The 46 Best Red Removal Cards in Magic Ranked

Last updated on July 15, 2026

Burst Lightning | Illustration by Eleonor Piteira

We all have a role to play in this world, and if you’re a red mage in the Magic: The Gathering universe, your role likely has something to do with casting fiery spells and burning creatures. Sometimes you destroy artifacts, sometimes lands, but mostly you’re just here to chew gum and play burn spells.

That at least makes red very consistent. If you’re up against a red deck, you know they have removal at their disposal, and you’ll want some in your red decks, too. Maybe leave the umbrella at home though; Lightning Bolts abound with this one.

What Is Red Removal in MTG?

Lightning Bolt | Illustration by Christopher Moeller

Red removal includes anything with a mono-red color identity that can either take an opponent’s permanent off the battlefield, or otherwise downgrade it. This can be creature removal, but also spells and abilities that destroy, exile, bounce, or in any other way remove lands, planeswalkers, artifacts, or any other permanent type.

Red removal usually takes the form of burn spells. Some of those are also direct damage spells that hit players, but a burn spell only qualifies for this ranking if it targets creatures/planeswalkers, too. Land destruction and artifact destruction are also common in red.

#46. Gut Shot

Gut Shot’s just kind of funny, especially when it comes out of nowhere in a non-red deck. It’s rarely great though, so consider this a quick gut check, and we’ll move on.

#45. Tribal Flames

Non-domain decks need not apply. But any deck capable of getting five basic land types with ease can do worse than Tribal Flames’s 5 damage to any target for just 2 mana.

#44. Lightning Axe

Using discard as an advantage turns Lightning Axe into one of the best-rate removal spells you can get. You need to be pitching something with madness or discarding an Arclight Phoenix before you want it at all, but turning the downside on its head unlocks a lot of potential.

#43. Punishing Fire

Punishing Fire is best friends with Grove of the Burnwillows, a combo that’s seen this spell banned in Modern for most of that format’s existence. I suspect this is safe in Modern and maybe even underplayed in Commander; there’s so much incidental lifegain in EDH that you could conceivably cast this 4-5 times in one game.

#42. Mass Destruction Cards

Rather than list off every card in Magic that blows up the world, just take a look at Jokulhaups, Obliterate, Apocalypse, and Decree of Annihilation, and decide if you want to be that kind of Magic player or not. Proceed with caution.

#41. Mana Cannons

Multicolor-matters decks only have so much room for mono-colored cards, but Mana Cannons is high on that list. It’s both board control and wincon for decks full of 2+ color cards.

#40. Kazuul’s Fury / Kazuul’s Cliffs

There are decks that definitely want Fling and its variants, but those cards are situationally terrible when your big creature or steal-and-sac plan just isn’t coming together. Kazuul's Fury solves that issue by giving your fling effect alternative functionality as a land drop, so it’s never truly dead. And it doesn’t matter that much how expensive a fling effect is, since you usually don’t fire them off until late in the game anyway.

#39. Chainsaw

This is a cool little tech piece for equipment decks. As an equipment, Chainsaw doesn’t have the strongest impact on the game. But removing something on ETB spots you the first counter, and it gives equipment decks a little more breathing room to set up their plays.

#38. Bottle-Cap Blast + Hell to Pay

Two variations of red burn spells that also produce Treasure tokens. Bottle-Cap Blast is the more compact option, but Hell to Pay has a higher ceiling (and therefore higher rarity, too).

#37. Ghostfire Slice

The cost reduction on Ghostfire Slice is almost always online in Commander, and often in Constructed, too, though it costs 3 mana often enough that it’s not some breakout piece of burn. Devoid gives it some fun interactions, too, like how this can clear a creature with protection from red, or how it triggers Glaring Fleshraker on cast.

#36. Fireblast

You’re in dire straits if you have to use Fireblast as creature removal. It’s most often used to finish off an opponent who was foolish enough to drop below 5 life, though it can pop a creature, so it qualifies.

#35. All Will Be One

It’s not hard to control the board with All Will Be One, or even combo with something like The Red Terror. But the output comes at the price of a 5-mana enchantment that does nothing on its own, so you have to be dedicated to counters in some way.

#34. Abrade

Abrade just works, and that’s good enough. Two mana for a 1-for-1 can only ever be so good, but this covers enough targets to be worth a deck slot.

#33. Shatterskull Smashing / Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass

Shatterskull Smashing isn’t an incredible rate on a fireball, but it’s worth the opportunity cost of running a card that, at its absolute worst, is just a tapped Mountain. MDFCs are good, y’all.

#32. Burst Lightning

Burst Lightning is basically never the best card in your deck, but always good to have. It gives you early-game interaction that scales into the late-game, and it goes face, too. It’s one of Magic’s premium Shock variants.

#31. Bonecrusher Giant

There’s nothing demanding you play to Bonecrusher Giant anymore, but it was a constant presence in the Standard of its time, and it’s still totally playable in Cube.

#30. Mizzium Mortars

The card that inspired Winds of Abandon, Mizzium Mortars is totally fine to cast as a 2-mana removal spell, and backbreaking when overloaded. Effective 1-for-1 removal and one-sided sweeper is a nice split of abilities for one card.

#29. Mjölnir, Hammer of Thor

Mjölnir, Hammer of Thor reverses Mizzium Mortars’s design. Neither half is as effective as the comparable mode on Mortars, but the equip text on Thor’s hammer gives it more impact in decks full of worthy creatures.

#28. Legion Extruder

Legion Extruder isn’t that far off from Bonecrusher Giant. It kills the same creatures upfront, then follows up with a large creature. Extruder has more long-term potential with other expendable artifacts, though it’s more specialized than Bonecrusher.

#27. Comet Storm + Crackle with Power + Jaya’s Immolating Inferno

“Big fireball that hits all opponents at once” is a sub-category of its own. Comet Storm used to be the default, but Crackle with Power and Jaya's Immolating Inferno are often better, and none of these cards are necessary by any means. Save them for red decks designed to ramp up to large amounts of mana, and use them to remove creatures if you must.

#26. Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle

Mono-red decks can get Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle up and running without much trouble, though multicolor decks are going to need Prismatic Omen or some similar effect to make this happen regularly. A land that throws out multiple Lightning Bolts is serious business, and worth working towards.

#25. Shellshock

The biggest thing holding Shellshock back is the fact that it’s a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles card, which is enough for some people to ignore it completely. However, you won’t be able to ignore it when it takes out your creature and a couple of your opponents’ creatures, then leaves the caster up a few Mutagen tokens, too.

#24. Sundering Eruption / Volcanic Fissure

Shatterskull Smashing might not straight-up win you the game, but Sundering Eruption certainly can. Falters are too situational to run without a buyout, and MDFCs are the ultimate buyouts. This can absolutely win you games and costs little to put in your deck. Plus, it’s an easy, non-hateful way to run some extra land destruction.

#23. Pyroblast + Red Elemental Blast

These are just good color hosers, whether in Constructed sideboards or mainboard in blue-dominated formats like cEDH and Legacy. Their main appeal is giving countermagic to red, but 1 mana to destroy something like Hullbreaker Horror is great, too.

#22. Galvanic Blast

Galvanic Blast is another Shock upgrade that becomes a strict upgrade to Lightning Bolt with metalcraft. It’s one of the best damage-to-cost ratios you can get for heavy artifact decks.

#21. Chain Lightning

Chain Lightning is another prime example of a Lightning Bolt imitator. It gets the job done in formats that don’t have the original or that want redundancy of cheap burn. The copy text almost never matters, though it’s an interesting extra layer to consider.

#20. Nova Hellkite

Nova Hellkite is wildly slept on, and not just because of the awesome Raymond Swanland art. This space-dragon offers a strong rate in any format that regularly features X/1 utility creatures. The warp ability snipes off Rhys the Redeemed or Esper Sentinel while axing the opponent for 4, and it comes back to do that again later, bringing cast-from-exile synergies with it.

#19. Chandra’s Ignition

Chandra's Ignition can flip a game around, if it doesn’t altogether end it. It’s vulnerable to instant-speed interaction, but big-creature decks can use it to clear the board, and really big creature decks think of it as a finisher.

#18. Overlord of the Boilerbilges

This is inherently a powerful split card that lends itself to so many mini-combos. I considered Inferno Titan for this list, but it’s just so hard to play it with Overlord of the Boilerbilges in the conversation. Consider this Duskmourn Overlord a weak removal spell that “suspends” a legit wincon, and if you can cast it for the full amount, all the better.

#17. Balefire Dragon

If you see a Balefire Dragon on the opponent’s board, you should do anything in your power to prevent it from hitting you. With the right haste enablers or cheat-into-play effects, it might be too late to do anything to stop your board from going away.

#16. Chaos Warp

Truth be told, Chaos Warp isn’t a very strong card. It’s at best a 3-mana removal spell (think Mortify, Putrefy), and at worst it’s 3 mana to sometimes upgrade its target. However, it’s almost a necessary evil for red decks, which have few other answers to enchantments or indestructible threats. I think Chaos Warp is wildly overplayed, but it fills a role that few other cards do.

#15. Flame Slash

Flame Slash is just an excellent card that doesn’t get the love it deserves, maybe because it’s not exciting in any way. Four damage for 1 clears out creatures way above the curve, which makes this an exceptional tempo spell in creature-based match-ups.

#14. Pyrokinesis

Pyrokinesis is tough to rank because it’s an absurd Cube card (Peasant Cube especially), but a mediocre Commander card. The upper end is very strong and hard to play around, though not quite as strong as one particularly furious elemental we’ll get to shortly.

#13. Screaming Nemesis

MTG’s take on Carrie is kind of a messed-up card, good enough for Standard’s ban list. Permanently shutting off lifegain is really nasty, but so is having an improved Stuffy Doll effect on a creature this efficient. It pressures fast, which incentivizes blocks, then punishes blocks. And for some reason, Screaming Nemesis also triggers when it blocks, so it’s also a pain to try and attack into.

#12. Galvanic Discharge

Galvanic Discharge’s base rate is good enough that you can ignore the energy altogether and it’ll still perform. Add in any other energy cards and it starts to go above and beyond what a 1-mana removal spell should do.

#11. Unholy Heat

Unholy Heat has the highest damage output for a 1-mana burn spell… assuming you can get delirium. The base of a Shock to creatures is already good enough, and this blasts away most creatures when fully charged, though you need to build a delirium engine into your deck if you’re serious about dealing 6 damage.

#10. Thor, God of Thunder

Thor, God of Thunder puts a spellslinger spin on Terror of the Peaks, and even “draws” you the first spell to cast. Much like the upcoming dragon, I just assume I’m not keeping any creatures in play if I can’t remove Thor the moment it comes down.

#9. Goblin Bombardment

Ranking Goblin Bombardment this high is sort of cheating, because the main use of this enchantment is as an infinite combo engine with recursion creatures and token generators. It’s kind of understated how well this works as creature removal though. Small creatures just aren’t safe with a Bombardment in play.

#8. Delayed Blast Fireball

There are so many ways to fulfill the exile requirement on Delayed Blast Fireball without foretelling. Cascade and impulse draw are two easy ways, and the 3-mana mode’s not even too bad. This is a great one-sided board wipe that requires just a tad more deckbuilding considerations to maximize it.

#7. Blasphemous Act

Commander’s best red board wipe often costs just to cast, and it has yet to be dethroned in the format. Blasphemous Act is so efficient of a board wipe that you’ll still run it in creature-heavy decks just to have access to a reset button.

#6. Terror of the Peaks

Terror of the Peaks provides the strongest Impact Tremors effect out there. You’re just never safe if your opponent has this in play. As Andy Dufresne said in The Shawshank Redemption: “Get busy killing that Terror of the Peaks, or get busy dying.”

#5. Vandalblast

Vandalblast has been rated highly by everyone everywhere since the dawn of Commander and deserves the praise. It holds up as one of the best ways to destroy artifacts in Magic, and it scales up into multiplayer beautifully.

#4. Lightning Bolt

You could argue that Lightning Bolt deserves to be #1, but if we’re talking pure power level there are cards that beat it. It’s the most iconic by a longshot, and one of MTG’s most consistently good-but-not-broken cards, but that does put it just below the truly broken cards.

#3. Pyrogoyf

Pyrogoyf is the ultimate Flametongue Kavu. It’s graveyard dependent, but barring a Rest in Peace in play, Pyrogoyf is usually a 3/4 or greater, and anything at or above 4 damage is silly. A 4/5 Ravenous Chupacabra is unreal, and the lhurgoyf text isn’t a complete blank, either.

#2. Broadside Bombardiers

Broadside Bombardiers just does so, so much damage. Its potential to wrap up games with just a few boast activations is unparalleled, but it can play creature control by sacrificing expendable creatures and artifacts to take out smaller targets, too.

#1. Fury

Fury is an out, a finisher, and a combo piece all in one fundamentally broken package. Catching you up against fast opponents or going over the top in the late game are both common functions of this creature, and it enters unfair territory when you “scam” it with blink or Supernatural Stamina effects.

Best Red Removal Payoffs and Synergies

Damage amplification is one of the best payoffs for red damage-based removal. This can be generic damage increases from cards like Fiery Emancipation, or effects that specifically work with red cards, like Torbran, Thane of Red Fell, Embermaw Hellion, and Mechanized Warfare.

Some cards pay you off for damaging creatures. Imodane, the Pyrohammer redirects that damage, Fall of Cair Andros amasses army tokens, and Magmatic Galleon creates Treasures, to name a few.

Fin Fang Foom is a new payoff to keep an eye on, doubling interaction that specifically targets an artifact or land.

Wrap Up

Galvanic Discharge | Illustration by Zoltan Boros

Red mages know how to get it done. They leave a lot of scorched earth in their path, but few threats can hold up to a red deck that came prepared with removal. Indestructible and protection can be tough to beat, but red even has a few answers to those types of protection, too.

I’m interested in hearing what kind of red removal you run in your decks. What are your favorite Shock and Lightning Bolt variants? Let me know what you think in the Draftsim Discord, and check out The Daily Upkeep newsletter to stay up to date on all the latest MTG news.

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