Shouldn't the Oracle text include a "nonartifact creature" clause, since artifact creatures were never "summon creatures?"
niceguygreensboro
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(2 votes)
Why is this a rare sorcery, when Worldly Tutor , which is identical, is an uncommon instant? Seems backwards to me..
Kryptnyt
★★★☆☆ (3.0/5.0)(1 vote)
Shhhh! I'm hunting wabbits! Be vewwy vewwy quiet!
NobuTheBard
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(1 vote)
It's a rare sorcery because it was printed for Portal. Portal was the first "starter" set and focused on a simplified ruleset to introduce the game to new players. It didn't contain instants or interrupts (among other things), so numerous cards were reworkings of existing spells at sorcery speed. In this case, Worldly Tutor. A weird result of this is some very strange timing restrictions on some sorceries meant for combat tricks, like Harsh Justice or Blessed Reversal. You can see it also used a different vocabulary, referring to "summon cards" and actually calling to your deck as such, rather than as a library.
I don't know the story behind the rarity, especially when you see something like Personal Tutor was printed at uncommon. Personal Tutor was effectively similar to like, Merchant Scroll, which was a common (...in Homelands, anyway). Cruel Tutor, as an attempted at a redone Demonic Tutor, was also printed as a Rare. Maybe because the set was very creature-focused, so this looked like a stronger card? There's also fellow rare green creature tutor Natural Order in the same set.
As this card was never reprinted, copies of it can fetch a lot more than Worldly Tutor. Like, 6 times as much, as of this comment.
DarthParallax
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Tutor History:
Demonic Tutor: Basically, really dumb. It's an Uncommon, it's 2-mana, it gets you anything, IT'S BLACK, and it has No Drawback. It goes directly to your hand and you don't have to reveal it. It doesn't have a single one of the restrictions that basically every other Tutor card in the game has. It's at least, not an Instant.
Playtesting and Real World Results showed that Demonic Tutor was Not OK, and also that it would have been better to have at Instant Speed, so you could play it on your opponents' turn, untap on your turn, then actually cast what you fetched.
Mirage: Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Worldly Tutor. They still hadn't got a good grip on Mana Costs. For Instant Speed (actually a plus to playability without being Game Breaking) it would have been fine to have these cost 2 Mana, but they were going by "More Restricted Use than Demonic Tutor, better charge less Mana). Increased Rarity was also Completely Appropriate, as a Search for a Spell is USUALLY worth being Rare. (Some Land Searching should be lower Rarities, and is.) Uncommon Search Effects are hard to Design, but there exist some that make sense and don't feel pushed.
Portal: Portal's first set was released essentially after Mirage Block. (I consider Mirage and Visions to be a 2-set Block with Weatherlight kind of an odd hanger-on that segues into the Real next Block, Tempest. Weatherlight was printed after 5th Edition by my research. I could be wrong, but this is still Early Years of MAGIC, so weird things like the timing here can be expected.) Anyway, Portal's cycle of Tutors was clearly Based on Mirage's, but it had even more experience to work with, and decided to tone down the Power Level of Tutoring even further.
Diabolic Tutor appeared in Odyssey Block and 8th Edition, which is about as soon after 5th Edition, as 5th Edition is from Alpha, and that's just about the History of Tutors in R&D. There are a lot more Recent ones, but the actual Conventions of What is acceptable Power Levels or not hasn't changed much since the first printing of Diabolic, except that Odyssey tinkered with searching to put things into Graveyards, and Mirrodin tried out Searching for Equipment, and pretty much those cards are currently "No-Nos" for Power Level (won't be seen in Standard Again.) The Big Giant from Morningtide is plenty reprintable for fetching Equipment, but other Equipment Fetches, um, aren't.
Comments (5)
I don't know the story behind the rarity, especially when you see something like Personal Tutor was printed at uncommon. Personal Tutor was effectively similar to like, Merchant Scroll, which was a common (...in Homelands, anyway). Cruel Tutor, as an attempted at a redone Demonic Tutor, was also printed as a Rare. Maybe because the set was very creature-focused, so this looked like a stronger card? There's also fellow rare green creature tutor Natural Order in the same set.
As this card was never reprinted, copies of it can fetch a lot more than Worldly Tutor. Like, 6 times as much, as of this comment.
Demonic Tutor: Basically, really dumb. It's an Uncommon, it's 2-mana, it gets you anything, IT'S BLACK, and it has No Drawback. It goes directly to your hand and you don't have to reveal it. It doesn't have a single one of the restrictions that basically every other Tutor card in the game has. It's at least, not an Instant.
Playtesting and Real World Results showed that Demonic Tutor was Not OK, and also that it would have been better to have at Instant Speed, so you could play it on your opponents' turn, untap on your turn, then actually cast what you fetched.
Mirage: Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Worldly Tutor. They still hadn't got a good grip on Mana Costs. For Instant Speed (actually a plus to playability without being Game Breaking) it would have been fine to have these cost 2 Mana, but they were going by "More Restricted Use than Demonic Tutor, better charge less Mana). Increased Rarity was also Completely Appropriate, as a Search for a Spell is USUALLY worth being Rare. (Some Land Searching should be lower Rarities, and is.) Uncommon Search Effects are hard to Design, but there exist some that make sense and don't feel pushed.
Portal: Portal's first set was released essentially after Mirage Block. (I consider Mirage and Visions to be a 2-set Block with Weatherlight kind of an odd hanger-on that segues into the Real next Block, Tempest. Weatherlight was printed after 5th Edition by my research. I could be wrong, but this is still Early Years of MAGIC, so weird things like the timing here can be expected.) Anyway, Portal's cycle of Tutors was clearly Based on Mirage's, but it had even more experience to work with, and decided to tone down the Power Level of Tutoring even further.
Diabolic Tutor appeared in Odyssey Block and 8th Edition, which is about as soon after 5th Edition, as 5th Edition is from Alpha, and that's just about the History of Tutors in R&D. There are a lot more Recent ones, but the actual Conventions of What is acceptable Power Levels or not hasn't changed much since the first printing of Diabolic, except that Odyssey tinkered with searching to put things into Graveyards, and Mirrodin tried out Searching for Equipment, and pretty much those cards are currently "No-Nos" for Power Level (won't be seen in Standard Again.) The Big Giant from Morningtide is plenty reprintable for fetching Equipment, but other Equipment Fetches, um, aren't.