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To Tutor or Not to Tutor, That is the Question
Let’s be honest: few Magic cards inspire table-wide groans like a well-timed Demonic Tutor. Tutors—those cards that let you search your library for the perfect answer or game-winning combo piece—are polarizing in the Commander (EDH) format. Some players love them for their consistency. Others loathe them for removing the chaos and surprise that makes EDH magical. So, are tutors a blessing or a blight? Should every deck pack a few, or should they be shelved in the name of fun?
Today, we explore these cards' value, impact, and controversy. We'll dive into deckbuilding philosophy, gameplay implications, and the social contract that underpins Commander. We’ll examine how tutors function across the casual-to-competitive spectrum, the types of tutors available, and the strategies they enable or suppress. So, crack your favorite beverage, shuffle up that 99, and let’s talk tutoring.
Introduction to the Problem
The Commander format is a popular way for Magic: The Gathering players to engage in multiplayer games, but it can be challenging for new players to get started. With thousands of cards to choose from, building a deck that is both fun and competitive can be a daunting task. Many players struggle to find the right balance of cards, and it can be challenging to know where to start. Fortunately, many online resources are available to help new players master the Commander format, including tutorials, forums, online communities, and podcasts. These resources provide a wealth of information and support, making it easier for new players to dive into the game and start having fun immediately. Some of my personal favorites include a litany of great podcasts, including CommandCast, Elder Dragon Hijinks, EDHRecCast, Good Luck High Five, and Commander at Home, to name a few.
Tutors and Deckbuilding: Consistency vs. Chaos
Why Play Tutors?
Tutors solve one of Commander’s core challenges: inconsistency. The odds of naturally seeing your favorite combo or synergy piece are slim in a singleton format. Tutors act like a backstage pass to your deck’s best content, ensuring you can “do the thing” your deck was built to do.
Need to assemble your Kiki-Jiki combo? Fetch it. Want to dig up your only board wipe? No problem. Tutors provide control, flexibility, and insurance against bad draws. They let you smooth over awkward hands and ensure you see the most impactful cards more often.
They also enable high-concept strategies like toolbox decks, where each tutor fetches a different answer depending on the situation. They make off-the-wall brews more reliable, allowing players to build around obscure cards or interactions without worrying they’ll never see them.
Tutors can also support reactive gameplay. If you’re playing a deck that wants to respond to threats rather than proactively combo off, conditional tutors let you find your removal, counters, or graveyard hate. These tutors can add depth and skill to a deck, forcing players to assess board states and anticipate threats. By ensuring players can execute their strategies effectively, tutors significantly boost their confidence in their gameplay.
The Risk of Over-Optimization
But with great consistency comes great responsibility. Loading your deck with tutors can turn every game into the same script: ramp, tutor, win. It reduces variance, yes—but also spontaneity. Suddenly, your 99-card deck feels like a curated playlist on loop.
The beauty of Commander lies in unexpected interactions, topdeck miracles, and improbable victories. Over-reliance on tutors can lead to repetitive play patterns, homogenizing that experience. And opponents may lose interest fast when one player consistently searches out the same win-con.
More dangerously, this can create a play environment where only optimized lines are rewarded. It can discourage creative deckbuilding, especially when players learn that janky or theme-based strategies can’t keep up without access to reliable tutors.
Moreover, decks relying heavily on tutoring can create an arms race at the table. If one deck always performs like a well-oiled machine, others must follow suit or risk falling behind, shifting the pod from fun chaos to silent efficiency.
Redundancy vs. Reliance
Some deckbuilders find middle ground by prioritizing redundancy. Instead of one tutor and one win-con, they run multiple cards with similar effects—different removal spells, different combo enablers. This creates consistency without reducing gameplay variety.
Tutors, by contrast, often centralize your game plan. If you always use Demonic Tutor to find Exsanguinate or Thassa's Oracle, you reduce variance and replace it with predictability. This predictability may serve the deck but can erode novelty and engagement over time.
Another way players maintain variety is by using tutors creatively. Rather than always fetching the same card, they fetch different cards depending on context. An Enlightened Tutor player might grab Smothering Tithe in one game and Ghostly Prison in another. This keeps the tutor’s power in check while preserving the deck’s interactive potential.
Principles of Deck-Building
When building a Commander deck, it’s essential to consider the principles of deck-building. This includes choosing a commander that fits your play style, selecting cards that work well together, and ensuring that your deck balances creatures, spells, and lands. It's often safest and recommended to start with a simple deck and gradually add more complex cards as you become more confident in your abilities. By following these principles, you can create a deck that is both effective and enjoyable to play. For example, a player who loves math and problem-solving may enjoy building a deck around a commander that excels at manipulating numbers and probabilities. This approach makes the game more engaging and helps you build a solid foundation for more advanced strategies.
Finding Resources and Guidance
Finding resources and guidance can be challenging for those new to the Commander format. However, there are many online communities and forums where players can connect with others, ask questions, and learn from more experienced players. These communities are a great way to get started, as they provide information and support. If you have a great local pod or LGS, you can hit on a Friday night with friendly and experienced players and glean some one-on-one guidance to help you improve your skills. By tapping into these resources, you can accelerate your learning curve and become a more confident and knowledgeable Commander player.
Gameplay Impact: Speed, Repetition, and Threat Levels
Speed and Efficiency
In competitive circles, tutors are non-negotiable. Consistency wins games. A deck without tutors is a deck that rolls the dice, while your opponent is drawing a near-perfect hand every game. However, that same optimization level can feel oppressive in more casual settings.
Tutors also elongate turns. There’s the time spent searching, shuffling, presenting, then shuffling again. Multiply that across four players, and a long game becomes glacial. This impacts everyone at the table—you’re not just optimizing your deck but taxing other players’ attention spans.
Some playgroups develop informal norms to speed things up, like having a tutor target already in mind or searching during another player’s turn. But these are social solutions to a mechanical inefficiency baked into the card type.
Threat Assessment and the Tutor Tax
Casting a tutor makes you the table’s number one threat—even if you’re grabbing removal. The implication is always, “I now have the exact tool I need to win or stop you.”
This paints a big, blinking target on your back. Sometimes, that’s justified. Other times, it’s just paranoia. Either way, it warps how opponents play around you. They may prematurely expend removal or focus on you with attacks, simply because you could be fetching a win-con.
Inexperienced players may overreact to tutors, while seasoned players understand when and why someone would fetch certain cards. Over time, many pods learn to read tutor behavior and respond accordingly, turning tutors into a mind game. Players look forward to these sessions and are eager to see how their strategies will evolve.
Repetitive Play Patterns
When you tutor the same card every game, you’re creating repeatable scripts that remove the storytelling element of EDH. Watching someone execute the same A-to-B combo with Demonic Tutor becomes stale after the third time. What starts as a clever interaction turns into a routine.
That sense of repetition doesn’t just affect the tutor player—it affects the table. If every game ends with the same win-con fetched by the same tutor, other players may feel their decks don’t matter. Eventually, they stop engaging.
This effect is amplified in pods, where games regularly end quickly due to tutoring into fast combos. Some players enjoy these fast finishes. Others feel like the game’s narrative arc was cut short and that they lost the joy of exploration and discovery.
The Social Contract: Fun for One or Fun for All?
Commander isn’t just a format; it’s a social experience. What counts as “fun” varies wildly from table to table. Some groups thrive on cutthroat competition, while others value narrative and weird, janky plays. Understanding each player's unique goals and needs is crucial to ensuring everyone has an enjoyable experience.
Tutors and the Rule 0 Conversation
If your pod expects casual, wild games and you show up with seven tutors and a game-ending combo plan, you’ll likely create a mismatch in expectations. Rule 0 exists for a reason. Discussing power levels, win conditions, and tutor counts before the game helps everyone enjoy the experience.
This is especially important with newer players or those less familiar with how tutor-heavy decks operate. Letting others know your deck runs multiple tutors and can combo early gives them a chance to choose an appropriate response—whether it’s counterbuilding, switching decks, or just asking you to tone it down.
Rule 0 also offers a path for exploration. You might say, “I’ve got a combo deck but I’m trying something new—mind if I test it here?” Being upfront creates a shared understanding and helps avoid salty responses later.
The Fun Factor
For the player casting a tutor, it’s satisfying. You feel clever, prepared. But for opponents, especially in casual games, it may feel like a shortcut past the fun. If your tutors always grab the same combo piece, you rob the table of variety.
Ironically, you also rob yourself of new experiences. Some of the best moments in Commander come from having to win with what you draw. That constraint breeds creativity. When you always have access to your best card, you skip that process. The journey becomes a formality, not an adventure.
It’s also worth noting that tutor-heavy decks can have a chilling effect on experimentation. If you know your opponent is running eight tutors and ends games by turn five, you’re unlikely to play your meme tribal deck, even if that’s what you wanted to bring.
Meta Balance and Power Parity
When tutors are used unevenly across a playgroup, they can distort game balance. If only one or two players are tutoring consistently, they often win more frequently or dominate early board states. The others may feel powerless, even if their decks are well-built.
To address this, some groups adopt house rules: no universal tutors, limit one tutor per game, or ban tutors entirely. Others allow tutors but restrict what they can fetch—no combo pieces, for example. These rules may sound arbitrary, but they exist to preserve the shared experience. After all, Commander is as much about fun as it is about winning. An exception to these rules can be seen in the allowance of multiple basic lands, distinguishing them from the one-card limit for other cards.
Some groups even run point systems, where tutors are “worth” points and decks must remain below a certain threshold. These creative solutions help build parity without sacrificing diversity. They encourage players to think critically about how powerful effects like tutoring shape the format.
Types of Tutors and Their Roles
Not all tutors are created equal. Some grab any card. Others are limited to specific types. Here’s a breakdown:
Universal Tutors (e.g., Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor): The most powerful and controversial. High impact, low restriction. Common in high-power and cEDH decks. Enable repeatable, fast wins.
Conditional Tutors (e.g., Eladamri’s Call, Fabricate) are more balanced and thematically resonant. They often reveal the card and tend to be more accepted in casual pods.
Tribal/Color-Specific Tutors (e.g., Goblin Matron, Worldly Tutor): Perfect for synergy decks, less game-breaking. Enhance theme and flavor without centralizing gameplay.
Budget Tutors (e.g., Diabolic Tutor, Gamble, Final Parting) are slower or riskier but effective in casual metas. They are often overlooked but solid for those who want the effect without the price tag.
Each category has pros and cons. Universal tutors are game-warping. Conditional and tribal tutors support theme and depth. Budget tutors bring power to the people. Understanding the role each tutor plays helps you use them responsibly.
Some players even build around tutors as part of their core identity. Think “toolbox” decks that rely on repeatable tutor engines like Survival of the Fittest or Birthing Pod. These decks aren’t necessarily overpowered—they’re interactive, responsive, and fun when used creatively.
Toolbox strategies also encourage dynamic play. Instead of ending the game outright, they allow a deck to pivot and adapt. These kinds of decks showcase the most constructive side of tutoring, rewarding knowledge and skill over brute-force efficiency.
Tutors by Power Level: Casual to cEDH
Casual Pods
Tutors are often limited or avoided entirely. The emphasis is on surprise, story, and goofy plays. Players may restrict themselves to thematic or conditional tutors, or skip tutors altogether in favor of more draw, redundancy, or chaos.
Some casual groups view tutors as anti-fun because they disrupt the core randomness of the format. A topdecked Craterhoof Behemoth is exciting. A tutored one? Predictable. Instead, casual pods lean into the absurd: 10-mana dragons, board-wide pillow fort battles, and accidental combos.
Others allow tutors but impose soft norms, like avoiding repetitive combo finishes or excessive shuffling. These informal rules create breathing room for jank and discovery while acknowledging search effects' strategic value.
High-Power EDH
Tutors are welcome but usually self-regulated. Players use them to enable synergy, not to rush to the finish line. A deck might run 2-4 tutors to ensure consistency without being oppressive. Redundancy is valued here too, but with a strategic tilt.
Tutors in high-power pods serve a practical purpose: finding answers. Need to wipe the board? Tutor for it. Need to stop a combo? Grab the counter. These decks aim to win but still care about interaction and maintaining a game state where everyone gets to play.
Players at this level often calibrate decks to the pod. A Demonic Tutor might grab a board wipe in one game and combo piece the next. That adaptability makes tutoring a tool for balance rather than oppression. Tutors also impact gameplay dynamics by allowing players to strategize around their life points, engaging in both offensive and defensive tactics.
Competitive EDH (cEDH)
Tutors are the backbone. Efficiency, redundancy, and fast combo assembly are the name of the game. Running fewer tutors than your opponents is a liability, not a virtue.
In cEDH, tutors aren’t controversial—they’re necessary. You need to find your win conditions quickly and repeatedly. That means running as many low-cost tutors as possible. It’s not uncommon to see decks running eight or more search effects designed to reduce variance to near-zero.
Here, tutors create balance through parity. Everyone has access to the same tools; skill is demonstrated by how well you use them. It’s a different philosophy than casual Commander, but equally valid in its own right. Just as a commander in the army must strategically position their forces to achieve victory, a player must use tutors to position themselves strategically in competitive gameplay.
The challenge in cEDH isn’t whether you tutor—it’s how well you tutor. The decisions that separate average players from great players are timing, threat evaluation, and the choice between grabbing interaction or acceleration.
Conclusion: Shuffle, Search, and Self-Reflect
Tutor cards in Commander offer undeniable power and strategic depth. They let you showcase your deck’s best moves and precisely navigate complex board states. But they also reduce randomness, slow down games, and can lead to repetitive play patterns that sap fun from the table.
Whether to run tutors—and how many—is a personal and social decision. Are you trying to win fast? Showcase cool synergies? Or play a wild, unpredictable game with your friends?
Consider what you want from your games. Do you value creative problem-solving or clean execution? Are you building for maximum synergy or maximum spectacle? The answers should guide your tutor choices.
And always, always talk to your playgroup. The best decks and games aren’t defined just by the cards in them, but by the shared understanding around the table. Use that Rule 0 conversation to align expectations, check in on comfort levels, and evolve together.
In the end, the best Commander games come from mutual understanding and respect. So talk it out, set expectations, and look forward to many exciting and engaging future sessions.
Happy shuffling.
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