One-Sided Board Wipes: The Sweepers That Spare Your Own Creatures

The strongest one-sided board wipes are black: In Garruk's Wake and Plague Wind destroy every creature you don't control for nine mana, Massacre Wurm gives your opponents' creatures -2/-2 until end of turn and costs each opponent 2 life for every creature of theirs that dies, and three-mana Golden Demise stops touching your creatures once you control ten permanents. In white, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite gives every opposing creature -2/-2 for as long as she stays on the battlefield. A one-sided board wipe is a sweeper that destroys, damages or shrinks your opponents' creatures and leaves yours standing. Below are 17 of them, grouped by how they spare your board and by colour, with the exact cost, type and condition for each.

Black: destroy every creature they control

At a four-player table, a symmetrical wrath trades your board for everyone else's. A one-sided wipe trades nothing: three opponents lose their creatures, you keep yours, and you attack into an empty table that turn or the next. That's why nine mana is a fair price. Black is where this effect lives, and the three wipes here that destroy every opposing creature at once are all mono-black.

In Garruk's Wake is usually the better nine-drop, since it also takes every planeswalker you don't control; Plague Wind's extra clause only matters against regeneration. Dread Cacodemon only wipes when you cast it from your hand, so reanimating it gets you a Demon and no sweep. Overwhelming Forces and Rain of Daggers hit one opponent, so aim them at the biggest board. Forces pays you back in cards; Rain of Daggers is two mana cheaper but charges you in life, which hurts against tokens.

The -2/-2 creatures: a sweeper with a body attached

These give every creature your opponents control -2/-2, which kills anything with toughness 2 or less: most tokens, mana creatures and utility creatures. Your side doesn't shrink, and you keep a creature afterwards.

Massacre Wurm is the pick for most black decks: against a token deck, the life loss alone can finish a player. Sephiroth does the Wurm's job in blue-black and grows every time an opposing creature dies. Elesh Norn's -2/-2 never wears off, so while she's out, any creature with toughness 2 or less that an opponent casts dies on arrival. Massacre Wurm and Sephiroth also stack with the destroy wipes above: cast In Garruk's Wake with either one on your side, and every creature it destroys costs its controller 2 life or grows Sephiroth.

The cheap ones: one-sided on a condition

Ten permanents sounds like a lot until you count your lands. Ascend checks as Golden Demise resolves, so the land or mana rock that takes you to ten can come down earlier that turn, and the city's blessing then lasts for the rest of the game (Comprehensive Rules 702.131a). Sandman's Quicksand wants a discard outlet or a looting effect on your own turn: discard it, then cast it from your graveyard in a main phase of that same turn. Bite of the Black Rose lets each opponent choose the lesser evil, so a player with no creatures votes sickness to keep their cards. Either way, nothing happens to you.

You can also build so the symmetrical half doesn't hurt. A -2/-2 only kills toughness 2 or less, so a deck of bigger creatures shrugs it off, and with Elesh Norn out, your other creatures break even while your opponents' creatures take -4/-4.

Red and the planeswalkers: damage that skips your side

Red's sweepers each come with a catch, and two gold planeswalkers get there on loyalty.

Artistic Process is the flexible one: the sweep clears tokens and mana creatures, and when there's nothing small to hit, it kills one big creature or makes a hasty flier. Its token is blue and red, but the colour of a token a card creates doesn't count toward that card's colour identity, so the card stays mono-red (Comprehensive Rules 903.4). Disaster Radius rewards a deck of huge creatures: reveal your biggest, sweep for its mana value, cast it next turn. In black-red, revealing Dread Cacodemon makes it 10. Save Mogg Infestation for a board of a few large creatures, since each one that dies leaves two Goblins behind. Angrath's +2 is why you play him: every turn, it wipes out one opponent's X/1s. Ral's +1 keeps the cards flowing until you can cash in the -7.

Sequencing: wipe first, or protect what you have

A symmetrical wrath asks you to hold creatures back. These reward the opposite.

• Wipe before combat. Cast the destroy sorceries in your first main phase and attack into the empty board. Cast Dread Cacodemon after combat instead, since it taps your team.
• Shrink before combat, too. The -2/-2 from Massacre Wurm, Archfiend of Sorrows and Sephiroth lasts until end of turn, so whatever survives blocks as a smaller creature. It only hits creatures already on the battlefield as it resolves, so a token made later that turn arrives full size (Comprehensive Rules 611.2c); Elesh Norn's static ability catches those too (611.3a).
• Cast the symmetrical modes before your own small creatures land, or make sure they have the toughness to survive. Indestructible won't help here: a creature with toughness 0 or less goes to the graveyard without being destroyed (704.5f).

Which one-sided wipe does your deck want?

• Big black decks want In Garruk's Wake or Plague Wind to swing the game, plus Massacre Wurm to cast on six.
• Low-curve black decks get cheap answers to tokens from Golden Demise, Sandman's Quicksand and Bite of the Black Rose.
• Red decks run Artistic Process anywhere, and Disaster Radius when the creatures are huge.
• Gold decks have Angrath in black-red, Ral in blue-red and Sephiroth in blue-black. Sephiroth and Elesh Norn are legendary creatures, so either can be your commander (903.3).

If your commander is white, Elesh Norn is the card. If it's black, run one nine-mana wipe and Massacre Wurm, and you're covered against both big boards and token swarms.

Narrow those results to your deck with the filter sidebar on the card catalog: your commander's colour identity, a mana value ceiling, or creatures only, for the sweepers that leave a body behind. Getting Better Search Results covers the search and the filters; for the whole build, from brief to legality check, see how to build a Commander deck with an AI assistant.

Frequently asked questions

What makes a board wipe one-sided?

Its text names only the other side: creatures you don't control, creatures your opponents control, or every creature one target opponent controls. At a free-for-all Commander table the first two are the same creatures. They differ only in team games, where a teammate isn't an opponent (Comprehensive Rules 102.3), so Plague Wind hits your teammate's creatures and Massacre Wurm leaves them alone. Golden Demise and Sandman's Quicksand switch to that wording once you meet their condition.

Do one-sided board wipes kill indestructible creatures?

Only the -2/-2 ones. An indestructible creature can't be destroyed, and lethal damage doesn't destroy it either (Comprehensive Rules 702.12b), so every wipe here that destroys or deals damage leaves it standing. A creature with toughness 0 or less is put into its owner's graveyard without being destroyed (704.5f), so Massacre Wurm, Elesh Norn and the other -2/-2 cards kill an indestructible creature with toughness 2 or less.

Do these wipes count as destroying for death triggers?

Death triggers care about dying, not destroying. A creature dies whenever it's put into a graveyard from the battlefield (Comprehensive Rules 700.4), whether it was destroyed, dealt lethal damage or shrunk to 0 toughness, so Massacre Wurm and Sephiroth trigger for every opposing creature these cards kill. "Destroyed" only matters where a card counts it: Overwhelming Forces and Rain of Daggers count only creatures destroyed this way, so one that regenerates (701.19a) or is indestructible adds nothing to the draw or the life loss.

What about my opponents' tokens?

Tokens are creatures, so every wipe here hits them, and since most are small, the -2/-2 cards are the efficient answer. Elesh Norn even kills a 1/1 or 2/2 token made after she lands. Watch the cards that count creatures: Rain of Daggers costs you 2 life per token, and Mogg Infestation gives that player two 1/1 Goblins for every token that died, doubling the army instead of answering it. Overwhelming Forces is the opposite, a card per token.

Build the deck around them

Put your sweepers into a Commander deck in the Mana Grove deck builder and let the Validation tab watch colour identity for you. Create a free account to start; every plan includes the full deck builder, and plans and pricing shows what the paid plans add.