Midnight Charm
Instant
Choose one —
• Midnight Charm deals 1 damage to target creature and you gain 1 life.
• Target creature gains first strike until end of turn.
• Tap target creature.
- CMC
- 1
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Planar Chaos
- Price
- $0.24
- EDHREC rank
- #23289
Midnight Charm does three things — tap a creature, give a blocker first strike, or drain an opponent for 1 — and the flexibility is the whole point. At one black mana for an instant, the floor is low and the ceiling never gets high enough to matter in most powered tables.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Midnight Charm is fringe at best — the three modes are all fine and none of them are good enough to earn a slot in a 99 that needs to do something meaningful. Pauper is where Midnight Charm has seen the most legitimate play, since commons-only environments reward modal one-drops more than powered formats do. In Legacy and Vintage it's simply outclassed; the drain and tap effects are too small to compete with the card density those formats demand. The honest read is that Midnight Charm is a Pauper card occasionally showing up in Commander brews that want maximum modal coverage on a budget.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.24 bulk tier
At $0.24, Midnight Charm is deep bulk — you're not paying for power, you're paying for cardboard. It holds that price floor without moving; there's no meaningful reprint risk or demand spike that changes the math.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.