Psychic Drain
Sorcery
Target player mills X cards and you gain X life.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- BU
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Ravnica: City of Guilds
- Price
- $0.22
- EDHREC rank
- #18933
Psychic Drain mills an opponent for X and gains you X life — solid incremental pressure — but costing one blue and one black pip at sorcery speed means it competes in a crowded slot against faster, harder-to-answer threats. It earns a slot only in dedicated mill or lifegain shells; everywhere else it's too slow and too small.
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 | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Psychic Drain is a niche inclusion — 40-card libraries and four opponents make incremental mill largely irrelevant outside dedicated mill decks, but the lifegain rider gives it a second dimension that pure mill spells lack. In Legacy and Vintage, it doesn't see competitive play; the formats move too fast for a sorcery-speed X-spell to matter, and both formats have access to far more efficient threats in the same color pair. Modern is the same story — the card is legal but outclassed at every mana value. Psychic Drain is essentially a Commander-only card in practice, and even there it needs the right shell to justify the slot.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.22 bulk tier
At $0.22, Psychic Drain is deep bulk — easy to acquire and unlikely to drop further given how low it already sits. Don't expect any price movement; it's a stable penny-bin card you pick up as an afterthought when ordering other singles.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.