When building an MTG Commander deck, no matter the theme, you’ll often want to include a handful of board wipes. With how quickly many strategies can pop off in the format, the ability to keep things under control is essential. Unfortunately, many of the best cards in this category are prohibitively expensive, putting them out of reach for many.
Fear not, however, for there are still some great board wipes available for MTG players on a budget. For those who don’t want to take out a personal loan to finance their latest brew, we’ve gathered a bunch of excellent options, all available for less than $1. No matter what color or strategy you run, there’s something in here for you.
White | Austere Command
Flexibility is the name of the game when it comes to Austere Command. The last two modes here can be combined to make it a generic “destroy all creatures” board wipe, which is fine in many situations. At six mana, it’s not particularly efficient, but it’s there when needed. Where the card really shines, however, is when those other modes come into play.
Wiping out every artifact and/or enchantment in play is a huge upside. Between mana rocks and incidental artifact tokens like Treasure or Food, you’ll often get a ton of value out of the former. As for the latter, it gives you a way to deal with a lot of the most-played advantage engines in the format, like Rhystic Study and Smothering Tithe. White has more ways to address these card types than most colors, but it’s still great to have the option tacked onto a serviceable board wipe.
While it’s not quite Farewell, Austere Command has the advantage of being available for just $0.38 right now. This means that, no matter what the budget is for your next MTG Commander deck, you’ll be able to add a copy of this excellent board wipe with ease.
Blue | Devastation Tide
While blue doesn’t get to destroy or exile creatures en masse like other colors, it does still get access to board wipes in the form of mass bounce effects. Cyclonic Rift is the gold standard for this kind of thing, if you have $30 to spare. For the rest of us, Devastation Tide is a very acceptable substitute for a fraction of the price.
For starters, you can actually fire Devastation Tide off for two less mana than Rift, which is a huge difference. When you need a board wipe in Commander, you typically need it as soon as possible, so this is a solid edge. Tide does bounce your own permanents as well, of course, but in some decks this can be an advantage. If you have a lot of powerful enters effects you want to reuse, for example, this is a great way to do so while also clearing every possible problem out of the way.
Of course, the biggest upside of Devastation Tide is that tasty two-mana Miracle cost. While it’s inconsistent, getting a full Cyclonic Rift for the same price as the single-target one is insane value. You can even lean into this element to an extent. If your deck runs cards like Scroll Rack or Mystic Sanctuary to put Tide on top, you can guarantee the Miracle cost on your next turn. Even without this extra synergy, Devastation Tide is very solid and more than worth its current $0.52 price tag.
Black | Blood Money
Black has no shortage of board wipes in the -X/-X area, but it’s rare for it to get one that just outright destroys everything in play. Blood Money offers just that, with the absurd upside of converting each of those kills into Treasure tokens in the process.
While it, regrettably, doesn’t count tokens, it’s still easy to nab double-digit Treasures when this resolves. Against particularly aggressive opponents, you could even secure a stack up into the twenties. With every creature out of the way, your chances of surviving to use said Treasures are great, too.
Blood Money is particularly potent alongside Revel in Riches, all but guaranteeing a win on your next upkeep barring enchantment removal. Even if you’re feeling more honest, having 10+ mana to sink into your next turn is likely enough to end things anyway. You can use it to fuel the draw necessary to find your combo pieces, or feed all of your Treasures to Krark-Clan Ironworks or Radiant Lotus to close out with a huge Torment of Hailfire.
With how many synergies it offers on top of its solid baseline effect, it’s frankly surprising that Blood Money is just $0.56 at the moment. If you’re looking for a budget black board wipe for your next MTG Commander deck, you really can’t do better than this.
Red | Chain Reaction
For those looking for a good board wipe in red, a few recurring problems present themselves. Typically, red board wipes only deal a small, set amount of damage, meaning they can’t deal with bigger targets. Blasphemous Act aside, you generally need to resort to X spells for a comprehensive clear. This is where Chain Reaction comes in, providing a powerful, scalable board wipe for just $0.34.
As the number of creatures in play increases, so too does the damage Chain Reaction can deal. This means it gets better and better the more urgent the need for a board wipe is. While you’ll always have to pay four mana for this, unlike Blasphemous Act, the damage ceiling here is actually higher. Hitting for more than 13 generally won’t matter in terms of clearing the board, but it does make Chain Reaction better for combo plays. If you’re trying to pop off with Repercussion, for example, it’s absolutely ideal.
There are some drawbacks here, of course. It’s worse than Blasphemous Act against a small cluster of chunky threats, so you’ll need to pack hard removal to deal with those. In most cases, however, this is one of the most efficient and most affordable red board wipes out there.
Green | Cyclone
Green isn’t exactly blessed in the board wipe department. Unless you’re trying to specifically deal with artifacts, enchantments, or creatures with Flying en masse, your best option is Cyclone, a slow and costly enchantment. While this is technically a budget MTG board wipe, at $0.37 for the Chronicles printing, it’s also the kind of card you absolutely shouldn’t run outside of thematic bracket one shenanigans.
Instead, looking to colorless to cover your board wipe needs in Mono-Green is a good bet. There are a surprising number of options available in this space, many of which are surprisingly affordable to boot. The gold standard for colorless clears is Nevinyrral’s Disk, which is available for just $0.33 these days thanks to regular reprints. This takes care of every creature in play, and every artifact and enchantment too, for a very reasonable mana cost. It comes in tapped, and therefore telegraphs itself heavily, but it can also be held up at instant speed once untapped, which is a big edge over its peers.
Outside of Disk, both Boompile and Oblivion Stone are great backups. Boompile trades the reliability of Disk for the chance to go off the turn you play it. It’s ideal in coin flip decks, to boot. Oblivion Stone is slow, but it lets you keep your own permanents safe if you have the time, which is a nice upside in ramp lists. These are available for just $0.49 and $0.15, respectively, which makes them great budget additions to any Commander deck, really.
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