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Board Wipes Cards in Commander

Board wipes are the reset button Commander needs — the answer to the format's inherent snowballing, where a single player can develop an overwhelming board before opponents assemble enough targeted removal to answer it. A well-timed wrath doesn't just neutralize a threat; it resets the entire table and buys every player time to rebuild, which is why nearly every competitive and casual deck runs two to four.

The baseline is Wrath of God and Damnation — four mana, destroy all creatures, no conditions. They've defined what a board wipe costs for decades. Supreme Verdict earns its slot over both in white-blue decks because it's uncounterable, which matters the moment any opponent is running a blue control shell. Vanquish the Horde scales down to two or three mana when boards are fully developed, making it one of the most efficient creature sweepers available when you actually need it most.

Farewell and Austere Command represent the format's best modal wipes — flexible enough to hit enchantments, artifacts, or graveyards in addition to creatures, which matters in a format where artifact ramp and graveyard recursion are as threatening as combat damage. Farewell's exile clause makes it especially punishing against reanimator strategies. Ruinous Ultimatum is the Mardu all-in version: asymmetric, devastating, and mana-intensive enough that it ends games rather than just resetting them.

Tribal decks have their own axis. Kindred Dominance wipes everything except your creature type, turning a symmetrical reset into a one-sided blowout. Hour of Reckoning does the same for token strategies, leaving your go-wide board intact while clearing everything else. Dusk // Dawn rewards low-power-toughness builds by surviving on half the creatures and then rebounding them from the graveyard in one card.

Not every board wipe is a sorcery. Dictate of Erebos converts your sacrifice triggers into a recurring asymmetric wrath — it doesn't say "destroy all creatures" but functions that way in sacrifice decks whenever you control the dying creatures. Elspeth, Sun's Champion wipes large creatures at minus-ability, which is exactly the threat profile that overruns creature-light control decks.

The minimum in Commander is two board wipes. Three is correct for most metas. Running one and hoping spot removal covers the gap is the most common structural mistake in the format — targeted removal answers one threat, but wrath answers the board state, and those are different problems.

159 board wipes cards

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