Scourglass

A board wipe that telegraphs itself a full turn in advance, then sheds half the symmetry that usually makes wraths feel safe to cast. The two-step structure is the whole point: it enters as an inert artifact, sits through a full rotation of play, and only fires on your own upkeep, which hands every opponent a clean window to respond, sacrifice value, or simply kill the thing before it goes off. That delay is the cost the effect pays for what it spares. Where the standard sweeper of this kind levels everything, this one leaves artifacts and lands standing, so the player who builds toward artifact-heavy boards walks away from the reset with their engine intact while creatures, enchantments, and planeswalkers all hit the bin. It is a wrath designed to be one-sided in deckbuilding rather than in the moment of casting: you cannot point it at a single threat, but you can stack your own side with permanents it refuses to touch. The upkeep restriction also blocks the usual reactive line of holding a sweeper to punish an overcommitted attack, forcing it instead into a proactive, announced reset that opponents get a turn to play around. That tension, a powerful asymmetric effect wrapped in the slowest possible delivery, is what keeps it honest and what has always kept it a build-around rather than a default answer.