Input - Tutor effects

[ChristophO]

Hi everyone!

After I read Vazdru's Watch list changes I decided to do three things:
Register for the online league to try out some new decks!
Start a discussion about tutor effects in our format. If you want to give an opinion on specific cards I would like you to use the other thread started by Doks. In this thread I would like to talk about the bigger picture of Highlander Magic with a focus on ALL tutor effects and their impact on game play.

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I would like you to reread the following paragraph from Vazdru's post talking about Demonic Tutor and tutoring in general:

People might think something drastic has happened to the format if one of the untouchables has finally gotten on the list. Quite frankly, we've pondered this move for some time now, and with this watchlist addition want to ignite discussion of the role of the tutors in our format at present, or more specifically, what kind of tutors we should permit, and if we should heed any experiences from other formats.
One well known fact is that the less powerful Imperial Seal is not tolerated in the format largely due to it's availability and price, but Demonic is. From power level standpoint, this is lopsided. We also have evidence that players are willing to splash just for Demonic, but we haven't seen that kind of deckbuilding with other tutors.
With this, we want to challenge the traditional thinking by asking if the format would be better if one of its strongest tutors is dismissed for the benefit of weaker one-mana Mirage instant tutors, or if the tutor policy we're driving is completely wrong.

1) I strongly agree that we should talk about tutors (hence this post!)
2) I disagree calling the mirage tutors weaker than demonic tutor. I believe this argument is used by most as a banning reason for Demonic tutor and I would like to prevent that by starting a discussion here that sheds some light on the power of tutoring effects in general!

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To establish talking about tutors in general we also need to group tutors so we can talk and discuss +/- of the different groups:

Mirage tutors: instant, cmc of 1, card disadvantage
Enlightened
Mystical
Worldy
Vampiric

Portal tutors: like mirage but Sorcery Speed
Sylvan
Personal
Imperial Seal

"From library into play" aka "Tutor + mana cheat card in one":
Tinker
Natural Order
Oath of Druids
Birthing Pod
(Stoneforge Mystic)

Good old Sorcery speed tutors:
Demonic Tutor
Grim Tutor

Creature Tutors:
Imperial Recruiter
Eladamris Call
Green Suns Zenith
Chord of Calling
Protean Hulk
Primal Command

Repeatable tutoring:
Survival of the fittest
Birthing Pod
Oath of Druids
Primeaval Titan

ungrouped/undecided:
Tezz. 1.0
Artifact Transmutation (the UU antiquities one)
Intuition
Gifts Ungiven

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Lets start with some facts about tutoring:

I:
First of all the strength of tutor effects (and to some extent draw and filter effects) heavily depend on the power of the cards that can be searched for in your deck. This is the reason why some cards are (or used to be) restricted in Vintage but not (banned) in Legacy, for example: Burning Wish, Brainstorm, Mystical Tutor, Ponder.

II:
Tutors can be either used for
a) controlish/toolbox style of play
example: mystical for Wrath, Demonic for Land drop, worldy Tutor for citp ability to kill opponents Sword of X and Y
b) find the Haymaker and JUST WIN the game
example:
End of Turn Enlightened Tutor for Moat against the Rb Goblin deck (with 10 life left or some counters for burn etc.)
End of Turn Mystical Tutor for the Missing storm combo piece/High tide engine card/Y. Will
Demonic Tutor for the missing Rector combo piece/Protection before deploying combo

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I believe we all agree that some amount of playable tutoring needs to be present in our format to enable decks to have more consistent deck plans without completely taking away seeing different cards in different games with the same deck. I personally hate Commander because you can cast this one card your deck has been built around (your general) ervery single game. So there certainly is a upper ceiling for tutor effects.
Regarding the tutor groups I believe there are some distinctions to be made. The most powerful cards from that tutor list in our current format would be those that do more than tutoring for a card and offer one or even two other benefits, which are repeatable tutoring or cheating into play without having a proper mana cost to offset the effect. Tooth an Nail is not overpowered I believe.
The normal tutors can be compared by comparing their criteria which would be Mana Cost and color identy (BB vs B1), Card type (Instant or sorcery speed), limitation in tutoring ( land, creature, sorcery, instant, artifact, only certain cmc, only certain color, everything, etc.), information (reveal tutored card) and other drawbacks (life loss, card disadvantage, sacrifice costs).

Regarding the drawbacks:
These only matter if the tutor is used for a toolbox aproach during the game. This of course depends on the actual use in deck and in single games as well. Sometimes you go for the haymaker play, sometimes you need an answer, sometimes the haymaker would be to risky and you swith to a safer toolbox solution. Iy the tutor wins you the game on the spot or puts you into a position where you a very confident you will win no matter what your opponent will do afterwards the drawback will not matter. Especially the card disadvantage drawback of the mirage tutors (card on top instead of into the hand) is very often absolutely neglectable when going for the haymaker play at en of turn. The instant speed also offsets the information gain of having to reveal the tutored card because the opponent will most likely not be able to play differenty because of the received information anyway.

Regarding Mana Cost/Instant speed:
Those two points play both into the same direction I believe. If you tutor a card you want to see that highest impact possible from your tutored card. To achieve this it is important to abuse opportunites for such a play. Diabolic tutor is weaker than Demonic Tutor because I can not cast it and the searched for card in the same turn. This means I have to guess which card will be the best on my next turn when casting Diabolic tutor which greatly weakens the tutors power. Instant speed tutors allow you to wait for the end of opponents turn to evaluate the board position thereby making the tutoring free if you can cast the tutor with spare mana without holding back other spells which happens often with 1 cmc and sometimes with 2cmc tutors.





   

[carte_blanche]

First thing to decide about allowing / banning tutors is: What kind of format one would like to play. HL is a singleton format created for more diverse games and a format that includes more than just a few different playable cards in total. A straight singleton approach would put into question all tutor effects if the goal is to maximize the game diversification.

Starting from this "no tutor" point, what would be the expected metagame in such a format? Well, decks with a highly redundant deck plan would be favored - RDW, Goodstuff, WW,... Aggro and Midrange in general. Control decks would have a hard time since they have to play a certain number of specific answers aside the "metagame hate" to stand a chance against all kind of expected decktypes (in this case: fast aggro, midrange, control). So these decks would be rarely seen, at least from a "chance to win a tournament" point of view.
Combo... forget it - the tutors are missing.

So a format without tutors would completely break up the "triangle" between aggro, control and combo. Doesn't look like so much fun to play...

Therefore, banning all tutor effects would not lead to a very funny format (by the way some of the tutor cards demand skill, therefore the skill level of such a format might be lower - catchword: toolbox).

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Speed of the tutors is an important thing, I suppose. With an instant speed tutor it's easier to go for the game winning spell because you have just to wait until your opponent lets down his defenses for a brief moment to go for the kill. Especially if the tutor is very cheap.

Given that a format provides a certain speed (therefore assuming that one does not have the time to accumulate 10 lands on the board in every game), it's harder to set up a winning strategy with a sorcery speed tutor simply because the opponent would have one more turn to react on a possible tutor target in many cases. That might be the reason why I see Demonic often beeing used to get anwers instead of game winners in non-combo decks.

I believe that the restriction of the tutor targets works in a way similar to sorcery speed (even though that is a more severe "drawback"). They give combo decks the tutor power to search up for gamewinners and allow toolboxes, just like Demonic-ish tutors just that you'll have to build your deck a bit more around these toolboxes.

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My conclusion is: We certainly need tutors but maybe not the "tutor for every card" ones that tempt people to splash a color just for one joker card.


Sidenote:
I'm not completely sure that I'm right saying we would be better off without Demonic... every color has its spoilers. If you're open to play another color you might be looking for things your deck currently can not do and fix it. Demonic is certainly a spoiler for black... are there any more? What I mean: From the color whell point of view the strong tutor effecs without restrictions to card types are typically black. I might be wrong but is there playable one left if Demonic leaves the HL format?
And: Is there a reason left to play black at all aside playing either Reanimator or Discard? I admit that I'm not completely up to date, but I got the feeling that one sees black rarely in decks except as a splash color. Haven't seen decks like MBC ore mono black aggro for centuries...

I would very much appreciate input on the color use in current deck lists and the "Any spoilers in black except the tutor?" question - but maybe not in this thread.

[haju]

As far as I can see, there is neither a problem with control nor with combo decks right now. Both decks would be weakened by the loss of Demonic Tutor, while the GoodStuff decks would be hardly affected. I totally agree with your "triangle", but then you are a little contradictory. On the one hand you say

Control decks would have a hard time since they have to play a certain number of specific answers aside the "metagame hate" to stand a chance against all kind of expected decktypes

which is absolutely right. On the other handy you say

My conclusion is: We certainly need tutors but maybe not the "tutor for every card" ones that tempt people to splash a color just for one joker card.

Tutors are part of the game. If you start banning tutors just because they can search cards then you'll have to ban the fetchlands too, because the can search lands. After that you'd have to ban cards with tutor effects like Fauna Shaman and Tezzeret the Seeker. As you can see there would be no end to this list.

In my opinion tutor effects are very healthy for this game, because they give you some kind of control over the game. If I play a tutor (it doesn't matter whether it has a condition or not) I must choose the best target in this situation. If I fail I may lose, if I succeed I may win the game. This is way better than praying and hoping for the right topdeck. I totally agree that there are tutor-like effects which are too strong (Birthing Pod, Tinker and Stoneforge Mystic, ...) but that's mostly because they are able to cheat things into play.

My conclusion is: Let the tutors stay in the format as they allow more interactions. After all we play to win and in the end tutors are just increasing the likelihood to draw a card. Can a tutor be to strong just because he searches for a card (one would have to evaluate the combination of Mystical Tutor and Miracle) or is the card searched for too strong. Tutor-like effects on the other hand can be too strong by themselves.

[carte_blanche]

@haju: The first quote was in my theoretical scenario of a format without tutors just to point out where that would lead to. The second quote was about tutors in general. So comparing them directly with each other is not the way I intended it (and wrote it btw). The latter one is more some kind of conclusion of the first part (hypothetical no-tutor format) and what I wrote about drawback on tutors.
In general, we agree that the format needs a certain portion of tutors.

But you made another interesting point: Indeed, I think that the fetchlands are kind of a problem in a format with a dualland manabase because they are tutors with a negligible drawback that enable whole decks (very strong ones). Fetchlands encourage players to play cards that are bad under "normal" circumstances: Blood Moon, Magus of the Moon, Back to Basics. Without fetchlands there would not be so many multicolor decks that make nonbasic hate worth playing.

Maybe my post wasn't clear enough about this: I think that tutors need some kind of drawback... if the drawback is not large enough, one should consider banning it (like Vampiric Tutor). If that is valid for Demonic... the council has to decide. I'm not so sure about this card. On one hand I like it to find anwers in control decks on the other hand: if people splash black just because of a single card that is not part of their game plan, one should really keep an eye on that particular card.

But that's exactly the point ChristophO wanted to discuss: Where is the red line for tutoring power? And Demonic is close to it...