Burning Wish Card Guide: Judgment's Sideboard Sorcery
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Burning Wish is a two-mana red sorcery from Judgment (2002) that lets you choose a sorcery card you own from outside the game — your sideboard, in tournament play — reveal it, and put it into your hand.
Two decades on, it's still the best-regarded member of the Wish cycle and a fixture of eternal-format combo decks, because a card that can become any sorcery in your sideboard is really fifteen cards wearing one sleeve.
The Wish cycle
Judgment printed five Wishes, one per color: Living Wish fetches a creature or land, Cunning Wish an instant, Burning Wish a sorcery, Death Wish any card at the cost of half your life, and Golden Wish an artifact or enchantment. The design descends from Ring of Ma'ruf in Arabian Nights, the game's original outside-the-game card.
Burning Wish and Cunning Wish proved the strongest by a wide margin. Sorceries and instants are where Magic keeps its most powerful effects, and both Wishes cost little enough to leave mana for casting what they fetch.
What 'outside the game' actually means
In sanctioned play the answer is simple: your sideboard, up to fifteen cards. Every Burning Wish in your maindeck is a tutor for a toolbox you assembled before the match started — a sweeper against creatures, graveyard hate against reanimator, a kill condition when it's time to close.
The rules around Wishes have shifted over the years. In casual play, 'outside the game' originally meant cards you owned that weren't in the game — colloquially, your binder. And in the early days, Wishes could even retrieve your own cards that had been removed from the game; that interaction died when the removed-from-game zone was renamed exile in the 2009 rules overhaul, which explicitly put exiled cards inside the game. Modern Wishes are sideboard cards, full stop.
Where Burning Wish shines competitively
Burning Wish's longest-running home is Legacy storm, where decks like The EPIC Storm use it as extra copies of their best sorceries — fetching Tendrils of Agony for the lethal chain or Empty the Warrens when a goblin army is the better line. One flexible slot that becomes exactly the right finisher is worth more than another rigid combo piece.
The same logic makes it a favorite anywhere sorceries do the heavy lifting: it adds redundancy to combo decks without forcing them to draw the actual combo pieces, and it gives fair red decks access to situational haymakers without maindecking them.
- Storm: fetches the win condition of choice on the turn it matters
- Toolbox: one card covers sweepers, hate pieces, and finishers from the board
- Redundancy: effectively extra copies of your most important sorcery
- The cost: the fetched card must already live in your fifteen sideboard slots
Collecting the Wishes
Burning Wish is a rare from Judgment, a small set whose foils are famously scarce — foil Wishes are among the set's toughest chases, and premium versions of the card have stayed thin on the ground ever since. Nonfoil copies are the practical route for players; foil Judgment copies are the trophy.
As a five-card cycle from one beloved set, the Wishes also make a satisfying mini-collection: two tournament staples, three curiosities, and a rules history longer than most cards twice their age.
Burning Wish printings tracked on RareWell
| Card | Set | Rarity | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burning Wish | Judge Gift Cards 2009 | rare | $53 |
 Burning Wish | Judgment | rare | $9.68 |
 Burning Wish | World Championship Decks 2003 | rare | $2.08 |
 Burning Wish | Conspiracy: Take the Crown | rare | $1.00 |
 Burning Wish | Magic Online Promos | rare | — |
 Burning Wish | Vintage Masters | rare | — |
Collections featuring Burning Wish
1 public collector has this card on RareWell — tap through to see it in their collection.
Cards mentioned in this guide
Frequently asked questions
- Can I use Burning Wish in Commander?
- By default, no — Commander games don't use sideboards, and the format's rules don't let Wishes reach outside the game. Some playgroups house-rule a wishboard, so ask your table first.
- Can Burning Wish get back a card that was exiled?
- Not anymore. Early on, Wishes could retrieve your cards that had been removed from the game, but since the 2009 rules update renamed that zone to exile, exiled cards count as inside the game and are out of reach.
- Does the card fetched with Burning Wish go to my hand?
- Yes. You reveal the chosen sorcery and put it into your hand, ready to cast with whatever mana you have left. Burning Wish itself is exiled as part of resolving.
- Which Wish from Judgment is the best?
- Burning Wish and Cunning Wish are the clear standouts, and Burning Wish generally gets the nod — sorceries include many of the game's most powerful effects, and its low cost leaves mana to cast what it finds.