Locations
Tutoring for a specific card has been a part of Magic since its earliest days. In fact, these cards get their name from Alpha's Demonic Tutor.
Tutors are a broad spectrum of cards, from hyper-specific options like Sarkhan's Triumph to completely open-ended ones like Diabolic Tutor. When they're cheap and reliable, they are extremely powerful, as they can reduce the challenge of a shuffled deck or find the perfect answer for a given situation.
Top Ten Most Reliable Tutors in Magic
I'm defining a "reliable tutor" as a card that requires you to:
- Tap mana to cast a spell, and;
- Search your library for a card that meets specific qualifications
This means cards like Tainted Pact and Windswept Heath don't count for our purposes.
Meanwhile, Entomb, is one of the best tutors ever printed, but it's not a universally reliable card in every deck.
For the same reason, Goblin Recruiter doesn't appear here, either. In a Goblin deck, it allows you to stack your deck with a handful of Goblins and reveal a Game Changer like Muxus, Goblin Grandee, but in most decks, it's just a two-mana 1/1 body.
Keeping that in mind, these are the top ten most reliable tutors:
- Survival of the Fittest
- Dina's Guidance
- Stoneforge Mystic
- Beseech the Mirror
- Mystical Tutor
- Grim Tutor
- Mastermind's Acquisition
- Splinter's Technique
- Vampiric Tutor
- Demonic Tutor
10. Survival of the Fittest
Survival of the Fittest is a tutor that lets you pay 
and discard a Creature card to search for another Creature card. The thing that makes Survival such a menace is that it sticks around and can be used multiple times per turn.
Since it was first printed in Exodus, Survival of the Fittest warped Standard, Extended, and Legacy around it as long as it was legal and continues to be an extremely powerful card in Premodern and Commander.
Survival, while banned in Legacy, lives on through two excellent Elves: Fauna Shaman and Formidable Speaker, both of whom are superb cards for graveyard decks or any deck that relies on specific Creatures.
9. Dina's Guidance
Like Survival of the Fittest, this Instant will only ever find Creatures. Luckily, Creatures usually are what you want since they have the most significant impact on the board and Dina's Guidance asks nothing more than 
for this powerful effect.
You could also employ Jarad's Orders and Final Parting if you're looking for similar effects. They're pricier than some of the better tutors, but they're also extremely reliable and can act as double tutors if you're running a graveyard deck.
8. Stoneforge Mystic
Stoneforge Mystic is a slightly more specialized tutor, but one that finds powerful cards, from Umezawa's Jitte to Skullclamp. For 
, you get a 1/2 body that can carry whatever you find or that can cheat out Equipment at Instant speed.
Banned in Standard, a titan of old Modern, and a Commander classic, Stoneforge Mystic was once seen as the White equivalent to Dark Confidant and Snapcaster Mage.
7. Beseech the Mirror
It goes without saying that Beseech the Mirror is most suited for a Black deck. is a huge ask for anything except in a deck with near-perfect mana, which makes this a bit below par for "reliability."
Still, there is no further criteria you must hit with Beseech the Mirror (in contrast to a card like Beseech the Queen) and you can find tons of ways to exploit it.
6. Mystical Tutor
Printed in 1996's Mirage, the tutor semi-cycle (Enlightened, Mystical, Worldly) has seen significant play for decades, with Mystical Tutor pulling ahead of the pack thanks to the power of Blue spells.
It remains banned in Legacy for tutoring up some of the most broken cards in Magic's history.
The cycle of one-mana tutors would continue in 1997's Visions (Vampiric Tutor) and 1998's Urza's Saga (Gamble), both of which are exceptional, although Gamble was deliberately tuned to be less reliable.
These also saw a devolution in 1997's Portal with Personal Tutor, Sylvan Tutor, and Cruel Tutor, which are significantly worse as Sorceries, but remain excellent tutors.
5. Grim Tutor
A rare from the limited-run Starter 1999 set, Grim Tutor was an expensive curiosity until it was reprinted in Core Set 2021.
For those who can afford the three life, it's a perfectly reliable tutor with no further complications, and it remains legal in every format except Standard. Nothing flashy, nothing splashy, just any card from your deck for and three life.
4. Mastermind's Acquisition
Mastermind's Acquisition is a combination of Diabolic Tutor and Wish that was introduced in Rivals of Ixalan to try and help solve some problems.
By 2000, it was clear that the Mirage tutors and Demonic Tutor were much too good for their mana cost. There's a huge difference between taking your turn off to play a tutor like Diabolic Tutor versus tacking a couple of mana onto the card you intend to find and cast with Demonic Tutor.
Unfortunately, Diabolic Tutor was too slow. Grim Tutor is much closer, but the three life cost hurts and will occasionally lock you out of casting it.
It's still rare to be able to cast Mastermind's Acquisition and the card you acquired in a single turn, but you have the full scope of both your deck and your sideboard, so you're safe from Cranial Extraction and Memoricide effects.
3. Splinter's Technique
The newest card on this list, Splinter's Technique is an upgrade to Diabolic Tutor. The mana is easier in a multicolored deck, and you even have a way to turn the Technique into a pseudo-Demonic Tutor.
Returning an unblocked attacker before damage is certainly a cost, but any Creature with an enters ability, from Ultron the Annihilator to Snapcaster Mage, would be an excellent enabler for Splinter's Technique. It may not be inherently Earth-shaking, but it's certainly reliable and has the potential to be splashable.
2. Vampiric Tutor
For and two life, you can get any card from your deck at Instant speed. It gets placed on the top of your library instead of in your hand, but since timing can make it so that doesn't get in your way, particularly when the card you find wins you the game.
An upgrade to the Mirage tutors, Vampiric Tutor became a crucial card in the old Extended Trix combo decks, which exploited the interaction between Donate and Illusions of Grandeur.
The Tutor would find either half of the combo or the Disenchant you needed to blow up the Illusions and your opponent along with it.
That was over twenty years ago, and Vampiric Tutor is still selling packs and winning games (albeit not in Limited). It even showed up as the chase card in Secrets of Strixhaven's The Mystical Archive.
1. Demonic Tutor
Despite being the oldest option, Demonic Tutor is still the best tutor in the game. For , you can fetch any card from your deck and put it in your hand, with no other requirements.
You might see players play Demonic Tutor for their third Land, for a silver bullet one-off like Grafdigger's Cage, or for the other half of a game-winning combo. A Game Changer in Commander, a staple in Eternal formats and Cube, and an exciting reprint in various sets and Secret Lairs, Demonic Tutor is as iconic as it is powerful.
Wrapping Up
Tutors are divisive. Of the 53 cards on the Game Changers list, a full 20% are tutors. Tutors are valued in tournament play for the same reasons they might see use in Commander and casual Magic; they dramatically increase consistency and enable combo finishes.
Demonic Tutor is the clear winner here, although I would be remiss if I didn't showcase the world's least reliable and most chaotic tutor: Unglued's Goblin Tutor. While I'd recommend reaching for anything on our list before Goblin Tutor, there's something to be said for literally rolling the dice.
