I picked this bunch because we have never actually seen all of them together at once, and it's quite annoying. Usually, I would just want them to talk about stuff and various apocalypses. But hey! this is versus! lets make them fight. Also, this is the fifth versus so it works.

Here is the setting


Previous rounds:


Along with voting, make sure to comment why you chose that person. Re-voting is allowed so you may even convince someone to change there vote!

What kind of arena are we talking about?
Are we talking a Hunger Games-esque huge arboretum or a plain sand pit?

Aside from that, are we talking strictly fighting, or more complicated multiplayer game politics?
And what kind of items do they possess? Is Liliana hanging with the chain veil or what?

Regardless, I give Liliana as the seeded favorite, Chandra as the wild card.
Jace plays too tricky in a straight fight so he'd get steamrolled. Garruk and Ajani would be early competitors and Garruk is more ruthless than Ajani after everything is said and done.

Ok so the arena is a sand pit type thing. Hunger games would favor Lilliana to much, and if there were muttations, Garruk would go to town. As for the items they possess, if you looked at the pole, you would see it said veiless Lilliana D:<, As for everybody else, they have the items that you usually see them with.

Liliana is still a major contender since she's slapped Garruk around before. Given, she was kind of evenly matched, but regardless.
Garruk has bowled through Jace before without even slowing down, so he's likely going to do so again. Ajani is a warrior, but Garruk is the freaking HULK.
Liliana puts Garruk down after the others go, which leaves a stand off between Chandra and Liliana. Likely the two most dangerous of the group.

OK so about the garruk lilliana encounter, she only beat him after she got the veil. Based on what demonstrations we have gotten of her powers, she seems like the most powerful, for all the above reasons.

Okay, boys and girls, you know the drill. Let's do this thing, Orcish style.

Will I make a subtle, nuanced argument based on a close reading of the established canon? No.

Will I deploy solid, logical reasoning in service of a thoughtful, plausible response to the prompt? Again, no.

Will I use the phrase "wham, bam, thank you, ma'am" at least once? It's possible.

Will I reference an 80's movie? Oh, hells yes.

Okay, so what do we have here? We have a bunch of strangers, each closely associated with a particular color, all connected in ways which they do not immediately understand, thrown together in an isolated location and asked to play a potentially lethal game.

Oh, hello Clue. It's been too long. I've been missing you.

Let's meet the players. Starring:

Chandra as Miss Scarlet.
Ajani as Mr. White.
Jace as Mr. Peacock.
Garruk as Mr. Green.
Liliana as... oh, crum... analogy crumbling before my eyes... ah, screw it - Colonel Mustard, because I said so, that's why.

First possible outcome: Chandra kills them all with the (flaming) candlestick.

That's how it could have happened. But what about this: Jace offs everyone with a (telepathic) knife.

But here's what really happened: Garruk did it, in the sand-pit-type-arena, with a revolver that shoots 3/3 beast tokens.

So, the final verdict: Garruk "Mr. Green" Wildspeaker carries the day in the most official of the various possible endings, then may or may not go home to sleep with his wife. Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am.

Ajani - dude's a warrior, assuming everybody's pretty even on the magical power scale, that's a huge advantage. May hesitate to take a life in a conflict he doesn't understand.
Jace - Should go back to the library. Mental manipulation is better suited to business delas in Ravnica than battle royales in the sand pit.
Lili - Probably the most experienced at killing things, and the most ruthless too.
Chandra - Headstrong and hair-triggered she'll be the first to make a lethal mistake. She might take somebody out before she goes down, but c'mon red winning in a multiplayer battle?
Garruk - Up there with Ajani in terms of strength but with the badly needed killer instinct. Knows a thing or two about vital organs and how best to punch them.

Garruk > Lili > Ajani = Chandra > Jace.

I really don't give this one to Garruk if his opponent is Lili. She might have dealt with him by using the veil, but she controlled that fight from almost the start.
Unless she's dealing with someone else, his number is gonna get punched.

... and I just had the horrifying realization that anybody that dies first becomes hers...
Oh good god... The field is hers.

Assuming she can raise a planeswalker, anyway. But still, she's also likely to manipulate Jace into protecting her, which will buy her some time. Garruk would likely come right after her, and Jace would try to stop him, likely getting mowed down in the process. Chandra and Ajani fight it out while the other three are doing their thing, and that one boils down to whether or not Ajani can get in close. Lili will take out Garruk while he's finishing up Jace, leaving a relatively fresh Liliana vs the winner of Chandra and Ajani. Lili's got a good chance, I think, but I might give the slight edge to Chandra, depending on how angry she gets over the whole thing.

Of course, Nicol Bolas is the ultimate winner, since he probably set up the whole thing in the first place.

I imagine Garruk knocking over Jace the way Rob Ford knocks over elderly city councilwomen.

That's actually going against the prompt's basis since it states that they've been stripped of their relationships outside the arena.
Given that, to Garruk, the largest threat would probably be the duel axe wielding lion man.
He's a very physical kind of guy, so his immediate assessment will tends not towards their mystical capacity, but their physical aptitude. That actually would probably put Jace and Lili relatively low on his priority list.

Jace, of course. He's protected by a near-impenetrable suit of plot armor.

EDIT: this gives me an idea for a card:

Ancient Arena
Land
: Add to your mana pool.
: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool. Spend this mana only to cast creature spells. Those creature enter the battlefield with a combat counter on them and attack each turn if able.

I'm fairly sure I worded it incorrectly. Now I'm imagining a story about a plane that uses soul traps to pull in creatures from across the multiverse and have them fight each other in an arena for the entertainment of the masses.

Ahh, fair point. I admit I only skimmed the prompt.

I think the end game would change dependend on who got taken out first, like if Chandra spends all of her power blowing up whoever happens to be standing next to her, but I'm going to vote Lillie because she's got the necromancy advantage, so all she has to do is wait for someone to die, and she might even be able to decive Ajani into helping her for awhile by pretending to be a damsel in distress or something, since nobody remembers how she really is. Or something like that.

Wait. Hunger Games with Teenwalkers?

Phone call for you - Magic movie screenwriters on line one.

IMO:

most likely winner: Jace - while others like Garruk and Ajani have close-combat warrior training, neither of them are very effective at combining it with their magic, Jace on the other hand has a full copy of Kallist's sword skills sitting around in his head plus his own training and experiences there, he's also the only one of the group with any experience or training in regards to planeswalker battles, having been trained by Tezzeret and fought Tezzy and others at times, like Baltrice and Ral Zerek. He's also got the advantage of blue-hax, and the potential threat of manipulating the other walkers into attacking each-other first to weaken them before he finishes off the remainder, and illusions to avoid being confronted directly that the others would have trouble dealing with or seeing through, and he's pretty exclusive in having stuff like counter-spells and un-summoning to deal with the biggest threats the others send at him, he's better suited than the rest towards battle melee against multiple opponents all fighting each other, due to his illusions and mind-magic

I'd put in Garruk as 2nd place, I get the impression that he has more experience dealing with planeswalker stuff than most of the others, and has good skills for summoning up his own army, as well as getting down and dirty himself, and protecting himself and healing himself, normally Lilliana might beat him out there, but an arena situation, unless it is pre-filled with corpses, is going to put her at a disadvantage, and she's less efficient without corpses there, if she gets lucky, one of the others would be killed and she'd res them as a zombie-caster on her side, and that might enable her to win against Garruk, but I have a feeling he'll overwhelm the others, including a Lilliana without enough corpses or spirits around to control, as I get the impression that she is less efficient at summoning her own monsters as she is at dealing with nearby spirits and corpses and turning them into her minions. She'd probably beat Garruk if the battlefield was pre-strewn with corpses, regardless of the minor advantage he has from his close-combat personal skills.

Lilliana is probably next, while normally a white user like Ajani might be her match, Ajani's got the wrong build, badly so, in his various appearances, he doesn't seem to fully have a hang on proper summoning skills, even if he has a few weird tricks there, and he seems to be explicitly be unable to use his healing and aura-manipulation powers on himself, and they are mostly buff related. This puts him at a severe disadvantage going into a fight without special circumstances like mana vortexes or strong allies for Ajani to buff, he might build up to better heights than some of the others can in what he can empower and perhaps call up, but he won't get there before he'd get taken out individually. His melee combat skills won't really make up for this, especially since he can't buff them to supernatural levels of strength like Garruk or combine them with illusions like Jace or anything like that.

Chandra is next, she'd probably beat any of the others besides Jace under some circumstances, due to raw power and focused offensive might, but Lilliana and Garruk appear to be skilled enough to have personal defensive enchantments to protect them from most magical attacks to some degree, as well as the ability to summon up minions to get in the way relatively easily, she also lacks Chandra's experience or Garruk's close-combat abilities, so might be overwhelmed if opponents get too close and push through her attacks to rush her, and her straightforward way of dealing with things will encourage them to finish her off first.

Ajani is most likely to lose, being unable to bring in allies severely nerfs his particular skill set, especially since by lore he explicitly can't self-buff, like, say, Elspeth or Gideon seem to do in some of the lore. Ironic, considering that he beat Bolas, who none of the others would have a chance against, but the situation for that fight seemed to have been made for Ajani's skill-set, whereas this battle seems made to nerf him.

You are VAAAAAAASTLY overestimating Jace's capabilities. For one, he doesn't have kallist's experiences in his head anymore. Those died when they switched back.
Even then, they do not translate to muscle memory and practical skill. Jace was, strictly speaking, an OKAY melee combatant. Against an actual opponent who knows how to use their weapon, he's fish food.
Almost every duel he's been in, also, has been more about accomplishing a fixed goal than in defeating an opponent.
And here you are underestimating Liliana. She's capable of a lot.

I guess I'm mis-remembering Jace's incidents with Kallist's memories.

As for Liliana, we don't really see much of her without some kind of thing powering her up under special circumstances, usually Bolas, but also the Veil. Although I'm not sure her multiple timeline zombie Bolases thing should count as cannon anyway, she's been protected from Jace's mind-reading and who knows what else and doesn't really fight much in Agents of Artifice. The stuff she did on Innistrad seems to be the best example of her abilities on her own, but it's uncertain how much of what she did was taking advantage of local undead forces that were already out of control on that plane, and how much she did on her own, plus she wasn't really fighting peers in that setup, but bunches of non-planeswalker mages or simple warriors who are normally reliant on Avacyn for their powers, and are nerfed with her locked away. She also was hiding her true skill level while dealing with Jace in Agents, so again it's hard to tell there, and her tussle with Garruk before getting the veil was too brief to tell much, as well as her again using local corpses.

I think the only time we see her pulling up summons on her own is against Baltrice in Agents, and it was mostly spirit ones, and I got the impression that while Liliana was the clearly better one in that fight, Baltrice isn't exactly a stellar example of a planeswalker when it comes to power, something like a drake to Chandra's dragon in terms of power levels for a fire mage, or as a partly red mage using some magi-tech, an HTML user to Ral Zerek's computer science mastery.

For the record, no, Test of Metal doesn't count as canon. At least nothing that actually happens in the book. The background info might still be solvent.


Well, since she ended up falling into the company of Geralf, who is a blue mana zombie user, I think it's safe to say that she didn't utilize much in the way of local undead.


There was definitely a moment when Liliana cut loose... and Baltrice was made very dead at that point.
Baltrice though, is more of a physical fighter. She's somewhere between Garruk's physical capabilities and Chandra's mystical ones. It's important to note that, since Baltrice's size and toughness were comparable to an OGRE when Jace observed her.