The Seduction Of One More Tutor

There’s a moment every Commander player knows. You’re staring at a 98-card list, feeling pretty good, when a quiet voice whispers: “You know what this deck needs? One more tutor.”

Not a flashy change. Not a full rebuild. Just one more way to find the thing you already want to do. Clean. Efficient. Responsible, even.

That voice is lying to you.

“Just one more tutor” is how decks slowly lose texture, tables lose patience, and games collapse into the same three turns wearing different sleeves.

Why Tutors Feel So Good

Tutors scratch a very specific itch. They promise control in a format that’s messy by design. Variance feels risky. Tutors feel safe.

When you add a tutor, you’re not thinking “this will make my games repetitive.” You’re thinking “this will reduce non-games.” You want fewer hands that do nothing. Fewer draws that miss. Fewer moments where you sit there watching someone else pop off while you flood out like a cautionary tale.

Totally reasonable.

The problem is that tutors don’t just reduce bad games. They reduce interesting ones too.

Consistency Is Addictive

Consistency is the most dangerous drug in Commander because it works immediately.

You add Demonic Tutor. Your deck feels smoother. You add Vampiric Tutor. Now your deck feels reliable. Add one more, maybe something conditional, maybe something slower. Suddenly, you’re never really surprised by your own draws.

At first, this feels like growth. Like maturity. Like you’ve “solved” your deck.

What you’ve actually done is flatten it.

The Diminishing Returns Curve

The first tutor you add does a lot of work. It gives your deck direction. It helps you find your key piece when you actually need it.

The second tutor still pulls its weight.

The third tutor? That’s where the returns start shrinking.

By the time you’re on your fifth or sixth tutor, you’re no longer increasing your deck’s effectiveness in proportion to the slot you’re spending. You’re just increasing the probability that every game follows the same script.

Your win rate might tick up a little. Your table’s enjoyment drops a lot.

When Decks Start Playing Themselves

A deck with too many tutors stops asking questions.

Early turns become predictable. Midgame decisions shrink. Late-game tension evaporates. You aren’t navigating a board state as much as you’re executing a checklist.

Draw tutor.
Find piece.
Protect piece.
Win or get stopped.
Shuffle up.

If that sounds harsh, it’s because you’ve probably been on both sides of it.

You’ve piloted a deck where you could almost autopilot your lines. You’ve also sat across from someone doing the same thing, watching them search their library for the card you already knew they were getting.

That’s not interaction. That’s a rehearsal.

The Social Cost Nobody Talks About

Commander is not played in a vacuum. It’s played in living rooms, game stores, and basements where people have expectations that go beyond technical play.

Heavy tutor density sends a signal. It tells the table: “I am here to do my thing, and your job is to stop me.”

Sometimes that’s fine. Sometimes that’s even fun. But when every deck at the table adopts that posture, politics die. Bluffing disappears. Weird alliances never form. The game turns into a race with occasional interruptions.

If you’ve noticed that people are quicker to point removal at you, quicker to team up, or quicker to sigh when you untap, your tutor package might be part of the reason.

Consistency Versus Identity

This is where things get sneaky.

Most players don’t add tutors because they want to combo faster. They add tutors because they want their deck to feel like itself more often.

Ironically, too many tutors erase identity.

When every game ends with the same card or the same line, your commander stops mattering as much. Your theme fades. Your “cool interactions” become trivia instead of experiences.

This is exactly the drift I talked about in Commander Deck Identity Drift. Over time, decks slide toward generic efficiency, not because players want that, but because tutors quietly pull them there.

Redundancy Is Not The Same As Resilience

A common defense of tutors is resilience. “I need tutors so I don’t fold to removal.”

That logic sounds airtight until you zoom out.

Tutors don’t make you resilient. They make you dependent.

If your deck relies on finding the same handful of pieces every game, then removal doesn’t hurt less. It hurts more. You’re just better at rebuilding the same fragile structure over and over.

True resilience comes from multiple angles of play. From threats that matter in different contexts. From value engines that don’t care which specific card you draw.

If this idea feels uncomfortable, it’s probably because you’ve confused redundancy with safety. I dug into that trap more deeply in The False Security Of Redundancy In Commander, and it applies perfectly here.

Tutors Change How You Mulligan

This part gets overlooked, but it matters.

When your deck is full of tutors, you start keeping hands you shouldn’t. Sketchy mana? It’s fine, you’ll tutor. Missing action? No problem, you’ll tutor. Awkward curve? Whatever, you’ll tutor.

You’re not actually making better mulligan decisions. You’re deferring them.

This creates a subtle skill atrophy. You stop evaluating hands based on what they do and start evaluating them based on what they could eventually find. That’s how decks start feeling samey even before the first draw step.

If mulligans feel like a lost art in your playgroup, it might be because tutors have quietly replaced decision-making with hope.

Why Tutors Feel Worse As Power Levels Drop

In high-power environments, everyone expects tutors. They’re part of the social contract. You sign up for that ecosystem knowingly.

At mid-power and casual tables, tutors hit differently.

They compress games without the counterbalance of equally efficient interaction. They make explosive starts feel unfair rather than impressive. They punish players who built for variance and storytelling rather than precision.

That mismatch is where salt lives.

You’re not wrong for running tutors. You’re just not always reading the room.

The Trap Of “It’s Just One”

The real danger isn’t a deck with six tutors. It’s the mindset that gets you there.

Each tutor feels defensible in isolation. Each one solves a specific problem. Each one comes with a reasonable explanation.

By the time you realize your deck is over-tuned, you’re already attached to the consistency. Cutting tutors feels like self-sabotage. Like going backward.

That’s how the trap closes.

What To Do Instead

This isn’t an anti-tutor manifesto. It’s a plea for restraint.

Here are a few ways to escape the consistency addiction without turning your deck into chaos:

Use Slower Tutors

Tutors that cost more mana, reveal the card, or put it on top instead of directly into hand preserve tension. They still help, but they don’t erase uncertainty.

Tutor For Categories, Not Specific Cards

Build your deck so that a tutor can find several reasonable options instead of one obvious choice. If every tutor always grabs the same card, that’s a design problem, not a luck problem.

Replace Some Tutors With Card Draw

Card draw keeps games dynamic. It rewards good sequencing. It creates forks instead of funnels. If you’re choosing between another tutor and another draw engine, the draw engine will usually make better games.

Accept Some Non-Games

This is the hardest part. Variance is not a flaw in Commander. It’s a feature.

Yes, you’ll occasionally lose because you didn’t find the thing. You’ll also win games you had no business winning because your deck surprised you.

Those are the games people remember.

The Irony Of Winning Less To Win More

Cutting tutors often lowers your win rate slightly.

It also increases your invitation rate.

You get better games. More interaction. More table talk. More moments where someone does something absurd and everyone laughs instead of immediately reaching for removal.

If you’re optimizing for fun, not spreadsheets, that trade is worth it.

Ask The Question That Actually Matters

Next time you’re tweaking a list, don’t ask “what’s the best tutor here?”

Ask “what happens if I don’t draw this?”

If the answer is “nothing interesting,” that slot might be better spent on something that creates play instead of certainty.

Commander doesn’t need more perfect decks.

It needs more decks that leave room for the unexpected.