8 Top Board Wipes

This week one of our House Wizards

shares his list of top boardwipes!

Those pesky things that ruin your plans just when you have the upper hand. Or about to have it.

Those spells that clear the board for you to dominate your opponent.

So let's get started with our Top Boardwipes!!!

Enter the House Wizard:

When I started writing this post I was hoping to make a list of the 

best board wipe in MTG. But after having a great conversation with

 one of my friends about what are the best board wipes, I 

remembered a statement I learned in college, “There is no perfect

 pasta sauce: there are only perfect pasta sauces”. Because what 

boardwipes give to a deck isn’t the victory of the game but the 

chance to delay the game to give you more option or to seal the 

game totally. So with that idea we will talk about the most 

essential board wipes in MTG. These are just my opinion on what 

the best board wipes are that can help you decide on what wrath 

effect would be perfect for your deck. 

1) Volcanic Fallout

   Aside from the blue hate (I will hate blue forever, nothing will change that.) this is one wins for its value as a red weenie removal.  With a very affordable casting of 3 mana, It can’t be countered. It deals 2 damage to all creatures and all players. And after all that, it’s an instant.

If that isn’t value I don’t know what is! Because not taking in to account that it can save you from infinite token combos such as earthcraft + squirrel nest combo. It can establish board dominance against mana dependent decks that use mana dorks (yeah those pesky elves), and it’s damage can be redirected to planeswalkers instead of dealing it to players (Editor’s note: Hmmm.. interesting I never thought of that before).

This card is mostly seen played in the EDH format but it is also being used in the Tiny leaders format because of its synergy with commanders like Shu Yun that can survive Volcanic Fallout due to Prowess mechanic.

2) Armageddon

    This could have easily gone to Boom/Bust for the utility in landy decks or Decree of Annihilation for being a complete board wipe that removes everything or cycling it to destroy all lands with a card draw and dodges a lot of counterspells from blue (Editor’s note: I have learned from a friend that using cycling will make it count as a triggered ability so you will need to use Stifle or other similar spells to stop the annihilation).

But what Armageddon has in spades is the value for the mana cost. 4 mana to destroy all lands can look useless when you your losing a game.

But a well-timed geddon can give back the tempo of the game to you and at best it could win you the game.

The only downside of this card is it requires you to master your deck and understand it. Because misunderstanding the use and/or timing of this card can easily spell your defeat.

3) Terminus 

      Of all the modern boardwipes this takes the cake for establishing board control. With a huge number of cards in the modern sets that can give or has creature indestructibility, many boardwipes like wrath of god, Akroma’s vengeance or Day of judgement has lost their edge in giving the player board dominance they sorely need.

Aside from that with formats like EDH uses cards like Bribery and/or Gilded Drake and has Commanders like Mimeoplasm or Sheoldred, You really don’t want to give these guys healthy pickings to anyone’s graveyard.

 

 Luckily, Terminus answers that for 6 mana it will return all creatures to their creatures to the bottom of the owners deck making sure anything stolen, reanimated or a creature that just won’t die leave the board. 

Then if you still aren’t sold, it has a Miracle mechanic for the Cost of 1 White mana. If that isn’t the meaning of Top Decking! I don’t know what it is.

4) Bonfire of the Damned 

             I really wanted Obliterate, Decree of Annihilation or Molten Disaster to be the best Red Boardwipe but Bonfire of the Damned is just too damn good not to be the one.

Bonfire of the Damned can look very weak if you cast it from hand if you have 6 mana it can only deal 2 damage to target player and creatures he or she control but with the miracle mechanic of this card you’re looking at 5 to target player and all creatures he or she controls with the same amount of mana.

This boardwipe doesn’t even hurt you and can technically blast the other player away if used properly.

This card is seen used in Modern, EDH, Tiny leaders, Even Legacy. Aside from that this card can be used as a great political tool when playing multiplayer format of EDH.

So even if not all his or her creatures will die from this I highly doubt any player would want to be in the receiving end of this spell.

5) Cyclonic Rift

            If we’re talking about a spell you don’t want to be in the receiving end of, this may be it. Aside from the value of 2 to cast, to return target nonland permanent you don’t control to owner’s this card and has an overload cost of 7 to return all permanents except lands to all other players except you with all that it’s also an instant. So if you wanna be an asshole in this game, use this card.

6) Toxic Deluge/Black Sun Zenith

               I really couldn’t decide between these two cards, in one hand pay X amount of life to give all creature –X/-X  for 3 mana and the other would be pay 2 black mana and pay X amount of mana to give all creatures X amount of –X/-X counters and shuffle Black Sun Zenith to your deck. 

Maybe it has to do a lot with the format. For a format like edh paying for life wouldn’t really hurt that much if you have 40 life and in a format like tiny with a really small card pool, a card that can come back again and again has huge value to the player.

But as sweepers these could have fallen to either Death Cloud or Damnation but what both have is really a small casting cost which can give you an edge to the opposing player aside from the sacrifice protection and indestructibility hate. So it all comes down to the format of your choice.

7) Bane of Progress

             There isn’t really that much boardwipes in green, maybe Whirlwind or Tranquility. But these cards are too conditional. Or end up as dead cards when there isn’t that many targets or the player just didn’t draw those kind of cards.

But Bane of Progress in itself can be considered a decent sweeper of artifacts and enchantments. For 6 mana destroy all artifacts and enchantments and add that many +1/+1 counters to it.

If you think about it it’s a enchantment/artifact boardwipe that can really hurt. Then if you combo it with cards like Mycosynth Lattice it turns to an actual board wipe that can kill.



So as the name implies it would actually break you.

8) All is Dust

                  So for green players this is their actual boardwipe. All is Dust is a 7 mana each player sacrifices all colored permanents he or she controls.

So you may think that 7 mana seems to steep price to pay for a card that does only one thing and easily evaded by colorless permanents but if you think about it with cards like life and limb and Nissa, Worldwaker that turn those lands into creatures it’s not a huge logical step to pick a card that can make you’re lands into creatures.

Some use Koth of the Hammer that can turn mountains into elementals and so on and so forth with the same effect yet not the same effectivity due to the limited ramp ability of the Red color.
 So when the dust does settle, you would really have a huge advantage with that strategy

There we have it our list of 8 Top Boardwipes in Magic: The Gathering.

We would like to hear your feedback on the comments! Be bold tell use what you think about our list :)