The 39 Best Auras in Magic Ranked

Last updated on April 1, 2024

Spectra Ward | Illustration by Ryan Alexander Lee

There are many types of enchantments in Magic today. You have backgrounds, which can give your commander extra perks whenever it’s on the field. Sagas are enchantments that utilize lore counters for a bit of extra value each turn. Then there are aura spells that require a legal target for successful casting to give that target a specific effect.

Today, we’ll be ranking 39 of Magic’s best aura spells. Get ready for a plethora of the best aura spells that you can slot into almost any of your current or future decks. But first, let’s learn more about what aura spells are and how they interact with your board state.

What Are Auras in MTG?

Curse of Opulence | Illustration by Kieran Yanner

An aura in MTG is an enchantment subtype that attaches to a permanent such as a creature, artifact, or land, or even to a player, which is usually an aura curse.

When Alpha debuted in 1993, auras were originally known as enchant cards. It wasn’t until Ravnica: City of Guilds came out in 2005 that Wizards of the Coast started depicting these enchant cards as auras to give a better distinction that they attach to permanents or players.

#39. Hydra’s Growth

It all starts with just one +1/+1 counter when Hydra's Growth becomes attached to a creature. Before you know it, you have a creature with over 30 power and toughness running around if it wasn’t removed before getting that strong.

The enchanted creature can become more powerful faster with counter-doubling cards like Branching Evolution and Primal Vigor. For best results, place it on your commander so you can trample through with commander damage for your win condition.

#38. Instill Energy

Instill Energy grants a creature haste, and once you’re done attacking with this enchanted creature, it’s free to untap once per turn so that you can have it up as a blocker against your opponent’s creatures.

#37. Sticky Fingers

Sticky Fingers is a great aura spell that ramps you with Treasure tokens for each instance of combat damage the enchanted creature deals. If you have ways to gain additional combat steps like Aggravated Assault or Waves of Aggression, you can gain two or more Treasure tokens per turn just from dealing combat damage alone.

#36. Curse of Vengeance

Curse of Vengeance is a lifegain and card draw resource that triggers when the enchanted opponent dies. Hence, it's best to enchant the losing player with this curse as soon as you know you have a way to remove them from the game.

#35. Shielded by Faith

Shielded by Faith protects your best creature by making it indestructible, which is essential for evading popular targeted removal cards. You can change what creature the aura is attached to whenever a creature enters the battlefield, which is efficient if your combat strategy changes throughout the game.

#34. Kaya’s Ghostform

Kaya's Ghostform protects your best creature or planeswalker from targeted removal or exile later in the game. Since the aura doesn’t have flash, you should enchant the creature or planeswalker with Kaya's Ghostform immediately after casting that spell for instant protection.

It’s best utilized in an EDH deck to protect your commander so you don’t have to pay commander tax. Also, consider Kaya's Ghostform for a superfriends deck to protect your most valuable planeswalker.

#33. Moldervine Cloak

Moldervine Cloak does more than just pump up the power and toughness of a creature. Say that the creature it enchanted gets removed and Moldervine Cloak gets sent to the graveyard as a result. It can keep coming back from the graveyard to your hand as long as you follow the steps for its dredge ability.

Then again, if you’re running Danitha, New Benalia's Light, you won’t have to worry about doing the dredge ability. You can have the legendary creature cast Moldervine Cloak directly from your graveyard to the battlefield.

Fun Fact: Moldervine Cloak is the only aura in Magic that has the dredge ability.

#32. Maddening Hex

Maddening Hex goes around the table dealing up to 6 damage to each player (depending on the result of the d6 roll) as players cast more noncreature spells. This red aura is best to run if you know many players in your pod are mostly running instant, sorcery, enchantment, or artifact spells to trigger its dice roll and damage ability. They’ll have to take the chance of their life totals whittling down, change their strategy completely, or just scoop.

#31. Psychic Possession

Psychic Possession is best played against an opponent that you know will draw a lot of cards, so you can benefit, too. If one of your pod members plays mainly blue with a card draw strategy, then Psychic Possession could be a big return on your mana investment.

If your opponent controls a Wedding Ring, you can enchant them with Psychic Possession to cause infinite card draw for you and them. Be sure that you have a Laboratory Maniac or a Jace, Wielder of Mysteries out on the field because the infinite card draw will mill you both out and you need an alternate win condition to stay in the game.

#30. Mechanized Production

Mechanized Production is a sneaky blue alternate win condition that takes some time to build. It’s more valuable if you enchant it to an artifact token and have a way to make more of them quickly without waiting another 7 to 8 turns to create enough copies.

If you’re running an Azorius deck with Myrel, Shield of Argive on the battlefield, keep attacking until you get at least eight or more artifact Soldier tokens. Enchant one of those artifact creatures with Mechanized Production, then you’ll win on your next upkeep.

#29. Shield of the Oversoul

Shield of the Oversoul can protect a Selesnya commander from targeted removal because with indestructibility. Plus, the creature gaining flying will make it easier to land combat and commander damage to end the game quicker. This Selesnya aura is especially effective in Tuvasa the Sunlit and Sythis, Harvest's Hand Commander decks.

#28. Steel of the Godhead

Steel of the Godhead is an Azorius deck staple if you’re ready to end games quickly. Players will feel backed into a corner with an unblockable creature on the field, and with no enchantment or creature removal, Steel of the Godhead can help you come out on top.

#27. Timely Ward

Timely Ward is yet another enchantment aura that grants a creature indestructible, but what makes it more special is its flash ability if you’re targeting your commander. It’s most valuable in Commander decks with Light-Paws, Emperor's Voice, Xenk, Paladin Unbroken, or Wyleth, Soul of Steel as the generals. You can surprise your opponent and cast Timely Ward in response to targeted removal or a board wipe and keep your commander around.

#26. Celestial Mantle

Celestial Mantle can put your life total way out of range for your opponents. Find a way to give the enchanted creature trample with Rancor or Shadowspear to increase the chances of dealing combat damage to and opponent.

#25. Trespasser’s Curse

Trespasser's Curse is a part of many infinite turns and infinite life gain combos, perfect for any format. Pull from Eternity, Backdraft Hellkite, Temporal Trespass, and Trespasser's Curse combo off for infinite turns. If you want infinite lifegain and infinite tokens with haste, have Elemental Mastery attached to Lurking Roper and Trespasser's Curse attached to yourself.

#24. Octopus Umbra

Octopus Umbra is essential for pumping one of your smaller creatures into a larger atrocity, especially in a Voltron deck. Plus, it gives you more control over the board and how your opponents can block by tapping down a blocker of your choice, as long as it’s not over 8 power.

#23. Overwhelming Splendor

The cursed player enchanted with Overwhelming Splendor will certainly be in a pickle as all their creatures turn into 1/1s with no abilities. This is a great aura to keep until the late game after you’ve built your own board state..

#22. Gaea’s Embrace

Gaea's Embrace is an aura that lets the enchanted creature regenerate. Since the aura gives the creature trample, this is best enchanted onto a commander to win via commander damage.

#21. Blessing of Leeches

Blessing of Leeches is another card that can protect an enchanted creature with regeneration, but it’s even better than Gaea's Embrace. Its abilities to be cast at instant speed and to regenerate the enchanted creature for free are highly valuable for interacting with a player who attempts to cast targeted removal on one of your creatures.

#20. Torment of Scarabs

Torment of Scarabs is a sow and one-sided nuisance that can also leave an opponent topdecking if they run out of nonland permanents to sacrifice. Torment of Scarabs could be the death of them if they run out of resources, leaving them with not option other than losing 3 life points per upkeep.

#19. Curse of Opulence

Curse of Opulence incentivizes you and other opponents in a pod to attack a specific player with the reward of receiving a Gold token each time the cursed player is attacked. Curse of Opulence can expedite the game by pushing players to kill off the cursed opponent faster. The ramp everyone earns from the Gold tokens can turn into a free-for-all with bigger, flashier spells cast to turn the tides of the game.

#18. Curse of Bounty

As you can see, curses are kind of our thing, and Curse of Bounty is one of the most valuable ones. Take advantage of untapping all your nonland permanents with mana rocks and mana dorks.. Plus, all your attacking creatures can stay untapped thanks to Curse of Bounty to be ready for an attack from opponents when it’s not your turn.

#17. Flickering Ward

Flickering Ward is an essential protection aura where the enchanted creature won’t receive damage if it blocks a creature with the color it’s protected from. The enchanted creature will also dodge damage and targeted removal from that color. If an opponent has enchantment removal, then you respond at instant speed by paying to return Flickering Ward to your hand (hence its name!).

#16. Kenrith’s Transformation

Kenrith's Transformation can lock out your opponent's best creature by turning it into a vanilla 3/3 elk creature. This aura is most efficient in EDH and Brawl formats as it can temporarily lock down an opponent’s commander from performing its main functions. Plus, it's an effective green source of card draw when you're looking for answers in a pinch.

#15. Pacifism

Pacifism is the original aura in mono-white that prevents the enchanted creature from attacking or blocking. The aura debuted in the Mirage set with many reprints thereafter. While it can’t prevent the mana or triggered abilities of a valuable creature from occurring, at least it’ll prevent it from achieving attack triggers, landing too much combat damage, or warding off your attacks.

#14. Ethereal Armor

Ethereal Armor does a lot for a 1-drop enchantment aura. It gives a considerable pump in enchantments-matters decks and grants first strike to the enchanted creature, which can even get around attacking or blocking creatures with deathtouch.

#13. All That Glitters

All That Glitters is much better than Ethereal Armor because the pump comes from two types of permanents you control rather than just one. This titular aura has been an automatic inclusion in enchantments-matter and/or artifacts-matter decks since its release in Throne of Eldraine. Think of the value that All That Glitters could generate for your enchanted creature if you had Mycosynth Lattice on the field, too!

#12. Ancestral Mask

Ancestral Mask is the quintessential power and toughness pumper when running a green enchantments-matter deck. It’s way better than Ethereal Armor and All That Glitters because of the +2/+2 pump for each other enchantment on the field instead of +1/+1 pumps for just the ones you control.

#11. Eldrazi Conscription

While Eldrazi Conscription is a kindred aura themed around Eldrazi creatures, its colorless identity means it can be included in any deck. Enjoy the crazy pump in power and toughness, a valuable evasive ability to increase your chances of combat damage, as well as a removal effect on attacks thanks to annihilator. You can go over the top and make Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger more formidable by including this thematically fitting aura into the build.

#10. Ghoulish Impetus

Ghoulish Impetus can force one of your opponent’s creatures to attack another one of your opponent’s on every combat to take some of the focus off of attacking you. That can give you some breathing room to get your board state in order. Plus, Ghoulish Impetus can be automatically returned to the battlefield and enchanted to a new creature without paying its mana cost when the original enchanted creature dies, making it a highly annoying aura to be up against.

#9. Breath of Fury

Breath of Fury gives you continual value with additional combat phases. It can attach to a different creature of your choice once you sacrifice the original target. As long as you have a way of constantly dealing combat damage with one or more of your creatures while Breath of Fury is enchanting one of them, you can continue to take additional combat phases until you win by whittling down an opponent’s life total.

#8. Splinter Twin

Splinter Twin can instigate infinite token, damage, and additional combat combos when enchanted onto the right creature. When attached to Combat Celebrant, you can receive infinite Celebrant tokens and infinite additional combat steps until you’ve achieved victory. The Deceiver Exarch/ Splinter Twin combo controlled Modern so badly that it was eventually banned in the format.

#7. Alpha Status

Alpha Status is best for typal decks that run the same type of creatures. Even in an instance where you’re not running a strict typal deck, Alpha Status can still work wonders. If you have a Maskwood Nexus on the battlefield, then the enchanted creature can receive a pump from all your creatures no matter the original type because this artifact makes them all creature types.

#6. Bear Umbra

A creature enchanted with Bear Umbra can untap all your lands once per attack and stretch how many spells you can cast that turn. Plus, the aura’s totem armor ability gives you protection the first time someone attempts targeted removal on the enchanted creature.

#5. Aqueous Form

Aqueous Form is the best aura spell for making your creature unblockable. You can push for victory by commander damage when it's enchanted on to your commander. This aura would be even more valuable if you found a way to gain additional combat steps.

#4. Curse of Misfortunes

Curse of Misfortunes loves piling different curses on the enchanted player for free each upkeep. If you decided to run a 5-color curse deck, you'd have 40 of them that you could include to cause cheeky shenanigans. You usually want a few tutors to find Curse of Misfortunes if it’s a vital part of your strategy..

#3. Spectra Ward

Spectra Ward makes the enchanted creature almost unstoppable (except it's still susceptible to board wipes) by giving it protection from all colors. It becomes a nearly unblockable creature that can't be dealt damage and can’t be the target of spells of any color. Be aware that if you give the enchanted creature protection from white in any other way after resolving Spectra Ward that the aura will fall off.

#2. Power Artifact

Power Artifact is the priciest of all the auras featured on this list because it’s on the Reserved List and was only printed for tabletop in Antiquities. An artifact with expensive activated abilities like Doubling Cube or Whip of Erebos would benefit from Power Artifact enchanted onto it.

#1. Treachery

Treachery is essentially free after casting since you get to untap five lands once it enters the battlefield. There’s no other aura like it in Magic and thanks to the Reserved List there’s been no reprints of it since its original printing in Urza’s Destiny.

Best Aura Payoffs

Auras-matters commanders benefit the more auras you play. Some auras-matters commanders are Voltron ones like Kosei, Penitent Warlord because the auras can assist in buffing one hard-to-kill creature. Enchantress commanders like Sythis, Harvest's Hand also benefit from auras in the deck.

Any card that can reduce how much you pay to cast an aura spell is integral in your build so you can cast more of them in one turn. Danitha Capashen, Paragon, Transcendent Envoy, Hero of Iroas, and Starnheim Courser can all reduce your aura spells by .

Some Voltron commanders that benefit from more auras under your control include:

• Light-Paws, Emperor's Voice
• Kodama of the West Tree
• Chishiro, the Shattered Blade
• Bruna, Light of Alabaster
• Kellan, the Fae-Blooded
• Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist
• Wyleth, Soul of Steel
• Uril, the Miststalker
• Valduk, Keeper of the Flame

You can easily move all your auras originally enchanted to one or more creatures to Heavenly Blademaster when it enters the battlefield to possibly one-shot your opponent.

Glamer Spinners can only move auras from one permanent to another as it enters, but it’s still awesome to do if a flying creature were to come into play.

Kor Spiritdancer pumps up quickly the more auras that are attached to it. The creature is also a great card draw resource as you continually cast more auras.

Any enchantments you cast while Ajani's Chosen sits in play can net you Cat tokens. There’s the option of attaching auras to those Cats as well if you’d like to do so.

Totem armor is one of the popular mechanics on aura spells with “umbra” in the name. Rather than the enchanted creature with a totem armor aura being destroyed outright, the aura would be removed instead so that the creature can stay alive.

I highlighted a couple of auras with totem armor already including Octopus Umbra and Bear Umbra. You can enhance the value of this mechanic by adding Umbra Mystic into your aura decks so that all your auras have totem armor.

Some enchantment creatures have the bestow mechanic. You can cast these creatures for their original mana costs or cast them for their bestow cost to become an aura spell that attaches to one of your creatures. For example, Observant Alseid is a 2/2 with vigilance when cast for 3 mana. If you cast it for its bestow cost of 5, then the creature you enchant it to will receive +2/+2 and vigilance instead.

Wrap Up

Aqueous Form | Illustration by Slawomir Maniak

Auras are awesome spells that can modify your creatures by pumping their power and toughness or giving them specific evergreen abilities amongst other powerful effects. These spells can slot into any Magic deck, but they are most beneficial in builds with more aura spells.

If you’re ready to learn more about auras and other spells in Magic, head to the Draftsim blog where we always have the best-updated content on anything about the game! Don’t forget to visit the Draftsim Discord to chat with other like-minded Magic players who want to learn as much about the game as you do! Until then, stay enchanted in your Magic journey (with aura spells that is!).