The 15 Best Play From Exile Cards in Magic Ranked

Karn, the Great Creator | art by Wisnu Tan

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 cards that 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 Cards That Let You Cast From Exile in MTG?

Invasion of Arcavios | Illustration by Dmitry Burmak

Well, that’s complicated! And if you found your way to this article, you might have some misconceptions (like I did before I started work on this!). So let’s do a bit of history and rules work before we rank the cards.

In the olden days, Swords to Plowshares used to “remove target creature from the game.” That card and the many others that referred to that outside the game zone space received errata when the rules were changed for 2010, when the exile zone was created. But that sounds a lot like the “outside the game” text you can find on cards like Wish. Which brings us to a common question asked of Google and/or reddit: Can I Wish for a card that’s been exiled?

Sorry. No.

Karn, the Great Creator is the trouble here, as this [former] popular engine in the Pioneer Mono Green Devotion decks allows you to get a card from either exile or “outside the game.” And that puts them together in people’s heads. Another part of the confusion is also that “outside the game” from tournament play means “your sideboard.”

Here’s the relevant bits of rules text. First, defining zones:

“400.1. A zone is a place where objects can be during a game. There are normally seven zones: library, hand, battlefield, graveyard, stack, exile, and command. Some older cards also use the ante zone. Each player has their own library, hand, and graveyard. The other zones are shared by all players.”

And now for how “outside the game” relates to the zones.

“400.11. An object is outside the game if it isn’t in any of the game’s zones. Outside the game is not a zone.

400.11a Cards in a player’s sideboard are outside the game. See rule 100.4.

400.11b Some effects bring cards into a game from outside the game. Those cards remain in the game until the game ends, their owner leaves the game, or a rule or effect removes them from the game, whichever comes first.

400.11c Cards outside the game can’t be affected by spells or abilities, except for characteristic-defining abilities printed on them (see rule 604.3) and spells and abilities that allow those cards to be brought into the game.”

Phew. Okay, so that means we’re talking about a lot of potential different classes of cards in this space.

There are cards that exile cards from a game zone, special exile interactions like foretell or impulse draw, specific sideboard interactions like lesson/learn, Eldrazi cards that interact with the exile zone, cards that can return from exile on their own, and cards that pull from outside the game, to name the most obvious.

We’re going to focus on cards that pull from outside of the game for this list, often called “wishes”, as that’s likely why you’re here.

That means we won’t be focusing on the Eldrazi cards that let you pull from exile, Coax from the Blind Eternities and Spawnsire of Ulamog, the two cards that give you reasonable access to exiled cards, Pull from Eternity and Kaya the Inexorable, or the few cards that allow themselves to be cast from exile, Eternal Scourge, Misthollow Griffin, and Squee, the Immortal. We’re also not looking at the dozen plus Un-set cards that do this.

Okay, one last thing. These cards that let you get cards from outside the game mean the sideboard only 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.

#15. Ring of Ma'rûf

10 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 Reserve List, no thanks.

#14. Golden Wish

5 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.

#13. 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 here at #13 for flavor purposes.

#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

5 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 pre-Modern 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; providing 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 dial 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 Play Card From Exile 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!

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!