Psychic Frog – Modern Horizons 3
Date Reviewed: January 1, 2025
Ratings:
Constructed: 4.75
Casual: 4.00
Limited: 4.25
Multiplayer: 3.25
Commander [EDH]: 3.75
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale: 1 is bad; 3 is average; 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
David
Fanany
Player
since
1995
This card was #2 on my Top 10 list.
Talk about a blast from the past. Yes, I know the databases will show Psychic Frog with just the one printing and a few variant card frames, but its nearly homophonous name is just the beginning of its similarity with legendary Dimir-colored powerhouses. Many people who were playing in the Odyssey era will remember games where the opponent led with a Darkwater Catacombs, and the feeling of utter helplessness that crept into the game as answers piled upon card advantage until they were staring down a 21/21 atog. Psychic Frog decks do all of that, and are capable of doing it much more proactively than their famous ancestor did – and the frog even features inbuilt card drawing, saving deck space (and making a nice nod to the “forgotten” 1UB Odyssey creature, Shadowmage Infiltrator). The discard-related boosts being permanent and only costing one card per counter is mind-blowing, and combined with its super-low cost, lend it a potential for synergy that even the old-school decks probably can’t match. This is another card that you’re going to want to play because it’s good, but finds it very hard to be perceived as fair – exercise caution in casual settings! (Not the ultimate in this regard, though; check back in a couple of days . . .)
Constructed: 4.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander: 3.5
This card wasn’t on my Top 10 of 2024 list…but it was on the short list, and had I submitted my list a week later, it certainly would have been.
Now we get to one of the more “infamous” cards of the year, the reference to Psychatog that tore up Legacy to the point of earning itself a spot on the ban list. Much like its forebear, the frog has two abilities that play very well…maybe a little too well, between the permanent nature of the boosts it accrues and its ability to leap majestically over anything in its path. Particularly in Legacy, which has a lot of tools to enable anything in blue, Psychic Frog managed to out-frog everything in its path. While it won’t take a hand of cards into a lethal swing in one go, it will prove far more resilient, even recouping your investment in part.
Psychic Frog earned a Legacy ban for being a bit too good at what it did, being an efficient beater that took a little fuel and used it to ignite a whole forest. I think it’s kept a bit of a toehold in Modern, though whether or not it’ll reclaim its froggy throne there remains to be seen, as a lot of what made Psychic Frog so noxious was mostly what made blue so noxious.
Constructed: 5 (f o r g)
Casual: 4 (shines more if your deck is more tightly tuned to take advantage of its talents)
Limited: 4.5 (two mana 2/2s are rarely awful, and this gets a lot scarier than that
Multiplayer: 3
Commander [EDH]: 4
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