All 15 Instant and Sorcery Tutors in Magic Ranked

Solve the Equation | Illustration by Lie Setiawan

Magic would be an awfully easy game if you always had the card you need the turn you need it, don’t you think? I’m firmly within the school of thought that Magic’s variance is a boon, not a curse, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate some consistency now and again.

That’s where tutors come in. If you can run it in your deck, you can probably tutor for it. While black corners the market in general, find-all tutors, most colors can search for something specific, like instants and sorceries.

Let’s find the best tutors for your spellslinging brews!

What Are Instant/Sorcery Tutors in MTG?

Firemind's Foresight | Illustration by Dan Scott

Instant/sorcery tutors are cards that search your library for instants or sorceries and put them in your hand or allow you to cast them. These are generally blue effects (by which I mean there’s one card on the list without a blue color identity) and they’re often attached to instants and sorceries themselves.

I’m being very specific with this list, and only ranking cards that explicitly state instants and sorceries in the text box; it’s okay if they don’t find both card types or they find additional ones, but they must find one or the other at the very least.

#15. Invert // Invent

Invert’s cute, but we’re here for Invent, a tutor that makes up for its high mana cost by finding two spells with one card. It’s not terrible, but not stellar, either; that cost is awfully high and Invert’s a nearly useless alternate mode.

#14. Micromancer

Micromancer only works in specific cases, but those cases are pretty good. There are plenty of very powerful 1-mana cards to grab, like Swords to Plowshares and Lightning Bolt; I’m a big fan of Ephemerate myself. Micromancer can be a neat Cube card.

#13. Firemind’s Foresight

Firemind's Foresight has a prohibitively high cost, but it snags quite a few spells. It helps that it’s an instant; it’s easy to envision a world where you cast this on the end step of an opponent’s turn, then win once you untap with the three spells you tutored. That said, something this expensive is restricted to Commander, and casual Commander at that. It once saw play in Eternal formats as a follow-up to Omniscience, but most decks have evolved beyond this.

#12. Invasion of Arcavios / Invocation of the Founders

The scope of Invasion of Arcavios is pretty cool. Not only do you get the library search, but you can wish for a card or even look through the graveyard if your win attempt was previously countered. This has become the centerpiece of a Standard combo deck, and I imagine Commander players can do a lot with a tutor that becomes a win condition.

#11. Wild Research

Gamble-ing with your tutored card is rarely a good idea, but Wild Research offers something unique in exchange: It’s a repeatable tutor you can use as often as you have mana to spend on it. Five mana for a card you might not keep is rather expensive, but it has uses in the right deck—likely one with high-priority enchantments for the other ability.

#10. Kaho, Minamo Historian

Kaho, Minamo Historian is a rather strange card with a distinct weakness compared to traditional tutors: This is templated such that if Kaho dies, you lose access to all the cards it exiled. But few cards get three tutor targets at once, and you can even reuse Kaho with blink effects if you like. It even color fixes for multicolor decks.

#9. Spellseeker

Perhaps best known for finding Time Walk in Vintage Cube and Canadian Highlander, Spellseeker is one of those situational cards that excels when you have high value, low-cost instants or cards like Brain Freeze, but it does little without them. If you’re just fetching Lightning Bolt and Counterspell and stuff, this is worse than regular ol’ card draw.

#8. Waterlogged Teachings / Inundated Archive

Waterlogged Teachings is pretty pricey as tutors go, but that cost increase comes for the modality of a double-faced card. Pretty much any Dimir EDH deck ought to consider adding Inundated Archive to their mana base. A land that still does something when you draw it on turn 10 is invaluable, especially in a format as grindy as Commander.

#7. Sunforger

Sunforger is pretty unique: Not only is it the only artifact on the list, it’s the only card without blue in its color identity and it casts whatever it finds. Mind you, it does so at a tax of at least 1 mana, but that can be worthwhile.

You’ll occasionally see this paired with Mistveil Plains to loop the same spell over and over, like a Silence to lock an opponent out of the game.

#6. Bring To Light

Don’t be fooled by the mana cost—Bring to Light is a 5-color card, and it comes with the great boon of casting the spell it tutors for. That gives you tons of flexibility, and it more than makes up for the high mana cost. The ability to find and cast the best card for any given situation—be that a board wipe, a draw spell, or something more esoteric—has made this card the centerpiece of multicolor decks in multiple formats.

#5. Solve the Equation

Solve the Equation costs a fair bit, but it does the thing where it finds whatever you need. This is rarely your first choice as a tutor, but it’s an excellent tool in Commander decks that need redundancy or that want a tutor without resorting to a Game Changer.

#4. Mystical Teachings

Mystical Teachings works great in a control shell, and it sees a bit of Pauper play in Tron lists that produce more than enough mana to cast two expensive tutors. Commander decks also meet that criteria, and I can see plenty of use in a card that fetches two instants. You could use it to assemble a combo, or simply to find the perfect removal spells for two turns.

#3. Personal Tutor

Personal Tutor looks an awful lot like Mystical Tutor, but the timing and tutor restrictions make it much weaker than the other. That said, it’s hard to argue with such efficiency; it just doesn’t have the same range of interactions as Mystical Tutor.

#2. Merchant Scroll

Only blue instants sounds restrictive, and it is, but that’s never stopped Merchant Scroll form excelling. You commonly see it in High Tide lists that combine the titular card with Frantic Search for mana production, but it works in any deck with win conditions that meet its criteria—common combo cards to use it with in Commander include Ghostly Flicker and Brain Freeze.

#1. Mystical Tutor

Mystical Tutor can’t be beat here, wholly due to its efficiency and flexibility. Many of the other instant and sorcery tutors cost more and have greater restrictions, but this one’s best in class. It’s technically card disadvantage since you burn a card to fix your next draw step, but that’s a cost worth paying to set up a win.

Best Instant/Sorcery Tutor Payoffs

Tutors are great because they get you what you need, but how do you actually leverage that into a win?

Combos are the easy answer. Combo decks run so much smoother when you have a playset of Merchant Scroll that effectively allows your High Tide deck to have eight copies of High Tide or Frantic Search or whatever else you want to assemble. In addition to making it easier to assemble your combo, casting tutors into additional cards cranks up the storm count tremendously.

Mystical Tutor and Personal Tutor specifically fix the top of your library, which comes in handy with cards like Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge and One with the Multiverse that cast spells for free off the top of your library.

Because tutors find whatever you need, they’re useful parts of toolbox decks that play lots of silver-bullet cards that are great in the right situation but too niche to play duplicates of; Pauper Tron decks do this with Mystical Teachings to find singleton copies of cards like Heritage Reclamation, Weather the Storm, and Breath Weapon.

Wrap Up

Spellseeker | Illustration by Douglas Shuler

While variance is a net positive for Magic, there’s no reason we can’t strive for greater consistency by including instant and sorcery tutors to find silver bullets or assemble game-ending combos.

What’s your favorite instant or sorcery tutor? Do you enjoy tutors in Magic? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!