168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic the Gathering uses a lot of slang, and it can be impenetrable for newcomers to the game. Someone's Dimir deck might ping you for one and mill two, and you'll have no idea what the first half of this sentence even means.
One of the prime examples of this tendency to use slang are "tutors". They're some of the most powerful cards in the game, and yet the community hides it behind slang originally named after a single card. Here's everything you need to know about Tutors.
Updated February 11, 2022 by Joe Parlock: Even though Wizards is trying to move away from using tutors, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty introduced a whopping 12 of them. They have been added to the count at the end of this article.
What Are Tutors?
Tutors are cards that let you search your library for a specific card or type of card. What happens once you've found that card differs depending on the tutor you've just played, but in general they do one of two things:
- Put it on top of your library.
- Put it into your hand.
Sometimes cards may ask you to put the card somewhere else, like Gifts Ungiven or Iname Death Aspect putting thꦫemᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ into your graveyard, but those are rarer effects than the two main ones.
'Tutor' isn't a keyworded mechanic like Trample, Disturb, or Cleave, it's just an umbrella term the community has given to spells or abilities that all do similar things. While there are a huge number of tutors, they can generally be split into indiscriminate and discriminate tutors.
Indiscriminate tutors let you search your library for any card. These are things like Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire. Some of these cards ofꩲfs꧙et their flexibility with an extra cost, like Vampiric Tutor and Cruel Tutor causing you to lose two life, Rhystic Tutor letting someone else pay two mana to stop the search, or Profane Tutor having Suspend to not be usable right away.
This kind of effect is virtually exclusive to black, although it has splashed into blue, red, and colourless in the past. Another good thing about indiscriminate tutoring is that it often doesn't require you to reveal the card you searched for – after all, if you can pick any card, you're not able to break any rule.
On the other hand, discriminate tutoring specifies what kind of card you can look for, and is found in every colour. For example, Idyllic Tutor is a white spell that searched for an enchantment, while Worldly Tutor is a green one that can search for a creature. Most land ramp (ramp being more Magic slang meaning "get extra mana quickly") also falls into this category, with cards like Cultivate, Kodama's Reach or Rampant Growth all being land tutors. Even lands themselves can be tutors, although these tend to more frequently be known as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:"fetch lands" instead.
In general, each of the non-blacꩲk colours can search for a different kind of card:
- White can search for enchantments and Planeswalkers
- Blue can search for artifacts, instants, and sorceries
- Red is the weakest colour for tutoring, and tends to search for specific creature types like Dragon, Minotaur, or Elemental.
- Green can search for creatures and lands.
Because discriminate tutoring requires you search for a specific type of card, almost every card that lets you do it also tells you to reveal that card to your opponents. This is to sಌtop someone saying they picked up a land when actually they got ﷺa creature, or vice-versa.
Why Are They Called Tutors?
In Magic's story, players are 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:'Planeswalkers', powerful mages who can move between universes. Your deck represents your experience and knowledge, with each card allowing you to conjure up creatures and abilities from other planes to help you do battle. Your hand represents what you currently remember, while your deck is the depth of all of your past experiences. So, as far as the game's concerned, Tutor cards literally 'teach' you the spells you want to cast.
The community picked up "Tutor" as a name thanks to the first card to have an effect like it, Demonic Tutor. To this day Demonic Tutor is still the best tutoring card available, thanks to its low mana cost and zero downsides. Over the years it's been joined by others like Vampiric, Demonic, Worldly, Idyllic, Profane, Mystical, Personal, Sylvan, Rhystic, Infernal, Enlightened, Cruel, Diabolic, Grim, and even Booster Tutors (the last one is a silver-bordered parody card that asks you to open a booster pack and pick one card).
What Are The Best Tutors?
By far the best tutors are the indiscriminate ones found in black. Demonic Tutor is generally considered the best thanks to its complete lack of any downside, but 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Vampiric Tutor is 🌠also up there because its downside is offset by its lower mana cos꧋t.
On the 'second tier' of tutors are cards like Grim Tutor and Diabolic Tutor. These have bigger costs, like Grim Tutor making you lose an extra life and pay two mana compared to Vampiric Tutor, while Diabolic Tutor costs double a Demonic Tutor.
You could argue the next tier are the tutors found in other colours. The main Tutor 'cycle' of Worldly, Idylic and Mystical Tutors are great in decks that use their colours, even if they lack the flexibility of the black tutors. Unfortunately, red wasn't let in on this and doesn't have its own equivalent.
Just below them are the tutors that search for a card and put it on top of your library instead of into your hand. These are cards like Sylvan Tutor, Enlightened Tutor and Personal Tutor. Sometimes keeping a card on top of your library is useful, but generally keeping your choices at risk of being milled (put into your graveyard) or even stolen isn't worth the risk.
How Many Tutors Are There?
Tutoring has been a part of Magic since the very beginning and is a popular effect to put into most sets. Because of that, pinning down exactly how many there are is hard wꦛork.
Searching Scryfall for "search your library for" comes up with 538 card꧒s (excluding parody sets printed with silver borders):
- 72 white cards.
- 52 blue cards.
- 69 black cards.
- 27 red cards.
- 191 green cards.
- Two Azorius (white/blue)
- Three Dimir (blue/black)
- One Rakdos (black/red)
- Five Gruul (red/green)
- 11 Selesnya (white/green)
- Three Izzet (blue/red)
- Six Golgari (black/green)
- Four Boros (red/white)
- Eight Simic (green/blue)
- One Esper (white/blue/black)
- Three Bant (green/white/blue)
- One Temur (green/blue/red)
- One Sultai (black/green/blue)
- Four WUBRG (white/blue/black/red/green)
- 48 Colourless
- 38 Lands
