The 41 Best Card Draw Cards in Magic

Last updated on July 22, 2024

Notion Thief | Illustration by Clint Cearley

Of all the mechanics, themes, and strategies in the game of Magic, drawing cards is the most potent of all. Magic is a game of resources, and there’s no better way to win a game than by just having more cards than your opponent. Limited players especially live and die by this ideology.

But it can be a daunting world. Every color and archetype has access to some kind of card draw engine, and there are hundreds of options to go with in eternal formats like Commander. That’s why today I’m coming to you with a comprehensive list of some of the best card draw cards in each color, and what makes them so great.

Let’s get started!

What Is Card Draw in MTG?

Preordain | Illustration by Svetlin Velinov

Broadly speaking, card draw in Magic works the same as in any other card game, be it a TCG or classics like Poker or Bridge: To draw a card, you take the topmost card from your library and put it in your hand.

There's an important caveat, though. Effects that trigger whenever you draw a card and/or punish your opponents when they do, like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse only trigger for effects that literally say “draw” in their description. An effect like Impulse doesn't have the word “draw” in it, so doesn't count for Sheoldred.

As such, for today's ranking, we'll only consider cards that spell out “draw” in their rules text. Magic has tons of ways to put cards in your hand or to achieve similar results, but if it doesn't say “draw”, it doesn't belong in this ranking.

By the way: In Magic, drawing cards is one way to lose the game. Specifically, whenever an effect asks you to draw a card and your library is empty, you lose the next time a player would receive priority (which, in practice, pretty much means on the spot, regardless of what's in play or on the stack). That's only for drawing cards, though. Effects that interact with your library in any other way won't make you lose the game even if they ask you to interact with an empty library.

Honorable Mention: Impulse Drawing

Impulse drawing, probably nicknamed that way after Act on Impulse, is a specialty of red cards that exile X cards from the top of a library (usually yours, but not always), and let you play those cards either until the end of your turn, or the end of your next turn.

While very common nowadays (including powerhouses like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer), and even though many players call this effect “drawing”, this is not card draw as per Magic's rules – you don't even put the cards in your hand, and you won't lose the game if you “impulse-draw” from an empty library.

Honorable Mention: Impulse

Magic slang sure can get confusing sometimes; while “Impulse drawing” is a red especially, “Impulse” is nicknamed after the Impulse blue instant.

Impulse refers to effects that let you look at the top X cards from your library, and then put some of those cards in your hand.

For new players, this certainly looks exactly like drawing cards, but you're not drawing cards unless the effect literally says “draw.”

Narset, Parter of Veils is a good example of this difference. If you and I both have a copy of Narset in play, we can't draw more than one card per turn, but we both can still use impulse-like effects like Narset's own ability.

Some very strong cards, including Thassa's Oracle (one of cEDH's staple wincons) are impulse effects. We won't rank them here, though, since they aren’t proper card-draw effects.

#41. Tatyova, Benthic Druid

Tatyova, Benthic Druid is a simple, straightforward, and very popular Simic commander. And, as you may guess, very good in the role of a landfall commander, where this merfolk druid ensures a steady stream of card draw.

#40. Faerie Mastermind

World Champion Yuta Takahashi designed this card, and the Commander format adopted it en masse along with a good showing in Standard decks. This faerie rogue is more draw hate than card draw proper but, hey, Faerie Mastermind draws you lots of cards if timed well!

#39. Selvala, Heart of the Wilds

Rolling card draw and mana dork in one card, Selvala, Heart of the Wilds makes for one of the best mono-green commanders and frequently shows up in cEDH decks under Sisay, Weatherlight Captain‘s command. Selvala's card-drawing ability may read a bit group-hug-y, but we all know who's gonna be dropping the biggest, baddest creatures on the board.

#38. Consecrated Sphinx

A bit like Faerie Mastermind, Consecrated Sphinx is more draw hate than card draws… but it still gets you the cards. It's unplayable in any format other than Commander, but it's a cEDH staple.

#37. Mulldrifter

Pauper staple Mulldrifter is a simple yet flexible “on a stick” card-draw effect. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done at two different points on your curve.

#36. Sea Gate Restoration / Sea Gate, Reborn

Like Mulldrifter, Sea Gate Restoration gets a spot due to the flexibility it provides. One of the best flip lands in the game, Sea Gate Restoration provides an infinite-hand-size emblem while drawing you lots of cards, and the Sea Gate, Reborn is an untapped mana source if needed early on.

#35. Opt

Cantrips are said to “replace themselves,” in the sense that when they leave your hand, you draw another card to replace them. They are legion, and we'll find a handful among the best card draw effects. Opt has been a multi-format cantrip since Invasion nearly two and a half decades ago, providing both card draw and card selection ever since.

#34. The Great Henge

It's easy being green!

Above all, if you drop this legendary artifact on curve: The Great Henge makes your incoming beatsticks bigger and draws you cards for each creature you put in play.

Green has several of these “creaturefall” card-draw effects, like Beast Whisperer or Guardian Project, which are fairly common in Commander.

#33. Solemn Simulacrum + Baleful Strix

To be honest, this may be too high a spot for Solemn Simulacrum or Baleful Strix if we're rating them strictly by their usefulness in current formats.

But as examples of very popular “cantrips-on-a-stick”, and given their steadfast service and dedication across countless decks and formats, I'd say they've earned their spot!

#32. Consider

Better than its Opt cousin since Consider fattens your graveyard, this cantrip is Modern-playable on top of its frequent presence in Pioneer and cEDH.

#31. Toski, Bearer of Secrets

In MTG parlance, saboteurs are creatures with a triggered ability that fires off whenever one of your creatures deals combat damage to a player.

Toski, Bearer of Secrets turns all your creatures into card-drawing saboteurs, making this excellent mono-green commander one of green's best card-draw effects.

#30. War Room

War Room‘s activated ability is a bit too costly (and painful!) for frequent use, but the option of sinking some extra mana into a card-draw effect at instant speed is never a bad idea.

#29. Curiosity

Perhaps not the best blue enchantment for a kitten that you're fond of, but excellent to slap on pretty much any evasive creature or pinger you have around.

Notice that Curiosity is more than a saboteur effect: It triggers not just with combat damage, but with direct damage too.

#28. Wheel of Fortune + Wheel Effects

Wheel effects, named after Wheel of Fortune, are a special subset of card-draw spells that (usually) force all players to draw a new hand after discarding it, with some variations of how they go about it. They’re so unique that wheel decks are a specific EDH theme.

As a rule of thumb, you won't use wheel effects just for drawing cards (decks that include wheel effects tend to have some more nefarious plans than that…) but they’re nevertheless one of the most potent card-draw spells in Magic.

#27. Archmage Emeritus

If green has “creaturefall” card-draw effects, blue of course gets a similar bonus for casting non-permanent spells!

Archmage Emeritus is too slow for 60-card formats, but a usual sight in cEDH.

#26. Black Market Connections

Extremely popular in Commander since printed in Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate, Black Market Connections provides flexibility in spades. It's far from the best option if you're only looking for efficient card draw, but for EDH decks that need a Swiss Army enchantment, Black Market Connections is a perfect fit.

#25. Phyrexian Arena

Drawing cards since Apocalypse, Phyrexian Arena is a bit too slow to see competitive play in Eternal formats. But it's extremely popular in casual Commander and sees high-level play in Standard, where it’s legal at least until the 2025 Standard rotation.

#24. Preordain

Scrying twice deeper than Opt in exchange for being sorcery speed, Preordain sees multi-format play from Pauper to Modern. It used to be banned in Modern, and it’s playable now (and hasn't broken anything just yet).

#23. Braids, Arisen Nightmare

A very popular mono-black commander at casual tables and quite capable of making the cut into the 99 of cEDH decks, Braids, Arisen Nightmare is the delight of sacrifice-heavy decks. Black is usually fond of gaining power at any cost, but Braid's more of the “This is gonna hurt you a lot more than it's gonna hurt me,” type of black card!

#22. Night's Whisper

Speaking of power at any cost, Night's Whisper is this ranking's first and tamest among the cards that let you pay life to draw cards.

Usually broken, but, in this case, it's balanced enough!

#21. Deadly Dispute

Pauper loves this black instant, and Deadly Dispute shows up both in Pioneer and in casual EDH decks.

Few things are as satisfying as your foe pointing removal at your creature, only for you to turn the victim into card advantage!

Village Rites offers a similar effect for a lower upfront cost, but not allowing you to sacrifice an artifact makes it a bit less flexible.

#20. Niv-Mizzet, Parun

Good ol' Niv-Mizzet, Parun is here to kill foes, draw cards, and chew jalapeño-flavored bubblegum. And it's all out of bubblegum!

An awesome Izzet commander and one of the most popular commanders overall, Niv-Mizzet, Parun is a great choice if you're specifically looking for a card-draw commander. But ol' Niv is a great team player and will happily hop out of the command zone and join your 99, where it's often found in cEDH brews.

And, yeah, Curiosity and Niv-Mizzet, Parun are a deadly two-card combo; just don't draw yourself to death!

#19. Sign in Blood

A bit harder to cast than Night's Whisper, but you can burn foes down with Sign in Blood – enough to make this black sorcery a multi-format workhorse.

#18. Ponder

As we move closer to #1, we'll start bumping into spells strong enough to be banned or restricted in certain formats.

Ponder looks even deeper than Preordain before drawing one, and you can shuffle everything away if you don't like what you see.

Strong enough to be banned in Modern!

#17. Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Another mono-black commander makes the cut – you're less likely to see Yawgmoth, Thran Physician than Braids, Arisen Nightmare in the command zone, but the Father of Machines is a lot stranger in formats like Modern.

You probably won't count on Yawgmoth too much if your only concern is to draw cards, but when looking at the whole package Yawgmoth, Thran Physician is hard to beat.

#16. Sylvan Library

Speaking of multi-format staples, Sylvan Library can even make the cut into Vintage, besides being often seen in cEDH.

The trick is that you can choose any of the cards you've drawn this turn to put on top of your library. That includes the card you normally draw during your draw step and any other effect that allows you to draw cards before Sylvan Library‘s trigger resolves.

#15. Skullclamp

Have you heard the one about Skullclamp? True story!

During internal testing, this little artifact used to give a +1/+1 buff, just like an equipable +1/+1 counter. But the MTG designers thought it was too strong, so they nerfed it to +1/-1, and sent the card to the press.

As soon as it was let loose in the wild, Skullclamp bumped into the likes of Bitterblossom and every token generator that spews X/1 creatures.

Long story short: Banned in Modern, banned in Legacy, and a very popular card-draw engine in the formats it's still legal in.

#14. Brainstorm

An improved, instant-speed version of Ponder, Brainstorm is arguably the best cantrip in Magic. It's playable in major Eternal formats, namely Commander, Legacy, and Pauper. It's restricted in Vintage and one of the select cards banned in Arena for the Historic format.

Unlike Ponder, Brainstorm doesn't shuffle on demand. But that's why Brainstorm is best friends with the fetch lands: If you don't like what's in your hand, put it on top of your library and then have a fetch shuffle it away.

#13. Gitaxian Probe + Mishra's Bauble

Let's put it this way: A cantrip that you can pay for with life rather than mana, and tells you what your foe's up to, is so fundamentally broken that Gitaxian Probe is banned in Modern and Legacy, and it's also restricted in Vintage, where it's no stranger to top-tier decks!

Mishra's Bauble, one of the best eggs in Magic, isn’t as broken, but being a 0-mana cantrip (even if the card draw is delayed) makes it a mainstay in Vintage and Modern.

#12. Treasure Cruise

A match made in heaven with Arclight Phoenix in Pioneer, and a house in Vintage, Treasure Cruise sees exactly zero play in Modern or Legacy… but that's because it had to be banned, which is a testament to the power of Ancestral Recall‘s little delve cousin!

#11. Mystic Remora

Alright, let's talk about the blue fish in the room.

Save for some occasional showing in Vintage, 60-card decks have no use for Mystic Remora. Commander, on the other hand, is chock-full of this Ice Age blue enchantment, and it's probably one of the most-feared one-turn plays a blue deck can make.

#10. Griselbrand

Griselbrand is one of the scariest reanimator targets, and being a huge, flying lifelinker means that the 7 life you pay to draw seven cards isn’t an outlandish price.

You won't see Griselbrand coming back from the graveyard in Commander, though, since it's banned there.

#9. Esper Sentinel

Like Mystic Remora, but in white and much, much better: It has no cumulative upkeep, and it can block in a pinch. Esper Sentinel is a powerhouse both in cEDH and Modern, and it's very likely the best card-draw effect in white.

#8. Leovold, Emissary of Trest

A common story among the upper ranks, Leovold, Emissary of Trest was an amazing card-draw (for you) and draw-hate (for your foes) Sultai commander until, victim of its own success, it was banned from EDH.

It still sees quite a bit of play in Vintage and Legacy, the only other formats you can play it.

#7. The One Ring

More like the one card every Modern deck needs four copies of, really. And also every cEDH deck, but, well, cEDH players love Rings that go into every single deck.

The Lord of the Rings brought its main McGuffin to Magic, and it has been rocking formats ever since. You get to draw cards, and protection from everything buys you time to actually put your cards to good use.  The One Ring is probably the best card-draw artifact in all of Magic. 

#6. Sensei's Divining Top

Another artifact that got itself banned from Modern and Legacy, Sensei's Divining Top goes infinite with just about anything that has a Magic logo on its back.

It may seem like a cantrip at first glance, but combined with cost reduction and effects that let you play cards off the top of your library, Sensei's Divining Top is a card-drawing monster. If you need a sample, look up Mystic Forge and Foundry Inspector.

#5. Rhystic Study

Introduced in Prophecy, rhystic spells weren't received too well… but one of them bloomed into one of the strongest Commander staples: Rhystic Study.

Any spell can trigger this blue enchantment (unlike Esper Sentinel or Mystic Remora, for which you need a noncreature spell), and it has no downsides or per-turn limitations.

Except perhaps for Timetwister, Rhystic Study is simply the best card-draw effect you can include in your Commander deck, and among the strongest early plays.

#4. Timetwister

As a proud member of the Power Nine – the most powerful Magic cards ever printed – Timetwister‘s fame should be enough to put this wheel-plus-graveyard-hate at the top of the list. But some card-drawing effects are really broken, so we'll find three more cards above this hall of famer.

#3. Yawgmoth's Bargain

A card that's not a Power Nine, ranked on top of a power-niner?

Yep, indeed! This high up, we'll go strictly by “Whoever gets the most bans, wins.”

You can play Timetwister in Vintage (even if it's restricted) and Commander, but Yawgmoth's Bargain is strictly Vintage-only. That's how broken “paying life to draw cards” is!

#2. Library of Alexandria

You can only play Yawgmoth's Bargain in Vintage, but at least you can put four copies in your deck.

Not so with Library of Alexandria. This Arabian Nights land is banned everywhere else, and it's restricted in Vintage: only one copy per deck!

#1. Ancestral Recall

We'll give this ranking's #1 to Ancestral Recall, but even that is selling this power-niner short.

Ancestral Recall is just off the charts, and like Library of Alexandria, it's banned everywhere save Vintage, where you can have just a single copy in your deck. Not to mention being one of the most expensive cards in Magic.

Ancestral Recall draws you cards or forces your foe to, at instant speed, for by far the best base rate in the game, and with exactly zero drawbacks.

This is, and forever will be (unless WotC gets really crazy!) the best card draw spell in all of Magic.

Best Card Draw Payoffs

Drawing cards is its own best payoff: The more cards you draw, the more options and resources you have to beat your opponents.

Magic is, at its core, a resource-management game – more doesn't always mean better, but it usually lands pretty close. 

You still have specific payoffs for whenever you draw cards, though. Niv-Mizzet, Parun or the emblem from Teferi, Hero of Dominaria are two good examples. Psychosis Crawler benefits from the full hand you drew and burns opponents while you draw.

There are also specific payoffs for drawing your second card, and WotC experimented with payoffs for drawing your third card each turn!

Card Draw vs. Card Advantage

In Magic, “Drawing” is a very specific game action – the card or effect must literally say “draw” in its rules text. Card advantage is a strategic concept (rather than a specific game term) is a lot broader and basically means “having more cardboard than my opponents.”

For starters, any card that puts more cards in your hand is card advantage, even if it doesn't say “draw”. But card advantage also looks at what happens in other zones. If I play three creatures, and then you kill them all with a Wrath of God, you've got card advantage: You used a single card to get rid of three of mine. Card draw is just one way to acquire more resources – card advantage is all the ways to have more resources than your opponent.

Wrap Up

Sylvan Library | Illustration by Bryan Sola

We’ve reached the end of the list! I really enjoy putting these kinds of lists together as I inevitably find new cards to run in my jank Commander decks that I’ve never heard of before, but are surprisingly powerful.

What did you think of my rankings? Were there any cards or selections you’d swap around a bit? Any cards I missed that you think are worthy of recognition? Let me know in the comments or the official Draftsim Discord. If I think they’re as good as you say, I’ll maybe just include them in the list.

Until next time, stay safe and stay healthy!