Witness Protection
Enchantment — Aura
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature loses all abilities and is a green and white Citizen creature with base power and toughness 1/1 named Legitimate Businessperson. (It loses all other colors, card types, creature types, and names.)
- CMC
- 1
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Foundations
- Price
- $0.24
- EDHREC rank
- #1937
Witness Protection turns any threat — a Medomai the Ageless locking someone out of extra turns, a Tatsunari, Toad Rider generating a board — into a vanilla 1/1 Citizen with no abilities and a new name, all for one blue mana. One mana to permanently neutralize a commander-level threat is the best rate removal gets in blue.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Tatsunari, Toad Rider
Tatsunari, Toad Rider casts enchantments to trigger his Frog token engine, and Witness Protection is a one-mana enchantment that also neutralizes the biggest blocker or problem permanent in the way of that engine.
Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Edric, Spymaster of Trest rewards connecting with small creatures, and Witness Protection converts an opponent's 5/5 blocker into a 1/1 that now draws the enchanter cards when it gets through — a double-function play in one blue mana.
Alela, Artful Provocateur
Alela, Artful Provocateur creates a Faerie token every time an enchantment enters under your control, so Witness Protection pulls double duty: you get a free body and you permanently shut down whatever ability was threatening the board.
Koma, World-Eater
Koma, World-Eater plays a tempo game of locking down permanents, and Witness Protection handles the indestructible or hexproof threats that Koma's tap effects can't cleanly answer on their own.
Kykar, Zephyr Awakener
Kykar, Zephyr Awakener cares about noncreature spells and enchantments matter synergies, and Witness Protection fills both the removal and enchantment-count slots simultaneously at one mana.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Witness Protection is at its best: the format is full of high-value activated and triggered abilities on commanders, and permanently blanking one for a single blue mana at instant speed is an absurd rate that no other color-pie-appropriate answer matches at this cost. In Pauper, it's a legitimate answer to problematic creatures in a format where common removal is often limited in blue. In Modern and Pioneer, the competition is stiffer — Fatal Push and Unholy Heat exist — but Witness Protection's ability to hit any permanent type that can have abilities, including enchantments and artifacts, gives it a niche. Legacy and Vintage have too many efficient threats and too much redundancy for a one-for-one permanent answer to matter, so it stays on the sidelines there.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.24 bulk tier
At $0.24, Witness Protection is firmly bulk — easy to acquire as a playset without thought. The price is stable; it's widely printed, sees enough cross-format play to keep supply high, and there's no realistic spike vector for a common enchantment at this slot.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.