MTG Cleanse Cards: Best Board Wipes and Where to Find Them

TLDR

If you mean “cleanse cards” as in board wipes, the best MTG cleanse cards are Farewell, Wrath of God, Supreme Verdict, Austere Command, Toxic Deluge, Blasphemous Act, Cyclonic Rift, and Vanquish the Horde.
If you mean the actual card named Cleanse, it is an old white sorcery that destroys all black creatures and is banned in sanctioned tournament play.
Use Scryfall to find and compare cleanse-style effects by Oracle text, then use ProxyKing or PrintMTG for casual proxy testing where your playgroup allows it.
In Commander, the best “cleanse” card is usually the one that removes the problem while leaving you with a plan afterward. Casting a wipe and passing with nothing is not strategy. It is performance art.

MTG cleanse cards are usually what players mean when they talk about board wipes, wraths, sweepers, or “please make the battlefield less embarrassing” spells. They reset creatures, artifacts, enchantments, graveyards, or sometimes everything that is not nailed down with the word “land” printed on it. The best ones are not just powerful. They are efficient, flexible, and timed well enough that you are not simply helping the next player win.

First, What Does “Cleanse” Mean in MTG?

“Cleanse” can mean three different things in Magic: The Gathering.

First, there is the literal card Cleanse from Legends. It costs four mana and destroys all black creatures. It is not a modern staple, and it is banned in sanctioned tournament play because Wizards removed and banned several older cards whose art, text, name, or combination created racist or culturally offensive issues. So if you were searching for the card Cleanse specifically, that is the answer, but probably not the card you want for a deck.

Second, there are cards with “cleansing” in the name, like Planar Cleansing and Cleansing Nova. These are real board wipe effects and much closer to what most players want.

Third, and most commonly, “cleanse cards” means board wipes: cards that clear away a large category of permanents. That is the version this guide focuses on, because it is the one that actually helps you build a deck instead of win a trivia night no one asked for.

Best MTG Cleanse Cards Overall

Card	Mana Cost	What It Cleans Up	Best Format Fit	Main Tradeoff
Farewell	{4}{W}{W}	Artifacts, creatures, enchantments, graveyards	Commander	Six mana, and everyone remembers who did it
Wrath of God	{2}{W}{W}	All creatures	Commander, Cube, casual	Creature-only
Supreme Verdict	{1}{W}{W}{U}	All creatures, cannot be countered	Azorius control	Needs blue-white
Austere Command	{4}{W}{W}	Flexible creature, artifact, and enchantment modes	Commander	Six mana
Vanquish the Horde	{6}{W}{W}	All creatures, discounted by board size	Commander	Bad on empty boards
Final Showdown	Spree	Flexible instant wipe package	Commander, Standard shells	Full wipe mode gets expensive
Toxic Deluge	{2}{B}	All creatures with -X/-X	Commander, Legacy, Cube	Costs life
Blasphemous Act	{8}{R}	13 damage to each creature, heavily discounted	Commander	Damage does not beat everything
Cyclonic Rift	{1}{U} / {6}{U} overload	Opponents’ nonland permanents	Commander	Bounce, not permanent removal
Hour of Revelation	{3}{W}{W}{W}	All nonland permanents	Commander	Triple white

Farewell: The Best White Cleanse Card for Commander

Farewell is the cleanest answer to the messiest Commander boards. It lets you choose any number of four modes: exile all artifacts, exile all creatures, exile all enchantments, and exile all graveyards.

That flexibility is absurdly useful. If your graveyard deck is ahead, you can leave your own enchantments alone and clear graveyards plus creatures. If an artifact deck is building a small industrial district, you can remove artifacts without touching creatures. If the table has become a soup of tokens, treasures, enchantress pieces, and reanimation targets, Farewell can reset almost everything.

The downside is that Farewell costs six mana and exiles your own chosen categories too. It is powerful, not polite. In casual Commander, it also slows the game down if you cast it with no follow-up. Have a plan. A miserable table reset with no plan is just doing chores in public.

If you want to test it in casual games before committing to a final list, ProxyKing has a Farewell MTG proxy for playtesting and kitchen table use.

Wrath of God and Day of Judgment: The Classic Creature Cleanse

Wrath of God is the template. Four mana, destroy all creatures, no regeneration. Day of Judgment is the cleaner modern cousin that destroys all creatures without the regeneration clause, which usually matters about as often as someone voluntarily paying cumulative upkeep on Mystic Remora with a smile.

These cards are best when your deck does not rely heavily on creatures, or when your creatures generate value before dying. Control decks, planeswalker decks, enchantment decks, and slower Commander lists all want this kind of effect.

Wrath of God is also one of the most iconic cards in Magic history, which makes it a useful baseline for evaluating every other wipe. If a board wipe costs more than Wrath, it had better offer flexibility, exile, instant speed, asymmetry, or some other real upside.

ProxyKing carries a Wrath of God MTG proxy if you want to test classic wrath effects in casual decks.

Supreme Verdict: The Control Player’s Cleanse

Supreme Verdict is one of the best four-mana creature wipes because it cannot be countered. That line matters most in blue matchups, where control players often turn the stack into a tiny courthouse.

In Commander, Supreme Verdict is excellent in Azorius, Esper, Bant, and Jeskai decks that need dependable creature removal. It does not answer artifacts, enchantments, or graveyards, so it is not a complete reset. But when the problem is creatures and someone is sitting on two blue mana with a smug expression, Supreme Verdict does the job.

Austere Command: The Flexible Commander Wipe

Austere Command is one of the best cleanse-style cards in Commander because it lets you choose two modes:

Destroy all artifacts
Destroy all enchantments
Destroy all creatures with mana value 3 or less
Destroy all creatures with mana value 4 or greater

The strength is precision. Token decks can wipe large creatures while keeping small ones. Big creature decks can wipe small utility creatures. Enchantment decks can spare their board and destroy artifacts. Sometimes Austere Command is a board wipe. Sometimes it is a scalpel. Sometimes it is both, because Commander boards are allowed to become crimes against readability.

Its main cost is mana. Six is a lot. But in a four-player game, the ability to choose what dies often matters more than raw efficiency.

Vanquish the Horde: Best Cheap Wipe When the Board Is Crowded

Vanquish the Horde costs eight mana, but it costs one less for each creature on the battlefield. In Commander, that usually means it costs two white mana by the time anyone seriously needs it.

This card is excellent in creature-heavy pods. It is also awkward if your table plays low-creature combo, spellslinger, stax, or artifact decks. Like all conditional discounts, it looks brilliant when it works and deeply unemployed when it does not.

Play it if your meta floods the board. Cut it if the real problems are enchantments, graveyards, or one player pretending their Thassa’s Oracle is a social experience.

Final Showdown: Flexible, But Read the Receipt

Final Showdown is a white instant with spree, meaning you pay the base cost plus the added cost for each mode you choose. Its modes can remove abilities from all creatures, protect one of your creatures with indestructible, and destroy all creatures.

The appeal is flexibility. You can blank abilities, save a key creature, wipe the board, or combine modes. The catch is that the full package costs real mana. Final Showdown rewards timing and punishes people who skim cards while nodding confidently, which is half of us on prerelease weekend.

It is especially interesting in decks that want instant-speed interaction or want to wipe while keeping a commander alive.

Toxic Deluge: The Best Black Creature Cleanse

Toxic Deluge is one of the best black board wipes ever printed. For three mana, you pay X life and give all creatures -X/-X until end of turn.

That matters for two reasons. First, three mana is cheap. Second, -X/-X gets around indestructible because creatures with zero or less toughness die to state-based actions. This makes Toxic Deluge excellent against gods, protection effects, and boards that think “destroy” is optional.

The cost is life. In Commander, 40 life gives you room to spend, but you should still count. Paying 12 life to clear the board is fine if it saves you. Paying 12 life because you are annoyed is less fine, though emotionally understandable.

Blasphemous Act: The Red One-Mana Reset

Blasphemous Act costs nine mana, reduced by one for each creature on the battlefield. In Commander, it often costs a single red mana and deals 13 damage to each creature.

That rate is silly. Red is not usually the color of clean creature sweeping, but Blasphemous Act is the exception that keeps showing up with a chair.

Its weakness is that it deals damage. Indestructible creatures survive. Protection from red matters. Very large creatures can live. Still, for most Commander boards, 13 damage is enough to convince the creature section to leave.

Cyclonic Rift: The Blue “Cleanse” That Does Not Actually Clean

Cyclonic Rift is not a destruction spell. It returns permanents to hand. But overloaded Cyclonic Rift is often treated like a cleanse card because it clears every nonland permanent your opponents control while leaving your board alone.

That asymmetry is why it is so powerful in Commander. Cast it at the end step before your turn, untap, and everyone else gets to rebuild while you attempt to end the game. Very fair, in the sense that the card was printed and therefore technically exists.

The downside is that it does not permanently remove cards. Opponents can recast them. But if the game ends before that happens, this complaint can be filed in the same folder as “I was about to stabilize.”

Planar Cleansing, Cleansing Nova, and Hour of Revelation

If you want cards that feel closest to the word “cleanse,” these are the name-adjacent options.

Planar Cleansing destroys all nonland permanents. It is blunt, expensive, and effective. This is not a card you cast to get a small edge. This is a card you cast when the board state has become a group project and everyone deserves consequences.

Cleansing Nova offers two modes: destroy all creatures, or destroy all artifacts and enchantments. That makes it flexible, though less powerful than Austere Command in Commander.

Hour of Revelation destroys all nonland permanents and often costs only three mana if there are ten or more nonland permanents on the battlefield. In Commander, that threshold is not exactly rare. Someone made 14 Treasure tokens, another player has six enchantments, and somehow there are three Clues no one plans to crack. The hour has arrived.

Where to Find the Best MTG Cleanse Cards

If you want to research cleanse cards, start with Scryfall. It lets you search by exact Oracle text, format legality, color, mana value, and card type.

Useful Scryfall searches:

o:"destroy all creatures" legal:commander
o:"exile all creatures" legal:commander
o:"destroy all nonland permanents" legal:commander
o:"exile all graveyards" legal:commander
(o:"destroy all" or o:"exile all") t:sorcery legal:commander
name:/cleanse|cleansing/

If you want casual playtest copies of specific staples, ProxyKing is best for individual proxy singles and recognizable staples like Wrath of God and Farewell. For full decklist printing, PrintMTG is a better fit because it lets you paste or upload a list and print on demand.

Keep the proxy rule simple: use proxies for casual games, Commander nights, Cube, testing, and budget access when your table or organizer allows it. For sanctioned events, use authentic cards unless a judge issues a proxy for a narrow tournament situation, like a card becoming damaged during the event. Trying to rules-lawyer that distinction is a great way to make a store employee age visibly.

ProxyKing’s How to Use MTG Proxies Responsibly is worth reading before bringing proxy board wipes to a public game night.

Quick Buying and Testing Framework

Use this simple framework when picking your cleanse package.

Good

Play two to three basic wipes that match your colors. Wrath of God, Day of Judgment, Blasphemous Act, Damnation, Cleansing Nova, and Evacuation all fit here.

Better

Mix different kinds of wipes. Run one destroy effect, one exile effect, and one flexible wipe that hits artifacts, enchantments, or graveyards.

Example Commander package:

Farewell
Austere Command
Vanquish the Horde
Blasphemous Act if you are in red
Toxic Deluge if you are in black
Cyclonic Rift if you are in blue

Best

Choose wipes that leave your deck ahead. If you play enchantments, use creature wipes. If you play big creatures, use small-creature wipes. If your commander survives Final Showdown, build around that. If your deck wins after Cyclonic Rift, include Rift and accept that people will sigh. Sighing is part of Commander.

Final Verdict

The best MTG cleanse cards depend on what you need to remove. Farewell is the best broad Commander answer. Wrath of God is the classic creature wipe. Supreme Verdict is the control staple. Austere Command is the flexible multiplayer tool. Toxic Deluge is the best black sweeper. Blasphemous Act is the red efficiency monster. Cyclonic Rift is the blue one-sided reset that makes people check whether they still enjoy this hobby.

If you are building a Commander deck, do not just ask, “What clears the board?” Ask, “What clears the board while letting me recover faster than everyone else?” That is the difference between a board wipe and an actual plan.

FAQs

What are MTG cleanse cards?

MTG cleanse cards are usually board wipes or mass removal spells. They remove many creatures, artifacts, enchantments, graveyards, or nonland permanents at once.

Is Cleanse a real Magic card?

Yes. Cleanse is an old white sorcery that destroys all black creatures. It is not a recommended Commander staple and is banned in sanctioned tournament play.

What is the best cleanse card in Commander?

Farewell is one of the best Commander cleanse cards because it can exile artifacts, creatures, enchantments, and graveyards in any combination.

What is the best cheap board wipe in MTG?

Toxic Deluge is one of the best cheap black wipes at three mana. Blasphemous Act is often the best cheap red wipe because it frequently costs one red mana in Commander.

Is Cyclonic Rift a cleanse card?

Not technically. Cyclonic Rift bounces permanents instead of destroying or exiling them. In Commander, overloaded Cyclonic Rift often functions like a one-sided board cleanse because it clears opposing nonland permanents.

Can I proxy board wipes like Farewell or Wrath of God?

Yes, for casual playtesting, kitchen table games, Cube, or Commander if your playgroup or organizer allows proxies. Proxies are not legal in sanctioned events unless issued by a judge under specific tournament rules.