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Artifact-focused decks have always been popular builds in Magic: The Gathering, whether you’re assembling game-ending combos with tokens, overwhelming opponents with modular counters, or simply ramping hard with mana rocks.
But consistency has always been the challenge. Unlike creature types that have tribal synergies, there are no innately cohesive artifact families in MTG. It can feel like digging for a needle in a haystack each game, hoping to draw your various powerful artifacts.
That’s where dedicated artifact tutoring comes in – the essential secret sauce to make artifact construction hum. With the right artifact tutors integrated into your 99-card deck alongside namesake commanders like Urza or Breya, you gain unprecedented flexibility to search up whichever missing artifact piece you need directly into your hand or even the battlefield.
In this article, we explore the top methods for efficiently tutoring key artifacts in Magic: The Gathering, enabling you to achieve maximum consistency, assemble your favorite win conditions, and demonstrate the true magical potential of artifacts in EDH and eternal constructed formats.
What Are Artifact Tutors in MTG?
Before diving into the best options, we should define what makes a card specifically an “artifact tutor” in Magic.
The tutor terminology will be familiar to most experienced players, referring to spells that let you search your library and/or graveyard to retrieve a specific card type directly into your hand or onto the battlefield.
Artifact tutors specifically facilitate finding artifact card types above others. This allows you to cherry-pick the perfect mana rock, combo piece, or late-game bomb needed from your library or graveyard.
Unlike generalized tutors often focused on finding planeswalkers or other historic spells, dedicated artifact tutors help assemble your strongest artifact synergies. As long as you have the mana cost covered, you crack open your deck and claim whichever elite artifact you need for a given game state.
This enables unprecedented flexibility in setting up metalcraft, improvise, or affinity advantages. With deck stacking power like this, you can understand why artifact commanders often top the lists of most powerful EDH builds!
The Best Artifact Tutors in Magic
Now let’s explore prime artifact tutor options to supercharge your EDH deck’s consistency. These are the most efficient magic cards that enable cherry-picking artifacts from your library or graveyard:
Enlightened Tutor – A white instant staple in eternal formats, Enlightened Tutor flexibly grabs any artifact or enchantment for just two mana, making it arguably the best broad tutor in Commander. It can fetch combo pieces like Aetherflux Reservoir or set up lockdown effects like Stony Silence.
Tribute Mage – In the two mana blue tutor slot, Tribute Mage is a more specialized option, exchanging flexibility for artifact specificity. This wizard efficiently fetches artifacts with casting costs up to three, enabling early game ramp like Mind Stone or mid-game value from Crystal Shard.
Treasure Mage – Scaling up to a three-man tutor, Treasure Mage grabs exciting artifacts up to a CMC of six. The mage shines in EDH, grabbing iconic cards like Sol Ring or mana doublers like Grim Monolith, fueling explosive turns. This tutor overperforms in big mana strategies.
Reshape – The most underrated artifact tutor in EDH is Reshape, which “transmutes” by sacrificing an artifact already on your battlefield to search your deck for another with the same CMC. This facilitates explosive graveyard artifact recursion in scrapyard-focused artifact builds.
The whir of Invention & Planar Bridge – At the highest end of the mana curve, these two iconic artifact tutors enable incredible toolbox searches. Whir cheats artifacts from your deck at instant speed while Planar Bridge repeatedly tutors your most devastating threats directly into play.
Using Tutors for Maximum Impact
With a loaded artifact tutor toolkit at your disposal, how should you integrate tutors optimally within your games for consistency and victory?
Here are key tips on wielding artifact tutors for glory in MTG battle:
Carefully Consider Mana Costs – The converted mana cost of your artifact tutors dictates the timing of when you can search your library. Lower-cost options like Enlightened Tutor provide flexibility but limit what you can fetch. Heavier tutors like Planar Bridge can repeatedly grab expensive bombs but require a dedicated ramp to activate their potential.
Weave In Graveyard Recursion – Many artifact-themed EDH decks already recur artifacts from graveyards with cards like Goblin Welder and Glissa the Traitor. This pairs powerfully with tutors that sacrifice artifacts like Reshape – returning an artifact to hand before sacrificing means getting two artifacts ultimately!
Set Up Game Ending Combos – Once you assemble infinite artifact mana from the likes of Basalt Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth, chaining big splashy X cost tutors becomes possible. With infinite colorless mana, a tutor like Planar Bridge or Ring of Three Wishes lets you repeatedly drop your heaviest artifact threats from your deck for the win!
Artifact Tutor All-Stars in Top EDH Decks
To demonstrate artifact tutoring power put into action, here are some prime staple tutors that enable key gameplans within beloved artifact-matters commander decks:
Urza, Lord High Artificer – No list would be complete without mentioning the infamous Urza, whose explosive artifact synergies broke the format for a time even after bans. Compact tutors like Tribute Mage that enable cracking Urza out quickly or finding his key enablers like Sensei’s Divining Top are all-stars here.
Breya, Etherium Shaper – This Esper artifacts deck builds to overwhelming advantage via an aristocrat engine, saccing, and recurring artifacts repeatedly with Breya to drain life totals. Transmuter tutors like Reshape and efficient wishes like Burning Wish are perfect includes to finding the moving combo pieces.
Sharuum, the Hegemon – At the beating heart of many artifacts reanimator style builds lies Sharuum. The Sphinx synergizes directly with artifact tutors sacrificing creatures to recur powerful artifact threats from your graveyard like Blightsteel Colossus. Cards like Buried Ruin even return them afterward!
Conclusion: Assemble Consistency with Artifact Tutors
Whether you’re an affinity fan looking to dump your hand faster, an aristocrats engine aiming to loop value ETB effects, or simply love big splashy combos, dedicated artifact tutoring delivers the reliability artifact decks demand in EDH.
Cards like Enlightened Tutor, Tribute Mage, Reshape, and more specialize in finding the right artifact solutions for any game state or synergy. Carefully tuned tutor packages make once-inconsistent artifact builds hum with card advantage.
So next time you brew an artifact-focused Commander deck, be sure to weave in a healthy tutor toolkit. The flexibility to transmute, wish, or search up your most essential threats, value engines, and combo pieces makes achieving your endgame win conditions an inevitability rather than a hope!
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