Discussion: Instants that protect your board

[cheonice]

Over the years we got more and more very powerful protection spells. It went a long way from Dauntless Escort to staples like Teferi's Protection. In your oppinion, what is the most powerful card? Which do you like playing? What would you consider a worthy budget alternative?

Teferi's Protection
Clever Concealment
Flawless Maneuver

Selfless Spirit
Guardian of Faith
Grand Crescendo
Akroma's Will

[Serenade]

Heroic Intervention
Cosmic Intervention
Glorious Protector
Lae'zel's Acrobatics
Ghostway
Faith's Reward
Second Sunrise

What rank as the best wraths these days? Act, Rift, Deluge, Farewell, Eviction? Then I'd put the blink and phasing stuff as best.

[pokken]

Hour of revelation and cyclonic rift are the best two wipes imho with toxic deluge third

[folding_music]

I really adore Lae'zel's Acrobatics and it is reassuringly expensive mana-wise so you don't feel like yr playing at an unfair power level
but mmm I think Muddle the Mixture is my fave boardwipe-prevention spell lol

[cheonice]

Good point, totally forgot about Toxic Deluge et al. Feels strange to have a green spell mixed into all the white goodness.

[Mookie]

What rank as the best wraths these days? Act, Rift, Deluge, Farewell, Eviction? Then I'd put the blink and phasing stuff as best.

My brief scryfall search puts the top 10 most-played board wipes (in order) as:

• Cyclonic Rift
• Blasphemous Act
• Toxic Deluge
• Austere Command
• Damnation
• Farewell
• Wrath of God
• Supreme Verdict
• Cleansing Nova
• Vanquish the Horde

Looking at these, there is one bounce, one damage-based, one -X/-X, one exile, and six destroy effects. So, while granting indestructible doesn't stop everything, it does still stop the vast majority of board wipes. I'd also hypothesize that one of the reasons why Rift, Deluge, and Farewell are so high is because they get around the most common protection. Sort of an arms race, really, between harder-to-prevent board wipes and harder-to-ignore protection. We'll see where things end up in a few years.

Back to the original topic, I don't think there is a single 'best' protection effect. Play whatever synergizes with your deck. If you're running creature recursion, Selfless Spirit is awesome. If you're running blink synergies, then go for Ghostway. If you're playing aristocrats and want your stuff to die, then embrace it and recur stuff with Living Death. That said, Flawless Maneuver and Clever Concealment definitely get major bonus points due to being free to cast, particularly if your deck is tight on mana.

[Toshi]

My brief scryfall search puts the top 10 most-played board wipes (in order) as:

• Cyclonic Rift
• Blasphemous Act
• Toxic Deluge
• Austere Command
• Damnation
• Farewell
• Wrath of God
• Supreme Verdict
• Cleansing Nova
• Vanquish the Horde

I will never understand why Tragic Arrogance doesn't make these lists...
Thorough, doesn't care about indestructible, highly political and with the amount of artifact/enchantment creatures these days it gets extra gross.

Anyhow, for me Clever Concealment and Flawless Maneuver top the list by virtue of being virtually free. With Clever Concealment phasing out it is by far my favorite one.
Teferi's Protection comes in third as it protects more than just creatures while costing mana (duh). Grand Crescendo would be my fourth pick for its double utility.

Outside of those 3+ mana makes a lot of difference for the upper echelons of commander, so they are just as fine/unplayable and it only comes down to the deck type which one you run, as ETBs, tokens and others all have different angles and tech.
Creature based ones without flash don't really compare, as they end up being an extra layer for your opponents to work through instead of surprisingly one uping your opponents.

Adding to the list so far: Eerie Interlude(!!!), Golgari Charm, Wrap in Vigor and Semester's End, ...

[PrimevalCommander]

Akroma's Will is in my top 5 easily. This reads more as a win condition with protection backup, which has more value to me than a protection only card. Every time I have seen it cast, including when I do it, at least one player dies. I would like to have a couple more copies. Goes in most every white deck that gets into combat.

The blink options, both instant and creatures just seem to be a bit clunky in my experience. I don't have extensive experience with them, but the timing is more difficult to pull off than some of the others. If you are playing a blink deck, then obviously the value goes up, but I'm not playing any of them outside of that right now. I don't have Clever Concealment or Flawless Maneuver yet, but they are obviously good and I hope to have one or both very soon.

Top 5
Akroma's Will good wincon
Teferi's Protection most comprehensive protection
Clever Concealment Free
Heroic Intervention two stage protection
Flawless Maneuver Free

Guardian of Faith good with creature synergy
Grand Crescendo good with token synergy
Glorious Protector good with creature & blink synergy

Haven't tried these, but the read well.
Lae'zel's Acrobatics
Cosmic Intervention
Ghostway

[pokken]

Brought Back is usually good enough (keeping your best two permanents, and also acting as bad rampant growth sometimes)

[Jemolk]

I prefer mass recursion to protection, myself. Protection is only useful if you've currently got a fantastic board. Mass recursion is good if the aggregate of all your removed cards make a good board. Also people will see you as a bigger threat if they consistently find themselves unable to answer your board at all, than they will if they find that it's merely a setback -- at least if you ever become the imminent threat, they can set you back, after all. The only one of these protection spells I really like as a generic protection spell, then, is Teferi's Protection, and that's because it also effectively says "I don't die, see you later" on it. I'm not fussed about mana costs; I generally play a fairly reactive game anyway, so I'd rather something that protects my face but costs mana as opposed to something that only protects my board but can be cast for free. Similar in a way to how my preferred answer to uncounterable spells that need to be removed while on the stack is Time Stop and not Mindbreak Trap -- Time Stop can stop more things, including combat if necessary.

I do play all the mass blink spells in 5c Allies, though -- and I mean all the mass blink spells. Up to and including Legion's Initiative. They just straight up kill people there.

[Mookie]

I will never understand why Tragic Arrogance doesn't make these lists...
Thorough, doesn't care about indestructible, highly political and with the amount of artifact/enchantment creatures these days it gets extra gross.

Anecdotally, I put Tragic Arrogance in all my decks when it first came out... but I ended up cutting it from all of them. It's pretty easy to include Wrath of God in a creature-light deck, since you get a relatively asymmetric effect. However, Tragic Arrogance wants to be in a deck that is also light on artifacts, enchantments, and planeswalkers, which is... somewhat less common, at least among my decks. It's a powerful effect, and getting to choose certainly helps, but every time I had to choose between sacrificing Skullclamp and Sol Ring made me sad. I actually wonder how much play The Eternal Wanderer will see, since she provides a version of this effect that only hits creatures, and is thus a bit easier to fit into decks.

[pokken]

Arrogance is garbage. It is too likely to leave one person who is not you in pole position.

"Oh your only creature is consecrated sphinx, guess this wipe is dead."

[illakunsaa]

I think March of Swirling Mist has potential to protect your own board.

[duducrash]

"Oh your only creature is consecrated sphinx, guess this wipe is dead."

It's like Urza's Ruinous Blast . Great in theory and some scenarios, but plays out weirdly

[Dunadain]

Ill add Guardian of Faith as putting it on a creature makes it easier to tutor/recur and opens up the ability to blink.

Oh yeah, and Glorious Protector.

[Dunadain]

I will never understand why Tragic Arrogance doesn't make these lists...
Thorough, doesn't care about indestructible, highly political and with the amount of artifact/enchantment creatures these days it gets extra gross.

Anecdotally, I put Tragic Arrogance in all my decks when it first came out... but I ended up cutting it from all of them. It's pretty easy to include Wrath of God in a creature-light deck, since you get a relatively asymmetric effect. However, Tragic Arrogance wants to be in a deck that is also light on artifacts, enchantments, and planeswalkers, which is... somewhat less common, at least among my decks. It's a powerful effect, and getting to choose certainly helps, but every time I had to choose between sacrificing Skullclamp and Sol Ring made me sad. I actually wonder how much play The Eternal Wanderer will see, since she provides a version of this effect that only hits creatures, and is thus a bit easier to fit into decks.

I've never liked tragic arrogance, but the new wanderer has been amazing so far. I think it's an unfair comparison though because wanderer also is a value generating permanent after the wipe.

[Dunharrow]

I have really warmed up to Ghostway and Eerie Interlude lately. TP is probably still the best, but I like how Ghostway and EI can be used proactively when needed. Sure, saving your board from a wrath is amazing.
Also amazing is blinking 3 ETB creatures and getting a huge tempo swing.

[Avacyn Believer]

Thinking about this question made me realize that I don't really play board-protection spells. I think its because I play Voltron the most, so I care more about protecting one creature than the whole board. Only my token deck is where I look at the whole board, and I play the already mentioned Dauntless Escort and Selfless Spirit. In addition to Make a Stand, and Rootborn Defenses. Shalai, Voice of Plenty fits that category too, kind of. But those are all deck-specific.

As for what it best, you can't beat Teferi's Protection, and Flawless Maneuver is useful to cast for free. The only reason I don't put those into every deck with is because I only have so many copies of those cards. For budget versions, I'd be looking more at what synergizes with the deck than what is generically good.