20 Best Board Wipes in Magic: The Gathering
From Wrath of God to Cyclonic Rift, these are the spells that turn crowded battlefields into devastation.
In Magic: The Gathering, board wipes, or sweepers, serve as the ultimate reset button. These spells clear multiple cards from the battlefield in a single shot, whether you need to eliminate a full opponent's army or slow down the game by removing lands. Introduced in Magic's debut in 1993, these powerful plays have remained a cornerstone of strategy. Control and midrange decks often rely on board wipes to erase an opponent's momentum, while modern alternatives use non-targeting exile effects or mass toughness penalties.
This list presents 20 of the best board wipes in MTG history, each offering a unique brand of devastation. Boompile, a four-mana artifact, functions as a chaotic, chance-based alternative to traditional board wipes. Scourglass, another artifact, provides a delayed detonation that specifically spares artifacts and lands.
Artifact-focused strategies gained a devastating asymmetrical tool with Organic Extinction in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Commander. For ten mana, this card destroys all non-artifact creatures, preserving artifact-heavy decks' mechanized armies. In Garruk's Wake is a nine-mana sorcery that destroys opponents' creatures and planeswalkers, leaving the battlefield untouched.
Green is limited in traditional mass creature destruction, but Ezuri's Predation offers a unique solution by spawning Phyrexian Beast tokens to fight enemy creatures.
Nevinyrral's Disk, a colorless emergency button since Alpha, destroys all artifacts, creatures, and enchantments simultaneously for just four mana, making it a staple in competitive decks. Armageddon, a white sorcery for four mana, destroys all lands, effectively erasing the game's fundamental resources and locking in a superior board state.
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