Cruel Tutor

The black tutor rebuilt for an audience that was never meant to touch the stack. Portal stripped instant speed out of its whole card pool to keep new players away from the timing rules that make Magic intimidating, and this is what that philosophy did to the genre's sharpest effect: the certainty of Demonic Tutor, dialed back on two separate axes. Where Demonic Tutor pulls the chosen card straight to hand, Cruel Tutor only sets it on top, costing you a draw step to cash in, and the two life it asks is the design's way of pricing the certainty of finding exactly what you need. The top-of-library clause is not purely a downside; it hands the searched card to anything that cares about your next draw, but the friction of waiting a turn is real and deliberate. Functionally it is closest to Imperial Seal, which performs the same sorcery-to-top trick for two mana less, making this the more available, less precious version of that compromise. The sorcery-speed restriction is the tell of its origin: a best-in-class effect with its rough edges sanded off, the timing limitation standing in for all the rules complexity an introductory product was built to avoid.