Certain cards in Magic's history have built up legacies for being incredibly good. One such card is Psychatog, a card that has dominated the Extended format for years now and shows no sign of stopping. But just because a deck is built around Psychatog doesn't mean that it will always win-- you have to know how to build the rest of your deck as well. That's where I come in.

I recently picked up my deck again, I haven't played for a while, and recently found some friends who were interested, however, they are all extremely good, and I tend to get- for lack of a better term-- pwned. Can you help?

Land:
10 island
11 swamp
2 tainted isle

for: 23 land

Creatures:
4 festering goblin
4 phantom whelp
4 psychatog
4 thieving magpie
1 avatar of woe
1 phage the untouchable

for: 18 creatures

spells
2 chainer's edict
4 counterspell
3 mana short
2 psychotic haze
4 shade's form
1 decree of pain
1 touch of invisibility

for:16 spells

artifacts:
2 spellbook

strat: Use counterspells, mana shorts, and edicts to hold the enemy off while i power up my psychatogs with discarding and shadesform (get cards with magpies.)

thanks for your help in advance. caleb

Psychatog can be kind of tricky to use properly. Yeah, you just have to swing with it and then feed it your whole hand and graveyard, but what if that still isn't enough damage? Then you have no cards left in your hand, which means that if your opponent plays something nasty, you can't counter it (or even bluff a counter). So a Psychatog deck has to be all about filling its hand (and graveyard) with cards. To do this, I recommend more card drawing.

First of all, replace Festering Goblin with Drowned Rusalka. The benefits of this is that the Rusalka's ability puts two cards in your graveyard(the sacrificed creature and the discarded card) while getting you a card deeper into your deck.

Also, Decree of Pain and Touch of Invisibility with two Minamo Sightbender. Less mana intensive than the Decree, and reusable Invisibility. Just remember to use it on Psychatog before you start pumping it up. Also it will help your Magpies get through to get you more cards.

I'm not too sure about Psychotic Haze either, especially now that we have a 1/1 that can be of use without dying itself. I'd say replace them with Compulsive Research for more card drawing, or Nightmare Void for reusable discard and graveyard filling.

Shade's Form, while nice, doesn't really do enough. Yes, the pump ability is nice, but Psychatog already has two pump abilities. You need to focus more on getting through your deck by drawing lots of cards(and discarding where need be), so that you can have what you need quickly. Replace Shade's Form with Sift, a spell that does exactly what you need-- sift through your deck to find the important cards.

That ought to do it, I suppose. Hopefully you'll be able to plow through your deck quickly, find a Psychatog, and have enough cards in your hand and graveyard to attack for lethal damage. Good luck!