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.

Nostalgia Part 1: Break The Seal!

This article is not beer-related, sorry Q_Q

Now that we have covered the most important Game Mechanics, it's time to relax a little and take a look what truly takes the spotlight in a Card game: The Cards themselves. In further articles, we'll be discussing some Cards, both new and old, mostly talking about their rulings rather than a strategic sense.

With all the legacy support and Duelist Pack: Kaiba on the horizon, it really brings back memories of some really old Cards who never lose their luster for veteran players like yours truly. And what better way to start with one of the oldest and most powerful Cards of the game? I'm speaking, of course, about the Forbidden One, the unstoppable and never-forgotten Exodia. Even when its first anime episode was somewhat cheesy, the image of Exodia blasting away the three massive Blue-Eyes White Dragon, supposedly the most powerful monsters at the time, is a scene anyone recalls and probably praises. After that, Exodia has reincarnated in several forms, mostly with lame consequences -_-

Exodia the Forbidden One itself is a really mediocre Effect Monster. But like its other parts mention, whosoever breaks the seal will know infinite power. This infinite power they speak of is no other than that of a Win Condition, one of the rarest Mechanics in the game, which as its name mentions, grants an instant victory in the current Duel.

The rulings for the Forbidden One are pretty straightforward:

1) The only case in which you can hold all five pieces of Exodia and still remain within the Duel is when you adquire the last pieces during the resolution of an effect that isn't over yet. The most common example is drawing 3 Cards with Graceful Charity, with some of them being the final pieces, but you still have to discard two Cards to complete the resolution of Graceful Charity. If you discard some Exodia pieces, you will not win the Duel. Again, this is the only case in which this happens, as you will see in a minute:

2) If you draw Exodia within a chain, then the Duel is over, ignoring every remaining chain link. For example, if you have very few Life Points, and your opponent activates Ring of Destruction, you can chain Reckless Greed, draw into the final pieces of Exodia, and win the Duel. Even if Ring of Destruction would cause you to lose, the chain stops before Ring resolves.

3) If there are pending Continuous Effects, Exodia is applied before them. For example, if you activate a Counter Trap Card while controlling two copies of Bountiful Artemis, and you only have one Card left in your Deck, you will draw a Card, fulfill Exodia's Win Condition, and win the Duel before the second Bountiful Artemis applies its effect.

4) If there is a lingering effect, Exodia is STILL applied before it. For example, if Deck Devastation Virus will destroy any Exodia pieces you draw into, if you complete Exodia, you will win the Duel before the Virus has a chance to destroy the drawn piece.


Oh yeah. The Forbidden One doesn't care about your fancy rules on how to properly resolve chains Q_Q


There are some more rulings about this mighty behemoth:

5) Exodia the Forbidden One has no effect, despite being an Effect Monster. Its Win Condition cannot be negated by anything. Divine Wrath can't do anything since Win Conditions don't use the chain (and they are not effects!), so not even a deity can face Exodia. Similarly, declaring "Exodia the Forbidden One", or any of its parts with Prohibition won't stop you from declaring a victory, so not even the power of a sign on a pole can face Exodia, no matter how strong you wave it.

6) If both players gather the five pieces at the same time, the Duel ends in a draw. Just because only Exodia matches Exodia. One day it may even have its list of facts. This also means that Exodia doesn't even care about turn player priority. Scary, huh?

In general, Exodia isn't too complicated, despite holding so much power.  The main things you should remember is the "don'ts" rather than the "dos". You do not Summon Exodia to the Field in order to Win, and of course, you do not need any free Monster Card Zones to do so. You do not attack any monsters or players with it, and it doesn't magically gain infinite ATK or DEF. Since Exodia doesn't have an effect, let alone Spell Speed, you do not chain to the declaration of victory, and you definately do not say something like "Exodia is a Spell Speed 4 effect". These may sound silly to some, but they were all common questions when Exodia was more popular, specially with little kids who were often familiar with the fake Exodia Cards that show a complete Level 12 Exodia with infinite ATK/DEF.

Stay tuned for the next part of the Nostalgia article, for some more classic Cards, while we are waiting for Kaiba's Cards. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me an e-mail at ness00[at]gmail[dot]com.