Charmed

Versatility is an excellent quality of a card in any format, but especially in multiplayer EDH. Cards like beast within and profane command are great in EDH because they’re almost always the right card for the situation. Magic has a long list of cards that let you do one of several things, dating back to shapeshifter - but its probably best represented by the various charms in the game.

I believe charms were first printed in visions, but have seen several iterations throughought magic. They range from relatively weak monocolour options like funeral charm to more powerful three-colour options like bant charm. An aside - I once played a cromat deck with every 3 coloured charm in the game and every split card from dissension, made for some very complicated sunforger decisions!

The recent pack of 3-colour charms from alara block all have some EDH application, but there are obviously a very limited number of decks you can put them in. If you happen to be playing a certain shard, you probably already look at the cards specific to that shard as part of your deck-building. It’s more interesting to look at the generally less-powerful mono-colour charms, as they can find homes in a huge number of EDH decks.

For this post I’d like to focus on an underrated charm that probably should see more play in EDH:

Dawn charm gives you three reactive options, all of which are quite strong in multiplayer EDH.

I’ve found myself slipping more and more fog effects into my decks, snapping up a copy of darkness and developing quite the friendship with constant mists. Preventing all damage is an underrated ability in general but especially in EDH where its one of the few options to survive an insurrection or entwined savage beating.

Regenerate is less exciting as most EDH removal either sacrifices, exiles, or explicitly says “cannot be regenerated” (wrath of god, decree of pain). It can function as a kill spell when creatures would otherwise trade, and once in a while turn a wrath into a fail if regenerating is an option (inferno).

Counter a spell that targets you ranges from meh to awesome. Blocking a cruel ultimatum is certainly nice, but mainly this works because holding 2 mana up means you can fog, regenerate, or counter - where holding up mana for a negate has a much more limited application.

Macaroni or Cheese

I certainly wouldn’t put dawn charm in every deck, but it is a nice complement to sunforger and better than holy day if you’re looking for a fog effect outside of green. It is fantastic if it fogs an insurrection, good if it saves your dude from a kill spell, and once in a while clutch when it blocks a cruel ultimatum