Vow of Fun

I have awoken, as if of a deep, dreamless sleep, and the Commander spoilers are coming fast and furious.

I have written before about my love for Leaden Fists. The short version being that the best place to hide an opposing commander is right on the battlefield. Recursion is a fact of life we must all deal with. So if a big, nasty, monster is going to get popped right back into play, make your opponent do the killing, not you.

Beyond Leaden Fists or Ice Cage, now we have an entire CYCLE of "Vows" which are all somewhat similar in effect.

Vow of Duty, Vow of Flight, Vow of Malice, Vow of Lightning and Vow of Wildness all basically do the same thing…buff a creature (usually an opposing creature) and prevent it from ever attacking you again. A much more "political" option since you don't deprive your opponent of the joys of his creature, but you do prevent him from inviting you to that particular pain-party.

And what an effortless, risk-free way to help out the guy at the table who's running out of gas! He'll never be able to attack you. And one of his creatures might just get bumped from chump blocker to worrisome board threat! The Vows are not only a sound tactical decision, but they actually increase the fun quotient!

Probably the only thing Leaden Fists has going for it is flash. But how crazy would these Auras be if you could also use them as combat tricks?

I also see Red has gotten its very own version of Beast Within, entitled Chaos Warp. For 1 Red and 2 colorless, the enterprising red mage gets:

"The owner of target permanent shuffles it into his or her library, then reveals the top card of his or her library. If it’s a permanent card, he or she puts it onto the battlefield."

Note that unlike say Polymorph, they only get the top card of their deck. There's a good chance it will be a land or spell and you will have made a pretty good trade-off. Additionally, since you want to save your one-to-one removal for the most heinous thing in your opponent's deck, regardless of what your opponent pulls up it will no doubt be better. Unless they pull exactly the same card, which will certainly happen the first time I cast this no matter how astronomical the odds.