In Depth Spoiler Analysis: Dimir Charm

Hey everyone, it's spoiler season, so it's time again for me to make more prophetic predictions!

Dimir Charm

There have been a huge amount of dissenting opinions on this so far, so I really want to talk about this card.  Since this card is much more situational than the charms that already see a large amount of play in Standard (Selesnya Charm, Azorius Charm), evaluating it is going to be very hard before the whole set is spoiled, and even harder before Standard is fully developed.  Despite the lack of clarity, I can tell you with certainty what we can determine from what we know right now, and I can definitely cover with much more certainty the impact in Modern and Legacy.

So, let's start by going over each of the abilities one by one.





Mode 1: Envelop.  "Counter target sorcery spell"



Here's a list of the Sorceries that we want to counter.


Standard
Rakdos' Return
Bonfire of the Damned
Entreat the Angels
Epic Experiment (Hopefully? :D)
Terminus
Clan Defiance
Farseek (sometimes)
(Lingering Souls purposefully excluded)

Modern
Past in Flames
Scapeshift
Maelstrom Pulse
Thoughtseize/Inquisition of Kozilek (situationally)
Spectral Procession

Legacy
Natural Order
Show and Tell
Infernal Tutor
Burning Wish
Green Sun's Zenith
Glimpse of Nature
Hymn to Tourach
Chain Lightning

My executive summary here?  This mode is not good enough alone to justify main deck inclusion in really any format (yet), but seems really good out of the sideboard, and it could be a huge blowout if you can hit a big X spell.  Envelop is a legal card in Legacy, and most of the time will be better, but in Modern, we don't have any comparable cards.  I really like this mode right now in Modern.

Mode 2: Swat. "Destroy target creature with power two or less"

This is the mode that really puts this card into the playable pile for me.  I'm not even going to list out all of the creatures this kill because it is so long.  This is always going to be active against white and green decks in any format, meaning that viability of this in the main deck is very good.  It also kills important creatures in every matchup in Legacy.

Some fun interactions with this:

• With Jace, Architect of Thought's +1, you can kill a 3 power creature.
• On the play it will always kill a mana dork or counter Farseek, meaning it is always good vs. green ramp in any format.
• In the same vein, this card is way better on the play in Legacy - it kills Delver only on the play (consistently).  It still always kills Dark Confidant, Grim Lavamancer, Stoneforge Mystic, Mother of Runes, Deathrite Shaman... basically every good turn 1 play.
• Curse of Death's Hold interacts very well with it - you can kill Thragtusk tokens, Garruk tokens...

Mode 3: "look at the top three cards of target player's library, then put one back and the rest into that player's graveyard."

This mode is really bad, and you are never going to want to do this, but there are times when it is important to use this one.  Here are some situations where I would use this mode:

• Almost always in the control mirror Game 1.  The trend of control decks in Standard is to be strongly focused on instants and planeswalkers, so it is unlikely that there is a card to counter.  If you have Lingering Souls and Think Twice in your deck, most of the time this isn't half bad.  I would, of course, hold the Charm as long as possible to cast for maximum information.
• When it is the last card in your hand and you are behind on board.  In this situation, any one-for-one trade is not going to help, so digging is fine.
• When you are very far ahead on cards, but your opponent has a few non-sorcery trumps that can beat you.  An example would be if your opponent has no creatures or cards in hand, 12 lands in play, and Sphinx's Revelation in their deck, while you have 4 cards in hand but no other counters, and you are ahead on board.  Filtering for Negate or Dissipate is strong here.

Conclusions

This charm should be seeing a fair amount of play the very moment the first mode (Counter target Sorcery) is good.  The second mode is always great.  Proper deck construction with this card should ensure that your third mode gets cast as little as possible. 

In Standard currently, we just don't see enough sorceries for this to be a main deck card.  This will probably change in the next few weeks, but for now, this is sitting in the board of my Esper deck against Bonfire.

In Legacy, this card seems to be strong, but generally weaker than other options.  The only deck I always like it against is Elves, since you can't predict which games you need to counter Natural Order and which games you need to kill a Heritage Druid or Nettle Sentinel.  Against Show and Tell and other combo I like Spell Pierce a lot more, and if not that, Envelop has seen play in the past (GerryT played it a few months back at an SCG Open), and it does seem better than this.

In Modern, this card really has potential.  I feel like this deals with so many important cards (Dark Confidant, rarely Tarmogoyf, Deathrite Shaman, Scapeshift, Past in Flames) that it can slot right into the Esper Gifts deck.  There might be another deck for this in the future, hell, it might even spawn a new control deck.  I'd be looking to put this in any deck that needs to improve its game against Black decks.

Thanks for reading, leave a comment if you disagree with anything (and I bet you do!),

Daniel