Live Play Data

Demonic Tutor

· Sorcery · Commander Masters (CMM)

16%

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

1755

Decks Running

927

Median Cast Turn

5.0

Drawn → Played

77%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Demonic Tutor appears in 16% of tracked multiplayer Commander decks on Playgroup Live, and 77% of drawn copies were cast before the game ended, with a median first-cast turn of 5.0.

Demonic Tutor sits in 16% of the 5958 distinct Commander decks that have played a tracked game on Playgroup Live. Its black color identity limits which decks can run it, making that figure all the more striking among eligible builds.

The card is a 2-mana sorcery with a straightforward effect: search your library for any card and put it in your hand. Its power is pure flexibility. Any game plan becomes more consistent when you can fetch the exact piece you need. That universality is visible in how spread the data is: 589 unique players have brought it to a tracked game, and no single player accounts for more than a small slice of those instances, which gives the numbers reasonable breadth for a dataset of this size.

Demonic Tutor is banned in Legacy and Historic, restricted to one copy in Vintage and Timeless, and banned in The Lord of the Rings format. Commander remains the primary home where it is fully legal and unrestricted, cementing its status as a format cornerstone for black decks.

At a glance

16% of tracked Commander decks include Demonic Tutor
77% of drawn copies were cast before the game ended
T5.0 median first-cast turn across multiplayer games
23% draw rate, consistent with a singleton in a 100-card deck
589 unique players have brought it to a tracked game, indicating broad spread

First-cast turn

n=314

14%

16%

13%

33%

T6-9

11%

T10+

Median 5.0 P25 3 · P75 7 · max 19

On curve 18% (44 / 314 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 42%

The "good card" funnel

1759 brought · 589 players

Brought to game

1759

Ever drawn

410

Reached battlefield

314

Still on board at game end

77%

Of 1759 Demonic Tutors brought to tracked games, 410 were drawn, and 314 of those resolved on the stack, reflecting the card's strong but not universal path from deck to hand to cast.

≥ +0.4pp

Players who cast this card win 30% of the time (n=299) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=1160).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 20% (n=91) — about the same as leaving it in the library. Those players survived long enough to draw it, so the gap above is about the card resolving, not just about surviving.

Observed gap +5.5pp; 95% confidence interval +0.4pp to +10.7pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

471 instances

2.8%

Library

1.3%

Battlefield

66.9%

Graveyard

12.5%

Exile

Almost all Demonic Tutors end the game in the graveyard after resolving, which is exactly correct for a sorcery: it resolves, fetches a card, and moves to the graveyard. The handful remaining in hand or exile reflect games that ended before the spell could be cast.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 The Ur-Dragon 28 decks
2 Kaalia of the Vast 22 decks
3 Edgar Markov 18 decks
4 Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge 14 decks
5 Oloro, Ageless Ascetic 14 decks
6 Marrow-Gnawer 11 decks
7 Atraxa, Praetors' Voice 10 decks
8 Kenrith, the Returned King 10 decks
9 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse 10 decks
10 Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls 10 decks

The top-commanders chart is spread across a wide range of color identities and strategies, from mono-black builds to five-color goodstuff decks, confirming that Demonic Tutor functions as a format-generic inclusion rather than a synergy-specific pick.

Frequently Asked

How often is Demonic Tutor drawn in a Commander game?

Across 1347 tracked multiplayer games where Demonic Tutor was in a deck, it was drawn 23% of the time. That is a normal draw rate for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of the 410 copies that reached a player's hand, 77% were cast before the game concluded.

What turn does Demonic Tutor usually get cast?

The median first-cast turn in multiplayer games is 5.0. The distribution skews early: a cluster of casts lands on turns 2-3, with a long tail extending to turn 14 in extreme cases. The interquartile range runs from turn 3 to turn 7, meaning half of all casts happen within that window. Players rarely hold it once they draw it, but mid-to-late draws naturally resolve later in the game.

How quickly do players cast Demonic Tutor after drawing it?

Of the observed drawn-and-cast instances, the median delay between drawing the card and casting it is 1 turn. The same-turn cast rate is 42%, meaning roughly one in three players who draw it cast it on that same turn. The rest typically wait one turn before firing it off. A card fetch this flexible rewards finding the right moment rather than slamming it the instant it's drawn.

Does casting Demonic Tutor correlate with winning?

In 299 tracked participations where Demonic Tutor reached the stack, the caster's normalized win rate was 30%. Participations where the card stayed in the library showed a win rate of 25%. The gap is a directional early signal, but both the cast sample and the standard error on the delta are large enough that we treat this as consistent with the card being strong rather than a statistically conclusive proof. More tracked games will sharpen the picture.

Is Demonic Tutor banned anywhere relevant to Commander players?

Yes. Demonic Tutor is banned in Legacy, banned in Historic, and banned in the The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth Commander variant (tlr). It is restricted to one copy in Vintage and Timeless. In 1v1 Duel Commander it is legal. In standard multiplayer Commander it is fully legal and unrestricted, which is why it consistently appears in a significant share of tracked black decks.

Which commanders most often run Demonic Tutor on Playgroup Live?

The Ur-Dragon leads the top-commanders list with 927 total decks including the card across the dataset. The commander spread is wide: five-color and multicolor commanders dominate the top slots, reflecting that any black-inclusive commander deck is a candidate. The top ten commanders cover color identities from mono-black to five-color, consistent with Demonic Tutor's role as a format-generic tutor rather than a synergy piece for any one strategy.