. Last Turn has enough power to create an entire PHASE out of thin air. Wow...just...wow, man. Even so, while this Phase doesn't modify the usual Phase structure of the opponent's turn, you can create it during any other Phase of the opponent's turn (outside of the Damage Step, of course). Anyway, you perform this Battle Phase, and the player returns to his/her turn. The regular Battle Phase of the turn can still be conducted if it hasn't already. And when everything seems calmed enough, Last Turn strikes once more:

The player whose monster remains alone on the field  at the End Phase of this turn wins the Duel. Any other case results in a DRAW.

Bam! Right in your face, Exodia. Last Turn finally honors its name by arbitrarily determining that this IS the Last Turn of the Duel, no matter what you do. In theory, the winner of the special battle will be declared the winner of the Duel, but many things can happen before it. Namely, the opponent using Monster Effects to disrupt who controls each monster (such as Summoning Brionac by pulling some Tuners and bouncing your monster). This is why Last Turn was used in conjunction with Jowgen the Spiritualist: The opponent would run out of Cards, won't be able to Special Summon a monster, and would be pretty much doomed to lose the Duel.

And there you have it. A Card that performs 4 different effects at different times, providing a Win Condition, with almost no flaws in design. It's also admirable that whoever designed this Card had the very roots of the game in mind: Two monsters go in, one goes out, no outside interferance. That's Duel Monsters. Not some random instant-pluses Cards to turn the Duel around >_>

Stay tuned for the next article. No more nostalgia for a while, but instead, we'll deal with THE Card that should have been included in the upcoming Duelist Pack Kaiba. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me an e-mail at ness00[at]gmail[dot]com.