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Wrath of God - one of the few cards that has become synonymous with white and lived on to tell the tale. It is a staple of the Magic scene. Its power is unfathomable by new players, but revered by veterans. What gives it this subtle strength?
But it kills my own creatures too!
Balance was abused by using cards that were not affected by it - artifacts, most significantly, Moxen. These allowed the Balance player to have enough mana to continue playing his spells after a devastating Balance. Of course, this was preceded by sacrificing all his lands to Zuran Orb, gaining a ton of life and leaving the opponent with no lands either. In this manner, with the opponent having lost all his lands, his hand and his creatures, it was only a matter of time until the Balance player won with this massive advantage. Death Cloud was (and still is) abused by having either more resources than your opponent and setting up the Cloud with X as just enough to destroy your opponent's stuff leaving you with some permanents, or, if you fell behind, making X greater than your resources so that your opponent would lose more than you. Mana acceleration such as Sakura-Tribe Elder and Kodama's Reach allowed you to have more lands, while Kokusho, the Evening Star eased the loss of creatures and life. In both of these cases, the symmetry of the card was broken by the player having their deck built around it and thus being able to deal with the bad effects of the card better than their opponent. Wrath of God works similarly. Observe the following example:
Matt was able to break the symmetry of Wrath of God by having no creatures on the board. As such, decks with little or no creatures can use Wrath of God to full effect, as it loses the drawback of destroying your own creatures - you can destroy all of your opponent's creatures for only 2WW, a pretty good deal. Thus, Wrath of God finds a nice home in white control decks. Costed just right... EDITOR'S ADDITION: Let's take a look at all of the other [white] creature board sweepers that exist in magic. Some of them destroy more than just creatures, but take specific note in the costs of each:
All of the above white cards do the same thing, more or less -- they destroy all creatures without any conditions (I will be getting to those later). Each one is a slightly different variation of the Wrath of God effect, but they each cost significantly more. Final Judgement is exactly the same as Wrath except that it removed them from the game, negating any 'when this goes to the graveyard from play' abilities. Catastrophe, from Urza's Saga, gives you the option of Wrath or Armageddon. Rout, the instant version of the spell, costs 5 as a sorcery and 7 as an instant! The others are just 'meh' versions with an additional effect. Wrath of God remains the best creature board sweeper in Magic. It's elegant, efficient and extremely cost effective. Of course, there are other white board sweepers, but the others are conditional in many different aspects. Some require that a certain condition be met (like being tapped) or that they only affect certain types of creatures (like creature types or nontoken creatures). Cards like Planar Collapse and Retribution of the Meek actually cost less than Wrath of God, but for good reasons. Planar Collapse only triggers during your upkeep and also only if there are four or more creatures in play. Then there's Retribution of the Meek which destroys only creatures with a power of 4 or more. Below are some of these white 'conditional' cards:
False Prophet is a cool card, but he has to go to the graveyard to Wrath the board (and a remove from the game wrath too!) Winds of Rath, Retaliate and Righteous Fury all are decent variations of the Wrath, but require the creatures to either be tapped, have damaged you this turn or be enchanted in order for them to be destroyed. They still are not as efficient as the original Wrath (which, mind you, has been around since ALPHA!)
There are some other creature killing spells in other colors like red and black. Red gets Puppet's Verdict, Breaking Point and Devastation. The Red cards, with exception to Devastation, all have a rather dramatic draw back. Puppet's Verdict is kind of like Solar Tide except that it involves a coin flip. And Breaking Point, which only destroys all creatures unless a player pays 6 life, costs 1RR and could easily backfire on you. 6 damage is always nice but when your opponent has a horde of Saprolings with Coat of Arms in play, you would hope that they didn't take 6 to counter the effect of the red Wrath equivelant. Black gets Decree of Pain, Forced March, Endemic Plague, Extinction, Tsabo's Decree, Overwhelming Forces, Plague Wind, and Rain of Daggers. Wow! I didn't realize black had so many of them! Anyway, many of these cards are overcosted, kill only your opponent's creatures and/or hurt you. Not that killing only your opponent's creatures is a bad thing, but paying an extra 3-5 mana to do it can only prove one thing: Wrath of God is the best board sweeper in Magic. There are most likely more cards in Magic that have a variation of the effect of Wrath of God, but I think my little blurb in Einstein's article has given you a better understanding of why Wrath of God is so good... and also given you some food for thought for your next control deck. I will now return you to today's regularly scheduled article. Well, maybe not regularly scheduled... but I digress. ~Streetz~ Back to Wrath of God and Card Advantage
In the previous example, Matt gained a 3-for-1 advantage, destroying 3 of Jon's creatures in exchange for Wrath of God. Matt effectively played Ancestral Recall in terms of card advantage! Getting rid of many of your opponent's cards while using up only one of your own is what wins games. Even if the Wrath player has creatures, they will usually not be set back a great deal if it is destroyed, and one creature is a small price to pay to destroy your opponent's army. This card advantage and defensive capability is a great boon to blue, and as such, blue decks love the card. The U/W control decks of old were incredibly strong as they used few creatures, for example Counterpost, which in fact had no creature cards! It used Kjeldoran Outpost to make creature tokens instead. Thus, with this reusable creature source, Wrath’s effects were practically harmless to the deck itself, but a handful for the opponent.
In summary So there you have it - Wrath of God is good because: 1. It has a powerful effect. 2. It provides huge card advantage. 3. You can abuse the symmetry in order to maximize its power. Until next time, may your Wrath win you games! ~EinsteinMonkey~ You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here. Most Popular
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Symmetrical
effects are some of the most subtle powers in the game. Magic is a game based
around several limitations, such as playing one land per turn. Whoever is able
to break these restrictions gains a definitive advantage - this is why cards
such as the Moxen and Black Lotus are insanely powerful. Likewise, if you are
able to break the symmetry of a card, you gain an edge over your opponent. Aside
from Wrath of God, two notable examples of symmetrical cards are
And
then there's a card like Mageta the Lion which is like a Wrath of God on a
stick... for the cost of two cards and an activation mana cost! However,
despite the hefty mana expenses, the coolest thing about Mageta is the fact that
he destroys everything but himself. He's like an Exterminator... killing
all of the bugs in his way... including the good ones, so he can clear a path to
beatdown victory! But, he does cost 3WW to cast and comes into play with
summoning sickness.. so I guess he still lacks the mana efficiency of the Wrath.
Wrath
of God's sheer power comes from two things: its powerful effect, and the
resulting massive card advantage that it can give you. Put extremely simply,
card advantage is the concept that if you get more cards than your opponent, you
have a better chance of winning the game (this doesn't do it justice, but it
will suffice - if you don't know much about card advantage, I
