I’ve watched a lot of Commander games get decided by one simple sentence: “hold on, I’m going to tutor.” Sometimes that means someone is grabbing a board wipe to keep the table alive. Sometimes it means the game is about to end. Either way, tutors change how Magic feels. They make your deck more consistent, they reward planning, and they can also make games drag if you’re searching and shuffling every other turn.
This guide breaks down MTG tutors for all colors. Not just “black has Demonic Tutor.” I mean what each color is actually good at finding, the most common tutor styles in that color, and how to use tutors without turning your deck into the same 3-card script every game.
Quick cheat sheet: what each color tutors best
Here’s the simplest way to remember it:
| Color | Best at tutoring for… | Typical “cost” |
|---|---|---|
| White | Enchantments, artifacts, Equipment, small utility creatures | Often to the top or with restrictions |
| Blue | Instants/sorceries, specific answers, sometimes artifacts | Often to the top or conditional |
| Black | Anything (the classic unconditional tutor) | Life, sacrifice, higher heat from the table |
| Red | “Chaos” tutors, impulsive/temporary access, risky searching | Random discard, time limits, randomness |
| Green | Creatures and lands, toolbox chains, tutoring to battlefield | Creature-focused, board presence matters |
| Colorless / Multicolor | Broad options, but slower or more expensive | Mana-heavy, setup required |
If you’re new to tutors: the biggest power jump isn’t “can I search?” It’s where the card goes (hand vs top vs battlefield) and how narrow the tutor is (any card vs only artifacts, only creatures, etc.).
The 3 destinations that define tutor power
Most tutors fall into one of these buckets:
1) To hand (best “I have it now” tutors)
These are the cleanest and usually the strongest. You search, you put it in your hand, you move on.
2) To the top of your library (setup tutors)
These are often cheaper or instant-speed. They also make you play more honestly because you still have to draw the card.
3) To the battlefield (the big spike)
This is where tutors start feeling unfair. You’re not just finding the card. You’re skipping the mana and timing steps too.
Keep that framework in your head as we go color by color. It makes every tutor easier to judge.
White tutors: enchantments, artifacts, and “small creature” toolboxes
White doesn’t get “search for any card” very often. What it gets instead is precision.
The classic white tutor jobs
- Enchantment tutors (find your engine pieces, prison pieces, value auras)
- Artifact and Equipment tutors (find your key rock, your win piece, your sword)
- Recruiter-style creature tutors (find small creatures that solve problems)
White tutor staples to know
If you’ve played Commander for more than a week, you’ve probably seen these patterns:
- Enlightened Tutor style: cheap, instant-speed, usually puts the card on top. It’s a “plan ahead” tutor.
- Idyllic Tutor / Plea for Guidance style: slower, but gets the job done if your deck is enchantment-heavy.
- Stoneforge Mystic / Open the Armory / Steelshaper’s Gift style: Equipment tutoring that makes Voltron and Equipment toolboxes feel consistent.
- Recruiter of the Guard style: finds small utility creatures (think: removal on a stick, hatebears, combo helpers).
When white tutoring feels strongest
White tutors shine when your deck has a clear card-type identity:
- Enchantress (enchantments)
- Equipment/Voltron (Equipment and artifacts)
- Hatebear and toolbox builds (small creatures)
If your white deck is “goodstuff,” white tutors can feel awkward. But if your deck is built around a category, white tutors feel like extra copies of your best cards.
Blue tutors: spells, answers, and topdeck setup
Blue tutoring usually looks like one of two things:
- Find a spell (instant or sorcery)
- Stack your next draw (top-of-library tutors plus card draw)
Blue tutor staples to know
- Mystical Tutor is the poster child. It’s instant-speed, cheap, and it puts the spell on top.
- Merchant Scroll is narrower, but very consistent in decks that care about blue instants.
- Personal Tutor / Solve the Equation style effects help spell-heavy decks find the exact piece they’re missing.
Why blue tutors play differently
Blue often plays at instant speed. That means a “to the top” tutor is still scary, because blue can:
- tutor on end step,
- untap,
- draw,
- and hold up interaction.
Blue tutors also tend to find interaction more than they find “the win.” In practice, that makes them feel less villainous at casual tables… even when they’re doing the same consistency job. Learn more.
Best blue tutor targets (the ones you actually go get)
- Countermagic (to stop someone else’s tutor line)
- Board control (bounce, wipes in some builds)
- Card draw engines
- Combo pieces in dedicated combo decks
If you’re trying to keep games fun: make sure your blue tutors can grab answers, not only win buttons.
Black tutors: the unconditional kings (and why they get you targeted)
Black is the main tutor color. Full stop. Black gets the cleanest “search your library for a card” effects, and it gets them at efficient rates.
Black’s main tutor styles
- Unconditional to hand (the gold standard)
- Pay life (speed traded for life)
- Sacrifice a creature (turn bodies into any card)
- Graveyard setup (tutor to graveyard, then reanimate or recur)
Black tutor staples to know
- Demonic Tutor: the baseline “any card” tutor.
- Vampiric Tutor / Imperial Seal style: cheap, often top-of-library, usually costs life.
- Diabolic Intent: sacrifice a creature, get any card. In token decks this is basically “two mana Demonic Tutor.”
- Entomb / Buried Alive: not “to hand,” but in graveyard decks they might as well be.
How to not make black tutors miserable to play against
This is the part most lists ignore.
If you run a pile of black tutors and you always fetch the same combo line, your deck turns into a vending machine. Efficient, yes. Also boring.
Try at least one of these:
- Build multiple win lines, so your tutors create choices.
- Use tutors to find interaction early, not only closers.
- Run a few type-restricted tutors so you’re not always grabbing “the best card in the deck.”
Black tutors are strong. That’s fine. Just don’t make every game feel identical.
Red tutors: Gamble, chaos, and “temporary access” searching
Red doesn’t tutor like the other colors. Red is the color that says: “sure, you can have what you want… but you’re going to sweat a little.”
Red tutor styles you’ll see a lot
- Risk tutors (you might lose the card, or pay a weird price)
- Impulse access (exile cards and play them this turn)
- Artifact synergy searching (red loves artifacts in Commander)
Red tutor staples to know
- Gamble: the most famous red tutor because it actually searches for any card… then makes you discard at random. Sometimes you tutor a combo piece and immediately pitch it. Sometimes that’s terrible. Sometimes that’s exactly what you wanted.
- Goblin Engineer / Goblin Welder lines: these aren’t always “search your library,” but they function like tutoring by turning your graveyard into a second hand for artifacts.
- Hoarding Dragon / Imperial Recruiter style effects (in the right builds) can act like narrow tutors that still do real work.
When red tutoring is secretly amazing
Red tutors get better when your deck:
- can use the graveyard well (discard isn’t always a downside),
- plays a heavy artifact package,
- or wants speed more than safety.
If you like high-variance games, red tutors feel great. If you hate randomness, keep your red tutoring light.
Green tutors: creatures, lands, and putting threats straight into play
Green is the other tutoring powerhouse, but it’s focused. Green is about creatures and lands, and green often turns tutoring into board presence.
Green tutor styles
- Creature tutors to hand (find your utility creature)
- Creature tutors to battlefield (skip steps, end games)
- Land tutors (consistency, fixing, and land engines)
- Toolbox chains (sacrifice/upgrade lines)
Green tutor staples to know
- Worldly Tutor: top-of-library creature tutor, cheap, instant-speed.
- Finale of Devastation / Green Sun’s Zenith: flexible creature tutors that can also be finishers.
- Chord of Calling: instant-speed creature tutor that rewards creature-heavy boards.
- Eldritch Evolution / Natural Order: sacrifice-based tutoring that often jumps straight to “oops, big monster.”
Green land tutoring (yes, it matters)
Green also “tutors” lands constantly:
- Crop Rotation
- Sylvan Scrying
- the usual ramp spells that find lands
If your deck relies on a specific land (a utility land, a combo land, a value engine), green makes that plan consistent.
The green tutor danger zone
Green’s “to battlefield” tutoring is where casual tables get salty. Not because it’s illegal or wrong, but because it compresses the game. You go from “setup” to “you’re dead” very fast.
If your playgroup likes longer games, lean into:
- to-hand tutors,
- toolbox creatures,
- and land consistency
before you lean into “find Craterhoof and end it.”
Multicolor and colorless tutors: slow, universal, and often overlooked
If you’re not in black, you can still tutor broadly. It just usually costs more mana or requires setup.
Colorless tutor patterns
- Big-mana artifacts that search for any card (slow but universal)
- Land-based tutors like Inventors’ Fair (artifact-focused, but real)
- Artifacts that “wish” (political tutors like Wishclaw Talisman)
These are great in:
- artifact decks,
- mono-color decks that want redundancy,
- and slower metas where spending 5–6 mana to tutor is acceptable.
Multicolor tutors
Multicolor tutors are often powerful because they can be:
- broader than a single-color tutor,
- or stapled to efficient bodies.
Examples include creature-finders in Selesnya colors, or “find a multicolor card / cast it” style effects in five-color shells.
If your deck is 3–5 colors, multicolor tutors can smooth out consistency without needing to rely entirely on black.
Tutor hate: the cards that punish searching
If your pod is full of tutors, someone will eventually start packing anti-search tech. And honestly, that’s healthy.
Common “tutor hate” cards include:
- Aven Mindcensor (searching gets way worse)
- Opposition Agent (tutors can turn into disasters)
- Stranglehold (shuts off searching in a big way)
- Leonin Arbiter (taxes searching)
- Ashiok, Dream Render (stops searching and hits graveyards)
You don’t need to run these in every deck. But it’s worth knowing they exist, because they change how you should sequence your tutors. Sometimes the correct play is: don’t tutor yet.
How many tutors should you run?
There isn’t one right number. But here’s a clean way to think about it:
Low tutor density (0–2):
You’re using tutors as “break glass in case of emergency.” Great for casual metas where variety matters.
Medium (3–6):
This is the sweet spot for a lot of Commander decks. Enough consistency to function. Not so many that every game feels scripted.
High (7+):
Now your deck is built to find specific lines. This is fine if your pod is fast, or if everyone is doing it. Just know what kind of games you’re signing up for.
Also: every tutor is a time tax. If you’re running 8 tutors plus a full fetch land package, practice fast searching. Your friends will thank you.
The easiest way to build a “fun” tutor package
If you want tutors but you don’t want repetitive games, do this:
- Pick 3–5 targets per tutor category.
Example: if you run artifact tutors, have multiple artifacts worth finding (ramp, value, interaction, win piece). - Include at least a few “answer” targets.
Tutors feel better when they sometimes grab removal or protection instead of always grabbing the same combo piece. - Add redundancy instead of only tutoring.
If your deck needs an effect, run multiple cards that do it. Tutors then become consistency tools, not crutches.
Final thoughts
MTG tutors for all colors aren’t equal, and that’s a good thing. Each color tutors in a way that matches its identity:
- White finds the right kind of permanent.
- Blue finds the right spell at the right time.
- Black finds whatever it wants (and pays for it).
- Red takes risks and makes it exciting.
- Green builds creature and land consistency and can explode into a win.
- Colorless and multicolor options fill gaps when your colors can’t.
If you want one practical takeaway: tutors are best when they create decisions. Build your tutor package so you have real choices, not just one obvious line. Your deck will feel smarter, and your games will feel less samey.