Most long term MTG players in addition to the cards they have for play use also have some form of special sub-collection. It can be anything from collecting a specific artist, collecting misprints or collecting a specific card. A common one is collecting a specific creature type with Angels and Dragons being very popular. I also collect a creature type but my collection is focused on a more obscure creature type from MTG - Atog.
Atogatog (from Odyssey) the art by Ron Spears features all 5 original atogs.
An Atog is an original MTG creature type which first appeared on the card Atog all the way back in Antiquities. There are a few common traits shared by most Atogs - they are 1/2 creatures (except for Atogatog and Megatog), they are roughly humanoid with a huge toothy grin (usually on a large head with bulbous eyes) and most importantly they eat some sort of resource to grow bigger. The name Atog is actually an anagram (something that WotC enjoys mixing into MTG names like Liliana Vess "Villainess" and Pemmin's Aura "I am Superman") for goat a real life creature renowned for eating even metal objects like cans. Atog is also unusual as being part of a cycle spread out over many different sets and blocks. Here's a bit about atogs from Mark Rosewater's tumbler (which is awesomely called blogatog) -
There is masses of things that make atogs fantastic but personally my love for the creature type began with Invasion/Odyssey standard which was when after years of on and off casual play and collecting I started to become more of a tournament player attending FNMs, pro tour qualifiers (PTQs), gran prix trials (GPTs) and regional championships. I played a bunch of random stuff at first (including a UR walls and pingers deck) but with the release of Torment I bought a couple of copies of the Grave Danger theme deck (old school pre-constructed decks, this one was most notable for having 2x Psychatog, 2x Chainer's Edict and 2x Tainted Isle) which I mashed together and then slowly modified into the Upheaval + Psychatog control deck which was highly competitive at the time. I had a lot of fun and a decent level of success with the deck and kept changing and playing a version of the deck until Odyssey finally rotated from standard. To honor my favorite creature I then decided to collect a full 4 copy playset of every playable physical english version of every creature with the Atog creature type.
Technically I still haven't succeeded thanks to Atog being part of the ridiculously expensive and hard to obtain Summer Magic) but apart from that exception I have the full collection (plus many more including foreign language versions). There's also a not legal for play world championship gold bordered version of Psychatog. As an aside one thing that truly annoys me is the existence of Atog related "cards" which are exclusive to MTGO being the Eternal Masters version of Psychatog (with new art by Izzy which doesn't exist in physical form) and the Chronatog avatar card.
Another thing that annoys me is despite being an awesome original MTG creature type they have seen no love since Chronatog Totem and Auratog (Timeshifted reprint) were printed back in the original Timespiral block (sadly neither saw a reprint in Timespiral Remastered). There was a functional reprint of Atog in Aether Revolt as Ravenous Intruder but it was given the gremlin typing instead.
Close but no cigar-atog.
Where is my enemy pair atog cycle? Where are the atogs who eat resources like - tokens, counters, the library (would probably need restrictions), life (ditto on restrictions), spells/copies of spells and planeswalkers? Where is the Omnitog I always dreamed of that could eat permanents? I hope one day there will be answers.
In the meantime however I have my collection and every now and again I like to bring out my Atogatog tribal deck for EDH nights. It features all 12 of the actual atogs (no matter how mediocre, lol) plus a bunch of changelings to fill out the numbers and tries to win in meme-tastic ways like casting Insurrection with Conspiracy (set to atog) on the field and swinging with + eating all my opponents creatures or with Myscosynth Lattice/Enchanted Evening + an artifact/enchantment eating atog to eat everything + a Second Sunrise effect to get it all back (or Barren Glory aka The Cheese Stands Alone for the most meme worthy of alternative win conditions). The deck has always done surprisingly well, it's purposefully underpowered but still strong end that when people underestimate it (with some justification) it's able to pull off the classic EDH 3rd person to go off win (where the 1st and 2nd people to go off are brought down and the 3rd person manages to grab the win thanks to good positioning and everyone running out of resources to stop them).
The full EDH deck aka. POGatog (name thanks to Liam)- "atogs" (top left), spells (bottom left), lands (top right) and permanents (bottom right).
The deck in this version as I said earlier is intentionally low powered. It can easily be powered though with a few changes like using more powerful tutors (Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Enlightened Tutor) by running a proper 5 colour land base with more 5 colour lands, fetchlands, other dual lands etc. (instead of almost all forests for Foratog's sake), by adding in more pillowfort/stax elements (Collective Restraint, Sphere of Safety ...), adding better removal spells/wraths (Blasphemous Act, Beast Within ...) and more interaction like counterspells.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed my musings about collecting, atogs and the Atogatog deck. What is your sub-collection? If you have any comments please post them here or on any of the TabletopLG social media.