MTG Slang - Hard/Soft Tutor
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on Jan. 18, 2019, 6:38 a.m. by notorius-B.D.A.W.G
I see references to "hard tutors" and "soft tutors" but I don't know what it means. Example: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/breakfast-hulk/#c3416394
Is it a tutor that brings a card to your hand vs top of library? Or instant vs sorcery?
notorius-B.D.A.W.G says... #3
Yeah I tried googling and searching here and had no luck. I was coming to the same conclusion about hard getting any card and soft being limited to types etc. Thanks for the help.
January 18, 2019 7:09 a.m.
DrukenReaps says... #4
I've literally never heard people describe tutors this way... But Boza's explanation makes the most sense, I guess?
January 18, 2019 7:36 a.m.
From what I read in my own google search, a Hard Tutor is unconditional, whereas a soft tutor is conditional. This could be a condition such as “only fetch a creature” or “find a card with CMC less than number of lands you control.”
However, there are numerous discussions on the old Gatherer comments arguing certain conditional tutors are hard tutors, so that definition seems to fall apart quite quickly in use.
January 18, 2019 9:06 a.m.
SynergyBuild says... #6
It seems a niche term. After researching it, Dig Through Time is a soft tutor, like Demonic Consultation , they can fail. Demonic Tutor is a hard tutor, they always hit.
January 18, 2019 9:15 a.m.
SynergyBuild that makes sense, and would explain all the discussions I saw regarding what is or is not a hard tutor. On one side, a creature-only tutor can fail to hit if you are out of creatures, but the chances of that are so low that, in practice, such would be a hard tutor.
Thanks for clearing that up.
January 18, 2019 9:29 a.m.
aha! So soft = "top X cards", while hard is "your library". This makes the most sense, though personally I would not call the soft ones tutors at all. There are so few of them, that the distinction is negligable.
And when you play those "soft" tutors, you either do not care what they find, or you have ways to make them hard tutors. For example, Demonic Consultation is most often used to exile your whole library for 1 black mana by naming something not in it rather than as a weird Demonic Tutor .
January 18, 2019 9:50 a.m.
notorius-B.D.A.W.G says... #9
Thanks for the extra input guys. I think I get it now.
Boza says... #2
googling it wont help.
My assumption is that soft ones looks for a specific card type ( Worldly Tutor ) versus ones that look for any card ( Demonic Tutor ).
January 18, 2019 7:03 a.m.