Last One Standing selection
Asked by pedroedmarcos 6 years ago
Hey there,
I was thinking in use Last One Standing on my deck, but then a question came up on my mind. Which is the best way to select the creature at random to be the last standing? I was just thinking in maybe just use some app at my phone to generate a number(1 to X, X equals the number of creatures on the battlefield), but I just saw some guys complaining about how is not fair cause I will still choose where to begin to count. So if I get 1 on the app I just select my most powerful creature to be the starting point. Other idea was to roll a Die to select a player and then, roll the die again to select a creature of that player at random. Is there a better way or more fair way to use this card? (This second option looks better cause on my playgroup is pretty common to have a lot of creatures, like on a token strategy, and doing it like this we don't have to count all of creatures the battlefield, just the player selected on the first die roll)
I agree about numbering the creatures before generating a random number, if using an app. You should also number first before rolling dice. The app merely gives you a digital "die" with the appropriate number of faces for whatever you need.
I personally go with dice if the number of creatures is small enough for this to be feasible (up to, say, 20 due to the probable presence of spin-down dice at the table, though I could go up to 100 if I got out my D&D percentile dice). With higher numbers, an RNG app would be the preferable method for determining, once we count how many creatures are on the table and pick a starting point for the count.
This topic has come up on here before, with the question involving ridiculous numbers of tokens due to commander shenanigans, and so a third option was also brought up: statistically, if one player has over 100 elf tokens, another has over 100 zombie tokens, and the third has three creatures, odds are that either an elf or a zombie is going to be the last one standing, and so if the group agrees then the results could be short-cut to choosing one of those two token types. I would stress that you need the whole group's agreement on this, though, because it's not random. After all, there's always the chance that one of the third player's three creatures could actually be the survivor, even if it's an extremely slim chance.
December 3, 2018 6:38 p.m.
pedroedmarcos says... #3
Do you know any app to recomend me for this? On my playgroup is pretty normal to have almost 40 creatures on the battlefield, even more if someone is playing Rhys.
December 3, 2018 7:43 p.m.
Not a specific one, no. A dice-roller app that lets you set a custom number of die faces would work.
December 4, 2018 8:25 a.m.
The tool you want is called a random number generator, and is used for a number of various purposes, such as randomization of groups for scientific trials. If you Google "Random Number Generator", Google provides you with one at the top of the search page. You can also search for a random number generator application--there are plenty of free ones.
With regards to the question, since most people lay their creatures out in a line, you don't really need to specifically label all the creatures before you generate the number--just choose which creature will be number 1 before generation, then agree to count counterclockwise until you hit the displayed number.
Rhadamanthus says... #1
The best way to make the first option fair is to number all the creatures first, and then generate a random number for the one to choose.
The second option isn't completely fair because the distribution isn't uniform. With the way the math works out, any given creature controlled by a player with fewer creatures is more likely to be chosen than any given creature controlled by a player with more creatures.
December 3, 2018 5:55 p.m.