Cleansing Nova

What white pays for in a board wipe is rarely raw power; it is flexibility, and here the flexibility is the entire pitch. The modal split lets one slot answer two unrelated problems: the creature board that has spiraled, or the artifact-and-enchantment shell that a control mirror or a prison deck has quietly assembled. The choice is locked in at cast, so the value lives not in the resolution but in never having to guess which half you would need back at deckbuilding time. The cost of that breadth is steep relative to a dedicated sweeper: five mana to destroy only creatures is a premium most decks will not pay when cheaper wraths exist, and the second mode rarely sweeps enough to carry the rate alone. It sits in a line of white modal removal that trades efficiency for never being dead in hand, the design that wants to be useful in every matchup rather than excellent in one. Wrath of God ages well because clean, cheap, and unconditional is a shape worth memorizing; this asks an extra mana and hands you an escape hatch instead. Whether that trade earns its slot depends entirely on how often a deck expects to run into noncreature problems it has no other way to touch, and how much it is willing to pay to answer them without splitting its removal suite in two.