Live Play Data

Enlightened Tutor

· Instant · Dominaria Remastered (DMR)

14%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

2223

Decks Running

1091

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

71%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Enlightened Tutor sits in 14% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live, and 71% of drawn copies reach a cast before the game ends, with a median first-cast turn of 5.

Enlightened Tutor appears in 14% of the 8036 distinct Commander decks that have played a tracked game on Playgroup Live, covering 1091 total decklists across 1893 multiplayer games.

As a 1-mana instant that tops the library rather than putting a card directly into hand, Enlightened Tutor is a setup piece rather than an immediate payoff. 71% of drawn copies are cast before the game ends, and the median first-cast turn lands at 5. The card resolves to the graveyard, so stickiness is not a relevant metric here. What matters is timing: a mode of turn 1 in the cast distribution confirms that players holding it in their opening hand fire it as early as possible to set up a key artifact or enchantment for the following turn.

The commander spread is broad. 709 distinct players have brought Enlightened Tutor to a tracked game, and no single player accounts for more than 23% of instances, which gives the dataset reasonable diversity. The top commanders skew white-heavy and enchantment-adjacent, consistent with the card's search restriction. Its restriction to white also caps the raw inclusion ceiling compared to colorless staples, making 14% a strong figure for a mono-white-identity card.

At a glance

14% of tracked Commander decks include Enlightened Tutor
71% of drawn copies are cast before the game ends
T5 median first-cast turn across all observed casts
23% draw rate, consistent with a singleton in a 100-card deck
709 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=363

17%

12%

10%

11%

10%

33%

T6-9

T10+

Median 5 P25 2 · P75 7 · max 17

On curve 17% (60 / 363 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 47%

The "good card" funnel

2223 brought · 709 players

Brought to game

2223

Ever drawn

508

Reached battlefield

363

Still on board at game end

71%

Of 2223 copies brought to games, 508 were drawn, 363 of those were cast, and nearly all resolved immediately to the graveyard as intended, with the searched card waiting on top of the library for the following turn.

≥ +2.0pp

Players who cast this card win 33% of the time (n=324) , vs 26% when it never left the library (n=1432).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 27% (n=124) — 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 +7.1pp; 95% confidence interval +2.0pp to +12.2pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

560 instances

3.8%

Library

2.5%

Battlefield

64.6%

Graveyard

10.0%

Exile

Enlightened Tutor resolves to the graveyard by design, so the dominant final zone across observed instances is the graveyard. The small number of copies finishing in the library mostly reflect participations where the card was never drawn from the top after a late-game tutor.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Giada, Font of Hope 23 decks
2 Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer 21 decks
3 Y'shtola, Night's Blessed 19 decks
4 Oloro, Ageless Ascetic 18 decks
5 Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER 17 decks
6 Toph, the First Metalbender 17 decks
7 Edgar Markov 16 decks
8 Jin Sakai, Ghost of Tsushima 16 decks
9 Baylen, the Haymaker 15 decks
10 Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge 15 decks

The commander list spans mono-white to five-color, with deck counts spread across ten different commanders, suggesting Enlightened Tutor earns its slot in any white-inclusive build that leans on key artifacts or enchantments rather than belonging to one dominant archetype.

Card text

Enlightened Tutor

Instant

Search your library for an artifact or enchantment card, reveal it, then shuffle and put that card on top.

Dominaria Remastered (DMR) · Rare · Illustrated by Howard Lyon

Frequently Asked

How often is Enlightened Tutor drawn in a Commander game?

Across 1893 tracked multiplayer Commander games where Enlightened Tutor was in the deck, it was drawn 23% of the time. That figure is normal for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 508 instances that reached a player's hand, 71% were cast before the game concluded. The remainder is mostly a game-length effect: copies drawn deep into a long game sometimes never see play before the final turn.

What turn does Enlightened Tutor usually get cast?

The median first-cast turn is 5, with the distribution mode sitting at turn 1. That early spike reflects players who keep it in their opening hand and deploy it immediately to top-deck a key piece for the following turn. The interquartile range stretches from turn 2 to turn 7, so mid-game casts are common when the card is drawn later. Mean cast turn is slightly above median, pulled by occasional late-game finds.

Is Enlightened Tutor banned in Commander?

No. Enlightened Tutor is legal and unrestricted in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and several other formats. It is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, or Pauper. Despite being a powerful 1-mana tutor, the Commander Rules Committee has not restricted it, likely because it tops the library rather than putting the card directly into hand, creating at least one turn of delay before the searched card is usable.

Does casting Enlightened Tutor actually improve your win rate?

In 324 participations where Enlightened Tutor was cast, the normalized win rate was 33%, compared to 26% in 1432 participations where it remained in the library. The delta is a directional positive signal, but the confidence interval on the current sample touches near zero on the low end, so treat this as an early indicator rather than a settled finding. Larger sample sizes will sharpen the picture.

Which commanders run Enlightened Tutor most often?

In the Playgroup Live dataset, Giada, Font of Hope leads the list, followed by Baylen, the Haymaker and Toph, the First Metalbender. The spread across 709 unique players and a broad commander list suggests Enlightened Tutor is not concentrated in one archetype. White-inclusive commanders that rely on key artifact or enchantment pieces, such as enchantresses, stax builds, and combo-adjacent strategies, appear throughout the top-commander chart.

How quickly do players cast Enlightened Tutor once they draw it?

Of instances that were both drawn and cast, the median time between drawing and casting is 1 turn, with a same-turn cast rate of 47%. That means roughly half of all drawn-and-cast copies are fired on the same turn they are drawn. An average hold time just over one turn is consistent with players waiting for the right moment to set up a specific combo piece or value engine rather than slamming it blindly.