Scryfall is, in the words of the site's creators, "a powerful Magic: The Gathering card search" engine.

Scryfall homepage search bar

Scryfall allows users to find groups of cards that meet a given set of criteria, learn specific categories that a given card falls into, and even see official rulings associated with a card.

Let's start with the basics. Scryfall can be used just like Google's search engine if you'd like to just look up cards by their name.

Search for Cards by Cycle Phrase

For example, if you wanted to search for all the cards in Scourge's "Decree" cycle, you would simply look up "Decree of" in Scryfall's search bar.

This nets the five cards you're looking for, each with their most recent printing displayed.

Search for Cards by Set

If you wanted to look at all the cards from Scourge, not just the Decree cycle, Scryfall provides that functionality too.

By typing "s:scg", "set:scg", "s:scourge", or set:scourge" into the search bar, you're able to see all the cards from this 20-year old set.

If you wanted to build an Exhibition (Bracket 1) deck themed around Scourge, this would provide you with a nice starting point.

Search for Cards by Keyword

Let's delve a little bit deeper into Scryfall's capabilities. Looking through the card gallery, we can see that Scourge has a decent number of cards with the keyword "cycling" on them.

Let's say that we really like what cycling does for our deck, so we'd like to narrow our search to only include the cards from Scourge that have the ability to cycle themselves.

By typing "s:scg keyword:cycling" or "s:scg kw:cycling" into the search bar, you'd be able to find all 19 of the cards in this set that have the cycling ability.

Scryfall can do much more than just search for keywords and sets. Here's some other common functionalities.

Search for Cards by Color Identity

ci:color or commander:color

commander:sultai (or ci:BUG)

These search terms narrow the field of available cards to those that fit into a given color identity.

This supports both WUBRG lettering and common phrases, so if you wanted to find all possible cards that could fit into a The Wise MothmanThe Wise Mothman deck, you could search for commander:sultai (or ci:BUG) and find 16,798 cards.

Search for Cards by Oracle Text

 o:"word"

fo:mill commander:sultai

This pulls up all cards with a given word or phrase in their Oracle text, the most up-to-date rules text available for a given card.

For example, if you wanted to find all cards that mention mill for a The Wise MothmanThe Wise Mothman deck, you'd search for fo:mill commander:sultai and find 476 cards.

As a quick note, if you'd like to include the reminder text on cards in your search, you can use "fo" instead of "o." For this search, that "fo" cards with dredge printed on them to be included in our results.

Search for Cards by Power, Toughness, or Mana Value

Pow=X, tou<X, CMC>x, etc.

pow>1 tou=3 cmc>2 commander:sultai

These terms let us find creature cards with power, toughness, or mana value that fit certain numerical parameters.

For example, if we'd like creatures with power greater than 1, toughness equal to 3, and mana value greater than 2, we can search for pow>1 tou=3 cmc>2 commander:sultai and find 1,456 cards.

Search for Cards by Type

t:type

This term lets us narrow our search to cards of a specific type. Let's go back to our Mothman deck one more time. If we want to search for cards that mention milling and are creatures, we'd look up t:creature fo:mill ci:BUG and find 259 cards.

t:creature fo:mill ci:BUG

Search for Split Cards and Modal Double-Faced Cards (MDFCs)

is:split, is:mdfc, etc.

These are special search terms that only apply to a small groups of cards. is:split shows us all 122 split cards (which allow its caster to choose one or both halves of the card), and the is:mdfc tag shows us all 88 cards that let players choose a side of the card to play with.

All of these operators can be used with and, or, and parentheses to allow for more complex searches.

For example, if you're building a split-card-focused Spellslinger variant of The Wise Mothman and want to explore your card pool, you can search for (t:instant or t:sorcery) is:split commander:sultai and find 24 cards.

(t:instant or t:sorcery) is:split commander:sultai

Search for Commander-Legal Cards

legal:edh or f:edh

For EDHREC users, it's important to note that not every card is legal in EDH. Some of you may have noticed that our previous searches included cards legal in Alchemy, a digital-only format. To narrow our search to Commander-legal cards, we can append legal:edh or f:edh to any of our searches. And, if you'd prefer to view cards in EDHREC order (instead of in alphabetical order), you can add order:edhrec to your searches too.

commander:sultai legal:edh order:edhrec

As some of you may know, Scryfall has another level to it: Otags.

This community-based card-tagging system lets users ascribe specific labels to cards, letting the whole Magic community search for cards with common labels.

When I started using Otags in my searches, I became a significantly stronger deckbuilder. This system isn't perfect (once in a while a card may be missing a tag that it should have), but it's generally extremely reliable and improves the deckbuilding experience drastically.

Let's look at a few of The Wise MothmanThe Wise Mothman's tags:

• synergy-mill
• mill-opponent and mill-self
• gives-pp-counters

These tags can give us a lot of direction for a deck built around this commander. First, we can see that this commander mills both us and our opponents.

So, we're going to make sure to take advantage of both our graveyard and our opponents' graveyards.

Then, we can see that this card gives us a benefit when cards are milled. So we'll make sure that we fill the deck with other ways to mill players to trigger our commander's abilities more often.

And, lastly, we see that Mothman hands out +1/+1 counters. So we'll make sure to have enough creatures on board to take advantage of that power and toughness buff.

Just by looking at these tags, we've already got a solid game plan if we were to build this deck from scratch.

Let's explore these tags, and a few related tags, to identify some key cards for this deck:

otag:synergy-mill commander:sultai legal:edh order:edhrec

• synergy-mill
  • We'll want more ways to take advantage of the mill that our commander supplies, and we're looking towards other cards with the synergy-mill tag for that. After searching for otag:synergy-mill commander:sultai legal:edh order:edhrec, we find 71 relevant cards. Among those, here are some of the best ones:

(otag:mill-opponent or otag:mill-self or otag:mill) commander:sultai legal:edh order:edhrec

•  mill-opponent and mill-self and mill
  • Because our commander really likes when we mill cards, we're going to include even more ways to get cards into 'yards. Let's search for (otag:mill-opponent or otag:mill-self or otag:mill) commander:sultai legal:edh order:edhrec, and find 900 relevant cards. Here are some of my favorites:

otag:pp-counters-matter commander:sultai legal:edh order:edhrec

• gives-pp-counters
  • Lastly, our commander gives out +1/+1 counters to our creatures. Let's look at cards with the "pp-counters-matter" tag to see how we can take advantage of that. A search for otag:pp-counters-matter commander:sultai legal:edh order:edhrec gives us 261 results, including some great cards like:

While it's a lot of fun to use Otags to fill out decks with synergistic pieces, every Commander deck still needs ramp, removal, and card draw.

When you're close to finishing a deck, you can search Scryfall for otag:ramp, otag:removal, and otag:card-advantage within your commander's color identity to ensure that you've included all the best pieces.

And, as an added bonus, Archidekt's online deckbuilder allows users to use Scryfall syntax to filter cards within their deck. You can use this feature to check your ramp, removal, and card draw counts before heading to Scryfall to fill in any gaps that may have developed over time.

Looking one final time at The Wise MothmanThe Wise Mothman, here's some on-theme picks from Scryfall to fill out these categories in our deck:

• fo:mill otag:ramp commander:sultai

• fo:mill otag:removal commander:sultai

• fo:mill otag:card-advantage commander:sultai

There's even more to love about Scryfall, far more than can be covered in just one article. The site even allows regular expression (RegEx) searches for super specific card-finding.

The majority of players will do just fine using Otags and other search terms to find the cards they need for their deck, but if you're interested in going deeper, here's a few more cool things that Scryfall can do:

• USD>X, EUR<Y, TIX=Z
  • These terms allow users to narrow searches to card prices that fit a certain criteria in US Dollars, Euros, and even MTGO tickets.
• art:X
  • This allows users to find card art that contains something specific. For example, a search for art:"dutch angle" will turn up 1561 cards with a tilted perspective in their art.
• is:filterland, is:painland, etc.
  • These terms allow users to search cards by some community-created nicknames. This, like is:mdfc, can be extremely useful when finishing up your mana base.

And, for those of you who'd like to learn even more about Scryfall, you can check out their syntax documentation online.