The 36 Best Black Tutors in Magic Ranked

Last updated on March 14, 2026

Booster Tutor | Illustration by Heather Hudson

Tutors, ramp, dorks, whatever the name, Magic has certainly created some interesting nicknames for various kinds of cards and effects. Some are very intuitive and to the point, others… not so much.

One of the most impactful and recognizable of these, though, are tutors. Tutors are cards that find other cards, whether they’re specific or generalized, and act as a way to add some much-needed consistency to combo or control decks. Today, I go over the best tutors in black, which is where the name comes from!

Let’s jump in!

What Is a Tutor in Magic?

Diabolic Tutor | Illustration by Mark Winters

A tutor is a spell or ability, typically an instant or sorcery, which allows you to search through your library for a card—or specific type of card—and place it in a different zone, usually your hand or on top of your library. It’s a way for decks to consistently find certain cards, most often combo decks, which means that the cheaper and more efficiently a card can perform these actions, the stronger it is as a tutor.

Tutors have been around for some time. They get their naming scheme from the namesake card Demonic Tutor, printed in Alpha. For just two mana, the card searches your library for any one card at sorcery speed and places it directly into your hand. To this day, Demonic is one of the best tutors in the game and a deserving namesake for the mechanic overall.

I also omit spells that only search an opponent's library, like Opposition Agent and Praetor's Grasp. These can be fine or even great in their own right, but I assume you're here to discover ways to search your own library, plus plundering an opposing deck won't always give you something that synergizes with your own gameplan.

#36. Brainspoil

Not off to too strong of a start, but Brainspoil is stronger than it looks. Yeah, it’s a 5-mana removal spell that’s nearly unplayable, but the 3-mana transmute ability comes in clutch. It allows for you to tutor up 5-mana spells for just 3 mana, which could be an incredible added level of consistency depending on what your combo pieces are. This serves as a sort of stand-in for all transmute spells in black.

#35. Lo and Li, Twin Tutors

Lo and Li, Twin Tutors have very limited roles, but they certainly work for the decks with good lessons and noble payoffs.

#34. Shadowborn Apostle

We all know and love Shadowborn Apostle, and while it requires several copies of itself to tutor a demon, it’s one of the most classic creature cards out there and deserved some recognition.

#33. Mausoleum Secrets

Next up is Mausoleum Secrets, a 2-mana instant that allows you to search up a black card with a mana value equal to or greater than the number of creatures in your graveyard. It’s kind of niche, I’ll admit it, but if you’re going for something in the 1-to-3 mana value category, this is very doable.

#32. Demonic Collusion

While the art may be one of the more terrifying and gruesome ones, Demonic Collusion isn’t the best tutor out there. It’s the classic 5 mana for a generic tutor, a decent deal, with a small upside of having buyback for two cards.

I’m not sure how I feel about a three-for-one that doesn’t even account for me paying 5 mana, but a generic 5-mana tutor isn’t anything to be upset about, either.

#31. Burning-Rune Demon

The little brother to Razaketh, the Foulblooded (mechanically, not by lore), Burning-Rune Demon comes in surprisingly low on today’s rankings. It’s a 6/6 for 6, and it lets you find two other cards from your deck—not named Burning-Rune Demon—and put one, which and opponent chooses, into your hand and the other in your graveyard.

Since we need this card to work in every circumstance, it’s basically reserved for decks with high levels of redundancy, which is French for reanimation decks.

#30. Razaketh, the Foulblooded

On its own, Razaketh, the Foulblooded is an overweight battlecruiser. It can be awkward to cast, requires three black pips, and is dead to any counterspell. If you manage to reanimate it, or possibly bring it into play through a Birthing Pod line, you’re going to win almost every time.

Its tutor is instant speed for no mana, which means in a format like Commander, there’s basically no stopping you from finding your cards, assuming you can pay the life. There are cards like Sudden Edict, but as you hold priority after it resolves you can stack activations without giving your opponents a chance to edict you.

#29. Buried Alive

Buried Alive is Entomb on steroids (and sorcery speed). For 3 mana, it dumps three creatures into your graveyard. There isn’t too much reason to opt for this over a cheaper version, though. Putting multiples in your graveyard lets you get blown out by total graveyard hate, like on Tormod's Crypt, so it’s not too worth it. If you’re in game one, though, and can set yourself up to use the multiple Reanimate spells in your hand through their two Counterspells, then go for it.

#28. Rhystic Tutor

Rhystic Tutor—no, not Rhystic Study—is a 3-mana generic tutor at sorcery speed. Seems great, right? Well, you would be right if it didn’t have a free counter to itself built in, which is any player paying mana. What sucks here is that this is clearly a Commander-only card, in that it’s dead in the water in any other format but is significantly worse. If you can time it right, with all players either being forced to use their mana on something else or being tapped out, it’s pretty good!

#27. Scheming Symmetry

As the name suggests, you need to be up to something to make good use of Scheming Symmetry. It sounds like a fun group hug card to gain political favor with an opponent, but that's not nearly nefarious enough for a black tutor. Instead, try combining it with mill effects to blow away the card the opponent just tutored. Or, cast it with a smile on your face, then immediately slam Gonti, Lord of Luxury and take a peek at what they just set on top. Either way, you still get to set up your next draw.

#26. Case of the Stashed Skeleton

There's a lot going on with Case of the Stashed Skeleton for someone who didn't engage with Murders at Karlov Manor much. This is a case enchantment, which means you need to fulfill the second condition of controlling no skeletons, make it to your end step to solve the case, then unlock access to the final part during your next turn. What's a suspected creature you ask? Don't worry, you're trying to kill that skeleton off anyway!

#25. Hour of Victory

Hour of Victory needs the help of five total mana and gives you a simple 2/2 while you accelerate to max speed. I like this break up of the cost, but the overall input is lacking compared to black's other library searchers.

#24. The Cruelty of Gix

The Cruelty of Gix from Dominaria United represents a lot of power for a single card. It’s one of the first sagas with read ahead—a mechanic that allows the caster to choose what chapter it enters the battlefield on—meaning it can act as a hand disruption spell, a generic tutor, or a reanimation spell, or all three if you're patient. It's options and versatility like that which make good cards great, and I think it’s worth keeping an eye on.

#23. Unmarked Grave

Unmarked Grave is a 2-mana version of Entomb with a major downside: It can’t tutor for legendary cards, period. That knocks out Griselbrand—the most common reanimation target—as well as some other combo pieces. This is a significant downside, hence the lower ranking, but it still tutors for the most effective creatures you’d want to reanimate, like one of the best ETB effects on black cards: Archon of Cruelty.

#22. Illicit Shipment

Illicit Shipment is a 5-mana tutor, like many others we've looked at already, but with a catch. Printed in Streets of New Capenna, this one has casualty 3. That means, assuming you have a creature with power 3 or greater to sacrifice, you can pay 5 mana to tutor up two cards as opposed to one. That comes out to 2.5 mana per card, without accounting for the mana you spent on the sacrificed creature, which is pretty decent in the grand scheme of things.

#21. Coveted Prize

Coveted Prize is a 5-mana sorcery that tutors up a card from your library in addition to letting you cast a spell with mana value of 4 or less if you have a full party. Interestingly, this spell costs less for each creature in your party, which gives it a high top-end potential if you’re a hardline party deck. I think this is interesting design-wise and is probably one of the best cards in an Orzhov ()  party/venture deck. Outside of that, though, it’s pretty mediocre.

#20. Razaketh’s Rite

Next up is Razaketh's Rite. This is your standard 5-mana tutor, with a slight upside of cycling for . That cycling is pretty valuable, as this card is totally dead in many situations, especially at 5 mana in the sorcery-speed category. Cycling can be done at instant speed, and it's nearly as cheap as possible to do so.

#19. Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire

How would you feel about a creature that said: “If this attacks, cast a free copy of Vampiric Tutor?” That's not too far off from what Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire‘s actual boast ability says. It costs mana, but doesn't cost life, and if you're feeling generous you could even target a different player.

#18. Demonic Counsel

A demonic tutor that literally becomes Demonic Tutor once you have delirium is both clever and actually fairly good. Obviously you'll want a few demons chained up in the deck in case you can't get the requisite four card types in the graveyard, but delirium's usually active at some point, after which you've got an unfettered 2-mana tutor at your disposal.

#17. Cruel Tutor

Cruel Tutor is one of the older and weaker tutors out there, but it still holds up. To be short, it’s Imperial Seal at 3 mana. It’s not that good, but it puts any card onto the top of your deck, and that’s what we’re after, right?

#16. Insatiable Avarice

Insatiable Avarice caught players' attention as soon as Outlaws of Thunder Junction came out. Commander players saw it as an expensive Vampiric Tutor + Ancient Stirrings hybrid, while Constructed players took a swing at combining the topdeck manipulation with Caustic Bronco and Shadow of Mortality. Either way, spree gives this enough modality to warrant inclusion in decks across multiple formats.

#15. Sidisi, Undead Vizier

While it isn’t the most efficient way to tutor up cards in black, Sidisi, Undead Vizier is one of the additional ways mono-black decks can find consistency for combos. It’s a flat-out generic tutor for 5 mana, and a lot of its value comes from the fact that it can be reanimated for additional value later on. Those same mono-black decks which desire such consistency will already have reanimation options built in, which makes this especially potent in those decks. Outside of those, it’s just a generic 5-mana tutor, nothing too special.

#14. Entomb

Entomb, while not exactly a tutor, is still one of the greatest tutor-esque cards thanks to the graveyard synergies black has access to. In reanimation decks, for example, this is a 1-mana spell to set yourself up perfectly for any reanimation spell in your hand. It’s incredibly efficient, cheap, easy to cast, and leaves nothing to be desired.

#13. Dark Petition

Dark Petition is a 5-mana Demonic Tutor, which doesn’t sound good, but has a unique upside to try and balance it out. If you have more than two instants or sorceries in your graveyard when this resolves, you get added to your mana pool, making this essentially a Demonic Tutor.

Sure, the 5-mana cost and reward make this exceptionally clunky and awkward to cast or benefit from in a multicolored deck, but it’s still decent in mono-black decks going into the endgame and is worth going over.

#12. Wishclaw Talisman

Wishclaw Talisman is one of the more interesting permanent tutors out there. This black artifact allows you to tutor up at the cost of and a wish counter, of which there are three, but your opponent gains control of it next. In a 1v1 game, you’ll get two uses out of this compared to your opponent’s one, but you’re still paying the to cast it.

If you can manage to win or destroy the Talisman after using it the first time, it’s a decent sorcery-speed tutor. Outside of that, I don’t particularly like it. You have to gamble with what your opponent can come up with for their 1-mana Demonic Tutor, and that’s just a little too frightening for me.

#11. Profane Tutor

Well, suspend has come to tutors, and, I’m not all that impressed with Profane Tutor. Tutors are meant to be ways to grab the right tool for the job unless you’re an obvious combo deck, and suspend kind of takes the wind out of your sails. There isn’t much sense in tutoring up a perfect removal spell if you were killed before you could take the second time counter off this card.

Maybe I’m a bit too harsh, though. This is still a small price to pay for a Demonic Tutor-effect, and in slower decks that will always be searching for one of two or three cards, I’d say it’s just okay.

#10. Diabolic Tutor

Next in line is Diabolic Tutor. This one has a relatively expensive cost at 4 mana, which is more than most other tutors sans Dark Petition. The effect, however, is certainly in line with what you’re paying.

It places a card directly into your hand at sorcery speed. Quite literally just Demonic Tutor’s text, except it’s uncommon. Four mana is still a relatively important downside to take into account, though. Sorcery speed isn’t always too much of a problem, but it means that both casting this card and playing what you tutored up is going to be much more difficult and tedious. The great thing about Demonic Tutor is just how cheap it is, and it makes playing whatever you’re searching so desperately for much, much easier.

Overall, though, this offers some nice consistency in singleton formats, and it shouldn’t ever be overlooked or underestimated.

#9. Hoarding Broodlord

Assuming you can properly convoke this dragon with a decent number of creatures, Hoarding Broodlord is a universal tutor on a massive flying stick, and it even gives a blanketed convoke ability to anything you could cast from exile (including the card you just tutored). There used to be a time when Rune-Scarred Demon would make a list like this, but just run this dragon instead and you'll be happy enough.

#8. Beseech the Mirror

Beseech the Mirror is basically just an improved version of Diabolic Tutor. Putting the card into play for the price of paying the bargain is super effective. It's often losing nothing for being super mana-efficient, and it means this card just becomes a second copy of any card in your deck with a mana value of 4 or less.

#7. Diabolic Intent

I still see Diabolic Intent as a relatively underplayed and underrated tutor. It does everything that Demonic Tutor does, and the only additional cost/downside is that you must sacrifice a creature.

Think, for a moment, how many decks you’ve played against in Commander that consider sacrificing a creature as a legitimate downside? Quite frankly, I can’t think of many. The only real “downside” to this card is that you may not always have a creature to sacrifice or one that you’re okay losing at that particular moment.

#6. Grim Tutor

Next up is Grim Tutor! This is another one of those cards which drastically dropped in price following a large reprint. This 3-mana sorcery-speed tutor searches up any card and places it directly into your hand for the cost of just 3 life.

This version of a tutor is obviously much weaker than what’s to come, but it’s yet another way to place a chosen card directly into your hand—an already rare effect—which adds some much-desired consistency to black EDH combo decks.

#5. Doomsday

It feels a little dubious to call Doomsday a tutor, since instead of searching for a card or two it just lets you stack your library as you see fit, though I suppose it checks off all the boxes for what qualifies as a tutor. Think of it like five Vampiric Tutors stapled together… and it exiles everything else. Entire livelihoods have been made off of this card, which is fitting of a card with the literal name Doomsday. Can you imagine if that card sucked?

#4. Splinter's Technique

Splinter's Technique is in contention for the top spot because it can work during combat and sneak makes it another copy of Demonic Tutor. Even if you didn't pull off an unblocked creature, this is acceptable as a Diabolic Tutor.

#3. Imperial Seal

Imperial Seal is, in all honesty, not that great of a card, but it’s better than anything we’ve seen before. It tutors up any card and puts it on top of your library for 2 life, and costs just . If you’re familiar with Vampiric Tutor, you’ll realize that this is just a sorcery-speed version of Vampiric.

The whole good part about Vampiric Tutor is that it can be cast during your opponent’s turn, effectively having it put the card into your hand since you’ll draw it on your turn. This takes that out of the equation but nonetheless is still strong as a 1-mana generic tutor. At one point, this card was hovering around $700 due to limited printing, whereas it now exists within the realm or mortals.

#2. Vampiric Tutor

In a very close second, we’ve got Vampiric Tutor. This one tutors any card from your library and puts it on top after you’ve shuffled, as opposed to putting it directly into your hand. That’s a pretty serious downside but considering this card costs only and is at instant speed, it’s certainly a strong runner-up and among the best black instants in the game. Instant speed allows you to possibly hold up other interactions while doing this on your opponent’s end step, effectively costing you only a single draw step to put the card into your hand.

That all said, the downside of having to use up a draw step or have an additional card as a cantrip really holds this card back. The 2 life isn’t anything to get upset about, though.

#1. Demonic Tutor

In first place, we have Demonic Tutor. This black sorcery is as good as it comes as far as tutors go. It’s cheap, it puts the card directly into your hand, and it doesn’t force you to reveal what card you chose to your opponent since it’s a general tutor.

If you’re still struggling to understand just how powerful this card is, imagine how many times you’ve been in a situation where you’d outright win the game if you just had the one specific card? This card acts as that card, with an extra tacked onto it. See what I mean?

#0. Booster Tutor

Finally, to the obvious winner: Booster Tutor. There isn’t anything quite like opening a fresh pack of cards and grabbing a dud bulk rare to help you in your fight against your unworthy opponent. For 1 black and at instant speed, no less!

In all honesty, I don’t know how good this would actually be. In Limited, I could see this being extraordinarily strong since you can choose what pack to open. I don’t think you’d mind losing if you got to open an old pack of Alpha and open up $10,000 worth of cards!

Wrap Up

Entomb | Illustration by Seb Mckinnon

That wraps up today’s look at what black has to offer when it comes to strong tutor spells! This is surely black’s strongest area of expertise, alongside removal, and is how the color truly shines in Magic.

What did you think of my rankings? Are there any obvious omissions or adjustments you’d make yourself? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below or over in the official Draftsim Discord.

Until next time, stay safe, and stay healthy!