It’s Time to Restrict Psychic Frog in Vintage
- Eric
- 0
- on Nov 11, 2025
The last creature to be restricted in Vintage was Golgari Grave-Troll in 2019. Considering how often that creature sees the battlefield (never), we have to reach back to Monastery Mentor's 2017 restriction to find a played creature getting put onto the list.
This ignores Lurrus's stint on the Ban List and assumes that the Cat won't ever go back there. At the very least, Lurrus's presence puts some restrictions on deck building. Why I can play Force of Will in a Lurrus deck but not Ancestral Recall in a Keruga, the Macrosage deck, I will never understand. But that sort of errata won't happen in Magic.
So, let's look to the Frog. While clearly an homage to Psychatog, putting counters on it was the first mistake. Making it Blue/Black and not Green/Black is another mistake, but again, we won't be seeing any errata of that kind.
The Frog presents an interesting conundrum with Lurrus. Lurrus not only lets one recast the frog itself, but also acts as a way to bin things Lurrus can recast. Even if one eschews playing Lurrus, the Frog is a powerful choice. It's in two of the most powerful colors in Vintage. You can even pitch it to Force of WillGrief.
While not as ubiquitous as Urza's Saga was, Psychic Frog is hitting the "Why not?" point of playability.
So, it's time to restrict Psychic Frog in Vintage.