Gauntlets of Chaos

The exchange-of-permanents design lineage runs from Juxtapose through Donate to Harmless Offering, but this is the strange ancestor that asked the broadest question: what if the exchange itself were the spell, and the targets could be almost anything? The targeting clause is genuinely odd, asking only that the two permanents share one of the three named types, so the swap stays within a category: artifact for artifact, creature for creature, land for land. That still leaves enormous latitude, since it means trading a worthless token for an opposing dragon, or a junk artifact for a game-defining one, provided the rate (five to cast, then five more and the artifact itself to activate) is paid in full. The Aura-destruction rider is the corner case the design has to police: without it, the card would be a clean way to launder crippling enchantments back onto an opponent's permanent, and the era that produced it had no shortage of those to launder. Destroying them on exchange closes that loop and forces the card to admit what it is, which is a ten-mana, two-card investment in a single permanent swap. The one mercy the rate offers is timing: the activation carries no speed restriction, so the swap can happen at instant speed in response to a removal spell or an attack. The shape of it (exchange as a primary effect, with a rider that handles the abuse case) is the template every later Donate variant refined.