Brew like a Game Designer: Fixing the Tutor Problem (A Defense of Toolbox Decks)

(Sunforger | Art by Darrell Riche)
A.K.A. "Kieran Gets to Talk About Sunforger"
Here are a few true things:
- This series (and my personal deckbuilding philosophy) emphasizes making Commander decks as fun as possible to play and play against.
- The popular consensus among Magic content creators is that tutors (effects that search your deck for cards of your choice, like Demonic Tutoror Green Sun's Zenith) often make Commander decks less fun to play. I mostly agree.
- I love building and playing toolbox decks, which are centered around tutor effects. My favorite thing in the game is tutoring for a tutor.
Let's spend a little time unpicking this contradiction and maybe learn a bit about the role of tutor cards in Commander along the way. Shall we?
A History of Tutors
"Tutor" is Magic: The Gathering vernacular for an effect that can search your library for another specific card, or for the act of doing so (as in, "I tutored for Kiki-Jiki
- Enlightened Tutor
- Mystical Tutorand Personal Tutor
- Vampiric Tutorand Imperial Seal
- Gamble
- Worldly Tutorand Sylvan Tutor
Since this time, Magic's designers have refined the game's mechanics, further defining what cards each color is broadly capable of tutoring for in. In the modern color pie:
- White can tutor for enchantments, as well as smallcreatures, Equipment, and Vehicles.
- Blue can tutor for artifacts, as well as instants and sorceries.
- Black can tutor for any card, often at a cost, and is also uniquely capable of tutoring to the graveyard.
- rarely tutors, though occasionally it can tutor for artifacts. Sometimes red can tutor for cards outside its assigned purview, but doing so involves significant risk.
- can tutor for creaturesand lands.
Colors can also tutor for subsets of their available categories. For instance:
- White, able to tutor for enchantments, can also tutor for Auras.
- Blue, able to tutor for artifacts, can also tutor for Equipment and Vehiclesor artifacts with specific mana values.
- Green, able to tutor for creatures, can also tutor for creatures with specific abilities.
Additionally, every color can occasionally tutor for categories of cards that feel essential to that color. For instance, Red can tutor for Dragons
One category I've deliberately left off this list is cards that tutor exclusively
This is by no means an exhaustive list; the color pie is complex and full of exceptions. However, understanding the basic types of tutors available in each color will help us find the most fun way to use this type of card in our decks.
(Demonic Tutor | Art by Donato Giancola)
The Problem with Tutors: Options vs. Choices
The primary criticism of tutors in Commander goes as follows: by ensuring that you can always access your best cards, tutors reduce the diversity of the games you play. Commander is a 100-card singleton format because drawing different cards every game leads to fun, varied gameplay experiences. Tutors can homogenize the games you play until they all kinda feel the same.
For instance, suppose you play Craterhoof Behemoth
Now, what if you also put Demonic Tutor
Mark Rosewater, Magic's lead designer, drew a distinction between options and choices in his 2009 article "Decisions, Decisions."
Options, Rosewater proposes, are "additive decisions. That is, they are choices that give the player an additional ability that does not come into conflict with previous abilities." For instance, Demonic Tutor provides players with an enormous range of options: access to any card in their deck, on demand.
A plethora of options, however, does not always lead to fun gameplay. To steal another hypothetical from Rosewater, imagine if every card in Magic had flash. Technically, this gives players many more options regarding when to cast their spells. However, in practice, there's actually only one correct answer in this hypothetical situation: always hold your spells until the last possible moment, which is usually the end of an opponent's turn. No longer do players need to decide between casting a threat, wiping the board, and leaving mana open for a Counterspell
Similarly, adding a card like Demonic Tutor to your Lathril
Rosewater describes choices, on the other hand, as "[I]nteractive decisions... That is, they are decisions that impact the use of other abilities in the game. Yes, you gain new functions, but at the cost of old functions." In practice, this means that choices require sacrifice of some sort. Maybe you can play a threat, but you give up the ability hold mana open and cast a Counterspell
So, how do we use tutors to increase the number of interesting choices we make when playing our decks, without giving ourselves so many options that we make the game less fun?
Tutors With Consequences
In short, we want the tutors we play to ask interesting questions of us other than "what's the best possible card I could draw right now?" I'm going to show you how to accomplish this goal by focusing on three of my favorite cards in the whole game. These are, in no particular order:
Take a moment to familiarize yourself with these cards if you aren't a Scryfall-dwelling cryptid like myself, then let's dive in!
(Fact or Fiction | Art by Mateus Manhanini)
Tutors and Gameplay Choices
All three of the cards listed ask you to make significant sacrifices in order to use their powerful tutoring abilities.
Artificer's Intuition
- Solemn Simulacrumfor Relic of Progenitusto exile a bloated graveyard?
- Lightning Greavesfor Great Furnaceto hit a missing land drop?
- Vanquisher's Bannerfor Esper Sentinel?
- Worn Powerstonefor Sol Ring?
Other than that last one, these are all nuanced questions that I believe contribute to interesting strategic gameplay.
Similarly, Wild Research asks if finding an instant or enchantment of your choice is worth potentially losing access to any card in your hand. Is even the best card in your deck worth the risk of discarding the removal spell you're counting on? What about the risk of spending two mana only to put the card you need directly into your graveyard? Lots more questions here than merely "what card should I get?"
The choices and risks inherent to Sunforger
The choices arise from the fact that Sunforger
As a whole, this suggest that the most fun tutors are those that create interesting choices by involving some sort of risk or sacrifice.
(As an aside, Birthing Pod
(Trinket Mage | Art by Mark A. Nelson}
Tutors and Deckbuilding Choices
Choices don't only exist during gameplay, though. The most fun tutors also ask players to make fun choices during the deckbuilding process.
You'll notice that Artificer's Intuition
By restricting the cards they can find, these two tutors encourage deckbuilders to make unconventional card choices. I don't think I'd play Strength-Testing Hammer
This sort of "repeatable tutor with a restriction" often stars in toolbox decks. The "toolbox" archetype encompasses decks that center around a repeatable tutor and a wide range of cards for the tutor to find. Usually, a toolbox deck incorporates many situational effects that can be tutored up when they'll be most effective. A toolbox might include effects like:
- Removal for each card type
- Board protection
- Counterspells
- Card draw/ramp
- Graveyard hate
- Stax effects like Vexing Baubleor Propaganda
- Recursion
- Win conditions
Usually, a toolbox deck wants to play as many different types of effects as possible. The power of this sort of deck is not in the strength of individual cards, but in the ability to always have access to the right tool for a given situation. A toolbox deck's ultimate goal is to never face a problem it can't solve or a threat it can't answer.
Building a well-crafted toolbox deck demands many choices during deckbuilding. For instance, a deckbuilder crafting a Sunforger
- How many removal spells for each card type should I put in my toolbox? How many counterspells? How much board protection?
- Regarding removal, do I care more about efficiency, flexibility, or value? What about the potential to get around abilities like hexproof and indestructibleor effects like graveyard recursion?
- Is Settle the Wreckageor Comeuppancea better answer for a large attack? Do I have space to play both? Am I fine with just a Teferi's Protection?
- Can one cardfill multiple roles in my toolbox?
There are no right answers to these questions, no "best in slot" cards. The right choices for your toolbox depend on your playgroup, deck, and personal preferences.
Compare this to Demonic Tutor
From this, we can deduce that the most fun tutors provoke unconventional deckbuilding choices due to tight restrictions on which cards they can find.
(Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero | Art by AlbaBG}
Tutor Chains and Tutor Loops
"But Kieran," I hear you say. "I don't want to feel limited when I play my tutors! I love feeling like I have every card in my deck at my fingertips! They're such cool cards, Kieran!"
Fear not, friend: I feel the same way. And the solution is more tutors! Allow me to introduce the concept that's driven over a dozen of my toolbox decks over the last decade: tutor chains!
Here's where this article really goes off the rails.
A question: can Recruiter of the Guard
Playing conditional tutors that chain into each other expands your choices when tutoring, but applying an additional cost to those choices keeps them interesting and prevents you from always tutoring for the same card. In the above example, Recruiter of the Guard
By adding a Sunforger
- Any creature
- Any Sunforger-able instant
- Any Equipment
Nothing better than paying 13 mana in installments ( + + + + ) to search out any creature with Recruiter of the Guard
It may seem like a tutor loop creates a boring, prescribed path for your deck, but with thoughtful card choices, a deck's tutor loop can be a dynamic engine that changes based on circumstance. For instance, if you're using Stoneforge Mystic
This core tutor loop powers a Commander deck I've owned for eight years, in which the full tutor chain looks like this:
(Plus Eternal Witness
There's a ton of choices in here! If we draw Recruiter of the Guard
In short, chaining restrictive tutors together allows you to access most of your deck with any tutor, but at an additional cost of time and mana. This creates nuanced strategic choices during gameplay and also encourages innovative deckbuilding.
Tutor chains are also a LOT of fun. I've been tinkering with my deck that incorporates the above loop for 8+ years and it's my favorite deck of all time. Was this article just an excuse to show it off? Maybe!
Meltiest Bros.
View on ArchidektCommander (1)
Creatures (25)
- 1 Aerial Extortionist
- 1 Bloom Tender
- 1 Displacer Kitten
- 1 Eight-and-a-Half-Tails
- 1 Emiel the Blessed
- 1 Emrakul, the Promised End
- 1 Eternal Witness
- 1 Generous Patron
- 1 Glen Elendra Archmage
- 1 High Fae Trickster
- 1 Humble Defector
- 1 Loaming Shaman
- 1 Loran of the Third Path
- 1 Mindclaw Shaman
- 1 Radiant Performer
- 1 Recruiter of the Guard
- 1 Resolute Archangel
- 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
- 1 Stoneforge Mystic
- 1 Sun Titan
- 1 Trophy Mage
- 1 Wildfire Devils
- 1 Windshaper Planetar
- 1 Zacama, Primal Calamity
- 1 Zirda, the Dawnwaker
Artifacts (8)
Enchantments (4)
Instants (21)
- 1 Akroma's Will
- 1 Call the Coppercoats
- 1 Comeuppance
- 1 Cosmic Intervention
- 1 Eladamri's Call
- 1 Endless Detour
- 1 Enlightened Tutor
- 1 Final Showdown
- 1 Flick a Coin
- 1 Invert Polarity
- 1 Legion Leadership // Legion Stronghold
- 1 Mages' Contest
- 1 Mystic Reflection
- 1 Naya Charm
- 1 Olórin's Searing Light
- 1 Render Silent
- 1 Scout's Warning
- 1 Take the Bait
- 1 Unexplained Absence
- 1 Valakut Awakening // Valakut Stoneforge
- 1 Wild Ricochet
Sorceries (5)
Lands (36)
- 1 Axgard Armory
- 1 Boseiju, Who Endures
- 1 Branchloft Pathway // Boulderloft Pathway
- 1 Breeding Pool
- 1 City of Brass
- 1 Command Tower
- 1 Exotic Orchard
- 1 Fabled Passage
- 1 Flooded Strand
- 2 Forest
- 2 Island
- 1 Jetmir's Garden
- 1 Ketria Triome
- 1 Mana Confluence
- 1 Mistveil Plains
- 1 Misty Rainforest
- 2 Mountain
- 1 Mystic Monastery
- 1 Needle Spires
- 1 Needleverge Pathway // Pillarverge Pathway
- 1 Path of Ancestry
- 3 Plains
- 1 Prismatic Vista
- 1 Rejuvenating Springs
- 1 Spara's Headquarters
- 1 Spire Garden
- 1 Stomping Ground
- 1 Sungrass Prairie
- 1 Temple Garden
- 1 Windswept Heath
- 1 Wooded Foothills
Worse Cards, Better Games
Honestly, that's the thesis of this whole article series, right? That it's better to play fun cards than strong cards. Ditch your Demonic Tutor