On today’s Good Morning Magic, Gavin Verhey provides a look at the history of Charms, including some of the “weirder” ones.
First introduced 25 years ago in Mirage, Charms came to be after the design team discovered a number of small effects that they liked, but found that they didn’t work well as standalone cards. Instead, three of these small effects were combined on one card to give the player multiple casting options. Thus, the Charm was born.
According to Verhey, designers decided to include three options for Charms because two options was too narrow and four options simply just didn’t fit on the card. Charms would go on to become a fan-favorite and designers would return to them many times over the years.
Charms would take many different forms, undergoing changes in converted mana cost, color combinations, power level, and more.
Some of the strangest Charms were those printed in Onslaught, which took on tribal elements, as well as 2007’s Planar Chaos, which had Charms that operated outside the normal color-pie parameters and had mismatched casting costs.
The most recent cycle of Charms were those printed in 2014’s Khans of Tarkir. These Charms were the first three-color Wedge charms, featuring the names of clans of Tarkir. These Charms also introduced a new modal template with bullet points, which would eventually become the standard for cards with multiple casting effects.
So which cycle of Charms are your favorite? Which is the strongest ever printed? Let us know what you think in the comments below!