Best Budget Board Wipes for Commander Under $1

Board wipes keep commander games from spiraling out of control. Without them, whoever sticks the first uncontested threat runs away with the game. The good news is that most of the best wraths in the format cost less than a dollar, so there's no excuse not to run them.

White wraths

White has more board wipes than any other color and nearly all of them are dirt cheap.

Fumigate destroys all creatures and you gain 1 life per creature killed.

. In a four-player game with 15 creatures on the board, that's 15 life. That buffer matters when you've just spent your turn resetting instead of developing. Twenty cents.

Austere Command lets you choose two of four modes: destroy all artifacts, all enchantments, creatures with mana value 3 or less, or creatures with mana value 4 or greater.

. The flexibility to spare your own creatures based on their size while clearing threats and problem permanents makes this one of the best six-mana spells in the format. Forty-one cents.

Hour of Reckoning costs

but has convoke. Your creature tokens can tap to help cast it, and it only destroys nontoken creatures. In any token deck this is a one-sided board wipe that costs you nothing meaningful. Twenty-three cents.

Martial Coup for

creates X 1/1 soldier tokens. If X is 5 or more, also destroy all other creatures. So for seven mana you wipe the board and get five soldiers. You refill as you clear. Twenty cents.

Terminus puts all creatures on the bottom of their owners' libraries for

, which means no death triggers, no graveyard recursion, no indestructible protection. And if it's the first card you drew this turn, you can cast it for its miracle cost of . One mana. A one-mana wrath that dodges indestructible. Twenty-seven cents.

Phyrexian Rebirth destroys all creatures, then creates an X/X horror artifact creature where X is the number of creatures destroyed. You wipe the board and get a massive threat in one card. Twenty-five cents.

Descend upon the Sinful exiles all creatures for

. Exile, not destroy. Indestructible doesn't help. Death triggers don't fire. If you have delirium, you also get a 4/4 angel. Twenty-eight cents.

Red wraths

Chain Reaction deals X damage to each creature, where X is the number of creatures on the battlefield.

. With 10 creatures out, this deals 10 to everything. In commander that number is often high enough to kill most of the board. Twenty-nine cents.

Mizzium Mortars deals 4 damage to target creature for

, or you can overload it for to deal 4 to each creature you don't control. One-sided board wipe built into flexible spot removal. Forty cents.

Black wraths

Crux of Fate lets you choose dragons or nondragons, then destroy all creatures of the type you chose.

. In dragon tribal this is a one-sided wrath. In anything else, you pick whichever mode kills more of your opponents' stuff. A dollar ninety, slightly above budget, but too important for dragon decks to skip.

Multicolor wraths

Merciless Eviction exiles all artifacts, all creatures, all enchantments, or all planeswalkers.

. Exile means gone for good. No recursion, no indestructible, no death triggers. Whatever permanent type is causing problems, this removes every copy of it from the game. Eighty-five cents.

Cleansing Nova destroys all creatures or all artifacts and enchantments.

. Simple modal wrath that covers two different board states. Sixty-nine cents.

Dusk // Dawn destroys all creatures with power 3 or greater, then the aftermath side lets you return all creatures with power 2 or less from your graveyard to your hand. In a deck built around small utility creatures, this is a one-sided wrath that rebuys your whole team. Thirty-three cents.

Noncreature wraths

Not every problem is a creature. Sometimes the enchantment player or the artifact combo player needs answering.

Austere Command covers this already with its modal options, but Cleansing Nova is the simplest option for hitting artifacts and enchantments specifically. Both well under a dollar.

What about the expensive ones?

Blasphemous Act and Vanquish the Horde are two of the best board wipes ever printed and they regularly show up under a dollar depending on the printing. If you can find them cheap, grab them. Blasphemous Act regularly costs

in a full game and deals 13 to everything. Vanquish the Horde often costs and just says "destroy all creatures."

Cyclonic Rift, Toxic Deluge, and Farewell are format staples but cost real money. They're not budget-friendly, but if you already own them, run them.

The budget options listed above are genuinely competitive. You don't need to spend twenty dollars on a wrath effect when twenty cents gets you Fumigate and twenty-seven cents gets you Terminus. Save the money for your mana base.