Last Rites MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: With the ability to discard any number of cards to force an opponent to also discard that many, Last Rites enables strategic depletion of the opponent’s resources, tipping card advantage in your favor.

Resource Acceleration: Unlike direct resource ramp, Last Rites accelerates your game plan by diminishing your opponent’s choices, paving the way for a smoother execution of your strategy with lesser interference.

Instant Speed: While Last Rites is not an instant, its strategic depth comes from the choice of timing for its use, ideally when the opponent has fewer cards in hand to minimize their options and maximize the impact of the discarded cards.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Last Rites requires players to discard any number of cards to realize its potential. This can lead to a significant loss of hand advantage, especially if a player discards more cards than they’re ultimately able to affect within the opponent’s hand.

Specific Mana Cost: The necessity for black mana to cast Last Rites could limit its integration into multi-colored decks. Players running decks without black mana may find this card incompatible with their strategy.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a casting cost of three mana, including two black, Last Rites can be quite costly relative to its potential impact. When considering the need to also discard cards, some players might find the cost too steep compared to other disruption tools in MTG that come at a lower overall resource expense.

Reasons to Include Last Rites in Your Collection

Versatility: Last Rites offers a unique blend of discard mechanics and card selection, allowing players to strategically remove key cards from their own hand while also disrupting the opponent’s game plan. This duality makes it a handy tool in various decks that capitalize on graveyard strategies or hand disruption.

Combo Potential: For decks built around synergies with discarded cards, Last Rites can be a catalyst. It serves as a bridge, populating the graveyard with creature cards that trigger on discard or death, or simply enabling powerful reanimation spells.

Meta-Relevance: In environments where players rely on specific hand-sized cards for their win conditions, Last Rites can be a game-changer. It’s particularly effective in uprooting finely-tuned combos or depleting an adversary’s resources, allowing for a shift in the balance of power at critical moments during a match.

How to beat Last Rites

Last Rites requires strategic play, as it can drastically alter the game by discarding multiple cards from an opponent’s hand while potentially drawing cards. To effectively combat Last Rites, it’s essential to maintain a full hand, minimizing the card’s impact should it be played. Cards like Elixir of Immortality, which shuffle your graveyard back into your library, or threshold-enabling cards that benefit from having many cards in your own graveyard, can turn the tables. Also, instant-speed draw spells that refill your hand after Last Rites has resolved can mitigate its effectiveness.

Relics with graveyard-exiling abilities, such as Tormod’s Crypt or Relic of Progenitus, hinder efforts to leverage the discard into additional benefits. Also, having cards with madness or those that can be played from the graveyard helps to use the forced discard to your advantage. Be wary of when to deploy creatures and other permanents, as holding them back in the face of Last Rites preserves them for a better timed play. Always remember, hand disruption can be potent, but through proper deck building and timely responses, Last Rites can be rendered less threatening.