For four mana, you can get any card in your
deck. Seems great? Well, yes, if the card you're
getting didn't need to be cast before turn four.
Diabolic Tutor is great for getting your
late-game bomb, but not much else. Remember
Clone last week? Four mana for a variable amount
of power depending on what other cards you have
to work with. Diabolic Tutor gets a slight edge
since it can get any type of card, not just
creatures, but it's still basically four mana to
get a single card in your hand.
Like Cancel, Diabolic Tutor's rules text is
elegant, simple, and powerful. What would you
pay for the one card you need most, right now?
Four mana seems like a reasonable price for the
flexibility that this latest tutor offers. It is
arguably only as powerful as what it's searching
for, but with all the cards that exist and all
the new ones printed each year, you should have
no trouble finding something suitable.
Today's card of the day is Diabolic Tutor which
costs twice as much as the old Demonic Tutor,
but is still quite useful in the role of getting
whatever card you want from your library.
Mainly for getting the final piece of a
combination or an extra copy of something needed
in multiples, this is a powerful card in the
middle to later stages of the game mitigated
somewhat by the cost.
An additional note, but this and the original
Demonic Tutor are more or less must play cards
when possible for the Elder Dragon Highlander
format as it uses one hundred card libraries
with no card aside from basic lands repeated.
For Limited this is a good Uncommon to draft as
support to pull a situational card or removal as
needed. A card that might seem unplayable
can get another look when the odds of it
reaching your hand are increased by the Tutor.
Using Diabolic Tutor to find the one card that
can destroy an artifact or enchantment for
example or the last burn spell to finish the
game are the kind of plays that make this a
worthwhile addition to any Black deck. A
bit expensive and heavy on Black mana for the
midgame, but playable and too versatile to
ignore.
The primary weakness is based on the strength of
your pool itself and what is remaining in the
library to draw from. If your first few
picks in Booster or Sealed are key Black cards
you may want to draft this next as playing the
card of your choice on the next turn is rarely a
bad bargain. The smaller deck size of the
format does
