All 18 Wish Cards in Magic Ranked

Last updated on August 13, 2024

Fae of Wishes | Illustration by Magali Villeneuve

You know the feeling. You buckle down and do it. What’s the alternative? Getting rid of everything? But you might need it someday! It’s happened before. Like that Shining Shoal that went from bulk rare to over $15 January 2023 when it started hitting in Modern finally! So you just do it. You shop for giant cardboard boxes to store all your bulk Magic cards.

Or you sell them all and buy cards when you need them. Shh. That’s too practical!

You’ve lovingly stored your precious cards in boxes all these years. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to just dig through those boxes and cast whatever you need in the match at hand? “Hmm, I know I have a bunch of old Tranquility copies in the green section….”

That’s the promise of wishes, which let you get cards from “outside the game” and cast them! Except it works a bit differently in practice. We’ll explain how it all works and then rank the lot!

What are Wishes in MTG?

Vivien, Arkbow Ranger | Illustration by Yongjae Choi

The term “wish” is used to describe a card that can introduce another card from outside the game. This originates from the first cards that used the mechanic, the “wish” cycle from Judgment.

Though they only appear rarely, wishes show up in every color. But what exactly those wishes can find is often subject to certain restrictions.

“Outside the game” means the sideboard in tournament formats. There is no sideboard in Commander, so cards like Wish have no function there, to the eternal frustration of those of us who own these kinds of cards! So perhaps you house rule those in your EDH meta. Perhaps you play kitchen table MTG. In both cases it’s hard to evaluate the quality of a card, so this list will focus on utility for tournament level play from the sideboard.

Honorable Mention: Grizzled Huntmaster

A card that has a famously complicated textbox, Grizzled Huntmaster lets you functionally sideboard cards in the middle of a game. Combining the ability to search for silver bullets with a very efficient stat line makes this a formidable threat. It is a digitally-exclusive Alchemy card though, hence the honorable mention status.

#18. Ring of Ma'rûf

Ten total mana is wayyyyy to much for this effect. That’s understandable, since Ring of Ma'rûf was the first go at this effect by WotC. And since it’s on the Reserved List, no thanks.

#17. Golden Wish

Five mana to grab an enchantment or artifact from your sideboard. Karn, the Great Creator seems much better for artifacts. And it’s too easy to tutor up enchantments from your deck for less. So kinda unplayable.

#16. Research / Development

Another interesting take on the genre, Research / Development is an incredibly slow wish effect despite its cheap cost. There’s a number of sweet things you could combine this with including a number of efficient search engines like Birthing Pod or Fiend Artisan. But this begs the question as to why you were casting Research in the first place when you could already have the cards you were looking for in your deck.

#15. Spawnsire of Ulamog

For the low, low cost of 20 mana you can plop any number of Eldrazi in play. The highest cost of any activated ability is the dream of every casual player where you can just take your binder full of Eldrazi titans or your bucket of Hand of Emrakuls and Ulamog's Crushers and plop them onto the table.

Of course Spawnsire of Ulamog has a more real upper limitation in Constructed formats where you’re limited by the number of cards in your sideboard, but either way pressing the big shiny button with a “20” on it should win you the game on the spot.

#14. Death Wish

There are plenty of other ways to lose half your life for Death's Shadow decks, so Death Wish doesn’t even see play in those decks in Legacy. Some day this card will matter. But not yet. Until then, I’ll just slot it in low for flavor purposes.

#13. Coax from the Blind Eternities

Now this is a card design that I love. Coax from the Blind Eternities hasn’t seen much play but embodies everything that’s good about wishes. For an extra 3 mana you can choose whether you find Emrakul, the Aeons Torn or Eldrazi Mimic. I won't pretend that it's great, but the idea of beckoning an Eldrazi from the Blind Eternities sounds kind of awesome.

#12. Legion Angel

Three sideboard spots seems too much to give up for flexible angels decks. Legion Angel has long dropped out of these lists even in the lowest power format that can play it, Pioneer.

#11. Invasion of Arcavios / Invocation of the Founders

Five mana for a version of Mystical Tutor doesn’t quite work out. The sideboard fetch is tempting enough, but, again, that’s asking a lot for 5, as is spending the resources to defeat a battle with 7 defense. Invasion of Arcavios / Invocation of the Founders is priced just out of range.

#10. The Raven’s Warning

A bird, 2 life, a card and a sideboard selection on top of your deck, all for 3 mana over two turns. If nothing is disrupted. That seems reasonable enough, but pretty low impact. It’s enough for The Raven's Warning to show up occasionally in Keruga Fires decks in Explorer, of all things, but not very often!

#9. Vivien, Arkbow Ranger

Minus 5 loyalty for this is impossible if you’re using Viv’s fight ability, which seems the most common use for Vivien, Arkbow Ranger.

#8. Cunning Wish

So we’re playing Legacy and I have access to the entire MTG history of instants to put in my sideboard for when I play Cunning Wish in my Show and Tell + Omniscience deck. Bwa ha ha ha ha.

#7. Fae of Wishes

A key part of stuff to do with your almost infinite mana in Omnath, Locus of Creation decks when that was legal in Standard for a microsecond, Fae of Wishes sees the most play these days as a flexible part of Rona, Herald of Invasion combo decks in Pioneer. Those decks need Mox Amber and Retraction Helix to go off, so how about putting the fourth one of each in the sideboard given that you have stuff like Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy to give you a lot of mana?

#6. Glittering Wish

What if you’re playing 4-color Jeskai Ascendancy in Modern? Glittering Wish allows you to play the fourth Ascendancy in the sideboard while also letting you find an answer like Assassin's Trophy or Sterling Grove if needed.

#5. Living Wish

Another Premodern card, Living Wish seems pretty powerful, and it does a variety of things, like fetching Elderscale Wurm for some Vintage Doomsday decks and providing a toolbox for Premodern Alluren decks.

#4. Mastermind’s Acquisition

Mastermind's Acquisition costs too much as a tutor and as a wish, but in fast mana fueled mono black cEDH decks like K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth, you need all the tutors you can get.

#3. Burning Wish

You can see how brutal this would be for kitchen table casual! Burning Wish and the history of MTG instants? Insert maniacal cackling here. This is an old card, so we’re talking Legacy. It’s not much of a thing these days, but it’s had its moments in control, storm, and Show and Tell decks.

#2. Wish

Uniquely, Wish lets you play a card right from your sideboard without hitting your hand first. There are a few hundred folks playing this in their Prosper, Tome-Bound decks, which goes to show that folks don’t really understand how these types of cards work!

But Wish does see a proper home in a variety of Modern decks that don’t quite measure up, including Primeval Titan/Scapeshift and Jeskai Ascendancy builds.

#1. Karn, the Great Creator

Loved and hated, Karn, the Great Creator does so much for 4 colorless mana! This planeswalker was recently banned as the centerpiece of Mono-Green Devotion in Pioneer; granting access to a “Karnboard” of toolbox artifacts just provides so much flexibility for a deck that only has a few flex spots and doesn’t really want a traditional sideboard anyway! The Filigree Sylex? The Stone Brain? Pithing Needle? Grab a Liquimetal Coating, turn their lands into artifacts and then shut them off with that pesky static ability. Or just go ham with Cityscape Leveler!

Karn’s unique ability to get things in exile or outside the game has allowed for some true nonsense for a time. Pestilent Cauldron can be fetched out of the sideboard but played as Restorative Burst. That card goes to exile and Karn can get it from there, where it is seen as the Cauldron. Enough Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx mana and Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner and you have a really labor intensive infinite combo.

Finally, the static ability makes this one of the few cards today that has an EDH home.

Best Wish Payoffs

So because this isn’t really playing from exile, there are no specific payoffs. Even cards like The Thirteenth Doctor that reward you for casting spells from anywhere other than your hand don’t really work here, as most of these cards put them in your hand first.

The real benefit of these cards is what we normally get from cards like Demonic Tutor or Birthing Pod: the ability to get exactly the card you need for the situation at hand. What’s great about these cards is that you don’t have to fill your deck with them, instead using a single maindeck slot on a “wish” effect that can turn into whatever you need.

These cards are often useful in 60-card formats with likely even more decks of this kind in the future. But most of these cards don’t work in Commander, where you don’t have access to a sideboard at all, much less cards that let you fetch from outside of the game. This is a sore spot for many, as I can roll up with an Attractions secondary deck, but no Karnboard. So see if your play group will let you have a Wishboard if you’re primarily a Commander player and any of this seems cool to you. I’ve seen all sorts of “house rule expansions” of partner in my day, so you could always ask!

What Does it Mean to Play a Card from Outside the Game?

As far as playing in tournament scenarios, this means that you can only take cards from your sideboard. This can also include cards that you boarded out from your mainboard in a previous game.

For casual games this means pretty much any card you own that isn’t currently part of the game. If you want to pull a card out of your binder or ask a friend to borrow their bomb rare for a couple minutes, playing a wish effect would let you use those cards.

Does Wish Cards Work on Exiled Cards?

Interestingly enough the exile zone is recognized as part of the game itself, so cards that are exiled are still part of the game and can’t be searched for with wish effects. You can see this example in action with Karn, the Great Creator, which differentiates between “outside the game” and “exiled.”

Is Wish Legal or Banned in MTG?

Wish effects are by definition legal in most Constructed Magic formats except for Commander where you’re only allowed 100 cards with no sideboard. For this reason cards that feature the wish mechanic are generally aimed at the competitive crowd rather than more casual players.

How Do Wishes Work in MTG Arena?

Wishes work in MTG Arena just like they do in paper Magic, for the most part.

In BO3 formats wishes work as normal, where you can search your sideboard for the cards that your wish allows you to find. But in BO1 formats you’re only allowed to consult a 7-card sideboard for this purpose. It’s important to note that you still need to build a sideboard despite only playing one game for this exact purpose!

Wrap Up

Wish | Illustration by Ekaterina Burmak

These cards are relics of Magic gone by, relics of a time when the game seemed small enough that you could play a card that would let you dig through all the cards you owned, which were all in that one three ring binder decorated with a sweet Hypnotic Specter your cousin had drawn in Sharpie for you.

We are tens of thousands of cards past that time, but they keep printing wishes, which means nostalgia is alive and well in the halls of WotC. It also means that perhaps, after companion and lesson/learn, that maybe we’re getting closer to the day when “outside the game” and “the sideboard” get clarified as zones, which could be the beginning of tons of fun.

What do you think? Do you have friends that let you roll with these in Commander? How did that conversation go? Let us know in the comments or on Discord!