With 32 years of history to delve into, Magic: The Gathering has no shortage of weird and wonderful cards. Unsurprisingly, many of these have been lost to the ages, as power creep is one hell of a thing. Recently, however, MTG players have been uncovering many once-forgotten cards, and they’re surprisingly not useful in Commander.
Alongside Commander, Premodern has also been driving a lot of demand for many classic cards recently. Just yesterday, in fact, we covered how Tangle Wire was spiking, thanks to seeing play in multiple Premodern decks. While this was happening, it also appears that Psychatog was experiencing increased demand, pushing prices up.
MTG Psychatog
First released 24 years ago in Odyssey, Psychatog is one of the 12 Agogs in MTG. That said, until 2003, Atogs never really hit their stride, as each card has been somewhere between weird and unplayable. This is thanks to this creature type’s focus on sacrificing things, which can make them incredibly difficult to exploit.
Despite this rather damning downside, a couple of Atogs have proven themselves to be surprisingly playable. The namesake Atog, for instance, can become a surprisingly powerful threat with enough artifacts. Similarly, Chronatog can deliver one-hit kills, albeit at great risk. Thankfully, not all Atogs are this, as Psychatog is surprisingly playable.
Thanks to being a discard and graveyard exile outlet in one, Psychatog can do it all. Essentially, this easily allows you to get +3/+3 when discarding two cards, which isn’t a bad floor. This might not seem like much, but it’s actually enough to build an entire archetype around. In fact, the card has an immense competitive pedigree, leading Wizards to honor it with Psychic Frog, a Modern equivalent of the dated metagame king.
Fittingly named Psychatog, after the titular creature, this Premodern MTG deck is loaded up with card draw, counterspells, and removal. This allows Psychatog to be a rather grindy threat, removing cards from the graveyard when necessary to pack an extra punch. Notably, this deck isn’t topping every Premodern tournament; however, it’s more than capable of League wins.
On top of its namesake deck, Psychatog also appears within the adorably named Full English Breakfast and Grog-a-Tog decks. Thanks to this, Psychatog has become something of a staple within Premodern, which has caused a healthy amount of demand. As the popularity of Premodern grows, so has this demand.
The Spike
While Psychatog does have its uses, outside of its historical competitive dominance, the card has not been popular for quite some time outside of Premodern. In Commander, its main use is within Atog Typal decks, which is hardly the best-supported archetype. Thanks to this usually low demand, copies of Psychatog typically sold for around $1.77.
Thanks to the gradual rise of Premodern, however, the price of Psychatog has been steadily picking up. For the most part, this has been a slow and steady process, with the market price only reaching $4.13. This figure, however, hardly tells the whole story, as recent demand has skyrocketed thanks to the format’s popularity surging.
Following the release of Premodern as a sanctioned format on Magic Online and a major event at Lobstercon, the format is really picking up. Unsurprisingly, this appears to have increased the speed of sales and how much players are willing to pay. This, in turn, has caused Psychatog to become an $11 MTG card.
In the span of three months, this is an 839% price spike, which is undeniably substantial. Thankfully, if you’re interested in Premodern but don’t want to spend this much, there are some worse-condition copies available. Currently, prices for a heavily played copy of Psychatog start at around $5.50, but there’s not a ton of available supply.
The Decider
Much like the Tangle Wire price spike, Psychatog lives and dies on the success and popularity of Premodern. At the moment, this is very good news, as plenty of players are trying out the format both in paper and online. Just how long this hot streak will continue, however, remains to be seen.
Realistically, it’s very unlikely that this format will die out overnight, especially with how quickly events are selling out. If anything, the real deciding factor will be if Premodern continues to get more support, but that seems unlikely. Even if that doesn’t end up happening, there’s still more than enough demand currently to make investments pay off.
Ultimately, while the future does look rather bright for Psychatog and Premodern, nothing is ever certain in MTG. Should the Premodern metagame ever shift, this card could be pushed out, after all. Notably, it’s also not on the Reserved List, so Wizards could reprint Psychatog if they really wanted to. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens in the future.
Stick with us here at mtgrocks.com: the best site for Magic: The Gathering coverage. Be sure to check out our deckbuilder for your next big brew!