Psychic Surgery
Enchantment
Whenever an opponent shuffles their library, you may look at the top two cards of that library. You may exile one of those cards. Then put the rest on top of that library in any order.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- New Phyrexia
- Price
- $0.47
- EDHREC rank
- #14954
Psychic Surgery turns every opponent's fetch, tutor, and search into a free scry 2 plus potential exile — on-board disruption that compounds every single turn. The cost is that it does nothing until someone else shuffles, making it a blank against opponents who don't search, and Xanathar, Guild Kingpin is the clearest home because Xanathar already knows exactly when opponents are drawing off the top.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Xanathar, Guild Kingpin
Xanathar, Guild Kingpin already locks opponents out of casting cards off their own draw step, and Psychic Surgery adds a second layer — whenever anyone does search their library, you scry 2 and potentially exile whatever they found, turning Xanathar's soft lock into a hard one.
River Song
River Song rewards spoiling opponents' plans and draws extra cards from their spells, so Psychic Surgery slots in as a passive disruptive piece that punishes tutors and fetches while feeding the same control-tempo gameplan River Song wants to run.
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 Surgery shines brightest: four opponents means four libraries getting searched every game, so the scry 2 trigger fires constantly and the exile clause turns tutors into liabilities. Legacy and Vintage both see enough fetchlands and library manipulation that Psychic Surgery can generate real value, but those formats move too fast for a two-mana enchantment with no immediate impact to compete with dedicated hate pieces. Modern is the same story — fetchland-heavy metas trigger it often, but dedicated graveyard and library hate does the job more efficiently at that speed. Oathbreaker is the sleeper home: smaller deck sizes mean tutors are even more critical, so taxing or exiling the targets of those searches is disproportionately punishing. Psychic Surgery is a Commander card first.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.47 bulk tier
At $0.47, Psychic Surgery sits firmly in bulk territory — cheap enough to throw in any control or stax build without a second thought. It's a niche enchantment with a narrow best-case home, so don't expect the price to move meaningfully unless a high-profile deck pushes it into the spotlight.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Xanathar, Guild Kingpin
- River Song
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.