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Auras have long been part of the magic the gathering landscape and I like to think of them as one of the blind paths that every new player has to go down at some point before they recognize that they just don't work as well as you might hope and one of the steps along that path is to try to create a deck with a high number of auras thinking that you will build creatures that are big and powerful. What instead happens is that your opponent waits until that fifth aura is on your birds of Paradise making in the 9/9 flying trampling doublestrike life link creature that you always wanted and the uses terror to put all six cards into the graveyard and beats you down with his grizzly bears while you draw more auras that you have no creatures to put them on.

Arcanum wings is an uncommon aura from the future sight expansion set of magic the gathering. They cost one blue and one colorless and give the creature that they enchant flying. This is an effect that could be useful in limited where flying is very important and creature removal is limited(no pun intended) but outside of that flying just isn't all that hard of an effect to get.

What makes this card unique is the keyword ability it has. This ability is Aura swap and it costs one blue mana and two colorless mana. For this you can exchange this card with any aura in your hand. This is useful, if you have another aura in your hand that you would rather have on the creature, and while that is likely almost any aura in the game it still requires you to have enough auras in the deck that you are likely to have one in your hand.

The major advantage of this card is that it can be used as an instant. And this is how you would want to use it if you were going to. Declare the creature enchanted by Arcanum wings as an attacker, wait until your opponent declares blockers, which must be flying to block it, then exchange this for a spell that lets you do more damage and either kill the flying creature that blocks you or do extra damage.

This would work better if you could surprise your opponent with it but the only surprise you are likely to give your opponent is the pleasant surprise that he is playing someone who is using that mana auras since the ability is written on the card.

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