Wrath of God

The original sweeper, and the rate every white board wipe since has had to justify itself against. The "they can't be regenerated" line is the design fingerprint of its era: when this kind of sorcery first appeared, regeneration was the dominant durability mechanic in green and black, and a four-mana board wipe would have been a dead card against any deck holding up a regenerator. Slamming that loophole shut is what made the cost legitimate, and the wording outlived the threat, because by the time regeneration faded the card's name had already become the benchmark. The alternatives Wizards has printed since all argue with it over which clause to keep: Damnation moved the same effect to black at the same cost, Day of Judgment dropped the no-regeneration text and got treated as a meaningful nerf, Supreme Verdict bolted on uncounterable, Doomskar offered foretell as a tempo discount, Farewell traded the creatures-only scope for a wider menu of exile modes. Every one of those represents a designer relaxing or tightening a single constraint to earn its slot. The original itself has barely moved: same , same text, same job. What changed is the entire vocabulary of conditional sweepers that grew up around it, each defined by which piece of this card it chose to give back.