Careful. Funeral Charm was allowed to have a discard option as an instant because it was a oneoff. This cycle are very Charm-like, but they're repeatable not oneoffs; so the discard option opens up a world of unfun.

Absolutely. Of all the "Charm Rune" abilities so far, this is the one I’ve wanted the least. It’s mostly there as a placeholder. I hope to find a suitable replacement today.

Not to throw things for a loop, but are you sure you want Charm-Auras? It's an interesting idea, but very busy. The recently released Skinshifter is the only permanent with a tri-mode activated ability, and ugh, it's so cluttered.

I bring this up, because I was thinking you could keep the same basic flavor concept, but turn these into "battlemage" auras that grant two off-color activated abilities. It might even be an amusing opportunity to make use of Future Sight tech and have the aura do the tapping.

MoonCharm UtiliRune
­
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature
­, : Target player puts the top two cards of his or her library into their graveyard.
­, : MoonCharm UtiliRune deals 1 damage to each blocking creature.

@ M_Houlding: The "battlemage" auras are an interesting idea, but I don't think they're right for this set. Bombshell actually looked at the proposal for charm-auras from a similar angle, proposing something akin to Keldon Mantle.

I want a "mono-colored" charm structure for a few reasons:

• People will instantly see the parallel. This is a completely new way to design an aura, done in a way that's been around since Mirage.

• While the set has themes that span two or more colors and has some multi-colored cards, it is not a "multicolor/color matters" set. In fact, no faction or individual card ever references color mattering outside of "protection from", and those are few and far between.

• Each color within the set serves multiple factions, and the cards/pieces are built accordingly. Ideally, almost all cards fit at least two thematic strategies. The "charm auras" are a pretty direct way of doing this. They also serve a strong flavor role, as consumer products created by the company the set is named for.

The clutter factor is there, but doesn't bother me much. Given that several of the printed charms include flavor text, there's not that much more copy here. These are also uncommon, so keeping the text to a bare minimum is less of a priority.

Now in this specific case, I'm trying to build a charm that serves primarily three groups: a U/B Mindstrike/mill group, a B/R "death by papercuts" group, and a W/B "war of attrition" group. Black also has pieces that fit a nihilistic "nobody needs anything" group and a "capitalistic profit from auras and equipment" group, though serving those goals is of secondary importance on this card.

The first ability, life-siphoning, fits both the papercuts and the attrition themes. The second ability is pretty clearly for the mill strategy, though it too can help the attritionists by potentially mitigating parts of an opponent's attack. The question now is what kind of additional utility that (ideally) serves a "team" takes the third slot?

Settled on counter removal, as there are a number of cards that use or supply them in the set. Has interactions with creatures, planeswalkers, and the District lands.

RE: Text - Your set file as a whole is leaning towards the wordy side of things, which is why I mentioned it as a concern. Certainly the current state of "Test" is exacerbating that issue, but it still seems pertinent, regardless of rarity.

RE: Aura Structure - I don't know that you have to strictly observe the layout of a traditional charm in order to evoke the comparison. And I think it'd actually be a really interesting flavor-defining element if the aura was tapping, as the names bring to mind some form of program update to a personal device, rather than an alteration of the creature itself.

MoonCharm UtiliRune
­
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature
­, : Target player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.
­, : Remove a counter from target permanent.
­, : Unblocked creatures get +1/+0 and gain mindstrike until end of turn.

If nothing else, it's more legible from across the table.

Just thought I should mention that I'm strongly against tapping enchantments. It's always been just a flavour-wise distinction between artifacts and enchantments that Enchantments Don't Tap. Future Sight broke that taboo pretty much purely for the sake of breaking it. Flowstone Embrace was basically just a removal spell, little different to Immolation. Second Wind is a cleaner way of doing Touch of Vitae. But both of them at least affected the enchanted creature! UtiliRunes that need a creature to enchant but don't even do anything to that creature, instead choosing to have tap abilities, seem a spectacularly bad idea.

(If you really want to make them unrelated to the enchanted creature, then just make them standalone artifacts or enchantments.)

I do like SFletcher's approach here of using charm runes as a way to provide cards that are useful for a variety of different factions.

That said, I would agree with M Houlding that it's very important to keep the complexity and word-count of a custom set down (and also very hard to do). My first set Sienira's Facets led to some extremely complex board states even with just commons.

Hmm, I never did add the Multiverse feature to report on a set's average wordiness and average common wordiness, did I? I always meant to add that. I'll take a note.

I've never found Enchantments to have any sort of coherent flavor to begin with, so I don't mind mucking about with them.

And yes, I would love some word count statistics.

I've been banging on this one for a day or so and then:

Miner's Charm.

We already know the Coal Road has miners and it's all black there. Plus as an image, the old headlamps could make for great artwork.