The 76 Best Sorceries in Magic Ranked

Last updated on April 8, 2026

Toxic Deluge | Illustration by Svetlin Velinov

A ranking of a fundamental part of Magic? What kind of sorcery is this? Sorceries have been in the game since Alpha and are foundational to Magic. The entire game revolves around sorcery- versus instant-speed interactions, which all stems from the name of one of MTG’s six original card types.

There’s over multiple thousands of sorceries printed across Magic’s history when you account for MDFCs, adventure cards, and digital-only Alchemy cards on MTG Arena. That’s a lot to narrow down, but we’re up to the task!

Make sure it’s your main phase and the stack is empty, because it’s time to talk sorceries.

What Are Sorceries in MTG?

Rise of the Dark Realms | Illustration by Michael Komarck

Sorcery is one of the primary card types in Magic. It appears in the type line and refers to a spell that goes to the graveyard after resolution. Flavor-wise, they’re supposed to be the actual spells cast by planeswalkers, though some suspension of belief is required.

Sorceries are notable for their timing restrictions. As with most permanent types, sorceries can only be cast during your main phases, and only if the stack is empty. You’ll notice the text “activate as a sorcery” on many activated abilities, like the one on Birthing Pod. This doesn’t make the card a sorcery, but rather notes a timing restriction on when the ability can be activated.

Since there are so many powerful sorceries in Magic, I had to cook up some criteria for this list. I came up with some buckets, with each card on the list falling into one of them:

• Best-in-class: The sorcery is the best version of the effect available.
• Close follow-up: The sorcery is still worth playing in addition to the best.
• Immediate wincon: The sorcery is capable of winning the game when it resolves.
• Format All-Star: The sorcery is a defining part of multiple decks or enables powerful strategies.
• Staple: The sorcery is universally playable with virtually no downside.
• Broken: The sorcery is inherently overpowered, either intentionally or accidently.

Normally I’d focus on Commander, but it didn’t feel fair to use Commander as the baseline since many of the best sorceries in Magic aren’t legal in Commander. This is more of a universal approach to sorceries across all formats. I tried to account for how they function in present-day Magic, so historically powerful sorceries that don’t see much play anymore didn’t make the list.

#76. Steelshaper’s Gift

Tutors are always going to take up “best-of” slots, even hyper-specific ones like Steelshaper's Gift. It’s narrow, but the consistency it adds to the decks it fits into can’t be overstated.

#75. Scrap Mastery

Scrap Mastery’s basically Living Death for artifacts, but Living Death usually benefits everyone since most decks include creatures. Artifacts aren’t as prevalent, so Scrap Mastery ends up being more one-sided. And it sweeps artifacts off board too.

#74. Tasha’s Hideous Laughter

I wanted to represent mill somewhere, and I believe Tasha's Hideous Laughter is top of the heap. I considered Fractured Sanity instead, but Tasha’s absolutely chews through libraries with low curves and exiles everything it hits.

#73. Terminus

Expect to see a decent number of wraths on this list, given they’re usually sorceries and see play across nearly every format. Terminus is the hallmark “Miracles” sweeper and trumps indestructible, hexproof, etc., which leads me to believe it should see more Commander play than it does.

#72. Mana Geyser

Mana Geyser’s a strict Commander card with a design that predates the popularity of multiplayer Magic. It’s a big-mana combo starter, sometimes generating upwards of 15-20 mana. It’s temporary, but 20 mana is usually enough to find a kill before it goes to waste.

#71. Yawgmoth’s Will

Some decks treat their graveyard like a second hand, quite literally with Yawgmoth's Will. It’s usually a sign of an unfair strategy, though it’s been nearly phased out by Underworld Breach. It’s still powerful despite there being a better option, and it’s sitting on the sidelines if Breach ever gets the banhammer.

#70. Mizzix’s Mastery

Mizzix's Mastery is a potent spellslinger finisher and a cool use of the overload mechanic. You can cast the “cheap” mode in a pinch or wait until 8 mana to make it a one-sided Rise of the Dark Realms for spells. Speaking of which….

#69. Rise of the Dark Realms

The finisher to end all finishers… in 2014. I credit the fall of Rise of the Dark Realms to the existence of other cheaper mass-reanimation effects. Wake the Dead, Ghouls' Night Out, and Living Death all tread on what Dark Realms does at half the cost. Sure, it’s the cleanest way to get all the creatures, but half the creatures for half the price is almost always preferable.

#68. Replenish

Replenish is a mass enchantment reanimation spell. It’s an absurdly expensive Reserved List card, which is why you probably don’t see it played often, though Commander players can get a taste of it from Eiganjo Dynastorian.

#67. Abundant Harvest

Abundant Harvest is an underrated cantrip that always gives you what you need. It’s also an S-Tier design with its reference to Abundance.

#66. Scapeshift

Scapeshift is a one-card combo, fetching Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and a bunch of mountains to one-shot players in Constructed formats. It’s fallen off in recent years but still hangs around in landfall decks at Commander tables.

#65. Fractured Identity

In a 1v1 environment, Fractured Identity essentially steals a creature and gives you the relevant ETB effects. It’s more political in Commander, where it’s excellent at turning a game around on the lead player. It’s also a goofy combo card with detrimental permanents like Leveler. You get a Leveler, and you get a Leveler, and you….

#64. Chain Lightning

It felt right to give a nod to the best sorcery-speed Lightning Bolt follow-up here. Chain Lightning technically has a downside, but it matters so rarely that this just ends up being Bolts #5-8 in decks that want a critical mass of burn.

#63. Dread Return

Dread Return is an exceptionally fair reanimation spell… until it isn’t. It mostly finds its way into degenerate decks that are capable of milling themselves out, after which Dread Return puts their key creatures into play. Its rarity downshift in Commander Masters added that degeneracy to the Pauper card pool for the first time.

#62. Primal Surge

In a deck with nothing but permanents, Primal Surge picks up your library and puts it on the battlefield. I find it more exciting in decks with a few bricks floating around since it creates tension and leads to hilarious moments where the first card revealed ends the chain immediately.

#61. All Is Dust

Colorless decks by their very nature have fewer disruptive tools to work with. Most colorless sweepers are symmetrical effects like Perilous Vault or Oblivion Stone. All Is Dust is an ideal fit, and these decks tend to have the mana acceleration needed to justify a 7-mana wrath. It’s rigid, but it’s a staple of nearly every colorless deck.

#60. Insatiable Avarice

Insatiable Avarice is a versatile top-deck tutor. For 3 mana, you can either tutor or draw three. For 5 mana, you tutor then draw three, so you’ll draw the card you searched for. This black sorcery’s expensive for a top-deck tutor effect, but the raw versatility is enough to make this worth including if the triple-black cost to spree the second mode isn’t a problem.

#59. Genesis Wave

Genesis Wave is still a fine way to spend a ton of mana, but its age shows in a world where decks are faster, leaner, and more disruptive than ever. There are still enough heavy ramp decks and X-spells matter decks around to keep it relevant.

#58. Wrath of the Skies

The energy mechanic isn’t relevant in every Magic format Wrath of the Skies is legal in, but that doesn’t even matter, since you can dump as much mana as you want. This white sorcery is incredibly efficient considering how many card types it affects. It sees play in Modern control decks, many of which take a “fight fire with fire” approach to dealing with the energy decks and their Blood Moons.

#57. Doppelgang

It takes a lot of mana to make Doppelgang work well, but when it does, oh boy. This Simic card‘s the kind of spell I love using in the late game, when most other options are exhausted. Target your Avenger of Zendikar and a land, or win the game outright by targeting Biovisionary and any clone creature, i.e. Phyrexian Metamorph.

#56. Flare of Cultivation

If your deck is looking for maximum land ramp, Flare of Cultivation can turn a leftover creature into a free Cultivate. If you don’t feel like sacrificing a creature, though, the spell is almost identical to Cultivate anyway. I can’t help but imagine a deck with a turn 1 Arboreal Grazer directly into Flare of Cultivation, which seems pretty spicy.

#55. Approach of the Second Sun

As an alternate wincon, Approach of the Second Sun doesn’t ask you to jump through any ridiculous hoops (see: Hedron Alignment). It just asks for time and mana. It’s cheesy, but the best things in life usually have some amount of cheese involved (see: pizza).

#54. Day of Black Sun

Day of Black Sun has two points that make it an interesting wrath. Firstly, it's “creatures lose all abilities” clause nerfs indestructible-based protection, which is common in Commander. Secondly, you can cast it for X=0 to wipe out token decks at an incredible rate.

#53. Grapeshot + Tendrils of Agony

Grapeshot is one of red's best win conditions, and pairs with Tendrils of Agony as the most definitive storm = win cards. They convert arbitrary storm counts into damage, which usually wins more reliably than something like Brain Freeze or Ignite Memories.

#52. Inquisition of Kozilek

Inquisition of Kozilek is a great “backup” discard spell. It has limitations but lines up well with how most Constructed decks are designed. It’s unfortunately relegated to formats where Thoughtseize also exists, but there are matchups when Inquisition is the preferred piece of hand disruption.

#51. Prismatic Ending

One-for-one sorcery-speed removal can only reach so high, but Prismatic Ending just so happens to reach up to 5. The design is fun and imminently fair, and it only becomes better when we eventually get that rumored purple mana in Magic.

#50. Council’s Judgment

Council's Judgment has an interesting political bent in Commander, but it really shines in Eternal and Cube formats where it provides an out to annoying creatures with protection, hexproof, etc. It decisively answered True-Name Nemesis during its heyday, and it’s a popular staple in high-powered cubes.

#49. Pyroclasm

Pyroclasm is one of the most efficient sweepers in Magic history. It's 2 mana to wipe the board of any creatures with toughness 2 or less. This red sorcery tends to be most efficient against aggro decks that flood the board with cheap creatures, and has been a sideboard staple in Constructed metas featuring popular go-wide decks.

#48. Overwhelming Stampede

Overwhelming Stampede is one powerful Overrun effect. In Commander, you can cast this with something absurd like a Ghalta, Primal Hunger on the table and win the game on the spot. This goes best in decks with huge creatures like that – it’s up to you whether that’s because of their base power, or because of lords, +1/+1 counters, equipment, or any number of other ways to make huge creatures to attack with.

#47. Buried Alive

There’s no shortage of graveyard shenanigans in Magic these days, and Buried Alive makes for a fantastic enabler. Find your reanimation targets or get up to something despicable with Necrotic Ooze.

#46. The Rampant Growths

This slot collectively includes Rampant Growth, Into the North, Three Visits, Nature's Lore, Farseek, etc. There’s infinite redundancy across this type of design, giving green decks that want 2-mana ramp an abundance of options to choose from.

The newest flavor is Shared Roots, which adds lesson synergy for decks that care about it.

#45. Duress

Duress has been ruining control players’ lives since 1998 and has since been printed in over a dozen additional Standard-rotation MTG sets. This black sorcery is a great Constructed safety-valve to ensure there’s always an answer to the most problematic non-creature spells in any given format.

#44. Armageddon

Armageddon has its dedicated fans. Just ask Def Leppard. It also has a much more vocal majority of haters who consider mass land destruction a scourge on Magic. Look, mana denial was tantamount to early Magic, and you’re still welcome to “geddon” people out of Vintage Cube to your heart’s content. Yes, Ravages of War. I see you too.

#43. Green Sun’s Zenith

Green Sun's Zenith, or as I like to call it, Dryad Arbor in a trench coat, is a versatile creature tutor that scales with the game at every point on the curve. Cards like Finale of Devastation and Invasion of Ikoria get dubbed “the new Green Sun’s” as a testament to its power.

#42. Lórien Revealed

Lórien Revealed proved itself very quickly after its release in Lord of the Rings. It’s functionally an Island that fixes mana, and it fills up the graveyard, pitches to Force of Will, and is obviously castable as a 5-mana draw-three. It has a surprising number of niche interactions for a card that’s replacing a basic land in most decks.

#41. Hymn to Tourach

Three mana is the going rate for a discard spell that hits two cards. Hymn to Tourach isn’t the only card to break that mold, but it’s the king of the 2-mana hand disruption slot. The randomness always gives you a sense of hope, yet always seems to hit the most important cards in your hand. Every time.

#40. Sunfall

Sunfall from March of the Machine was the last truly pushed white wrath we've seen. Between this and Farewell, it’s questionable whether abilities like indestructible and hexproof still matter as much. That’s why I’m not including the OG Wrath of God here; it’s just not effective compared to other incredible catch-all sweepers.

#39. Doomsday

Look, these sorceries are so powerful and slot into different formats in ways that make it hard to get an exact order down, so take my positioning with a grain of salt. You can’t really throw Doomsday into just any deck and expect it to work, but you can build entire decks around it and win with a strategically stacked “Doomsday pile”.

#38. Expressive Iteration

Two-mana draw-2 with selection. Expressive Iteration’s a groan test card, one that you least want to see on the opposite side of an attrition-based battle. It earned itself a spot on the Legacy and Pioneer ban list, though it’s still kicking in Modern. 

#37. Breach the Multiverse

Breach the Multiverse is a splashy but undoubtedly powerful reanimation spell for EDH. Especially if your Commander tables are full of big-mana creature or planeswalker decks, this black sorcery can turn the tide of the game in your favor. Even if they’re not, this great black card can be a perfectly acceptable way to both find and reanimate your own powerful creatures.

#36. Toxic Deluge

Toxic Deluge is holding strong as black’s best sweeper, and the alternatives aren’t close. Yes that includes Damnation. Deluge’s success is a product of mana efficiency and being designed for a format with more expendable life than usual. Turns out it translates into 20-life formats just as well.

#35. Last March of the Ents

If you’ve got a powerful enough creature on the battlefield and some truly terrifying creatures in your deck, Last March of the Ents can and will be a devastating green sorcery. Slam down some Eldrazi titans to annihilate your opponents, or harvest their fear with Valgavoth, Terror Eater. You get the idea, though – make sure you’ve got the creatures to make this worth spending 8 mana on.

#34. Will of the Abzan

Will of the Abzan is for the Commander players. Making each opponent sacrifice their largest creature isn't the same as removing their strongest creature, but it often gets prominent threats from each player. The 4-mana Reanimate is less exciting, but a wonderful option to tack onto your removal spell. And it's backbreaking to get both modes. 

#33. Blasphemous Board Wipes

Blasphemous Act and Blasphemous Edict are similarly massive board wipes that work best in Commander as their cost reduces alongside the number of creatures in play. Unless you care about damaging creatures for Stuffy Doll effects, the Edict is likely the stronger of the two; it theoretically handles fewer creatures, but not many players have more than 13 creatures by the time a board wipe is necessary, and sacrificing permanents gets around indestructible.

#32. Gitaxian Probe

Gitaxian Probe is undeniable proof that Phyrexian mana was a mistake. It diminishes the importance of the color pie and takes away a lot of guesswork needed during gameplay. You’d happily pay 2 life for perfect information about how your opponent’s able to interact with you. It creates a lack of tension at a negligible opportunity cost.

#31. Torment of Hailfire

Torment of Hailfire is one of black’s go-to finishers in Commander. It’s frustrating for two reasons: It’s generically powerful and therefore comes up way too frequently, and it makes you do math, which is just unacceptable.

#30. Beseech the Mirror

Beseech the Mirror is more expensive than the average tutor, but it comes with the bonus of being able to cast the card you find if you bargained the spell. This is quite the powerful effect in a singleton format – this can be basically whatever you need it to be, but usually, it’s a combo piece like Underworld Breach or even a Thassa's Oracle if you’ve got the Demonic Consultation to go with it.

#29. Winternight Stories

Winternight Stories is a mighty spell in decks that want to fill their graveyard with creatures. It tears through your deck and fills the graveyard, and it even has synergy in multiples since you can discard excess copies to harmonize later. That also makes it perfect in self-mill decks like Teval, the Balanced Scale; since it can be cast from the graveyard or your hand, drawing it and milling it is roughly the same.

#28. Eureka + Hypergenesis

Eureka and the suspend version Hypergenesis dump entire hands of haymakers into play all at once, but they extend that same opportunity to your opponents. Hypergenesis is banned in Modern but sees no play in the formats it’s legal in, and Eureka is legal in Commander, but being a triple-digit priced Reserved List card means no one actually has one.

#27. Show and Tell

Show and Tell is less chaotic than Eureka, condensing the effect down to a single cycle around the table. That’s enough to make it the namesake card for decks looking to cheat big wincons into play, whether they be Omniscience, Griselbrand, or a land from an awful hand. Who said blue can’t ramp?

#26. Faithless Looting

Faithless Looting looks like an innocuous hand-shaping tool, but the real strength is how easily it sets up graveyard plays. Turn-1 Looting puts anything you need in the graveyard while digging towards your payoffs. It’s not amazing without any synergies, but the synergies that do exist are the exact reason this amazing flashback card has spent time on various banlists.

#25. Ponder

Ponder takes the cake for blue sorcery-speed cantrips, with Preordain as a close second. It lets you look at up to four cards when you’re digging and has almost no opportunity cost to slot into a deck. It’s a bread-and-butter card that separates the merely powerful sorceries from the top-tier ones.

#24. Tooth and Nail

Green tutor Tooth and Nail effortlessly cheats two combo creatures into play at once, making it something of a 1-card combo when entwined. Unlike Primal Surge, you don’t have to sculpt your deck in any particular way to make it work.

#23. Treasure Cruise

Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time collectively taught players (and Magic designers) the dangers of cost-reduction mechanics. Delve was immediately problematic, earning bans across various formats. Pioneer and Commander are the last frontiers where you can play these with no restriction.

#22. Time Warp

Time Walk is to Time Warp what a quarter is to a dime. That is, it’s 2.5x better. But you know what? Dimes are still pretty good. Time Warp is a classic “fixed but oops actually still broken” card with its own set of problems—namely, the fact that it doesn’t exile itself. There’s also Capture of Jingzhou and Temporal Manipulation as backups that don’t target.

#21. Farewell

So long, Farewell, auf Weidersehen, good night. The hills truly are alive with the sound of Magic players groaning as their entire board and all graveyards get exiled. Farewell is in the running with Cyclonic Rift and Toxic Deluge as the best Commander boardwipes, and it’s one of the neo-boogeymen of the format. Nuking the graveyards takes away a lot of decks’ post-sweeper comeback potential.

#20. Mind’s Desire

Mind's Desire earned itself one of the fastest bannings of all time, though it's since been released to the wilds, and has mostly behaved itself outside the occasional hour-long storm turns it produces.

#19. Time Spiral

Time Spiral highlights the joke about Mark Rosewater’s tendency to “fix” classic Magic cards by making new versions that end up being just as broken. It’s supposedly the fixed Timetwister, though you’ll forgive my skepticism.

#18. Wheel of Fortune

Another draw-7 eh? Wheel of Fortune is the original Alpha wheel effect and the card that lends its name to this type of effect. It’s arguably better than Timetwister since it fills your graveyard, and red doesn’t have the raw card advantage that blue does.

#17. Natural Order

The philosophy of Natural Order seeks to explain nature’s authority over worldly matters in the absence of law, which is appropriate because this is truly a lawless card. It’s remarkably similar to Tinker insofar as cheating big things into play goes. Just a little greener.

#16. Upheaval

Pick ‘em up y’all! And by ‘em I mean everything. Don’t forget the lands. One of the best blue board wipes, Upheaval is about as close to an actual reset as you can get. Fair, symmetrical, and balanced… except for the part where you float a bunch of mana and recast your spells before your opponents take their turns. Worldpurge was a second much safer, much worse attempt at this effect.

#15. Jeska’s Will

Arguably Magic's best red sorcery, Jeska's Will accelerates its caster way ahead of where they should be on turn 3. It’s a comical hybrid of Seething Song and Act on Impulse hiding behind the guise of being pushed because it was intended for Commander. It’s not remotely balanced, and that bears out in gameplay.

#14. Expropriate

I’ve already ranted about Expropriate elsewhere, so I’ll spare you the gory details and leave you with two notes. First, it’s a 9-mana spell that wins in the worst possible fashion (multiple extra turns and/or steal multiple things). Second, always vote money.

#13. Living Death

Living Death is as cheap as full-graveyard reanimation gets, at the cost of being a symmetrical effect. Decks running this should be in the best position to use it though. I flirted with the idea of including the suspendified Living End version, but that’s more of an archetype-specific card than a universally playable sorcery.

#12. Forth Eorlingas!

When did Boros () get so good? Forth Eorlingas! is a monarch card draw engine, token-generator, Fireball, knight/human spell and X-spell all in one. It’s probably the best Boros card ever printed, and definitely the best card in Magic with punctuation in its name.

#11. Thoughtseize

The muddling of formats makes talking about Thoughtseize dicey. It’s a Constructed all-star, but actively weak in Commander. Still, it’s the pinnacle of single-card hand disruption and it’s been a serious roleplayer in every Constructed format it’s ever been legal in. Black excels at hand disruption, and Thoughtseize is one of the best versions of it.

#10. Stock Up

Divination might be washed, but Stock Up proves that you can still play sorcery-speed card advantage spells, provided they’re broken. Stock Up's card selection is of such high quality that it has snuck into Legacy and Vintage decks, formats home to Magic's best cards.

All that power lies in the difference between drawing two random cards and picking the best two of five. There's something to be said for evading draw hate from cards like Orcish Bowmasters, but you mostly care about the card selection. Picking the cards you draw almost always ensures you have a perfect hand after this resolves. Everything from combo to control itches for a copy or two.

#9. Timetwister

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Timetwister doesn’t deserve Power 9 status. Either swap it for Sol Ring or let’s start calling this thing the Power 10. It’s immensely powerful, but a clear notch below Time Walk and Ancestral Recall. It does have the distinction of being the only *ahem* Power 9 card legal in Commander, if you’ve got a few grand to buy a damaged copy.

#8. Tinker

Tinker’s a classic example of a cost and effect not quite lining up. Sacrificing an artifact is trivially easy, and the reward is bringing any artifact from your library straight into play. It’s like bringing a roll of quarters to a restaurant and they just give you the entire building in exchange. It’s restricted in Vintage and banned everywhere else but personalized Cube formats.

#7. Mind Twist

Wouldn’t it be really cool if one player just didn’t start with any cards in their hand? That’s what it feels like when someone Mind Twists you. Early Magic had so many miserable cards like this, it’s a wonder we’re even here talking about it.

#6. Reanimate

“Back in my day we only paid 1 mana to Reanimate a creature.” Alright grandma. Let’s get you to bed. It’s the same Tinker design issue, where the cost isn’t appropriate for the reward you get. The unholy glory of Reanimate is that it’s fine even without set-up. You can find pockets where you can return something good without having to actively fill your graveyard.

#5. Balance

Balance is aptly named in function but completely misleading in practice. It’s supposed to equalize the game, but it’s so easy to break parity with artifact mana that it ends up being one-sided much more often. It has the scapegoat line of being a 2-mana wrath in decks that don’t put creatures on board, and it has built-in Mind Twist and Armageddon modes. You know something’s up when I mention two other cards on this list to describe Balance.

#4. Channel

Early Magic was in a wildly different headspace. Channel converts your most expendable resource into your most valuable, making it one of the most blatantly “cracked” cards in Magic history. We’re all aware of early Channel-Fireball combos, but Channel-Wurmcoil Engine does the trick too. I guess CWE doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as CFB, eh?

#3. Demonic Tutor

Do you know what every card on this list has in common? They’re all easier to find and play when you have Demonic Tutor in your deck. Proactive or reactive, it finds anything you need, and I’ve happily used one just to find a land drop. It’s also a second functional copy of many key cards in a singleton deck, another data point that makes it the clear best sorcery-speed tutor in Magic.

#2. Time Walk

Time Walk, or Explore as it’s known to unlucky players, is power through-and-through. Temporal Trespass, Alrund's Epiphany, and Nexus of Fate all made marks on Constructed formats, but even the best runner-up is miles away from the concentrated efficiency of Time Walk.

#1. Contract from Below

Is it fair to give the top spot to something you literally can’t play in any sanctioned format? Contract from Below uses ante, the second worst mechanic ever (let’s be real, stickers are #1), and combines it with a 1-mana draw-8, which is hilariously unfair. Funnily enough, the Pokémon TCG had this same exact problem with the Professor Oak Trainer card. Throw in a misprinted artist credit and we’ve got an absolute trainwreck of a Magic card.

Best Sorcery Payoffs

Spell-slinging themes are extremely popular for the Izzet () color identity, which often cares about instants and sorceries. Some cards like Collected Conjuring and Aisha of Sparks and Smoke only work with sorceries. Others are less picky and work with instants and sorceries, like Stella Lee, Wild Card and Ral, Monsoon Mage / Ral, Leyline Prodigy.

Cards like Atraxa, Grand Unifier, Tarmogoyf, Reconstruct History, and Nethergoyf increase in effectiveness the more card types you have access to, so including a few sorceries helps unlock these cards’ fullest potentials. The same goes for delirium cards like Fear of Missing Out, where a single sorcery in the graveyard puts you closer to maximizing the card.

You often see powerful effects on sorceries that would have to be way more expensive to make sense on an instant. Think wraths and hand disruption. Breaking the timing restriction on sorceries makes them significantly more powerful. Look for ways to grant your spells flash so you can be more reactive with your wraths, overruns, and other sorcery-speed effects. Quicken, Teferi, Time Raveler, and Valley Floodcaller all break the timing restriction open for sorceries and let them operate at instant speed.

Another way to capitalize on sorceries are cards that prevent your opponents from casting spells on your turn like Grand Abolisher, Voice of Victory, and Defense Grid. Sorceries are weak to countermagic since you have to tap out for them on your turn, so these cards protect explosive turns that revolve around Breach the Multiverse and similarly expensive cards.

When Can You Use a Sorcery?

You can cast a sorcery during your own main phases when the stack is empty.

Sometimes the effect of another card instructs you to cast a sorcery when you normally wouldn’t be able to. You can ignore the usual timing restriction if the effect in question allows you to cast that spell immediately. Similar effects with a duration attached usually won’t let you do so. For example, you can always cast a sorcery with Chaos Wand, but Snapcaster Mage won’t let you cast sorceries on an opponent’s turn.

What Is Sorcery Speed?

“Speed” is a slang term used to describe timing restrictions on different types of cards. “Sorcery speed” refers to cards and abilities that can only be cast during your main phase while the stack is empty. This obviously includes sorceries, but most permanents can only be cast/played at sorcery speed.

The opposite is “instant speed”, which refers to anything that could be cast at any point you have priority. Instants and flash permanents operate at “instant speed”, as do activated abilities that don’t say otherwise.

What Is the Difference Between Instant and Sorcery?

The only real difference between instants and sorceries is the timing on when you can cast them. They’re both card types that have an effect then go to the graveyard after resolution. Sorceries are more restrictive since they can only be cast during your main phases, whereas instants are generally better since there are more opportunities at which you can play them.

Is a Creature a Sorcery Spell?

No, creature spells are not sorcery spells. Sorceries explicitly have the card type “sorcery”. This misconception might stem from the fact that creatures can only be cast “at sorcery speed” or “any time you could cast a sorcery”. This just means that it’s your main phase and the stack is empty, which is when you’re legally allowed to cast sorceries, or any spells other than instants or spells with flash.

What’s the Difference Between Sorcery and Enchantment?

Sorceries are spells that resolve with an effect and then go to the graveyard, while enchantments are permanent spells that resolve by entering the battlefield. Enchantments can have static effects, triggered abilities, or even activated abilities, while sorceries simply do what they say on the card, like “Strangle deals 3 damage to target creature or planeswalker,” and then go to the graveyard.

What Does “As a Sorcery” Mean on an Ability?

When an ability says “as a sorcery,” it means that ability can only be used during your main phase when the stack is empty and you have priority. Abilities that don’t have this clause can be activated “at instant speed”, or whenever you have priority regardless of what else is happening. This is a balance decision made on cards whose abilities might be too powerful if you could use them at instant speed.

Can a Sorcery Have Flash?

Some effects can grant a sorcery flash, which basically “overrides” the sorcery-speed restriction and lets you play it as if it were an instant. It doesn’t actually become an instant; it just operates like one. Crashing Tide is an example of a sorcery that gains flash under the right conditions.

What are Tribal/Kindred Sorceries?

Tribal sorceries, now renamed “kindred sorceries”, are non-creature sorceries with an associated creature type. Kindred is a separate card type that allows a spell to interact with cards that care about a specific creature type. For example, Hunting Triad is an Elf Kindred Sorcery. It operates under all the same conditions as a normal sorcery, but it also interacts with cards that check for the elf creature type, like Leaf-Crowned Visionary.

Let’s Rest for a Spell

Demonic Tutor | Illustration by Scott Chou

Well, that was a lot. I like to joke that players prefer instants to sorceries so much that if the average player designed Magic cards, there would only be instants and creatures with flash. But the concept of sorceries is a great balancing tool that gives R&D some flexibility in the way they design cards. That doesn’t mean they didn’t get away with printing some of the most ridiculously overpowered cards of all time.

Remember the ordering of this list isn’t exactly scientific, and with so many sorceries in print, I’m bound to have missed someone’s favorite. Is there something I’m leaving off the list? Perhaps there’s one that doesn’t deserve its spot? Let me know in the comments below or over in the Draftsim Discord. And check out The Daily Upkeep YouTube channel for more great Draftsim content.

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