Pretty charming to have options isn't it?!

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, yet another time!

Maybe you've already encountered one deck of the rare species called "5-Color Charms". The basic idea behind the deck is that having multiple cards for different situations is great, having one card for multiple situations is better but having multiple cards where each one has different uses is best. For that reason you play nearly every Ravnica-Charm, Alara-Charm, Tarkir-Charm and Dragon-Charm.

Now I'm not here to talk about the deck even though I'd love to, but simply about Charms in general. While some of them have, for example, two rather situational modes and one outright "meh" one, there are some among them I would definitely include in any deck that can play them no matter what.

Much like the ChannelFireball-Series I have prepared a Top 8 - List and some honorable mentions to go through today, so let's get going...

Honorable Mentions

All of these are pretty useful in many situations but just didn't make it onto the list because of one mode that's not too exciting most of the time.

Take for example Crosis' Charm: Destroy target nonblack creature? Yes I'll take that. Destroy target artifact? Sign me up. Return target permanent to its owner's hand? Ehhhh, might have some uses sometimes but as I said: "meh". The same is true for the rest of them:

• Darigaaz's Charm: "Target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn."
• Esper Charm: "Target player discards two cards."
• Mardu Charm: "Target opponent reveals his or her hand. etc,etc."
• Selesnya Charm: "Target creature gets +2/+2 and gains trample until end of turn."

Simic Charm is definitely the worst of them, having no real bad mode, but no real good one either, except for maybe the hexproof mode but that one is still very situational. I just wanted to mention him because in decks that look to protect key creatures for cheap, he can be a nice addition providing three modes that will probably protect it against anything your opponents can throw at you. No swiss army knife like some of the others but still pretty decent.

Without further ado, I'll start with number 8...

Nr.8 - Jund Charm

EDH is a very durdly and grindy format, so often times you'll encounter at least one deck that heavily interacts with the graveyard in a four player game.
And since it's multiplayer, board wipes are pretty strong and important to have. Jund Charm has a little bit of everything. Most of the time the Charm will fizzle a spell that target's something in a graveyard while at the same time dealing with the rest of said graveyard aswell making future spells and abilites of the same kind a whole lot weaker.
And if that's not the situation you're dealing with, you can also get rid of token armies and small utility creatures at instant speed while possibly not harming your own team.
Of course he wouldn't be #8 if he had a third good ability but still, I doubt you'll encounter many games where you wish you hadn't drawn Jund charm...



(Except when you hope for that miracle-topdeck-one-outer of course...)

Nr.7 - Rakdos Charm

As small and minor as the modes look, I've yet to play a game where Rakdos Charm wasn't at least pretty handy. It's just one of those cards that make me feel comfortable passing the turn because "What could possibly happen that my Charm doesn't stop?!" Sure, there are many things, but some of the more broken ones can be stopped for the small price of a black and a red mana:

-  Graveyard wise you get the same deal as with Jund Charm for one green mana less.
-  A decent amount of combo-kills in the format involve at least one artifact so having artifact removal isn't bad to have.
-  What could be better than interrupting the player producing infinite creatures? Letting him do it and then killing him with is own combo!


As you can see, good old Rakdos Charm really is worth his money in regards to broken things and while sometimes he's just Shatter, having two "fuck your combo"-modes strapped onto it definitely makes him worth running 99% of the time.

Nr.6 - Rith's Charm

Slowly but surely we're getting into "three-mode" territory.

Rith's Charm is one of my personal favourites. Never overwhelmingly good but always pretty neat.

There're almost no games where someone isn't controlling a troublesome nonbasic land: Reliquary Tower with 10+ cards in hand, threatening hefty attacks with Kessig Wolf Run or turtling behind a Maze of Ith.
And if you don't worry about a land you can always produce three power in form of tokens at instant speed to block with or go offensive, especially if you're running Anthem-style effects.

Supposedly there have been situations where if you could've survived that last attack with a simple Fog you would've won the next turn... Just putting that out there.

Nr. 5 - Naya Charm

Naya Charm was one of the cards I didn't have on my radar for a long time until it was cast against me several times, always getting some serious stuff done.

Be it handling my Prophet of Kruphix, regrowing a Wrath of God to clear to board or buying that one turn that would tip the damage race to the opponents favor, Naya Charm never seems to be a dead card, because at the very least you can trade it for a more effective card you've already used at the end of turn.

The removal-mode is decent, not insane, and tapping down creatures is better in 1v1, but still having that instant-speed Regrowth with two additional modes is pretty damn good.

Nr. 4 - Abzan Charm

Still no "three-mode" Charm, but the two good ones are pretty insane considering you have them on one card. 

Exiling a creature with power bigger than three is pretty much Swords to Plowshares without the drawback in many situations, especially since EDH is so slow that big creatures matter more than in any other format.

Now the "All-Star"-Mode is definitely the Night's Whisper effect. Only that it suddenly has instant-speed! This can never, ever be bad. Whenever you encounter a game with little to no relevant creatures because everyone is playing control or your hand is full with other removal, Abzan Charm stays relevant by providing cheap and efficient card draw.

Not to forget the corner cases where the Charm might save an important creature from the likes of Mardu Charm or simple combat damage. No game-winning effect or even relevant in more than 5% of the games but hey, I prefer having access to the effect in these games instead of not.

As for the Top 3 ....

Nr. 3 - Treva's Charm

Three seems like the lucky number since the last three charms funnily enough are the ones I consider "three-mode".

The first of them all - Treva's Charm - is a really excellent piece of cardboard. Admittedly there are more defensive uses to it than offensive having the "attacking" clause on the removal part, but still, exiling a big attacking creature with lifelink/vigilance and then swinging back for a bunch seems to have some offensive parts.


What I like about Treva's Charm is, when everything falls apart, you still have the "draw a card, then discard a card"-mode to search for that unlikely out.

As much as I like that part of Treva's Charm the other two are juuuust a bit better...

Nr. 2 - Sultai Charm

Given this thing costs only 3 mana the options it provides are amazing. Dealing with most non-creature permanents except Planeswalkers while also providing an answer for many creatures is definitely a thing I want in a card.

Somehow I get the feeling the Sultai found Treva's Charm while delving through some junk and thought: "Hmmm let's do that... but better!"

While still dealing with enchantments you get to deal with artifacts aswell. The creature-removal part is still very conditional, especially in a format where more "golden" creatures see more play than usual and a high percentage of the games those creatures are very key to the strategy of the opposing decks as they're the commanders. But to make up for that the "draw-discard"-mode suddenly doesn't make card disadvantage... which is obviously huge.

Something that you tend to forget is that having access to black instead of white makes discard effects a whole lot better as black offers so many ways to reuse creatures in your graveyard while blue offers the same kind of deal for instants or sorceries.

To get to our "Numero Uno"...

"aaaaaand the oscar goes to..."

Nr. 1 - Bant Charm

Very similar to Treva's Charm but so different at the same time. Not only do I see Artifact-removal as more important than Enchantment-removal but the actual removal-part of the card is also a lot less situational.

Where before you might've looked at that Prophet of Kruphix or Jin-Gitaxias and saw them running away with the game you now have a very handy answer.

But that's not all. Bant Charm is just the swiss army knife I was talking about before. While handling a good 66% of the permanents you'd ever want to deal with, this beauty ALSO protects the answers to those cards itself can't deal with. Or protect your own permanents you know... whatever...

Admittedly before the change to how your commander interacts with "changing the zone" - aka the tuck-rules - this card was even more insane, but still it made it to the top of my list... or the bottom of this article at that...



Alright, that's it for today, I hope you enjoyed the read and that you're checking back in for more content in the future... If you do I'll...

See y'all 'round!