I once made a deck that was intended to have a couple of secret commanders in it. My one friend told me I couldn't run that deck without running tutors in it, so of course I tried to build the deck without tutors in it and of course he was right. The deck changed a lot from the original vision and that was one of the few reasons why, but I love that deck so much. I really don't think I would have ended up loving that deck the same way if I did put those tutors in. Great video!
@@dwpetrak It's a Bruse/Ikra deck. Originally, I was using Ishhin and Wulfgar as the secret commanders. The deck now doesn't use nearly as many attack triggers, but it's still all in on combat.
Secret commanders and janky decks definitely have an exception to using tutors. I have a friend with a Marit Lage deck, and without some tutors the deck would only get Marit Lage out like once every few games.
@@Dragon_Fyre A lot of Lorwyn block cards have spiked due to lack of reprints and time elapse. Lorwyn was released in 2007; it's approaching 20 years. The other confounding factor is that the Lorwyn block was one of the worst selling sets of all time, so people just opened a lot less packs
@@mooninites755 It’s in my Kaalia deck which is one of my oldest decks and was a budget card back when I added it. Was surprised to hear how much it had gone up in value.
It had a reprint in 2020 as part of the Mystery Booster set, but as with most things that didn't lowered the price for long. Such a great card for every Timmy out there
@EDHRECast I'm not calling for a boycott, cuz dragonshield are my favorite sleeves, but one of the major stake holders in Dragonshield apparently committed fraud to the tune of $2 billion.
I think this mindset needs to expand beyond tutors to a lot of generic high power staples. I stopped including cards like Rhystic Study, Smothering tithe, Teferi's Protection, and Cyclonic Rift in nearly all of my decks and it opened up my deck building so much. When I stopped including generically powerful staples in my decks, it freed up ~10+ spots in each deck. I'm not saying don't run card draw, removal, or protection, but maybe reconsider what types of those cards you're including instead
@@mooninites755 It’s great when you are in a like-minded pod but that may not be an option for LGS players. They are staples for a reason. Rarely do people agree on which cards are too powerful.
@@Dragon_Fyre I play at three different LGS's and I've done fine without them. Some decks have actually performed better since they have a more congruent play pattern and it's not just another goodstuff_COLORSCHEME.dec
One the flipside a hyperfocus on synergy can lead to decks like Kadena, were the commander alone is enough to predict 80% of the cards in the deck and all of the decks look mostly the same. Despite barely using generic staples.
Yes please build Minthara! Another NonBo is with her and the far traveler background, same situation of triggering on the endstep after she'd check the gamestate. She's one of my favourite decks and such a fun build around. Being only a power pump and not a full anthem means cards like skullclamp give so much value, especially with token makers like nested shambler that can scale really high! A great thing about her too is that when you get 1 experience counter you can let her go back to the cz and proliferate freely, then bring her back out for a go wide and tall swing. (Also Chthonian Nightmare works amazing because you reanimate so many 1-2 cmc cards that you'll actually have excess energy and can hit 6+ for a big creature quite easily while still applying pressure)
I'm also on the side of not tutoring, but like you guys, I've got that one exception - Transmute. I had a cycling/discard deck that had a few transmute cards and it was great to be able to recycle them over and over as a toolboxy build. Thanks for the great content as always guys!
I like tutors like Mausoleum Secrets, Grim Servant or Traverse the Ulvenwald. The restrictions make them feel rewarding to me. I want to work for my cake, before I eat it. :D
Woo! My Kona tech got into this one! Thanks a ton Dana. I have started playing next to no land-based tutors in my decks nowadays and I'm never looking back. I have found my games have been so much more enjoyable for me and the people I play with as a result. I'm so happy for this episode because I think more people need to play less tutors for all the reasons you have mentioned. (Also, Joey, build that Minthara deck)
Thank you Joey for bringing up Legendary Creatures and their tutorless experiment! I was gonna comment about it immediately upon starting this video, but I decided to wait and see if y'all would bring it up yourselves; I was not disappointed!
A card similar to Remembrance is Verdant Succession. It only works for green creatures but it puts them into play untapped. A buddy of mine has built an EDH deck built around this card by shuffling the green creature into their deck while the Verdant Succession ability is on the stack so he can then put the creature that just died on the the battlefield. The deck is fun to play and play against.
Huh, i would've thought you could stack the triggers with minthara and port circle to be favorable, but yeah, given the templating on the card it checks before it even puts the trigger on the stack
I'm completely fine using a tutor to find your finisher or combo piece to end the game. Casting Finale of Devastation for X=10 to grab a Craterhoof and end the game is much better than someone using Demonic Tutor to find a Rhystic Study.
Sold my borderless Demonic Tutor right after pulling it. Originally I would completely avoid tutors and infinite combos, but I get targeted a lot and was struggling to close games. Major "just you wait until I untap" energy. Still weary, but I've finally started to add some actual combos and tutors to push my boardstate over the top or find protection.
The deck I ran the most tutors in was The Council of Four where I was trying to commander damage players out with a 0-power commander. I needed High Alert style effects, but there were only 4 in those colors (5-now with Plagon). So I ran 3 or four tutors to try to get one of them out for the deck to function
Also I ended up building Minthara as a Aristocrat deck, later turned into a Braids Arisen Nightmare deck, but was fun to have the Aristocrat strategies drain stuff, or swing with a lot of tokens with Minthara's buff. Go build this Joey!!
There is an adrenalin-inducing aspect of tutors that isn't mentioned a lot, which is that when an opponent is suddenly facing a potentially life-ending threat, they can seemingly sweat a life-saving solution out of nowhere if they have a tutor in hand. Adrenalin is beneficial to tabletop gaming, so I'm happy when we have those moments.
My favourite tutor right now is case of the stashed skeleton, I play it in a Beledros witherbloom aristocrat deck. My plan with the card is to sacrifice the skeleton somehow and then find whatever my board is missing, like a reanimation spell, a blood artist type effect, a repetable sacrificing outlet or sometimes just a saw in half to make best value of my sad robot or wurmcoil engine. Cases are generally interesting to me because they feel like little minigames with great rewards, like getting the card you need after sacrificing a 2/1 skeleton. To me personally, this plays out very fun. One less fun situation was the time I had scheming symetry in hand turn one and decided to cast, so one of my opponents got a card too. I was looking through the deck trying to pick the card I wanted and came across sol ring. It felt so underwhelming making the "obvious pick" instead of planing two turns ahead and finding the best option
My favourite tutor right now in chord of calling. I run it in my main combo ghave deck. The reason I love it is that more often than not I have casted as a free counter spell. I have put targets in the deck that allows me to get out of board wipes like boromir. So using all my mana creating creatures with ghave and then tap them all to protect them is one of my favourite things that deck can do. In my mono black deck I run no unconditional tutors other than the one with suspend. Because mono blacks identity is the ability to tutor. So having some tutors in my braids deck feels so important to showcase what black does in magic. Also since the deck has weird ways to win it is not always obvious what to get. I feel that be able to create a deck that doesn't have a clear card to get if you want to run tutors so tutors don't simply become a copy of other cards in your deck.
This might be a controversial take, but tutors are really only as bad as the player using them. When I use a tutor in a deck, it's not because there is one target I am going to grab, but rather a plethora. Tutors present an opportunity for impulse control, and there are times when yes, I will grab the thing that will try and win the game, but other times, they are pieces I need for set up with context of what's in hand. Synergies > Win cons in my opinion, they are just more fun/interesting
“There should be no tutors except for the ones I like” this is what I hear from this video. The quote I dislike is tutors take out the suspense if he has the card or not AKA a two hour boring game where people are just drawing cards and the game is stalled.
I love using Ringsight. Not only is it at sorcery speed, and the card has to be revealed and then go to your hand, but you have to have a legendary creature on the battlefield. And even then you’re limited in what you can get if said creature is mono color at the moment.
Love the challenge from Matt this week as a long time Jetmir fan, 2 things I wanted to add: 1) you can flash back rite of harmony in the same turn if you have the mana, and go to combat to draw a truly ludicrous amount of cards off it 2) I think another underplayed card in non-hare Jetmir decks is Wyrm's Crossing Patrol, 1 mana for 3 bodies is so powerful it can take you from any level of Jetmir to the next on its own!
I love flavourful tutors or ones that requires you a setup or some efforts: My favorite tutor is "Yisan, the Wandering Bard": it's a 2/3 for 2G with "2G, TAP: put a specific counter on it, then tutor a creature to play with mana value == to the number of those counters". It's like a Birthing Pod, but the counters must increase. So, you need to either remove the counters (usually in black, or with "Scholar of New Horizons") or blink/flicker the creature (in white, with "Gilraen", "Distinguished Conjurer" or "Angel of Condemnation"), which is not guaranteed, it's slow, it's resource-wise expensive and fragile. The power of tutoring is then balanced out; I guess. Similarly, "Oriq Loremage" is a "Entomb on legs", in particular a 3/3 for 3B with no haste nor protection, just a "TAP: Entomb anything [and put a +1/+1 counter if it was a sorcery/instant]". In black I can "tutor" stuff by reanimating it, which requires (in my decks) to spend reanimation spells (usually, 4-5 mana value ones) or creature sacrifices (like "Whisper, Blood Liturgist") or some creature-fueled rianimation (usually some white Angels)
yeah this can be boiled down to: high powered tutors that grab powerful things lead to powerful gameplay. low powered tutors are fine for lower powered pods because they're either mana inefficient, are too niche, or... grab lands.
I know this isn't intentional and just how advertising works, but I find betrayal of the ultimate guard katana sleeves so hilarious. You guys seem way more enthusiastic about dragon shield lol.
I generally don’t play tutors at all; I’m from the earlier era of Magic the guys discussed where tutors were much harder to come by, so I got used to building without them. Most of my playgroup is similar, some of them run a tutor or two here and there. I’ve been experimenting with working them into two specific decks: Stella Lee is just a combo deck, and I’m building it toward being reasonably competitive at low budget. From that lens, tutors increasing the density of my win conditions (and cheap spells) are an easy choice. Now the deck’s limitation feels like its ability to ramp colored mana to execute the combo quickly, and to protect itself and Stella while making it happen. I also know tutors in that deck increase the already high level of threat Stella draws, but I’m not bringing it to tables where other people aren’t winning in similar ways. The other one is Shilgengar, who’s trying to assemble a multi-part combo including something to pull finality counters off my creatures (thief of blood, solemnity) and something to generate mana when creatures enter or die (pitiless plunderer, priest of Gix), along with a payoff. I tried to stick to thematic tutoring, so aside from buried alive/entomb, I currently just run Grim Menace. That one can go off a couple times without the upfront mana cost of a Rune-Scarred Demon, and I like it. The deck is a little janky and sometimes has to swing with angels and do small time aristocrat shenanigans for a while before the combo assembles, but I kinda like it that way. It’s funny to play an Angel deck with a 6/6 flying commander where combat is only your backup win condition.
So in agreement with your points here, but I also like where Joey was going: I like to use more specific tutors that have a casting restriction-i.e. paying life. My favorite version of this is Beseech the Mirror. What an amazing tutor…if you have something to bargain for it so that you may cast the found spell for free! This makes one of the more powerful (and affordable) tutor spells mostly useful in high enchantment and/or token density decks.
A cool way i found to make decks that use tutors responsibly is to see which tutors i wanted to run, remove them from the deck, and then to make a 94 or however large deck that works without the tutors. I think this lets the tutors be reintroduced and function as strong yet still variant pieces and actually enabling me to run more niche or low power options. I used to be very against tutors in commander but ever since i started making decks that can only use them responsibly and to search for unique pieces, theyve been actually a sort of “crutch” that lets me run cards that make more interesting situations work!
Like 90% of my favorite commanders are tutors: Sisay, Rocco, Oswald, Kaho, Arcum, Zur, and Vannifar. Codie, The First Sliver, and The Prismatic Bridge *can* be tutors. The way I make them interesting is secret commander strategies and trying to find creative ways to take advantage of the commander's ability rather than be Spike goodstuff piles. I also generally avoid combo wins. Sisay: build entirely around old Norin, Marisi, or Ragavan. Rocco: build entirely around Life of the Party or Academy Manufactor. Oswald: Modern Lantern Control but played like group hug instead of ruining opponents' draws. Glasses of Urza ❤. Arcum: same as Oswald but has fun options for Isochron Scepter. Zur: build around Zombie Infestation or High Alert. Build around Overencumbered group hug. Vannifar: build around Orvar + Sakashima + Adrix and Nev. Codie: build around casting and recasting Crashing Footfalls or Inevitable Betrayal. Build around hitting Profane Tutor into a Bring to Light toolbox of pet cards (Fractured Identity, Mirrorweave, Radiate, Saw in Half, Faith's Reward ❤. Kaho: figure out how to win with instants without combo or being miserable to play against. Cast and recast Elminster's Simulacrum. The Prismatic Bridge: only able to hit Boldwyr Heavyweights. Figure out how to win around/with what people get. The First Sliver: only spells are Tibalt's Trickery + Eternal Dominion/Endless Swarm, or Reshape the Earth without Gates to try and win with manlands, Field of the Dead, and/or Valakut.
To be clear, if that's what the pod/meta is into, have fun wit it. It's not the experience we're looking for either, but we're not judging if you're into it.
I currently play around with seven decks. I have a Mogis deck & it has a Demonic Tutor in it. This is the only tutor I have in any of my decks. Been playing since Revised.
I have a deck with Rocco at the helm where my deck is entirely built around Owlbear Cub. I really like having a tutor in the command zone since my rule is that I only cast Rocco for X=3 to bring the Owlbear Cub into play. One other tutor in the command zone I've considered recently is Kellan, the Fae-blooded as the perfect Sunforger commander. So Kellan finds Sunforger and then I just have a tool-box deck.
I do play, 4 tutors on every single one of my decks, but i do not play 2 card comboes or 9 mana win the game cards, i mostly use my tutors to round up my Ramp, Draw and Removal spells so i dont have to run 12 of each and run out of space for pet cards
I’ve been playing vamp and dt in my monoB deck for years and at the end of the day it’s a land tutor in 90% of cases… tutoring for a win condition is something you do if you play a combo deck and rely on that 1 in 100 card to win. At the end of the day most tutors don’t get ˋanything from the deck´ but get the same 2-3 cards, often because there’s just only one copy of the effect in magic period. If I want to build a combo deck around Aluren you can’t just run 1 copy and hope for the best….
Conditional tutors are awesome. People always forget that conditional tutors make you reveal the card. Giving your opponents that information can be absolutely devastating for your game plan, at least if you play against people that have played more than zero (0) games of magic.
This was an interesting chat, and i think i mostly agree. For full disclosure, I'm in a group that is fully ok with proxies (for a few reasons). Because of this, I've found that restricting tutors is an easy way to help limit power level when budget is less of a concern (yet you still want to avoid going above an '8'). I still use some like the Recuiters, Something something of Eos, but in limited amounts.
Any card that searches for something that's not a basic land, is a tutor. And that's because any card that's not a basic is limited to one copy so the tutors increase their redundancy. A rampant growth is not a tutor because basic lands have no limits, so you play it for ramping and not for redundancy. If you want redundancy on your basics you can just run more basics.
Rampant Growth is searching for a basic land of your choice. It increases redundancy for mana fixing purposes and is a form of optimization. You cannot just run more basics as suggested because you do not know which one you will need.
Ramp is way closer in power to generic tutoring than you give it credit. The green player is ahead of the Red and Black players by 3 mana on turn 5. And then you get mad when they tutor a board wipe for your army of 8/8s?
I recently put together an artifact deck with the intent of doing the Simulacrum Synthesizer + Skitterbeam Battalion combo. I put one tutor in the deck, Whir of Invention, which only gets artifacts, Is at least 3 mana if I already built a board of artifacts. I may replace it with an impulse effect instead like Machinate or Fomari Vault depending on how stale it feels. If you want to replace tutors, I think impulse/similar effects would be the "fair" version.
Challenge the Stats suggestion: Mirkwood Bats is overplayed in Grismold, the Dreadsower lists. While there are plenty of token creators in the deck (including the commander) all of the ones that have your opponents make the tokens won't trigger the bats. Also the sacrifice clause generally doesn't trigger since more often than not your tokens will die to blanket -1/-1 effects rather than a sac outlet
I’ve recently started adding tutors back into my decks because I’ve realized that it’s an easy way to keep my budget decks up to speed in a play group that is well over my budget. Like, they’re not budget friendly themselves, but they enable a budget build to be much more efficient.
I have a Yesin deck. I have a stack proxies of all my creatures to the side. When I got for a 1 mana value creature, I grab all the 1 mana proxies and shuffle them up and have an opponent pick one at random. I do the same at each progressive mana level after that.
With how strong power creep is, decks don't really NEED tutors as much as they used to. Decks with combos or ones that run a ton of mechanics need them; for example, I have a 5-color Tiamat deck that plays really slowly, so I run a lot of tutors to make sure I can deal with the board before Tiamat is cast and goes crazy. I have a Gonti thievery deck that runs a handful of tutors, so I can maximize the cards I'm stealing from an opponent. Golgari combo deck self-explanatory. Without them, neither of these decks really do anything. On the other hand, I just built three token decks where I run one staple tutor total because I want the density of token generators more than my "best" token generator for 1-3 more mana to fetch it. Lately in the tutor slots, I've just been running more card draw. Who needs 5 tutors if you have 16-22 cards that draw more cards? Commander is so broken that if you don't want to see a card in your hand, it shouldn't be there. Swap it out for card draw, synergy, or something interactive.
I was thinking the exact same thing. Outside of one mana tutors I don’t think most are even playable anymore (even demonic I’m cutting for cmc concerns). I’ve found cutting tutors to never be easier, it lets me make room for more pet cards 😂
It's not even power creep, it's redundancy. As sets get printed, they just print more versions of old cards with different names. I mean, how many versions of Wrath of God are not better then the original but are used anyways?
I built a light-paws deck an thought it would be really fun to play. Then i was playing it and realized that you tutor always the same auras. Didn't thought of that when i was building the deck. Definitely going to be less fun then other decks to play.
I have a voltron commander deck that has quite a few artifact and equipment tutors. As you guys said, without the core cards for the voltron strategy, it’s just a random 4/4 hero deck. Am I trying to grab the same equipment every time? No! Sometimes I might wanna win with commander damage and sometimes I might wanna pivot to the throw ability. Consistency is key but “winning” is not a reason to limit consistency artificially.
I’m okay with one Non-Land Tutor per deck (especially if it’s thematic for the deck), but that’s my limit. For example, I like Faerie Harbinger in my Faerie deck, and Forerunner of the Legion in my Vampire deck.
imo there its more simple answer for tutors 1. play them as a joker card, only one per deck 2. just dont abuse them with search always for same card 3. ... and thats all - you get healthy state for tutors in casual edh
I like restrictive tutors in some decks, in my equipment voltron deck I like the trophy/trinket mage cycle of creatures because they create an interesting deckbuilding challenge where I need to have role filler equipment (buff, evasion, protection) spread across 1-3 cmc cards. It forces redundancy but also makes it so I can get whichever of those 3 main pieces I am missing when I pull one of the tutors
My problem with both hyper specific tutors and hidden commander decks is that they usually enhance the main problem of tutors exponentially: they encourage repetitive play patterns. You will likely go for the same card every single game. For that reason I don't think they should get a blanko pass. It may not be the most powerful option, but that doesn't make it any less of a one trick pony.
I love the draft I played with Minthara. I drafted a mono-white deck and almost got the win. Then Hare Apparent came out and I combined the two concepts to a full fledged Commander deck. Mono-White Minthara and the army of rabbits. Piloting this deck always gives me the nostalgia of that draft in particular.
Before watching the video: I think tutors without all too many targets, high vmc cost and/or sorcery speed are often fine. Stuff like steelshapers gift can often only search for greaves and skullclamp, both are good but by no means gamebreaking. And that would make steelshapers gift just the same as another copy of one of these, just like when blue plays coastal piracy and reconnaissance mission. Those are fine, but the moment you spend only 1 mana at instant speed to get either a wincon, a boardwipe, a removal, a protection, card draw or literally anything else via mystical tutor cause it can search instants AND sorceries I think they become high power by default and to me atleast not fun.
At the end of the day it's an entirely personal choice. We gave a host of situations where we still use some too, depending on situation. Do what works for you.
I made a deck with 21 tutors to show some of my pod how Tutors can and do effect the game. As they took offense to me recommending a tutorless pod... It took one game, we are now tutorless.
Yeah i don't *usually* include tutor in my decks, but my faerie deck runs faerie harbinger and beseech the queen (thematically appropriate and high mana value), and my discard deck runs sudden spoiling (downside of helping an opponent) and profane tutor (suspend so i have to wait 2 turns, and mainly to get something like megrim/liliana's specter, not a wincon). (That being said, I have grim and vampiric tutor sleeved up and ready to throw in any decks that have black in them if somebody tells me they're playing one of their ridiculous decks)
I tend not to run tutors simply because exploring the different ways you can play a deck is part of the fun, as stated. I have a Duskana deck that runs Congregation at Dawn, looking for Kudo and Jetmir because they make the deck work. I see it as my deck having 3 commanders, and they're not flat out wins. The non-Jetmir part of the deck is budget jank 2/2s so i feel ok with it. I have a Zimone and Dina deck that runs a couple of tutors too, but that's a combo deck with a 4 or 5 card win, and I will ALWAYS state that "if I cast a tutor, I have the other 4 parts of my wincon. Beware." as part of the pregame. I hold myself to that as well. Edit midlisten: i don't think of land stuff (fetches or spells) as tutoring.
I think Yugioh is actually pretty effective in this design space having far more restrictive tutors. For example a 3 mana creature who on ETB adds a Sigarda’s Aide to to your hand, would make sense because that enchantment is such a linchpin for the equipment archetype.
Imo it always depends on the deck if I think tutors are fine. I play a Imskir graveyard deck in which i dont play any, because it would be too easy to win the game pretty fast if i tutor the good stuff out. But on the other hand my strongest deck is my Baru, Wurmspeaker. Its pretty refined and maxed out. But to be able to play on high power tables i need a "solution package" which give me answers to problems on the table since im already in a disadvantage because i play damn wurms. So the tutors are needed in the deck, that im able to compete in the environment.
Ironically, this episode inspired me to build a very specific, VERY janky tutor-focused deck :D Riku of Two Reflections, playing every single tutor-style card that lets your opponents make a choice. See for instance Guided Passage, Ecological Appreciation, or Threats Undetected. Then fill the deck with as many cards that have cross-functional interactions with each other. I'll call the deck "Build My Combo", I think it'll be a fun challenge for me trying to find effective combinations with whatever stuff my opponents decide to give me.
Honestly I don’t mind tutors and see them as kind of a first world commander problem. We are realistically talking about like 3 slots in a deck max (any more and you’re problably pushing cEDH/high power level of spectrum). They are glorified draw spells, and if anything are more skill intensive to play and add complexity to your deck which makes it more interesting for me personally.
I usually add tutors that are limited in what they can tutor, so only an equipment for example or an enchantment, transmute that are limited based on mana value or tutors that have a high mana value so you can't tutor and play the card same turn like diabolical tutor. If I notice that I'm tutoring for the same thing to win the game (not a hidden commander) or if it's too flexible I cut it.
My brother and I each have a Magda deck. Whenever we crack 5 treasures, we just start sifting through the bottom of our deck and pull out the first dragon that we find.
Three things: 1. Is it REALLY better if people have to luck into their removal? I think not. It's less skillful and also leads to more games where people feel bad that they had not agency. 2. I know this is a hot take, but I can justify it with numbers. Tutors add more deck diversity - not reduce it. If you have say a flicker deck that has 18 sources of, "When this creature enters, draw a card," this is 18 cards you spend doing just this one task. This gives you a statistically high chances of seeing one of these in the opening few turns. If you had say 10 tutors you wouldn't need to delicate so much deck space to this one solution. This means in practice, you get to have your flicker draw source consistently, but also many other cards too. You now have room for a source that will get something back from the grave when it enters, a source that will bounce an opponent's creature, and several more. You now don't need to waste a massive part of the deck on something so narrow. 3. Tutors enable a bunch of fun strategies that you just can't do without them.
I've got a lot of love for Waterlogged Teachings. It's a 4 mana tutor for instants or flash cards but its surprisingly flexible based on that flash clause, but otherwise and 60% of the time, tapped dual land.
The few decks I still play tutors in are used to get card draw or in the case of my gates deck I use them as farseek or three visits that can grab gates
Before I watch, I feel like the movement of removing tutors has grown here in the last few years. And I’ve always kind of disagreed with it. Commander is a singleton format, sometimes you need to get a card right now and tutors help with that. But the argument to that statement is that commander is a singleton format and tutors are basically extra copies of cards in your deck. It’s a very circular argument that doesn’t go anywhere so I’ve never tried to have the discussion about it. Play tutors if you want, don’t play tutors if you don’t want to.
I have a secret commander Voltron deck built out of the need to run my favourite character The Wandering Emperor. It has the most expensive glue money can buy, 10 tutors, 10 protection pieces and 10 recursion spells in there because the deck does nothing without her and Luxior on the battlefield. In the roughly 30 games I've played with it I've maybe won 5 times. Every win was incredibly satisfying doing 10million damage with her to the face but my confidence and respect in it's fragility is something born out of the fact that I can't have her as a commander. It is without a doubt my favourite deck born from the struggle of dealing with this nonsense rule.
I run Anchor to Reality in my Vehicle deck. Thematic and relatively high cost and the sole tutor in the deck makes it feel special and cool and guilt-free.
Heirloom Blade is one "tutor" that feels really good to have. even if you have few creatures that share a type that will almost allways be a tutor and if you have more it will give you more of the type you wanna have. esp on Teysa or Drivnod thats nutz cause you get two times the value :)
I use stone forge mystic the same way in my Aurelia the Warleader deck. Sure I could get the infinite combo every time, but more often I'm getting the ramp swords than anything, so I can actually have mana to cast other things (or the Commander itself)
I have a Sisay, Weatherlight Captain deck... It tutors a LOT. and I have Jegantha as a companion to make all the tutoring that much easier. I know this is not what you're talking about in this episode, because that's the gimmick of the deck, but it's really nice to have the ability to search up any of my legendary permanents for whatever situation I'm in. I used to run Thantis the Warweaver just to give me Jund colors but but I really wanted it because it would cause my opponents to go shields down and I would try to get Fynn the Fang bearer and Zagras, Thief of Heartbeats out at the same time... That was my only other deck that ran tutors.
I've removed all tutors from my deck building strategies and construction. The ONLY exception is sunforger in Feather, Redeemed, and i have no way to find it. Sunforger is fun, and works well with feather, so I included it, but there is nothing but a small toolbox within that works well with feather.
One thing I do like is more jank or more interactable tutors. Like Creation of Avacyn. it's appropriately costed, sorcery speed, and in exchange for being a saga, it can put creatures directly into play if it's not interacted with. But it's not being restricted to just creatures. I love this card to death. Feels endlessly fairer than one mana, instant speed tutors. I love tutors like that. Interactable, has a reasonable cost, or at least incredibly flavorful within specific decks you know?
Like with most things in MTG, it all depends on the character/player type you are. Just because you can always tutor for your wincons, doesn't mean you have to. Personally I have tutored for way more lands, mana rocks and ocassional removal spells, than any other thing. Even if I run a game winning combo, my principles are to not play it, unless i draw into all pieces naturally. I also can count on one hand the times that I fetched a non-combo wincon, but almost always because the game was dragging along for ages and everybody just wanted to be released from their suffering 🙃 Using tutors in a more situational, reactive way keeps the experience kind of fresh imho. I also run like 2-3 tutors at max, so even drawing into one only occours every few games or so
@@cw5948 Yeah, it should feel deserved, that's exactly why I normally don't search up instant win pieces. If you wanna call advancing the game plan normally, but saving a tutor as a situational tool sandbagging that's a bit odd in my opinion, but you do you.
I play equipment tutors in my equipment deck, but even I eventually cut Stonehewer Giant. In his case, he did always find the same equipment first (Argentum Armor) since he cheated all of the mana. But more of what got him cut was the amount of game clock he took; multiple uses of him meant a lot of searching/shuffelling, and decision points. Then there was the power level issue: in a high power table, he was way too slow and would never get going. But if it were a lower power table, he'd snowball like no other and stomp to table. He was eventually cut for the five mans Danitha, who fixes all these issues. So yeah, for play paytern, game time, and power level reasons, I don't use Stonehewer Giant anymore.
I made a secret commander deck while trying not to use tutors. It was a discard deck, which would help me dig for it. While I was looking for discard synergies, it hit me- Transmute! I'll just bring all the transmute 4s which at least *looks* more clever. XD
I have a 5c.mutate deck where I run Vadrok, Apex of Thunder is a secret commander. the majority of noncreature spells are chosen so I can cast them with Vadrok. Also it is atm the only deck I - I think - play a demonic tutor. It is actualky just to find Vadrok and to keep on mutating through casting DT to get the next mutate. The decks commander and swissarmy knife is Garth One-Eye + Jegantha as a companion. Otherwise Inhave left tutors behind, they can absolutely be strong but its so dull when you see people just tutoring for the same stuff time and time again.
I have a Slimefoot and Squee deck, and I got disappointed that I was always tutoring for Etali, Primal Conqueror. I left the tutors in and took Etali out. Now I have a much more balanced spread of options that vary by game.
@@Dragon_Fyre I like toolbox tutors, so I wanted to play the few tutors I had alongside a toolbox of cards. Etali was just too impactful compared to the other ones.
@@EDHRECast I have a Shadowborn Apostle deck as my deck with the most tutors and going to get Razaketh or Vilis is often the best play since either will fill my hand with other fun demons, but I prefer to just not always do that rather than remove Razaketh or Vilis. I only tutor them when I feel my opponents are doing something even saltier.
Lots of great points here. There are some decks I run tutors in, but most I don't. The challenge of making your deck run in a multifaceted way because of the singleton format is great. I only have one deck which is very tutor heavy, and that is a grixis thoracle deck. This deck is exclusively for Cedh, and yes the play patterns repeat, but it is consistent in a playstyle that demands consistency. I think alot of people (myself included in my early days) include tutors in their deck with no rhyme or reason to them. Like, yea Vamp or demonic can get you anything but like, do you really need that fetch?
I don't think I've ever seen a Rocco deck that wasn't a Norin the Wary deck with a Naya trenchcoat, and it's too the point that i can't finish my Street Chef deck out of derived annoyance. It wouldn't be so bad if every person who talks about it online didn't act like they were so special and creative for coming up with it.
my favorite tutor that I play in a few decks is Hoarding Broodlord, it's a generic tutor but it just, is expensive enough and works differently enough with the exiling that it's actually kinda fun
Speaking of the typal tutors, how do you feel about goblin recruiter? I play a rakdos goblin deck and if it resolves it can set me up to combo into a win, for example. Plus goblin recruiter is a special case.
I run very little tutors in my decks. I have a demonic tutor in my Liliana Heretical Healer deck, but that is a deck themed around Liliana, all her demons, all her planeswalkers, and the DT in the deck has her and Kothophed on it, so I have it more for thematic reasons. A DT in my Nekusar the Mindrazer deck, which I probably don't need as theres lots of card draw in that deck, it's just a higher power deck so a tutor feels more justified. Enlightened Tutor in my Calix Guided by Fate deck, which I'm debating taking out. Finale of Devastation more as a game ender even though it is a tutor. Worldly Tutor in my Cleopatra deck, but that might also come out. Entomb in my Nethroi, but I like entomb to get Scourge of the Skyclaves in the grave for the weird interaction. Grim Tutor in my Nazgul deck. But I think unless the tutor is thematic like for Liliana, or not as crazy like Invasion of Ikoria, I'm gonna start taking out the 1 and 2 mana tutors.
Every argument against Demonic Tutor applies to the restricted tutors as well imo. What's the point of tutoring for e.g. an elf? It's to reduce variance, always have access to what you need, or to always get your best card. Even though it's weaker than Demonic Tutor, it does the same thing with the same downsides. (I don't consider basic land or basic land type finders tutors)
The two cheap black tutors are the only two I really feel like are so egregious that we should probably not play them. Your opponents don't get to see what you're tutoring for and it can get any card. Things like mystical tutor, enlightened tutor, etc are fine and I don't think people should have a problem with them. If you look at vampiric tutor and demonic tutor and compare them to something like worldly tutor and eladamiri's call, you can clearly tell which are stronger. Worldly and vampiric both put them on top, but one has to show what it is and can only be creatures. same thing with demonic vs eladamri's call. As for Grim tutor, I think it's priced properly, both mana wise and with a cost, to allow for a search for any card. As for other cards like green sun's zenith, I think they're perfectly fine. There's restrictions on the cards for a reason. They pay 6-7 to green sun for some bigger creature, and you just pay 2 mana to kill it or counter the green sun's zenith. Games with more interaction makes games way more fun. If you let someone just tutor something up and have zero ways to deal with it, it's really on you and the other two players.
Gamble is the only exception to tutors that I make. You have to tutor for something that isn't so important that you can not deal with discarding it and it just leads to fun game moments, especially if you gamble with only 1-2 other cards in your hand.
I like playing tutors but I don’t use them to get combos (which IMO is where they are problematic because it makes every game more or less the same). I just use them to adapt to opponents decks, where I may really need a board wipe or specific spell to prevent an opponent snowballing out of control. I think this can make games more fun, not less. My opponents will need a few tricks up their sleeves to win. You don’t just get to Craterhoof for a win as an example, because I see it coming and can have a fog or counter-spell at the ready.
Elvish Harbinger really isn’t any different from a worldly tutor… idk… Sylvan Scying is so powerful. I use DT in monoB as sylvan crying 90% of times. So no… I heavily disagree with the line you are drawing here. Especially elves is such a combo tribe. Lands are Soooo powerful and I’m sick of green getting a pass for „only tutoring land“. (Talking about nonbasics). Crop rotation, sylvan scrying and temp with discovery are devastating in the right hand and deck. Nykthos, tree of tribel, strip mine, scavenger grounds, coffers, field of the dead, glacial chasm… there’s so many game warping lands. If you don’t wanna play tutors, non basic land tutors are a hard cut.
I once made a deck that was intended to have a couple of secret commanders in it. My one friend told me I couldn't run that deck without running tutors in it, so of course I tried to build the deck without tutors in it and of course he was right. The deck changed a lot from the original vision and that was one of the few reasons why, but I love that deck so much. I really don't think I would have ended up loving that deck the same way if I did put those tutors in. Great video!
What was the deck and the secret commanders?
I'm curious about that deck as well
@@dwpetrak It's a Bruse/Ikra deck. Originally, I was using Ishhin and Wulfgar as the secret commanders. The deck now doesn't use nearly as many attack triggers, but it's still all in on combat.
Yep, it's real hard to run secret a cmdr without tutors.
Secret commanders and janky decks definitely have an exception to using tutors. I have a friend with a Marit Lage deck, and without some tutors the deck would only get Marit Lage out like once every few games.
I imagine the reason Dolmen Gate isn't being run much in Kona is that it's over $20
It’s definitely due for a reprint
@@thayerbirch4847 When did that happen ? I thought it was like $2. 😅
@@Dragon_Fyre A lot of Lorwyn block cards have spiked due to lack of reprints and time elapse. Lorwyn was released in 2007; it's approaching 20 years. The other confounding factor is that the Lorwyn block was one of the worst selling sets of all time, so people just opened a lot less packs
@@mooninites755 It’s in my Kaalia deck which is one of my oldest decks and was a budget card back when I added it. Was surprised to hear how much it had gone up in value.
It had a reprint in 2020 as part of the Mystery Booster set, but as with most things that didn't lowered the price for long. Such a great card for every Timmy out there
On the one hand, I enjoy a good toolbox deck. On the other, I can't stand shuffling lol
Tutoring for solutions is fine. Tutoring for combo pieces is only for select games.
(ad break) Shuffling is much easier with silky smooth Dragonshield sleeves!
@EDHRECast I'm not calling for a boycott, cuz dragonshield are my favorite sleeves, but one of the major stake holders in Dragonshield apparently committed fraud to the tune of $2 billion.
@@davidrosenberg9615 tutoring combo pieces is for closing up games
I think this mindset needs to expand beyond tutors to a lot of generic high power staples. I stopped including cards like Rhystic Study, Smothering tithe, Teferi's Protection, and Cyclonic Rift in nearly all of my decks and it opened up my deck building so much. When I stopped including generically powerful staples in my decks, it freed up ~10+ spots in each deck. I'm not saying don't run card draw, removal, or protection, but maybe reconsider what types of those cards you're including instead
I agree, it forces additional synergy to your decks which makes them feel more unique
@@mooninites755 It’s great when you are in a like-minded pod but that may not be an option for LGS players. They are staples for a reason. Rarely do people agree on which cards are too powerful.
@@Dragon_Fyre I play at three different LGS's and I've done fine without them. Some decks have actually performed better since they have a more congruent play pattern and it's not just another goodstuff_COLORSCHEME.dec
Yeah, we've all three been phasing out those kinds of cards too.
One the flipside a hyperfocus on synergy can lead to decks like Kadena, were the commander alone is enough to predict 80% of the cards in the deck and all of the decks look mostly the same. Despite barely using generic staples.
Yes please build Minthara!
Another NonBo is with her and the far traveler background, same situation of triggering on the endstep after she'd check the gamestate.
She's one of my favourite decks and such a fun build around. Being only a power pump and not a full anthem means cards like skullclamp give so much value, especially with token makers like nested shambler that can scale really high!
A great thing about her too is that when you get 1 experience counter you can let her go back to the cz and proliferate freely, then bring her back out for a go wide and tall swing.
(Also Chthonian Nightmare works amazing because you reanimate so many 1-2 cmc cards that you'll actually have excess energy and can hit 6+ for a big creature quite easily while still applying pressure)
Sometimes tutors can help enact a janky strategy that would otherwise be impossible
Absolutely.
I'm also on the side of not tutoring, but like you guys, I've got that one exception - Transmute. I had a cycling/discard deck that had a few transmute cards and it was great to be able to recycle them over and over as a toolboxy build. Thanks for the great content as always guys!
I like tutors like Mausoleum Secrets, Grim Servant or Traverse the Ulvenwald. The restrictions make them feel rewarding to me. I want to work for my cake, before I eat it. :D
That makes sense.
Woo! My Kona tech got into this one! Thanks a ton Dana.
I have started playing next to no land-based tutors in my decks nowadays and I'm never looking back. I have found my games have been so much more enjoyable for me and the people I play with as a result. I'm so happy for this episode because I think more people need to play less tutors for all the reasons you have mentioned.
(Also, Joey, build that Minthara deck)
Thank you Joey for bringing up Legendary Creatures and their tutorless experiment! I was gonna comment about it immediately upon starting this video, but I decided to wait and see if y'all would bring it up yourselves; I was not disappointed!
Allowing ramp was a terrible idea and proved how much better Green and White are than any other color under these restrictions.
We're big fans of the LC show.
A card similar to Remembrance is Verdant Succession. It only works for green creatures but it puts them into play untapped. A buddy of mine has built an EDH deck built around this card by shuffling the green creature into their deck while the Verdant Succession ability is on the stack so he can then put the creature that just died on the the battlefield. The deck is fun to play and play against.
Huh, i would've thought you could stack the triggers with minthara and port circle to be favorable, but yeah, given the templating on the card it checks before it even puts the trigger on the stack
I'm completely fine using a tutor to find your finisher or combo piece to end the game. Casting Finale of Devastation for X=10 to grab a Craterhoof and end the game is much better than someone using Demonic Tutor to find a Rhystic Study.
Sold my borderless Demonic Tutor right after pulling it. Originally I would completely avoid tutors and infinite combos, but I get targeted a lot and was struggling to close games. Major "just you wait until I untap" energy. Still weary, but I've finally started to add some actual combos and tutors to push my boardstate over the top or find protection.
I often draw half my deck with Rite of Harmony in my Cadira deck. That card is wild and the Flashback is so unnecessarily good.
That card is crazy good.
The deck I ran the most tutors in was The Council of Four where I was trying to commander damage players out with a 0-power commander. I needed High Alert style effects, but there were only 4 in those colors (5-now with Plagon). So I ran 3 or four tutors to try to get one of them out for the deck to function
That is hilarious
I have a Tiamat deck where instead of tutoring I reveal off the top until I hit 5 random dragons. It plays waaay more fun that way
Seems like an interesting variant!
Also I ended up building Minthara as a Aristocrat deck, later turned into a Braids Arisen Nightmare deck, but was fun to have the Aristocrat strategies drain stuff, or swing with a lot of tokens with Minthara's buff. Go build this Joey!!
The listeners have spoken.
There is an adrenalin-inducing aspect of tutors that isn't mentioned a lot, which is that when an opponent is suddenly facing a potentially life-ending threat, they can seemingly sweat a life-saving solution out of nowhere if they have a tutor in hand. Adrenalin is beneficial to tabletop gaming, so I'm happy when we have those moments.
My favourite tutor right now is case of the stashed skeleton, I play it in a Beledros witherbloom aristocrat deck. My plan with the card is to sacrifice the skeleton somehow and then find whatever my board is missing, like a reanimation spell, a blood artist type effect, a repetable sacrificing outlet or sometimes just a saw in half to make best value of my sad robot or wurmcoil engine.
Cases are generally interesting to me because they feel like little minigames with great rewards, like getting the card you need after sacrificing a 2/1 skeleton. To me personally, this plays out very fun.
One less fun situation was the time I had scheming symetry in hand turn one and decided to cast, so one of my opponents got a card too. I was looking through the deck trying to pick the card I wanted and came across sol ring. It felt so underwhelming making the "obvious pick" instead of planing two turns ahead and finding the best option
My favourite tutor right now in chord of calling. I run it in my main combo ghave deck.
The reason I love it is that more often than not I have casted as a free counter spell. I have put targets in the deck that allows me to get out of board wipes like boromir. So using all my mana creating creatures with ghave and then tap them all to protect them is one of my favourite things that deck can do.
In my mono black deck I run no unconditional tutors other than the one with suspend. Because mono blacks identity is the ability to tutor. So having some tutors in my braids deck feels so important to showcase what black does in magic.
Also since the deck has weird ways to win it is not always obvious what to get. I feel that be able to create a deck that doesn't have a clear card to get if you want to run tutors so tutors don't simply become a copy of other cards in your deck.
This might be a controversial take, but tutors are really only as bad as the player using them. When I use a tutor in a deck, it's not because there is one target I am going to grab, but rather a plethora. Tutors present an opportunity for impulse control, and there are times when yes, I will grab the thing that will try and win the game, but other times, they are pieces I need for set up with context of what's in hand. Synergies > Win cons in my opinion, they are just more fun/interesting
There's an element of tutors being as bad as the player using them that's for sure true.
“There should be no tutors except for the ones I like” this is what I hear from this video. The quote I dislike is tutors take out the suspense if he has the card or not AKA a two hour boring game where people are just drawing cards and the game is stalled.
I love using Ringsight. Not only is it at sorcery speed, and the card has to be revealed and then go to your hand, but you have to have a legendary creature on the battlefield. And even then you’re limited in what you can get if said creature is mono color at the moment.
Love the challenge from Matt this week as a long time Jetmir fan, 2 things I wanted to add:
1) you can flash back rite of harmony in the same turn if you have the mana, and go to combat to draw a truly ludicrous amount of cards off it
2) I think another underplayed card in non-hare Jetmir decks is Wyrm's Crossing Patrol, 1 mana for 3 bodies is so powerful it can take you from any level of Jetmir to the next on its own!
Matt needs to stop giving Jetmir players ways to make that deck better. He's been reprimanded.
@EDHRECast don't worry Matt I will continue to spread the good word of the Cabaretti 🫡
@@filthystaxplayer7197wait until I get to start talking about cabaretti ascendancy too
I love flavourful tutors or ones that requires you a setup or some efforts:
My favorite tutor is "Yisan, the Wandering Bard": it's a 2/3 for 2G with "2G, TAP: put a specific counter on it, then tutor a creature to play with mana value == to the number of those counters".
It's like a Birthing Pod, but the counters must increase. So, you need to either remove the counters (usually in black, or with "Scholar of New Horizons") or blink/flicker the creature (in white, with "Gilraen", "Distinguished Conjurer" or "Angel of Condemnation"), which is not guaranteed, it's slow, it's resource-wise expensive and fragile. The power of tutoring is then balanced out; I guess.
Similarly, "Oriq Loremage" is a "Entomb on legs", in particular a 3/3 for 3B with no haste nor protection, just a "TAP: Entomb anything [and put a +1/+1 counter if it was a sorcery/instant]".
In black I can "tutor" stuff by reanimating it, which requires (in my decks) to spend reanimation spells (usually, 4-5 mana value ones) or creature sacrifices (like "Whisper, Blood Liturgist") or some creature-fueled rianimation (usually some white Angels)
yeah this can be boiled down to: high powered tutors that grab powerful things lead to powerful gameplay.
low powered tutors are fine for lower powered pods because they're either mana inefficient, are too niche, or... grab lands.
Deck context matters for sure.
I know this isn't intentional and just how advertising works, but I find betrayal of the ultimate guard katana sleeves so hilarious. You guys seem way more enthusiastic about dragon shield lol.
Same here!
I generally don’t play tutors at all; I’m from the earlier era of Magic the guys discussed where tutors were much harder to come by, so I got used to building without them. Most of my playgroup is similar, some of them run a tutor or two here and there. I’ve been experimenting with working them into two specific decks:
Stella Lee is just a combo deck, and I’m building it toward being reasonably competitive at low budget. From that lens, tutors increasing the density of my win conditions (and cheap spells) are an easy choice. Now the deck’s limitation feels like its ability to ramp colored mana to execute the combo quickly, and to protect itself and Stella while making it happen. I also know tutors in that deck increase the already high level of threat Stella draws, but I’m not bringing it to tables where other people aren’t winning in similar ways.
The other one is Shilgengar, who’s trying to assemble a multi-part combo including something to pull finality counters off my creatures (thief of blood, solemnity) and something to generate mana when creatures enter or die (pitiless plunderer, priest of Gix), along with a payoff. I tried to stick to thematic tutoring, so aside from buried alive/entomb, I currently just run Grim Menace. That one can go off a couple times without the upfront mana cost of a Rune-Scarred Demon, and I like it. The deck is a little janky and sometimes has to swing with angels and do small time aristocrat shenanigans for a while before the combo assembles, but I kinda like it that way. It’s funny to play an Angel deck with a 6/6 flying commander where combat is only your backup win condition.
So in agreement with your points here, but I also like where Joey was going: I like to use more specific tutors that have a casting restriction-i.e. paying life. My favorite version of this is Beseech the Mirror. What an amazing tutor…if you have something to bargain for it so that you may cast the found spell for free! This makes one of the more powerful (and affordable) tutor spells mostly useful in high enchantment and/or token density decks.
A cool way i found to make decks that use tutors responsibly is to see which tutors i wanted to run, remove them from the deck, and then to make a 94 or however large deck that works without the tutors. I think this lets the tutors be reintroduced and function as strong yet still variant pieces and actually enabling me to run more niche or low power options.
I used to be very against tutors in commander but ever since i started making decks that can only use them responsibly and to search for unique pieces, theyve been actually a sort of “crutch” that lets me run cards that make more interesting situations work!
Like 90% of my favorite commanders are tutors: Sisay, Rocco, Oswald, Kaho, Arcum, Zur, and Vannifar. Codie, The First Sliver, and The Prismatic Bridge *can* be tutors. The way I make them interesting is secret commander strategies and trying to find creative ways to take advantage of the commander's ability rather than be Spike goodstuff piles. I also generally avoid combo wins.
Sisay: build entirely around old Norin, Marisi, or Ragavan.
Rocco: build entirely around Life of the Party or Academy Manufactor.
Oswald: Modern Lantern Control but played like group hug instead of ruining opponents' draws. Glasses of Urza ❤.
Arcum: same as Oswald but has fun options for Isochron Scepter.
Zur: build around Zombie Infestation or High Alert. Build around Overencumbered group hug.
Vannifar: build around Orvar + Sakashima + Adrix and Nev.
Codie: build around casting and recasting Crashing Footfalls or Inevitable Betrayal. Build around hitting Profane Tutor into a Bring to Light toolbox of pet cards (Fractured Identity, Mirrorweave, Radiate, Saw in Half, Faith's Reward ❤.
Kaho: figure out how to win with instants without combo or being miserable to play against. Cast and recast Elminster's Simulacrum.
The Prismatic Bridge: only able to hit Boldwyr Heavyweights. Figure out how to win around/with what people get.
The First Sliver: only spells are Tibalt's Trickery + Eternal Dominion/Endless Swarm, or Reshape the Earth without Gates to try and win with manlands, Field of the Dead, and/or Valakut.
All that matters is that you and your group are having fun.
Tutors is bowling with bumpers up.
To me the laziest tutors are ones that find combo wins, and ones that find generic advantage (rhystic study). I’m typically cool with everything else
I wonder if people that do this doesnt get bored out of playing the same things
To be clear, if that's what the pod/meta is into, have fun wit it. It's not the experience we're looking for either, but we're not judging if you're into it.
@@adoo765 I used to play a mimeoplasm with 8 tutor and all my games were the same , it gets boring af
I use it to grab cerulean wisp with Stella and I constantly win turn 3/4 😅
@ i get it bro, i had a deck with about 9 tutors and it got old pretty fast because i always looked for the same convenient stuff
I currently play around with seven decks. I have a Mogis deck & it has a Demonic Tutor in it. This is the only tutor I have in any of my decks. Been playing since Revised.
I have a deck with Rocco at the helm where my deck is entirely built around Owlbear Cub. I really like having a tutor in the command zone since my rule is that I only cast Rocco for X=3 to bring the Owlbear Cub into play. One other tutor in the command zone I've considered recently is Kellan, the Fae-blooded as the perfect Sunforger commander. So Kellan finds Sunforger and then I just have a tool-box deck.
I love dragon shield. The best part is you can use custom art so if you can take a screen shot or have a picture you can get anything on the sleeves
We found the alt account for David Dragonshield, the company's CEO and founder!
I do play, 4 tutors on every single one of my decks, but i do not play 2 card comboes or 9 mana win the game cards, i mostly use my tutors to round up my Ramp, Draw and Removal spells so i dont have to run 12 of each and run out of space for pet cards
I’ve been playing vamp and dt in my monoB deck for years and at the end of the day it’s a land tutor in 90% of cases… tutoring for a win condition is something you do if you play a combo deck and rely on that 1 in 100 card to win. At the end of the day most tutors don’t get ˋanything from the deck´ but get the same 2-3 cards, often because there’s just only one copy of the effect in magic period. If I want to build a combo deck around Aluren you can’t just run 1 copy and hope for the best….
Conditional tutors are awesome. People always forget that conditional tutors make you reveal the card. Giving your opponents that information can be absolutely devastating for your game plan, at least if you play against people that have played more than zero (0) games of magic.
This was an interesting chat, and i think i mostly agree.
For full disclosure, I'm in a group that is fully ok with proxies (for a few reasons). Because of this, I've found that restricting tutors is an easy way to help limit power level when budget is less of a concern (yet you still want to avoid going above an '8').
I still use some like the Recuiters, Something something of Eos, but in limited amounts.
Thrashing Wumpus is my favorite card from that era of magic. Once you were talking about pestilence I was hoping to hear you say Thrashing Wumpus.
Any card that searches for something that's not a basic land, is a tutor. And that's because any card that's not a basic is limited to one copy so the tutors increase their redundancy. A rampant growth is not a tutor because basic lands have no limits, so you play it for ramping and not for redundancy. If you want redundancy on your basics you can just run more basics.
Rampant Growth is searching for a basic land of your choice. It increases redundancy for mana fixing purposes and is a form of optimization.
You cannot just run more basics as suggested because you do not know which one you will need.
Ramp is way closer in power to generic tutoring than you give it credit. The green player is ahead of the Red and Black players by 3 mana on turn 5. And then you get mad when they tutor a board wipe for your army of 8/8s?
I recently put together an artifact deck with the intent of doing the Simulacrum Synthesizer + Skitterbeam Battalion combo. I put one tutor in the deck, Whir of Invention, which only gets artifacts, Is at least 3 mana if I already built a board of artifacts. I may replace it with an impulse effect instead like Machinate or Fomari Vault depending on how stale it feels.
If you want to replace tutors, I think impulse/similar effects would be the "fair" version.
Challenge the Stats suggestion: Mirkwood Bats is overplayed in Grismold, the Dreadsower lists. While there are plenty of token creators in the deck (including the commander) all of the ones that have your opponents make the tokens won't trigger the bats. Also the sacrifice clause generally doesn't trigger since more often than not your tokens will die to blanket -1/-1 effects rather than a sac outlet
I’ve recently started adding tutors back into my decks because I’ve realized that it’s an easy way to keep my budget decks up to speed in a play group that is well over my budget. Like, they’re not budget friendly themselves, but they enable a budget build to be much more efficient.
There's some environments where you just have to play tutors.
I have a Yesin deck. I have a stack proxies of all my creatures to the side. When I got for a 1 mana value creature, I grab all the 1 mana proxies and shuffle them up and have an opponent pick one at random. I do the same at each progressive mana level after that.
With how strong power creep is, decks don't really NEED tutors as much as they used to. Decks with combos or ones that run a ton of mechanics need them; for example, I have a 5-color Tiamat deck that plays really slowly, so I run a lot of tutors to make sure I can deal with the board before Tiamat is cast and goes crazy. I have a Gonti thievery deck that runs a handful of tutors, so I can maximize the cards I'm stealing from an opponent. Golgari combo deck self-explanatory. Without them, neither of these decks really do anything.
On the other hand, I just built three token decks where I run one staple tutor total because I want the density of token generators more than my "best" token generator for 1-3 more mana to fetch it.
Lately in the tutor slots, I've just been running more card draw. Who needs 5 tutors if you have 16-22 cards that draw more cards? Commander is so broken that if you don't want to see a card in your hand, it shouldn't be there. Swap it out for card draw, synergy, or something interactive.
I was thinking the exact same thing. Outside of one mana tutors I don’t think most are even playable anymore (even demonic I’m cutting for cmc concerns). I’ve found cutting tutors to never be easier, it lets me make room for more pet cards 😂
It's not even power creep, it's redundancy. As sets get printed, they just print more versions of old cards with different names. I mean, how many versions of Wrath of God are not better then the original but are used anyways?
I built a light-paws deck an thought it would be really fun to play. Then i was playing it and realized that you tutor always the same auras. Didn't thought of that when i was building the deck. Definitely going to be less fun then other decks to play.
I have a voltron commander deck that has quite a few artifact and equipment tutors. As you guys said, without the core cards for the voltron strategy, it’s just a random 4/4 hero deck.
Am I trying to grab the same equipment every time? No! Sometimes I might wanna win with commander damage and sometimes I might wanna pivot to the throw ability. Consistency is key but “winning” is not a reason to limit consistency artificially.
I’m okay with one Non-Land Tutor per deck (especially if it’s thematic for the deck), but that’s my limit. For example, I like Faerie Harbinger in my Faerie deck, and Forerunner of the Legion in my Vampire deck.
imo there its more simple answer for tutors
1. play them as a joker card, only one per deck
2. just dont abuse them with search always for same card
3. ... and thats all - you get healthy state for tutors in casual edh
All that matters really is that it's a good experience for you and your playgroup.
I like restrictive tutors in some decks, in my equipment voltron deck I like the trophy/trinket mage cycle of creatures because they create an interesting deckbuilding challenge where I need to have role filler equipment (buff, evasion, protection) spread across 1-3 cmc cards. It forces redundancy but also makes it so I can get whichever of those 3 main pieces I am missing when I pull one of the tutors
My problem with both hyper specific tutors and hidden commander decks is that they usually enhance the main problem of tutors exponentially: they encourage repetitive play patterns. You will likely go for the same card every single game. For that reason I don't think they should get a blanko pass.
It may not be the most powerful option, but that doesn't make it any less of a one trick pony.
I love the draft I played with Minthara. I drafted a mono-white deck and almost got the win. Then Hare Apparent came out and I combined the two concepts to a full fledged Commander deck. Mono-White Minthara and the army of rabbits. Piloting this deck always gives me the nostalgia of that draft in particular.
We're all looking forward to seeing Joey's deck.
Before watching the video: I think tutors without all too many targets, high vmc cost and/or sorcery speed are often fine. Stuff like steelshapers gift can often only search for greaves and skullclamp, both are good but by no means gamebreaking. And that would make steelshapers gift just the same as another copy of one of these, just like when blue plays coastal piracy and reconnaissance mission. Those are fine, but the moment you spend only 1 mana at instant speed to get either a wincon, a boardwipe, a removal, a protection, card draw or literally anything else via mystical tutor cause it can search instants AND sorceries I think they become high power by default and to me atleast not fun.
At the end of the day it's an entirely personal choice. We gave a host of situations where we still use some too, depending on situation. Do what works for you.
Would love to hear more of Joey's thoughts on graveyard tutors!
The tutors I almost always run are the cards with Transmute.
I hate tutors in general but I accept Transmute. Unconditional, cheap tutors are a blight.
Wizardcycling is something I find fun in the right deck too
I made a deck with 21 tutors to show some of my pod how Tutors can and do effect the game. As they took offense to me recommending a tutorless pod... It took one game, we are now tutorless.
Yeah i don't *usually* include tutor in my decks, but my faerie deck runs faerie harbinger and beseech the queen (thematically appropriate and high mana value), and my discard deck runs sudden spoiling (downside of helping an opponent) and profane tutor (suspend so i have to wait 2 turns, and mainly to get something like megrim/liliana's specter, not a wincon).
(That being said, I have grim and vampiric tutor sleeved up and ready to throw in any decks that have black in them if somebody tells me they're playing one of their ridiculous decks)
I tend not to run tutors simply because exploring the different ways you can play a deck is part of the fun, as stated.
I have a Duskana deck that runs Congregation at Dawn, looking for Kudo and Jetmir because they make the deck work. I see it as my deck having 3 commanders, and they're not flat out wins. The non-Jetmir part of the deck is budget jank 2/2s so i feel ok with it.
I have a Zimone and Dina deck that runs a couple of tutors too, but that's a combo deck with a 4 or 5 card win, and I will ALWAYS state that "if I cast a tutor, I have the other 4 parts of my wincon. Beware." as part of the pregame. I hold myself to that as well.
Edit midlisten: i don't think of land stuff (fetches or spells) as tutoring.
I think Yugioh is actually pretty effective in this design space having far more restrictive tutors.
For example a 3 mana creature who on ETB adds a Sigarda’s Aide to to your hand, would make sense because that enchantment is such a linchpin for the equipment archetype.
Imo it always depends on the deck if I think tutors are fine. I play a Imskir graveyard deck in which i dont play any, because it would be too easy to win the game pretty fast if i tutor the good stuff out. But on the other hand my strongest deck is my Baru, Wurmspeaker. Its pretty refined and maxed out. But to be able to play on high power tables i need a "solution package" which give me answers to problems on the table since im already in a disadvantage because i play damn wurms. So the tutors are needed in the deck, that im able to compete in the environment.
Ironically, this episode inspired me to build a very specific, VERY janky tutor-focused deck :D
Riku of Two Reflections, playing every single tutor-style card that lets your opponents make a choice. See for instance Guided Passage, Ecological Appreciation, or Threats Undetected. Then fill the deck with as many cards that have cross-functional interactions with each other. I'll call the deck "Build My Combo", I think it'll be a fun challenge for me trying to find effective combinations with whatever stuff my opponents decide to give me.
Honestly I don’t mind tutors and see them as kind of a first world commander problem. We are realistically talking about like 3 slots in a deck max (any more and you’re problably pushing cEDH/high power level of spectrum). They are glorified draw spells, and if anything are more skill intensive to play and add complexity to your deck which makes it more interesting for me personally.
All cmdr "problems" are kinda first world problems 🤣
@@EDHRECast that's the truest thing I've read today hahahahaha
I usually add tutors that are limited in what they can tutor, so only an equipment for example or an enchantment, transmute that are limited based on mana value or tutors that have a high mana value so you can't tutor and play the card same turn like diabolical tutor.
If I notice that I'm tutoring for the same thing to win the game (not a hidden commander) or if it's too flexible I cut it.
My brother and I each have a Magda deck. Whenever we crack 5 treasures, we just start sifting through the bottom of our deck and pull out the first dragon that we find.
In the grand scheme of things Madga is relatively fair, too.
Three things:
1. Is it REALLY better if people have to luck into their removal? I think not. It's less skillful and also leads to more games where people feel bad that they had not agency.
2. I know this is a hot take, but I can justify it with numbers. Tutors add more deck diversity - not reduce it. If you have say a flicker deck that has 18 sources of, "When this creature enters, draw a card," this is 18 cards you spend doing just this one task. This gives you a statistically high chances of seeing one of these in the opening few turns. If you had say 10 tutors you wouldn't need to delicate so much deck space to this one solution. This means in practice, you get to have your flicker draw source consistently, but also many other cards too. You now have room for a source that will get something back from the grave when it enters, a source that will bounce an opponent's creature, and several more. You now don't need to waste a massive part of the deck on something so narrow.
3. Tutors enable a bunch of fun strategies that you just can't do without them.
None of that really seems to be true in our experience, save for maybe #3, but to each their own.
Jetmir is such a goofy goober, one of my favorite cards both in the commander zone and in the 99
That’s the most generous yet technically accurate description
I've got a lot of love for Waterlogged Teachings. It's a 4 mana tutor for instants or flash cards but its surprisingly flexible based on that flash clause, but otherwise and 60% of the time, tapped dual land.
Card is very good, has great art, and is never dead.
The few decks I still play tutors in are used to get card draw or in the case of my gates deck I use them as farseek or three visits that can grab gates
Before I watch, I feel like the movement of removing tutors has grown here in the last few years. And I’ve always kind of disagreed with it.
Commander is a singleton format, sometimes you need to get a card right now and tutors help with that.
But the argument to that statement is that commander is a singleton format and tutors are basically extra copies of cards in your deck.
It’s a very circular argument that doesn’t go anywhere so I’ve never tried to have the discussion about it. Play tutors if you want, don’t play tutors if you don’t want to.
Really all that matters is your playgroup enjoys what you're doing, and if they're down with tutors then that's what matters.
Dana, you can add Hecatomb to your Athreos deck for a third "Pestilence" enchantment.
I have a secret commander Voltron deck built out of the need to run my favourite character The Wandering Emperor. It has the most expensive glue money can buy, 10 tutors, 10 protection pieces and 10 recursion spells in there because the deck does nothing without her and Luxior on the battlefield. In the roughly 30 games I've played with it I've maybe won 5 times. Every win was incredibly satisfying doing 10million damage with her to the face but my confidence and respect in it's fragility is something born out of the fact that I can't have her as a commander. It is without a doubt my favourite deck born from the struggle of dealing with this nonsense rule.
The dual matte DS sleeves split all the time. Regular mattes are good.
I run Anchor to Reality in my Vehicle deck. Thematic and relatively high cost and the sole tutor in the deck makes it feel special and cool and guilt-free.
Rite of harmony is a win more card in Jetmir. If it drew you 5 cards, you made 5 creatures this turn. If you have 9 creatures in Jetmir, someone dies.
Heirloom Blade is one "tutor" that feels really good to have. even if you have few creatures that share a type that will almost allways be a tutor and if you have more it will give you more of the type you wanna have. esp on Teysa or Drivnod thats nutz cause you get two times the value :)
I use stone forge mystic the same way in my Aurelia the Warleader deck. Sure I could get the infinite combo every time, but more often I'm getting the ramp swords than anything, so I can actually have mana to cast other things (or the Commander itself)
I have a Sisay, Weatherlight Captain deck... It tutors a LOT. and I have Jegantha as a companion to make all the tutoring that much easier. I know this is not what you're talking about in this episode, because that's the gimmick of the deck, but it's really nice to have the ability to search up any of my legendary permanents for whatever situation I'm in.
I used to run Thantis the Warweaver just to give me Jund colors but but I really wanted it because it would cause my opponents to go shields down and I would try to get Fynn the Fang bearer and Zagras, Thief of Heartbeats out at the same time... That was my only other deck that ran tutors.
Love that episode! I personally treat Demonic tutor as a ramp in my mono-black deck.
(Dana here) I'll always have a soft spot for Demonic Tutor because of the OG art.
I've removed all tutors from my deck building strategies and construction. The ONLY exception is sunforger in Feather, Redeemed, and i have no way to find it.
Sunforger is fun, and works well with feather, so I included it, but there is nothing but a small toolbox within that works well with feather.
One thing I do like is more jank or more interactable tutors. Like Creation of Avacyn. it's appropriately costed, sorcery speed, and in exchange for being a saga, it can put creatures directly into play if it's not interacted with. But it's not being restricted to just creatures. I love this card to death. Feels endlessly fairer than one mana, instant speed tutors. I love tutors like that. Interactable, has a reasonable cost, or at least incredibly flavorful within specific decks you know?
Like with most things in MTG, it all depends on the character/player type you are. Just because you can always tutor for your wincons, doesn't mean you have to.
Personally I have tutored for way more lands, mana rocks and ocassional removal spells, than any other thing. Even if I run a game winning combo, my principles are to not play it, unless i draw into all pieces naturally. I also can count on one hand the times that I fetched a non-combo wincon, but almost always because the game was dragging along for ages and everybody just wanted to be released from their suffering 🙃 Using tutors in a more situational, reactive way keeps the experience kind of fresh imho. I also run like 2-3 tutors at max, so even drawing into one only occours every few games or so
Sandbagging has its own issues. When I win a game, I want to know it was deserved.
@@cw5948 Yeah, it should feel deserved, that's exactly why I normally don't search up instant win pieces. If you wanna call advancing the game plan normally, but saving a tutor as a situational tool sandbagging that's a bit odd in my opinion, but you do you.
I play equipment tutors in my equipment deck, but even I eventually cut Stonehewer Giant. In his case, he did always find the same equipment first (Argentum Armor) since he cheated all of the mana. But more of what got him cut was the amount of game clock he took; multiple uses of him meant a lot of searching/shuffelling, and decision points. Then there was the power level issue: in a high power table, he was way too slow and would never get going. But if it were a lower power table, he'd snowball like no other and stomp to table. He was eventually cut for the five mans Danitha, who fixes all these issues.
So yeah, for play paytern, game time, and power level reasons, I don't use Stonehewer Giant anymore.
Relatedly, I *haven't* put Grave breaker Lamia into my Anikthea deck because I foresee getting the same card(s) every time.
I made a secret commander deck while trying not to use tutors. It was a discard deck, which would help me dig for it. While I was looking for discard synergies, it hit me-
Transmute! I'll just bring all the transmute 4s which at least *looks* more clever. XD
I have a 5c.mutate deck where I run Vadrok, Apex of Thunder is a secret commander. the majority of noncreature spells are chosen so I can cast them with Vadrok. Also it is atm the only deck I - I think - play a demonic tutor. It is actualky just to find Vadrok and to keep on mutating through casting DT to get the next mutate. The decks commander and swissarmy knife is Garth One-Eye + Jegantha as a companion.
Otherwise Inhave left tutors behind, they can absolutely be strong but its so dull when you see people just tutoring for the same stuff time and time again.
I have one tutor in my several decks. It’s Profane Tutor in my Seizan, Perverter of Truth deck, because things that are profane are perverted.
I have a Slimefoot and Squee deck, and I got disappointed that I was always tutoring for Etali, Primal Conqueror. I left the tutors in and took Etali out. Now I have a much more balanced spread of options that vary by game.
You could just not tutor for Etali 😅
@@Dragon_Fyre I like toolbox tutors, so I wanted to play the few tutors I had alongside a toolbox of cards. Etali was just too impactful compared to the other ones.
@@Dragon_Fyre (Dana here) You can but that feels bad too, or it did for me when I didn't tutor up Rite of Rep.
@@EDHRECast I have a Shadowborn Apostle deck as my deck with the most tutors and going to get Razaketh or Vilis is often the best play since either will fill my hand with other fun demons, but I prefer to just not always do that rather than remove Razaketh or Vilis. I only tutor them when I feel my opponents are doing something even saltier.
Lots of great points here. There are some decks I run tutors in, but most I don't. The challenge of making your deck run in a multifaceted way because of the singleton format is great.
I only have one deck which is very tutor heavy, and that is a grixis thoracle deck. This deck is exclusively for Cedh, and yes the play patterns repeat, but it is consistent in a playstyle that demands consistency. I think alot of people (myself included in my early days) include tutors in their deck with no rhyme or reason to them. Like, yea Vamp or demonic can get you anything but like, do you really need that fetch?
I don't think I've ever seen a Rocco deck that wasn't a Norin the Wary deck with a Naya trenchcoat, and it's too the point that i can't finish my Street Chef deck out of derived annoyance. It wouldn't be so bad if every person who talks about it online didn't act like they were so special and creative for coming up with it.
my favorite tutor that I play in a few decks is Hoarding Broodlord, it's a generic tutor but it just, is expensive enough and works differently enough with the exiling that it's actually kinda fun
Very fun card.
Speaking of the typal tutors, how do you feel about goblin recruiter? I play a rakdos goblin deck and if it resolves it can set me up to combo into a win, for example. Plus goblin recruiter is a special case.
I run very little tutors in my decks. I have a demonic tutor in my Liliana Heretical Healer deck, but that is a deck themed around Liliana, all her demons, all her planeswalkers, and the DT in the deck has her and Kothophed on it, so I have it more for thematic reasons. A DT in my Nekusar the Mindrazer deck, which I probably don't need as theres lots of card draw in that deck, it's just a higher power deck so a tutor feels more justified. Enlightened Tutor in my Calix Guided by Fate deck, which I'm debating taking out. Finale of Devastation more as a game ender even though it is a tutor. Worldly Tutor in my Cleopatra deck, but that might also come out. Entomb in my Nethroi, but I like entomb to get Scourge of the Skyclaves in the grave for the weird interaction. Grim Tutor in my Nazgul deck.
But I think unless the tutor is thematic like for Liliana, or not as crazy like Invasion of Ikoria, I'm gonna start taking out the 1 and 2 mana tutors.
Demonic Tutor especially the original art is super hard to resist in an on-theme deck.
I took out most of my tutors except for the ones on theme: Demonic in my Demons deck, Vampiric in my Markov deck, etc.
On-theme are always really tempting.
Every argument against Demonic Tutor applies to the restricted tutors as well imo. What's the point of tutoring for e.g. an elf? It's to reduce variance, always have access to what you need, or to always get your best card. Even though it's weaker than Demonic Tutor, it does the same thing with the same downsides. (I don't consider basic land or basic land type finders tutors)
The two cheap black tutors are the only two I really feel like are so egregious that we should probably not play them. Your opponents don't get to see what you're tutoring for and it can get any card. Things like mystical tutor, enlightened tutor, etc are fine and I don't think people should have a problem with them. If you look at vampiric tutor and demonic tutor and compare them to something like worldly tutor and eladamiri's call, you can clearly tell which are stronger. Worldly and vampiric both put them on top, but one has to show what it is and can only be creatures. same thing with demonic vs eladamri's call. As for Grim tutor, I think it's priced properly, both mana wise and with a cost, to allow for a search for any card.
As for other cards like green sun's zenith, I think they're perfectly fine. There's restrictions on the cards for a reason. They pay 6-7 to green sun for some bigger creature, and you just pay 2 mana to kill it or counter the green sun's zenith. Games with more interaction makes games way more fun. If you let someone just tutor something up and have zero ways to deal with it, it's really on you and the other two players.
Vamp and Demonic (and probably Imperial Seal) are def in a league of their own.
Gamble is the only exception to tutors that I make.
You have to tutor for something that isn't so important that you can not deal with discarding it and it just leads to fun game moments, especially if you gamble with only 1-2 other cards in your hand.
Gamble is the best in reanimator decks. If I'm lucky, it's red Entomb
I like playing tutors but I don’t use them to get combos (which IMO is where they are problematic because it makes every game more or less the same).
I just use them to adapt to opponents decks, where I may really need a board wipe or specific spell to prevent an opponent snowballing out of control. I think this can make games more fun, not less. My opponents will need a few tricks up their sleeves to win. You don’t just get to Craterhoof for a win as an example, because I see it coming and can have a fog or counter-spell at the ready.
Elvish Harbinger really isn’t any different from a worldly tutor… idk… Sylvan Scying is so powerful. I use DT in monoB as sylvan crying 90% of times. So no… I heavily disagree with the line you are drawing here. Especially elves is such a combo tribe. Lands are Soooo powerful and I’m sick of green getting a pass for „only tutoring land“. (Talking about nonbasics). Crop rotation, sylvan scrying and temp with discovery are devastating in the right hand and deck. Nykthos, tree of tribel, strip mine, scavenger grounds, coffers, field of the dead, glacial chasm… there’s so many game warping lands. If you don’t wanna play tutors, non basic land tutors are a hard cut.