Cleansing
Sorcery
For each land, destroy that land unless any player pays 1 life.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- The Dark
- Price
- $10.76
- EDHREC rank
- #21363
Cleansing destroys all lands of a chosen basic land type — a surgical mana denial effect that can collapse an opponent's resources in a single turn. The four-mana white instant is a niche weapon, not a staple, but in the right shell it ends games before they start.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Cleansing occupies a narrow but real role in stax and land-disruption strategies, where targeting the dominant basic type at the table can cripple two or three players simultaneously. Outside of that context it's hard to justify, since most Commander games reward building your own engine over dismantling opponents' mana bases. Legacy and Vintage are the only competitive formats where Cleansing is legal, and in neither does it see meaningful play — Blood Moon effects and Wasteland handle mana denial more efficiently. Oathbreaker follows the same logic as Commander: playable in dedicated disruption builds, ignored everywhere else.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
Cleansing's effect is unique enough that no direct budget swap exists, but Impending Disaster and Epicenter threaten land destruction at a lower price point if total annihilation is the goal rather than surgical precision. If the appeal is white-based land removal specifically, Ruination and Ravages of War overlap in spirit, though both carry their own price tags and destroy more broadly than Cleansing's selective targeting.
Price Context
Current price
$10.76 mid tier
At $10.76, Cleansing sits in mid-tier pricing for a card with almost no competitive demand — the cost is driven by age and scarcity, not play rate. It's a stable oddity rather than a climbing staple, so the price is unlikely to move sharply in either direction.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.