Card Review 6-23-2025

“It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that Fling”

- The Professor, Tolarian Community College

Fling has been an iconic card in Magic’s history for a long time, with plenty of iterations on the effect over time. Today’s card, Self-Destruct, is a great variant that can help you burn your way to victory.

What makes Self-Destruct different is that while Fling always sacrifices the creature, Self-Destruct only deals damage to the creature it targets. This means that if the creature has more toughness than power, or, better yet, has indestructible, it can survive the spell to do more damage.

I’ve been using this in Standard to great effect, specifically with cards like Emberheart Champion and Heartfire Hero, who both have the Valiant keyword that gets value for being targeted by your spells. Heartfire Hero even gets in bonus damage when it dies, so it doesn’t mind being destroyed by Self-Destruct.

But Commander provides an even wider range of options for Self-Destruct. You can use it to drop Infect damage on players if they try to remove the infectious threat, or use it on your Big Stompy Creature that doesn’t have trample and thus can’t get through chump blocks. This flexibility is what makes Self-Destruct one of my favorite cards to emerge from Final Fantasy.