Psychic Allergy
Enchantment
As this enchantment enters, choose a color.
At the beginning of each opponent's upkeep, this enchantment deals X damage to that player, where X is the number of nontoken permanents of the chosen color they control.
At the beginning of your upkeep, destroy this enchantment unless you sacrifice two Islands.
- CMC
- 5
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- The Dark
- Price
- $3.50
- EDHREC rank
- #27504
Psychic Allergy drains each opponent one life per permanent they control that shares a color with it — every upkeep, passively, with no additional investment after it resolves. Five mana for an enchantment that does nothing the turn it enters is a real cost, and the drain only bites if opponents are actually running the targeted color.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Psychic Allergy is a Commander card through and through — the multiplayer table is where draining each opponent every upkeep compounds fast enough to matter, especially in a color-dense meta where blue, black, or green permanents are everywhere. In a 1-vs-1 Legacy or Vintage context it's a five-mana enchantment that ticks an opponent down by a handful of life per turn cycle, which is far too slow against decks that win by turn three or four. Oathbreaker runs 20 life totals, so the drain accelerates toward relevance, but the format's speed still works against a do-nothing-on-entry permanent. Psychic Allergy is niche even in Commander — it earns its slot in life-drain or enchantress builds targeting a specific dominant color at the table, not as a generically good card.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$3.50 cheap tier
At $3.50, Psychic Allergy sits in the cheap tier — reasonable for a narrow enchantment with a small supply and a dedicated niche audience. It's not a card that trends upward on broad demand, so that price reflects collector and oddball-combo interest more than competitive necessity.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.