The Top 10 MTG Red Board Wipes

One of red’s biggest strengths is creature removal, and that includes clearing the board. Even though it doesn’t have unconditional sweepers, red has plenty of options for burning your opponents’ board to the ground.

Most of red’s board wipes deal damage to creatures rather than outright destroying them. When we evaluate these cards, we need to make sure we’re dealing a good amount of damage for how much mana we’ve spent. This efficiency is key, but we also need to look at flexibility. Mono red board wipes can often deal different amounts of damage, which makes them strong in more situations. Other factors, such as being able to play them at instant speed, can also increase a board wipe’s utility.

While every board wipe has its own strengths and weaknesses, some are generally stronger than others. Listed here are the top ten red board wipes, all of which are worth a slot in the right deck.

Table Of Contents:

1. What Makes a Good Red Board Wipe?
2. Honorable Mention
3. Top 10 Red Board Wipes
   1. Starstorm
   2. Molten Disaster
   3. Chain Reaction
   4. Hour of Devastation
   5. Rolling Earthquake
   6. Delayed Blast Fireball
   7. Chandra’s Ignition
   8. Anger of the Gods
   9. Vandalblast
   10. Blasphemous Act
4. End Step

What Makes a Good Red Board Wipe?

The qualities that great red sweepers have are the same qualities we look for in all of our magic cards:

• Are they efficient?
• Are they good in multiple situations?
• Can we gain some extra advantages by using them?

For red board wipes in particular, there’s one other factor that’s also worth considering: their damage output. Since so many of them use damage to kill creatures (and sometimes players), they have a different set of advantages and disadvantages to consider.

What Are the Advantages of Red Board Wipes?

The fact that red sweepers use damage can often be one of their biggest strengths. Many of them let you deal different amounts of damage depending on your circumstances.

Instead of paying a fixed cost to destroy all creatures, you can pay more mana to remove larger creatures, or less mana to remove smaller ones. If you have the largest creatures on the board, you can use this flexibility to keep some of your biggest threats on the table.

Some cards also synergize with dealing damage, so red board wipes can provide you with a ton of unexpected value. Cards like Brash Taunter or Toralf, God of Fury can turn your sweepers into burn, and Body of Knowledge can turn damage into card draw. Adding extra synergies into your deck can lead to some very efficient plays, but just make sure they don’t distract from your main strategy.

What Are the Disadvantages of Red Board Wipes?

Of course, that strength can also be a weakness. Dealing enough to damage to kill an eldrazi titan can be expensive, or at worst, impossible. If your opponents have even one or two of these big threats, you might not be able to kill their best creatures.

There are also multiple keywords that protect against these board wipes. Indestructible gets around most sweepers, and these are no exception. Protection, however, only gets around damage-based board wipes. A creature with protection from red cannot be dealt damage by a red source, but a creature with protection from black would be destroyed by Damnation.

RELATED: MTG Protection: How It Works and What It Does

The rules around protection can be confusing, but it works against damage, not destruction effects. If you’re expecting your opponents to run this keyword, black or white might have sweepers that are better in your meta.

What Strategies and Tactics Work with Red Board Wipes?

Even though most board wipes are symmetrical, you still have an advantage when you’re the one playing them. Since you’re the only one who knows a board wipe is coming, you can build your board state accordingly.

When you’re playing around your own red board wipes, be mindful of how much damage you’ll be doing. If you’re going to be doing lots of damage, or if your creatures are small, then you should play out your hand after you wipe the board.

With large creatures, though, you can play them and do just enough damage to keep them alive. You can make a lot of these board wipes one-sided (or close to it) as long as you’re mindful of your creature’s size compared to your opponents’.

Honorable Mentions

Before we take a look at red’s best ten sweepers, I want to mention other solid options for low power decks. Even if these cards aren’t the most competitive, they can still be fun options for the right build.

Star of Extinction

Star of Extinction might not be my first recommendation, but analyzing its strengths and weaknesses will really highlight what we’ve discussed so far.

On the surface, it might surprise you that Star of Extinction didn’t make the cut. Dealing 20 damage for just seven mana is quite efficient, and destroying a land is a nice bonus. However, seven mana is a lot to ask for when you look at other red sweepers.

Other red board wipes can cost even more, but they also have cheaper modes. This card could end up stuck in your hand, or you might have to spend your whole turn to cast it. If it resolves, you can be fairly certain that the board will be clear. Regardless, its lack of flexibility might be too big of a risk.

Starstorm

Starstorm has a few nice perks. Casting it at instant speed gives you lots of options. You could wipe the board after another player attacks you, or on the end step before your next turn. In most cases, you’ll catch your opponents off-guard and be able to rebuild earlier than you normally would.

Cycling it when you have a strong board state is a fine backup plan, though spending three mana to draw a single card isn’t great. Still, my biggest problem with Starstorm is just how expensive it can get. You have to pay two red mana upfront, plus one for each point of damage it deals. That can add up quickly, and you might not have enough mana to get rid of every threat on the board.

Top 10 Red Board Wipes

Now that we know what we’re looking for, let’s go over the best board wipes you can find in red. Each of these cards have their own merits, and you may want different ones depending on your deck. Still, you should know which ones have the most power overall.

#10: Molten Disaster

Molten Disaster has a similar problem to Starstorm: more damage means more mana, and that can force you into really inefficient plays. Kicking it also stops you from pumping more mana into its X cost.

Still, split second is one of the strongest mechanics in the game. Sometimes you need to make sure your board wipe happens without a Counterspell or Teferi’s Protection stopping it. When you cast Molten Disaster kicked, you know exactly what’s going to happen.

If you have the highest life total, there’s also a chance you can take out the other players without giving them a chance to respond. I’ve won multiple games off of a kicked Molten Disaster, in large part due to the fact that players can’t usually respond to it. Special actions get around split second, but those are too rare to ignore the power of this keyword.

RELATED: What Is The Stack in MTG and How Does It Work?

#9: Chain Reaction

Chain Reaction can be incredibly efficient with the right board state. If each player in a game of Commander has just a couple of creatures, you’re likely to get rid of them all. At four mana, there are some boards where this card will have the same effect as Damnation. That comparison alone should let you know that Chain Reaction has a ton of potential.

To be clear, though: this card is not Damnation. There will be times where there aren’t a lot of creatures out, or where some creatures will survive the damage. This card depends a lot on your opponents’ boards, so it’s hard for you to consistently know how strong it will be.

#8: Hour of Devastation

Leave it to Nicol Bolas to decimate your opponents’ armies. Hour of Devastation is a great option for clearing the board, especially since five damage should also remove most planeswalkers.

My favorite part about this card is that it removes indestructible. Not only can this get rid of gods, but it also means Heroic Intervention can’t save somebody’s board state. This effect could take Hour of Devastation to the top of the list, but it’s limited by how much damage it deals. Five damage is ok, but there are plenty of creatures this card can’t handle.

RELATED: MTG Indestructible: How It Works and What It Does

#7: Rolling Earthquake

Rolling Earthquake is a classic board wipe. It only costs one red in addition to X, and it deals X damage to (basically) all creatures and all players. With enough mana, this can completely wipe the board and possibly knock some players out of the game.

However, it has the same drawback as some of our previous board wipes: its mana cost. It’s great to have the option to pump a bunch of mana into it, but that can also be quite taxing. Still, this is the strongest of the X-cost board wipes due to its cheaper cost.

#6: Delayed Blast Fireball

Delayed Blast Fireball is a decent board wipe on its own. You can either do a little damage for three mana, or invest eight mana into this to do six damage. That flexibility is nice, but I don’t love how expensive the second mode is. It can be fine if you need to wipe bigger creatures off the board, but it’s less efficient than you’d want it to be.

What really excites me about this card is combining it with impulsive draw. Red has received a flood of cards in recent years that let you exile cards and play them until the end of the turn, and Delayed Blast Fireball has a ridiculous amount of synergy with these effects.

You don’t have to foretell this card to get the higher damage output; you just have to cast it from exile. This means that if you cast it from an impulsive draw effect, you’ll get more damage and get to cast it for its normal cost of three mana! This synergy is so powerful that I had to include it in the top half of this list.

#5: Chandra’s Ignition

Chandra’s Ignition isn’t the strongest board wipe objectively, but it’s probably my favorite. In my Hallar, the Firefletcher EDH deck, this card has put in a ton of work either stabilizing the board or closing out the game.

As long as your deck has enough large creatures, you can feel confident in running this board wipe. It’s the only card we’ve looked at that guarantees you’ll be left with a creature.

It also damages your opponents while keeping you safe, so it’s a pretty reasonable win condition. In a voltron or infect strategy, this board wipe will occasionally steal the game for you, and that possibility adds so much value to running this card. Whenever your removal can serve as a secondary win condition, it’s worth a slot in your deck.

#4: Anger of the Gods

Anger of the Gods excels at what it does, but it goes into decks for specific reasons. If your playgroup doesn’t run token or go-wide strategies, then Anger of the Gods will be lackluster. It just doesn’t deal enough damage to handle with most threats.

If you do know that you’ll be facing lots of small creatures, though, it’s hard to beat Anger of the Gods. It’s cheap, lets your big beaters live, and exiles whatever it kills.

This is a great option for decks with lots of large creatures, or for metas with lots of cheap, aggressive decks.

#3: Brotherhood’s End

It might not exile creatures, but I see Brotherhood’s End as a stronger version of Anger of the Gods. Not only does it hit planeswalkers, but it also has a second mode. Against artifact decks, destroying all of their tokens and cheap tools can be backbreaking. Especially when you consider how prevalent treasure tokens have become, having an easy answer to artifacts seems incredible.

Of course, you still need to temper your expectations with this card. No matter which mode you choose, you can’t use this to take care of bigger threats. Still, I think this will make a great addition to slower red decks.

#2: Vandalblast

This pick might surprise you, but make no mistake: Vandalblast is a board wipe. Sometimes your opponents have dangerous artifacts instead of creatures, and you have to handle them to win. Getting rid of their mana rocks and utility artifacts can also set them back.

RELATED: The Best Mana Rocks in Magic: the Gathering

Perhaps the best part about this card is that it has overload. If there’s only one artifact you really care about, you can destroy it for just one mana. Otherwise, you can overload it. Both sides are quite efficient, and you could honestly include this in any red deck and be happy.

#1: Blasphemous Act

Putting Blasphemous Act at the top of the list was an easy choice. Unlike some of the other red board wipes we’ve discussed, this one actually gets cheaper when there are more threats.

13 damage will get rid of just about anything, and you’ll often be paying just one or two mana for it. No other board wipe matches the sheer efficiency of this card, and it deals enough damage that almost nothing will get out unscathed. I’ve had my board devastated by this card more times than I’d like, but for good reason: it’s the best red sweeper by far.

End Step

There are plenty of red sweepers to choose between, and some have different uses than others. Whether you’re trying to smoke out a few tokens or set your opponents’ board ablaze, I hope this list has helped you pick the right card to light up your next game night.