How To Prevent Mtg Sweeper Spells?

Phenomenal article, good sir. I have a similar philosophy about board-wipes. The short reason I give to people on why I tell them they should stop relying so heavily on board-wipes is this. Board-wipes (especially ones that only hit creatures) don’t do shit against well-constructed decks. Ideally, if you eliminate the cards they have now, they should be playing something more threatening later. Additionally, the problem with most board-wipes is that you’re usually tapping out to get rid of “everything” that’s in play, but what this means is the next player in turn order capitalizes on YOUR board-wipe the most by being first to rebuild. I don’t know about everyone else, but if my plan involves hoping all three of my opponents over-commit and allow my board-wipe to resolve, when three people have a reason to stop it, while tapping out (usually) on my turn to do so, then I don’t think that’s a reliable plan. On your point about stax I am curious on your opinion with what I’m about to say here. Because commander players, in a general sense, look down heavily upon stax, they view white as this vastly inferior color. “It needs more card draw.” “It needs more interaction.” White is only weak when the community strips it of its most powerful asset, resource denial via stax/hatebearers, as board-wipes alone are not going to cut it.

The thing that bothers me about board wipes (although they are necessary) is that the person going after the person who wipes the board always has such a tempo gain, ESPECIALLY if it doesn’t wipe artifacts or fast mana away. Very frustrating when you are just on the defensive for the next couple of turns after a boardwipe simply because you go before the person who wipes the board constantly.

That’s something i have only recently starting to grasp, to build a deck thinking of board interaction. I’m the guy with the “wrath tribal” deck at my play group because I play four wraths and six spells that deal damage to all creatures, plus spot removals. But only recently i have better thought out about what to do with an opponent’s graveyard if they reanimate, or living death, if they tutor a card, or if they have their own combo or play lots of quick small creatures. When i started playing at my lgs more is when i started taking out some of the destroy all creatures effects and started diversifying my removal, some for creatures, artifacts, enchantments, and even land. Lets call this “table” mentality, started to develop, cause when you play 1v1 a lot, your deck either gets adapted to countering a specific or small set of strategies, and then fairs much worse at tables which play more diverse or none of the strategies you’re usually accustomed to — when I look at my decklist now and to the old one when i started building it, i gotta admit that my past self would struggle to see why there is “random goodstuff” that doesnt necessarily contribute directly to my commander’s ability, in this case killing creatures, or playing lots of creatures with big fronts and small butts to serve as fodder, or playing some 15 spot removal, when im currently using only 3, or using all wraths for board wipe when they become consistently impracticable to play because i would usually need a support spell such as regenerate or give indestructible to my board.

The problem isn’t boardwipes. It’s not having action after your boardwipe. Simply wiping the board over and over doesn’t let you win. It doesn’t even really stop you from losing. Wiping the board to by a turn or two is a very viable tactic. Without boardwipes, midrange value engines take over the game.

AAAAAAAAH, YOU JUST KEEP TELLING ME EXACTLY WHAT I NEED TO KNOW. Your articles are so insightful and put into words exact things I’ve either had trouble articulating or things I didn’t fully realize. With this vid I’m realizing, especially with your final closing statement of the article, a critical flaw with one of my old decks. I made Halvar, God of battle/Sword of the realms deck that was centered around using the Sword of the Realms side to accrue incremental value. One of the tricks I had in there was that I played a fuck ton of board wipes. Keep my commander and my value creature and destroy everyone else’s creatures, I come out very slightly on top and play the long game using that value to win. But exactly what you said here with your child of alara dec happened. It crushed the fair midrangey decks two of my friend’s were playing and couldn’t do anything to the combo deck my other friend was playing. Which just lead to boring game states and eventually the deck getting retired with an unsure vague feeling of it just being too boring sometimes. I’ve wanted to bring it back and figure out a way to make it work better and I think your articles are helping me figure out a way I can. ACK thank you for these articles ❤

Vi: Surprised you didn’t mention the political part of board wipes. In my experience, Child of Alara decks are often targeted because people consider “easy access to board wipes” anti-fun, and they will tend to target decks when they are considered anti-fun even more often than powerful threats, even if those are just terrible gate decks.

I use to run a child of alara deck that ran it as its only board wipe, the rest of it was planes walkers and instants/sorceries that either disrupted my opponents or helped ramp/mana fix it was pretty fun, too bad it didnt see the day that your commanders death effects could activate if you chose to send it to the command zone

I took this article as a challenge. Instead of putting a board wipe in the command zone, I put Tajic, Blade of the Legion. He is a 2/2 indestructible creature in Boros. He also gets +5/+5 when attacking with two or more other creatures. This gives me a reliable way to apply pressure to players, while also ensuring I don’t suffer from my own board wipes. In addition, I have twenty spells that destroy all creatures or deal damage to all creatures. This keeps the board clear of most creature threats. The board wipes are paired with targeted removal for Nonland permanents in the form of enchantments in case there are non-creature threats that are on the board. The creature suite consists of the few creatures with indestructible, can gain indestructible, or prevent damage in budget, while being supplemented by enchantments that generate creature tokens before combat to trigger Tajic’s buff. Lastly, I added some lifelink to ensure the deck could continue to grind fight a battle of attrition. I am still in testing, but so far it has won both of the games it has been part of. One was against the midrange decks that it was designed to stomp, while the other was a grinder combo and control pod, which it managed to handle through agro mentality. The deck has issues. Cyclonic Rift returning all the enchantments to hand returns the problem pieces, and the deck can only stall if Tajic continues to be removed, but those aren’t issues I can really fix at my current budget. More concerning is my draw power, but I have so far managed without it.

It depends on how well rounded your removal is, as well as how smart you play it. Most combos, barring cedh level stuff, do require some gamepieces to live on board. Identify the player most likely to combo off, focus your instant speed interaction on them, try to pressure their lifetotal. I have to say I am yet to run into trouble with my control rakdos deck… though it helps that a lot of these decks are specifically dependent on their commander, so you can just hate that out.

I expected you to talk about the fact that board wipes in edh often end up with everyone sitting there, slowly trying to build up their board from nothing (including the one who played the wipe in the first place). There just aren’t conditional wipes for every deck but at the same time if you aren’t playing hyper aggro (and arguably even then) you need some way to come back when someone had a massive turn or your commander got blown up 3 times in a row. In my opinion, some sort of boardwipe is necessary in almost every midtier deck. Even if it throws you back a lot, by deciding when to boardwipe you can often get a value advantage.

When building for casual during covid lockdowns, I thought “hey, creatures like Massacre Girl would be great for breaking through boards and having a creature to smash face with sooner!” Then I thought about it and realized the same conclusion as this article: decks less dependent on creatures would be unaffected. I’d already made the sources of card draw also be creatures to help lower life totals faster, so in came cards such as Painful Quandary, Rankle, etc to pressure control, combo, spellslinger, etc with discard and reduce the number of wipes. Also Archon of Emeria and some similar stax pieces. I also diversified the kind of “creatures that wipe the board” to wipe more than just creatures, or hit more than just sending to graveyard. Bane of Progress, Kalemne’s Captain, Blot Out the Sky, Cyclone Summoner, Ugin the Spirit Dragon (Hey, the +2 and -X are amazing!), Rolling Earthquake (burning opponents while killing creatures helps), and Ezuri’s Predation also helped keep the game moving and answering threats in ways Massacre Girl and Phyrexian Rebirth couldn’t. I didn’t even touch Child of Alara. xD

My first deck i built was a gates/ child o alara, it was ok but never won with but it moved well, now my favorite deck Ashling the Pilgrim. When i blow her up, i can only be stopped by commander damage, poison counters or a i win card card. i will have lifelink and will have a ton of life. It wins about 35% of the time

Great stuff! As someone who literally built the Child of Alara gates decks in my early EDH days, I felt this acutely. How do you feel about combatting this problem with the “opposing roles” idea you talked about in your Glissa article? In other words, rather than ramp and card draw, push the deck towards a draw-go control plan which focuses on shutting down the spellslinging decks? You have your wincons already built in (especially the Maze’s End, which is really hard to interact with) and CoA plus some basic sac outlets gives you endless board control. Plus, having access to five colors with the gates naturally fixing your mana base at the cost of usually being a turn behind, you can run a really diverse interaction package of counters and spot removal for small stuff (esp stuff that shuts down your telegraphed board wipe). Separately, running an “interactive” commander like CoA poses an interesting question: how does everyone else play when staring down a board wipe? Obviously the control players go forward as if nothing is wrong and the jank creature decks cry, but in between you get people playing a game of not overcommitting, trying to bait out the Child sac, etc. It’s fun to analyze that gameplay and think about how to build a deck that capitalizes in on those play patterns; for example, you can indirectly control when and how much everyone else establishes board presence, and by extension e.g. how much people pressure life totals through combat, because as you put out more permanents yourself, people will also put out more in the hopes that you’ll be too attached to your own stuff to wipe.

I completely agree that board wipes are necessary. While it’s not the perfect solution, it does stop the player that heavily invested from getting critical mass and ending the game thus giving a chance for the combo player to potentially sneak in the win right after. What I’m trying to say is that when you build an EDH deck, you gotta balance it with a good amount of meta rather than complaining about what was played. Analyze the part(s) of the game where your deck is weak and fix it for next time rather than fill your deck with nothing but gas and then you scoop when it doesn’t go your way. It’s easier to change yourself as a player than it is to change somebody you’re gonna play only a few times.

I feel like board wipes are a necessary evil that is tricky to balance. I use more in my Henzie deck than most other decks I run because he’s suicidal. His Blitz others ability becomes broken when he dies over and over. There’s even an enchantment that hardcore enables him, but without it, ramp makes him incredibly resilient. So of course, I wipe the board a fair amount now to make sure he dies and slow down my opponents plans while accelerating mine. This is a good strategy, but I played it recently and won, but it forced the mono red player into topdecking. He could’ve focused on me and eliminated me if he thought about the consequences of keeping me alive, but most decks presented a real threat and it was hard to know who to beat down. His deck can win, but not when he can’t build up to an infinite combat combo usually. Mine just needs an explosive turn to take over the game, and it gets it much easier when he dies a lot. It has made me consider if I have too much board wiping in that deck or if I just got lucky and drew most of them. Either way, it’s a tricky balance that I want to continue to strive towards so that I’m not ruining someone else’s game like that and I’m not getting focused down to 0 before my plans can take off

As someone who had a child of alara deck for a long while (and it truly working) this was an interesting article. I do think you’re artificially enhancing your argument here by only running 2 counterspells in this hypothetical deck. The only removal I run in the deck specifically targets things that alara can’t get at (so exile effects). And 0 other boardwipes, because I don’t need them. And because of the assymetrical nature of the alara trigger, it has a whole bunch of stack interaction to stop the more combo’ish decks. The deck performs well and wins it fair share of games and its power level is around a 8 or a 9. Having said all that…. opponents don’t love playing against it, so I find I’m playing it less and less unless everybody pulls out their power level 9 decks..

if your deck’s matchup spread is as onesided as you describe your glissa deck’s(shits on decks even slightly weaker, but crumples against decks even slightly stronger) then that’s a deckbuilding and pod problem everyone nowadays measures their decks by speed and raw power – get a lot of mana fast and then drop a bunch of big mana plays – but this ends up just being a bunch of people playing solitaire and then mashing their cards against one another yes it feels like shit to have your one lander’s sol ring mental misstepped (who even plays MM in an edh deck???) but if edh players are going to be salty about their mana acceleration being disrupted, they may as well just play 100 card omniscience highlander single target removal is considered inefficient in edh because two people are down a card, so the other two benefit, but this assumes that you’re the only one playing interaction if you’re upset about someone board wiping every turn when you’re playing a tokens deck, where’s your interaction – your selfless spirit, boromir, boros charm, flawless maneuver, reprieve, mana tithe, lapse of certainty hell, whats wrong with thalia, vryn wingmare, or elite spellbinder + drannith magistrate? every color has ways to play around every strategy – that’s the beauty of having years of magic history and card design, and new cards rounding out color’s weaknesses in unique ways if you “rule zero” out certain tools, of course they’re going to suffer and the things those tools counter are going to thrive

I used to play like 3 or 4 boardwipes per deck when I started palying. I was always scared of my opponents decks and all their crazy boardstates and strong creatures. Nowadays I only play one at max because in my experience boardwipes just make games feel sluggish and make them way too long. They also take the fun from my opponents cause they can’t do their cool shit. I’d rather have more slots for synergies or targeted removal to answer threats but not completely reset the board. Since the games don’t tend to drag on for eternities people get to do their cool stuff, win and start a new game to have more fun with cool stuff.

I generally find decks whose game plans revolve around “keep players from ever having creatures” not only awful from a casual perspective but also from competitive perspective. Like you mention, all these mono black edicts or boardwipe tribal decks do is hand the game to either goodstuff decks or combo decks that don’t play to the board, both styles I think people (generally) try to avoid in casual games.

Pls god help me. I like to play this game the exact same way (control heavy decks with lots of board wipes) I’m a hearthstone player just getting into MTG. I’ve got a variety of decks now, child of alara being one of them, and just recently I made a sen triplets deck with a lot of removal and the goal of getting commander and certain enchantments to take opponents lands/spells. Wondering about what other fun heavy control decks there are that are more spell focused or decks that are not token heavy but have powerful creature effects.

One other thing is that board wipes extend games; often times negatively. I’ve had games run 2-3 hours just because board wipe was played into board wipe when someone could have won 60-90 minutes ago. The worst is planechase, when no matter what deck anyone is playing, there’s pretty much a board wipe every 4-5 turns. I’m not saying a turn 2, infinite combo auto win is the supperior experience; far from it. But having a 3 hour grind a thon being my only experience I get in a week of MTG can get exhausting.

3 minutes in “This deck will ruin the day of the casual synergy decks but against a less board depend deck it will be a mild nuisance. Board wipes are an asymmetrical game experience. They hurt some decks more than others” 5 Minutes in your weakness, your interaction. Different types of removal. Intentional Holes, Not answering a threat because you have a different work around. 7 Minutes in “Stax effects are the opposite of Board Wipes in terms of who they are harming.” and he’s just posting my Liesa deck again, shakes my head.

This article is essentially just a long way of saying: do not play slow, low-impact “engine-builder” decks. Magic has never, and will never be focused around those types of strategies. I mean shit, look in 60-card. When has that kind of strategy EVER been “good?” It’s an inherent problem with the game itself, not with board wipes or commander or whatever. The bigger issue is Commander players trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Now, luckily, Commander as a format has a T0 discussion, and if there are players who essentially want to play personalized Wingspan or Terraforming Mars, they can do that so long as every other deck in the pod is essentially the same. Ultimately, through playing Commander for the past 13 years, I have come to realize that the best, most varied and even-handed way of playing Commander with the least amount of feel-bad is playing a deck like the Mizzex/Kroxa/Karametra decks you used as examples. These decks are resilient, they still have synergies but are more focused on a generalized gameplan rather than one that needs 7 different pieces together to “do their thing,” and just generally have less weaknesses. This kind of deck is what Commander players need to get comfortable with playing or they’re going to be pissing and moaning about anything and everything like they currently do forever.

Play hive mind against control decks. While I assume you are running Avacyn with CoA, you can also pauper it up with That Which was taken with Nesting Grounds (to give TWwT a divinity counter). Anyway, with HM out, cast Contamination. This will lock people into black mana and is an easy sac outlet for you. After HM is out and C confirmed, cast Intervention Pact. Sure other pacts have more upkeep costs and/or pips, but the blue one needs a valid target and even then can turn into a kingmaker scenario instead of an all out win. Titan needs just one pip which is easy with a mana rock/dork/filter/treasure. Slaughter Pact would be pointless with Contamination out. I do not trust that there is not a colorless or hybrid mana creature with some ETB or that there will never be one in the future to trust Summoner’s Pact. During each opponent’s upkeep they will most likely be unable to produce the 1WW due to contamination and lose the game. That or just use Avacyn/TWwT and Rule of Law/Arcane Laboratory to stop combo decks from comboing without warning and still being able to break the pieces with CoA. This way will probably be less socially offensive.

As a guy who built his first deck as sheoldred and plays a ramp focused child of alara ramp deck, I agree with this article in some respects but your characterization of this deck having an insolvable problem is not correct. Don’t play more than one sac outlet. Don’t play other board wipes. The games that you lose to the rock paper scissors of EDH metas is a feature not a bug. Crushing the mid-range deck and then losing to combo leads you to strategize the next game with the dude that has counterspells. If all the mid-rangers are getting crushed by you, next game, you become arch enemy. You cannot out value three decently built decks with gates alone.

I made a highly powerful child of alara maze end commander deck, and I’ll be honest, every time I play it, I feel like a tyrant and no one is having fun wcept me. It is surprisingly one of the better decks I have. But zi dont take it out very oftern because I do feel bad making others not want to play the game.

I think that removal on its own isn’t a theme, or doesn’t work very well as one. You can build a deck where most of you spells are couterspells, for example, but you are going to have a hard time putting pressure on decks that have more than one win con, or have many smaller threats to deal with, or happen to have lots of protection from counterspells. But, I think that’s the part of these decks that makes the fun, at least for a little while. Sure, it does beat on certain players hard, but it will also teach lower power level players to evaluate things like board wipes more closely. The goal of commander, especially casual commander, is to have fun. And board wipes going off every turn is memorable at least.

I half disagree ;). The weakness of the control combo player is having a weak board, so you always have the option to use your boardwipes as leverage. Being like ok go to the control player or I will wipe your field. Also, I like to play boardwipes with upsides to them, or other options, so I can control what to remove or gain tempo after the wipe to futher my gameplan. Theres a big debate going on in cedh, removal vs non-removal. Everyone plays thoracle combo, so angels grace should be an easy include, but in truth no one actually plays it. Why? Because you still need to deal with two other players to win the game, so as a whole, the card doesnt get you further to winning the game. Which is mostly the biggest problem in control decks. Wipes, which hit multiple players at once are at least a step in the right direction.

This is another article that has the illusion of saying something but kinda doesn’t. It tries to draw a thesis statement from an intentionally poorly made deck, that the OP even trolls in his own construction to… self own themselves I guess? But even that isn’t really true as they kind of back peddle into a, “It’s fine and play as deck dependent.” Which is a bit of a superfluous cold take. Like yes of course that should be true of any deck. In the end this comes off as very click baity and the substance of the article lacks depth. An intentionally badly made deck followed by a fairly decent one that uses the cards under fire as intended doesn’t say anything. Though he does bring up issues with the Glissa deck and how it can pair poorly, they don’t offer solutions to that, which would have at least been something even if off topic. I just feeling like if the effort is going to be made to say something then say something 🤷‍♂️.

i don’t run removal in my favorite decks anymore and instead i run a lot of protection and fogs and do very well. i run the best 2 boardwipes just in case (vanquish the horde + winds of abandon) but i can often make it one sided and keep my stuff. my philosophy now is i don’t care what anybody else plays or has on the field or does on their turn. good luck hitting me with all your creatures or touching my stuff. at least a couple times a week someone tries to kill me with combat then has to sit around while i win because i hit them with (Tangle) or (Blessed Respite)