Psychic Purge

Psychic Purge is a curiosity in most formats — one mana for forced discard plus a punishing rider is a real rate, but dedicated discard and hand-disruption strategies are where it earns a slot. In Commander, it's a fringe inclusion: one-for-one discard is weak in a four-player game, and the 5-damage clause only matters when an opponent is empty-handed, which is hard to engineer reliably at a full table. Pauper and Legacy are the friendlier homes, where aggressive discard shells can sequence it early enough that the damage clause becomes a legitimate threat. In Vintage it's legal but completely outclassed. The counter-punish clause is almost never relevant in practice — most opponents won't have the presence of mind or the counterspell to specifically target Psychic Purge — but it remains the reason the card never broke out.