Commander is a format where a whole lot of stuff needs to be dealt with as efficiently as possible. If your opponents have a fast start, you need to keep them in check. Here are Commander Format Panel member Kristen’s first pick board wipes – the ones she finds the most efficient and useful.
Ah, the humble board wipe. A class of card that sees a lot of discussion, mainly around just how many you should be running in your deck. Trying to get Commander players to run enough is like trying to get people to eat their vegetables. That metaphor works both ways, too – I’m sure you’ve played against the control player who runs nothing but board wipes, right? Maybe that’s too much fibre, but I digress.
MY FIRST PICK BOARD WIPES IN 2025
The most played wraths in Commander are Blasphemous Act and Toxic Deluge (and Cyclonic Rift). It’s easy to see why; they’re not only the cheapest to cast and offer a really big bang-for-your-buck, but they’re also accessible to many players. While Deluge used to be pretty pricey, successive reprints have allowed it to be played in way more decks.
I know I don’t have to convince anyone to play Blasphemous Act, as a one mana board-clear is a no-brainer. What’s interesting about that, though, is that I’ve started teching more against it – and it’s paying off. Running pro-red creatures like Auriok Champion, or spells and equipment that grant protection… it’s paying off for me when it comes to weathering the storm.
There are many more that people should look at, though. Here are a selection of the wraths I’ve been playing a lot of, and why.
GETTING YOUR VALUE
When I’m playing a Golgari deck, I’m always reaching for Culling Ritual. The chance to clear the board in the early stages while making a boatload of extra mana to rebuild with is always a phenomenal play. This wrath gets worse the further you are into the game, but it gets better the lower the curves of your opponents’ decks.
You can easily slam this on turn 4 and get four mana back, making it effectively free to cast. You might even get more than four mana, which is kinda nuts so early in the game. It also gets significantly better if you’re on a tokens deck, because you can throw them into the mana-chipper.
Speaking of which, if you’re going wide with small creatures and tokens, you owe it to yourself to be playing Settle the Wreckage. Beyond being a great defensive spell that gets around attackers being hexproof, it can be used offensively to get some serious ramping action going.
If you’ve attacked with three or four creatures, you can wait after damage before going to Main Phase 2 and just exile your attackers and get some lands into play. You can also do it after declaring attacks if you want to just throw your smaller creatures to a certain doom when you don’t have any good attacks. I love playing this one in the early to mid game when I’m not in danger of being defeated, and when I feel like a board wipe is going to happen from an opponent anyways.
If you’re in a black deck, you should be playing Living Death, and I won’t hear about it otherwise. Okay, except if you’re playing mill, because then it’s a liability. But otherwise? This card is insane.
Living Death is a board wipe bundled with a mass reanimation effect for just five mana. It doesn’t get much better than that. Double up on it with Bringer of the Last Gift, and pave the way with Author of Shadows and Dauthi Voidwalker.
I value lifegain really highly these days. Life totals melt quickly, owing to the over-focus of modern creatures needing to attack or deal damage to trigger value based abilities. Dropping a Fumigate in the mid game can net you anywhere from ten to twenty life points, which can often reset you back to – or near – your original 40 life.
It can be particularly useful if you’re in a deck that burns through its own life total (hello, Orzhov) or in strategies low on creatures to block with, as you’ll take a few hits on the way.
TIPPY TAPPY
A board wipe I’ve been caught out by many times now is Don’t Move. Don’t Move is a huge tempo reset, because not only does it wipe the board of a bunch of creatures, it also makes it much harder for opponents to attack at all in the ensuing turn cycle. As I mentioned above, attacking generates a tonne of value for most casual decks nowadays.
For all intents and purposes, this turns off combat for a turn, acting as a pseudo-fog stapled to a wrath. It’s really, really good in Control decks, as it buys a lot of time and life total, slowing the game down a little.
When I started playing Commander, Sunblast Angel was quite the force to be reckoned with. In 2025, she’s a little expensive. That’s why I love to play Split Up, a much cheaper option. What makes Split Up so damned good is that you get the choice between blowing up tapped creatures or untapped creatures. While it’s not getting rid of everything, it’s still going to be an X for 1, where X is equal to more than enough for three mana.
You can make this go that much further to being one-sided by running a bunch of Vigilance, or putting into the flavor-of-the-month deck: a vehicles deck.
YOU CAN’T SAY NO AT THREE MANA
Like Toxic Deluge and Split Up, the following spells are only three mana, which is a really comfortable mana value to help with double spell turns.
The Battle of Bywater is phenomenal in tokens decks, big-butts decks (like Walls and Defender decks) and honestly just pretty good in any low to the ground kinda deck. Making a bunch of artifact tokens can contribute to a surprising amount of synergies, so keep in mind that having access to another artifact token maker on a wrath is magical Christmas land for select decks.
Brotherhood’s End is a wrath that just keeps earning its keep for me in every game I play it. You’ll know straight away if you’re going to need to rip out artifacts or wipe an early board of creatures, and given that both modes deal with the predominant early-game value accrual engines, it’s almost never a dead card.
I even play this in my Henzie deck, as losing Henzie really isn’t the end of the world. I’ve been known to take turn 3 off to slam this at some tables, too. An even better spell if you consider decks with damage doubling effects.
One last “three mana” one to cover before we move on, and that’s the big reset button that is only second in size to the larger “Sayonara” reset button, and that’s Hour of Revelation. You’d be surprised how fast the board can have ten nonland permanents on it these days. If everyone plays at least one one or two drop, and a three drop before you untap on turn three, and someone has made a treasure or a clue, that’s already ten nonland permanents. Which means this is definitely online on turn 4-5, which is the current sweet spot for resetting a board.
Commander players yearn for Revelation. Give it to them.
ONLY ONE MAY STAND
We love a bit of Game Knights here at Card Kingdom, and the famous phrase applies to board wipes, too. Back in the day, it was Duneblast or Divine Reckoning, or maybe Slash the Ranks.
They’re still playable, but I’d much rather give a card as a bargaining tool to another player in order to ensure the board is fully wiped, before getting my best creature back again. What’s neat about this compared to Divine reckoning is that you get to enjoy the enters the Battlefield effect on top of being the only one with any creatures in play.
Even if you are not using an ETB effect you’ll still get to come out ahead with your commander or another valuable creature still in play.
Another powerhouse board wipe in white is Final Showdown. Final showdown is an amazing wrath, owing largely to the fact that it gets around Indestructible effects. This works because of the way the spell resolves. Because the spell resolves line by line, all creatures will lose abilities until end of turn before the board wipe resolves. That’s also the reason that your creature will gain Indestructible should you choose that mode.
To cap it off this can be cast at instant speed, whether that is to wipe the board clean yourself, or, as a two mana way to interfere in another player’s attempt to protect their creatures.
It doesn’t get any more one-sided than Ruinous Ultimatum, unless, of course, you play Cyclonic Rift. This ultimatum isn’t actually that hard to cast, and essentially is a sorcery speed Cyclonic Rift in Mardu colors. The upside being that your opponents can’t re-cast things, as they’re blown up instead of bounced. If you’re in Mardu, this feels like an auto-include at this point, as it just wins games.
I’m not going to completely ignore blue though. Even if Cyclonic Rift is the best blue interaction/wrath, there are other options worth considering. Typal decks should consider Raise the Palisade, which is a way to help push damage through and reset the board, without interfering with your own deployment.
Obviously I still advocate for playing cards like Aetherize, especially if you are in mono-blue, but unless you’re playing hard control a spell like Raise the Palisade is going to come in very handy.
GO BIG OR GO SMALL
Modal spells have long been the preferred choice for basically every deck slot in Commander decks, and though you can’t always go super-modal on your board wipes (beyond choosing what permanent types to remove), you can choose whether to point your laser at one target or call down an aerial bombardment.
Damn and Winds of Abandon do exactly that, and it’s the reason I find myself playing them in so many lists. They’re basically never a bad card to draw into.
WIPE IT ALL CLEAN
Sometimes destruction isn’t enough, and you need a hard answer to all of the bullshit on the board.
I’m a huge fan of Farewell for this, and I think it gets a bad rap. People draw enough cards these days that they should never “always be dead to” Farewell. Sure, some games it’ll end it for people because they’re out of gas, but more commonly, it’s doing it to people because they were greedy, overcommitted, and don’t play enough lands.
While you can’t play many wraths in Simic – least of all Farewell – you can still play Oversimplify, which I’m thinking more Simic decks need to run, to be honest. It’s an exile wrath. You gotta have access to this effect in UG.
END STEP
These are the wraths I play the most and enjoy the most. They provide more than enough value to warrant running, and I challenge you to up your number of wraths this year. One or two are rookie numbers. Get that up to three, four or even five. I dare you.
Kristen is Card Kingdom’s Head Writer and a member of the Commander Format Panel. Formerly a competitive Pokémon TCG grinder, she has been playing Magic since Shadows Over Innistrad, which in her opinion, was a great set to start with. When she’s not taking names with Equipment and Aggro strategies in Commander, she loves to play any form of Limited.