Aura Swap in MTG: Rules, History, and Best Cards

Last updated on March 5, 2024

Arcanum Wings | Illustration by Carl Frank

Ready for some Sleight of Hand to keep your opponents on their toes? For a bit of “aura-justu”, if you will, since aura swap was inspired by the ninjas from Kamigawa?

Aura swap may be right down your alley, then! This is such a unique keyword ability that it's found in exactly one card in all of Magic: The Gathering. With aura swap, you may befuddle foes just by playing a mechanic they may have never seen before!

Let's explore aura swap and learn how it works, go over its history as a “futureshited” mechanic, and do a deep dive into a few corner cases involving shroud, stolen creatures, and ETB effects.

How Does Aura Swap Work?

Wild Growth | Illustration by Tony Szczudlo

Aura swap is an activated ability on (currently) just one aura card, namely Arcanum Wings. As with all activated abilities that don't specify otherwise, you can activate it at instant speed.

Aura swap allows you to do pretty much what the name implies: exchange the aura with aura swap for another aura in your hand. It's a bit like the ninjutsu mechanic often found on ninja cards from Kamigawa sets, but swapping auras rather than creatures.

Auras are enchantments that specifically have the aura subtype, like Wild Growth, Kenrith's Transformation, or the role tokens from Wilds of Eldraine. All auras have the “enchant” static ability in their rules text, which defines what an aura spell can target and what an aura can enchant.

The latter is an essential caveat for aura swap: the aura in your hand that you want to swap for an aura on the battlefield needs to be able to enchant the same type of permanent.

Arcanum Wings says “enchant creature,” so it can only target and be attached to creatures. The permanent can have other types and also be an artifact, for example, but it must be a creature.

Therefore, if you activate Arcanum Wings‘s aura swap, you can swap Arcanum Wings for the Kenrith's Transformation that you have in your hand since they both enchant creatures. But unless your creature happens to also be a land, you can't aura swap Arcanum Wings for Wild Growth, since they enchant different types of permanents.

Additional caveats:

The exchange of auras happens on resolution, and the exchange is instantaneous and simultaneous. The permanent never has both auras at the same time, and it never has none of them attached.

The History of Aura Swap in MTG

Arcanum Wings, currently the sole enchantment with the aura swap keyword ability, debuted in the Future Sight expansion (from the Time Spiral block) in May 2007.

Arcanum Wings is one of the 81 “futureshifted” cards included in Future Sight. All “futureshifted” cards hinted at possible new mechanics that Magic's R&D was considering to (perhaps) introduce in future sets. In a way, “futureshifted” cards were sort of “pre-prints” from sets to come (as opposed to reprints from older sets). These cards “came from the future,” from not-yet-released expansions, and were included in Future Sight as previews of things to come.

For example, we have Narcomoeba as a preview from Guilds of Ravnica, and Grinning Ignus as a preview of Strixhaven: School of Mages.

Not all these potential future sets came to realization, though. Or at least, not just yet.

“We created aura swap as yet another way to try and help make Auras more playable,” writes Magic's head designer Mark Rosewater, in an article published in August 2020 reviewing each of the Future Sight cards. “The idea behind it was that it added an element of surprise because you didn't quite know what a creature with an Aura with aura swap on it could do.”

According to Mark, aura swap was inspired by ninjutsu, a mechanic he designed for the ninjas in Betrayers of Kamigawa. The difference was that aura swap worked with auras rather than creatures, and instead of the mechanic working in your hand, it worked on the aura on the battlefield. “This was done to try and create drama,” Mark writes, “although in retrospect if we'd done it from the hand, it might have added drama to all Auras.”

To date, neither has Arcanum Wings been reprinted, nor does any other card with aura swap exist.

Why Is There Only One Aura Swap Card?

Originally, MTG printed a single aura swap card because “futureshifted” mechanics were just a glimpse of potential future mechanics.

Back in 2015, in a post on his personal blog, Mark rated the mechanic as a 6 on the Storm Scale, an informal scale that goes from 1 to 10 and rates how likely a mechanic is to return (with 10 being “almost assuredly not coming back”). “Right place, right world, there’s a chance [that aura swap returns],” Mark wrote at that time, “but it’s not something that we’re going to build around.”

As time passed, aura swap's comeback seems to have become less likely. When again reviewing “futureshifted” mechanics in a 2021 article, Mark noted that aura swap is a bit of a double-edge sword since it lets you circumvent mana costs.

Entirely personal opinion here: Wilds of Eldraine focuses a lot on auras, even introducing a new aura type, roles. If such a set isn’t the “right place, right world” for aura swap, I have a hunch we won't see this mechanic any time soon.

Does Aura Swap Trigger Enter the Battlefield Effects?

Yep, it does.

When the aura in your hand enters the battlefield (in exchange for the aura with aura swap), the arriving aura triggers all its ETB effects.

If you exchange Arcanum Wings for Kenrith's Transformation, you draw a card as Transformation enters the battlefield.

And if there's another permanent in play with an effect that triggers when enchantments enter the battlefield like constellation, that effect also triggers.

Can I Aura Swap an Aura onto My Opponent’s Creature?

Yep, you can. You can cast Arcanum Wings directly on your opponent's creature, and then activate the swap.

But! Remember that the new aura needs to be able to enchant your opponent's creatures.

Say you cast Arcanum Wings onto your creature, then an opponent takes control of said creature. You still control Arcanum Wings, so you can activate aura swap and exchange it for any other aura in your hand, as long as that aura can enchant creatures your opponent controls. Therefore, you can't exchange Arcanum Wings for Kaya's Ghostform since Kaya's Ghostform specifically enchants creatures you control.

But in the above scenario, you could swap Arcanum Wings for Dead Man's Chest, since Dead Man's Chest enchants creatures that you don't control.

Does Aura Swap Count as Casting?

Nope, it doesn’t. You're not casting anything; you’re activating an ability.

You’ll most likely need to cast Arcanum Wings at some point first, enchant a creature with it, and then activate aura swap, but activating aura swap is not casting.

What if the Creature Gains Shroud?

No problem; aura swap still works.

As long as the aura with aura swap is already attached, the creature then gaining shroud doesn’t prevent aura swap from working. And if the creature is controlled by your opponent, hexproof won't stop the exchange, either.

The gist of it is, auras that are already on the battlefield don't target anything, so creatures later gaining shroud or hexproof have no effect on the aura. Aura swap has no targeting clause, so shroud or hexproof has no influence here.

Gallery and List of Aura Swap Cards

• Arcanum Wings

Best Aura SwapCards

I know this comes as a huge surprise, but the absolute very best aura swap card in all of Magic's history happens to be Arcanum Wings! Best aura swap card, hands down!

On a serious note: it's really cheap, in case you want to test it in your deck. Even though it was never reprinted since Future Sights, it costs less than fifty cents.

Wrap Up

Kaya's Ghostform | Illustration by Johan Grenier

I hope this article has helped you hone your aura-jutsu skills!

As noted, I think that if aura swap didn't make a comeback in Wilds of Eldraine, then it's unlikely to return. But Wilds of Eldraine's roles show that WotC is very willing to push the envelope when it comes to auras, so even if aura swap itself is never part of a future set, we may still have plenty of toys for Arcanum Wings to play with.

If this deep dive into unique mechanics is the type of article you'd like to see more of, please drop a comment below, or stop by the Draftsim Discord and let us know.

And may the swap be with you!