Last One Standing The Battle Royale Board Game

Kickstarter is a wonderful place to find the latest ideas and innovations that are happening in the world of tabletop gaming, and they’re not all by big established companies. Brendan McCaskell established McCaskell Games just last year, let’s take a look at his latest offering on Kickstarter…

‘In the year 2025, a new reality television event has seized international attention called, Last One Standing. Participants from around the world compete for the title of world champion in this ultimate life or death battle. The competitors are parachuted onto an island where they will explore, loot, fight and kill for their own survival. Anyone can play, but in the end, only one can remain. Will you be the last one standing?’

I haven’t played the game myself, but here is a brief overview of the game play.

The game is played on a random set-up of modular boards, with randomly placed loot crates. Each player has a character, and to start with, not much else! The character placement (Drop-in) on the board is decided randomly by a die roll, and the characters can be placed on any viable hex. Then an island explosion occurs and markers applied to the side of the map.

Each round consists of five phases – Island Event; 2 actions; reload and rearrange; weigh-in.

The island event determines whether there will be an explosion – part of the map being removed – or a supply drop.

The action phase sees players carrying out one of three actions, starting with the character with the least weight, and can consist of a move, shoot, or use an item.

During the reload and rearrange phase you can reload your weapons and armour, as well as equip/un-equip your items.

Weigh-in sees you calculate the total weight of all the cards equipped, this then effects the turn order during the next round.

Play continues until… The last one standing… who’s the winner.

My thoughts.

Firstly, having not played the game, I can only go off the information available – rules, pictures, information from the designer and other peoples reviews.

I really like the art work, it’s cartoony and fun, and the standees really seem to ‘pop’. The board and tokens all appear to be colourful, though I can’t comment on the quality.

It’s a simple game, with quick gameplay, which I think will make it a fun thing to play and, once you have it on the table, you will probably play several games.

I especially like the exploding map. I see this forcing the pace of the game, making it a charge to get to the loot crates and upgrade your equipment. I also like the weight

effecting turn sequence. This, to me is where the decision making will come in and determine player strategy – do you go heavy with ‘big guns’ and hope you don’t get picked off before your turn?

All in all it looks like a fresh approach to a tactical skirmish game, and one that may well be worth taking a good look at.

Visit the website Here

On Kickstarter Here

Boardgamegeek Here