by ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist
Spirit Bonds is an Enchantment card from the Magic 2015 Core Set. It was designed by Justin Gary, former Pro Tour player and winner of Pro Tour Houston in 2002. It's an interesting card that can create a bunch of flying Spirit tokens. Whenever a non-token creature enters the field under your control, you can pay one White mana, allowing you to put a 1/1 White Spirit creature token with flying into play. It's similar to Militia's Pride from Lorwyn, which let you put in 1/1 Kithkin Soldiers tapped and attacking whenever you attacked with a non-token creature for the same cost of a single White mana per creature.
For an Enchantment that only costs 1W to cast, that's already pretty good. However, it also has a second ability. For 1W, you can sacrifice a Spirit and a target non-Spirit creature gains indestructible until end of turn. Being able to save some of your best creatures from board-wipes at the cost of Spirits that would be lost anyway is very helpful.
Overall, Spirit Bonds is a very solid rare Enchantment that is very playable in a wide variety of Commander decks. Aggressive mono-White Commanders such as Jazal Goldmane, Radiant, Archangel and Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero have made decent use of this card. Other Commanders that have used Spirit Bonds include Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, Brago, King Eternal, and Teysa, Orzhov Scion, among others.
Spirit Bonds hasn't really seen much Constructed play, however. There was a Magic Online Standard deck in November 2014 that did run two copies, a WBR aggro brew that you can find here. There have also been some rogue budget Blue/White Heroic and White Weenie builds that have also run two copies. During its time in Standard, it was a good card that just never found itself in a strong enough deck to be worth much. If you're building a Commander deck with one of the aforementioned Commanders, however, it's a card to keep in mind.
For an Enchantment that only costs 1W to cast, that's already pretty good. However, it also has a second ability. For 1W, you can sacrifice a Spirit and a target non-Spirit creature gains indestructible until end of turn. Being able to save some of your best creatures from board-wipes at the cost of Spirits that would be lost anyway is very helpful.
Overall, Spirit Bonds is a very solid rare Enchantment that is very playable in a wide variety of Commander decks. Aggressive mono-White Commanders such as Jazal Goldmane, Radiant, Archangel and Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero have made decent use of this card. Other Commanders that have used Spirit Bonds include Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, Brago, King Eternal, and Teysa, Orzhov Scion, among others.
Spirit Bonds hasn't really seen much Constructed play, however. There was a Magic Online Standard deck in November 2014 that did run two copies, a WBR aggro brew that you can find here. There have also been some rogue budget Blue/White Heroic and White Weenie builds that have also run two copies. During its time in Standard, it was a good card that just never found itself in a strong enough deck to be worth much. If you're building a Commander deck with one of the aforementioned Commanders, however, it's a card to keep in mind.
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