Deckbuilding
What Is a Cantrip?
A cheap spell that draws you a card on the way past, so casting it costs you nothing but mana. The word is on no card and in no rule, and the thing worth understanding is that a cantrip is card selection rather than card advantage.
The Short Answer
A cantrip is a cheap spell that draws a card as part of resolving. You cast it, something small happens, and a fresh card arrives to replace the one you just spent. Your hand is the same size it was a moment ago, minus the mana.
That is the entire definition and it is not a rules term. Search the comprehensive rules for cantrip and you will find nothing, because players coined the word and Wizards has never printed it. What that means practically is that the boundaries are fuzzy and arguing about them is unproductive: everyone agrees about Ponder , and there is a small grey zone at the edges that this page gets to at the end.
The reason the word is worth knowing is not the definition. It is what follows from it, which is that a cantrip does not give you more cards, only better ones.
Where the Word Comes From
Dungeons and Dragons. A cantrip there is a minor spell a caster can throw out freely without spending one of their real spell slots, and Magic players borrowed it for the same idea: a spell so cheap in resources that casting it barely registers, because you get the card back immediately.
Older still, it is a Scots word for a small magic trick or a bit of mischief. Both games got it from the same place and both use it to mean the same thing, which is a spell that does not really cost you anything.
The Classic Cantrips
When somebody says cantrip with no further explanation, they almost certainly mean one of these: one blue mana, a small amount of library manipulation, draw a card.
Ponder ↗
Look at three, reorder them, optionally shuffle, draw. The most selection per mana in the game.
Preordain ↗
Scry 2, then draw. Ponder's slightly more honest sibling.
Opt ↗
Scry 1, draw, at instant speed. The plainest cantrip printed.
Consider ↗
Surveil 1, draw. The same card for a graveyard deck, where the bin is a resource.
Brainstorm ↗
Draw three, put two back. Famous, and much worse without a way to shuffle after it.
Serum Visions ↗
Draw first, then scry 2, which is a real downgrade: you scry after seeing what you got.
Note how little separates them, and how much that little matters. Ponder looks at three cards and lets you reorder all of them, plus shuffle if you hate what you see. Preordain scrys 2 before drawing, so the card you draw is one you already approved. Serum Visions draws first and scrys after, which sounds like the same card and is meaningfully worse, because the scry no longer improves the card you are about to get.
Brainstorm is the odd one and the most famous. It draws three and puts two back on top, so it is net zero cards and it is only as good as your ability to shuffle afterwards. Without a shuffle effect you have simply agreed to draw those two cards again over the next two turns.
It Cantrips
The word is used as a verb at least as often as a noun. When somebody says a removal spell "cantrips", they mean the card draws you a card in addition to its main job, so casting it costs you no cards at all.
Arcane Denial ↗
A counterspell that cantrips. Popular in Commander because it costs you no card and no goodwill.
Elvish Visionary ↗
A creature that cantrips. A 1/1 body attached to a card you were going to draw anyway.
Mulldrifter ↗
Not a cantrip. Two cards, not one, which is what actual card advantage looks like.
This is where the concept earns its keep in deckbuilding. A counterspell that cantrips is a genuinely different card from one that does not, because trading one for one is fine and trading one for one while replacing your own card is close to free. Arcane Denial is played in an enormous share of Commander decks for exactly that reason, and it barely counters anything better than the alternatives.
The line between "a creature that cantrips" and "a card advantage creature" is worth keeping sharp. Elvish Visionary draws one and is a cantrip with a body attached. Mulldrifter draws two, which means it is up a card on the exchange, and that is a different kind of card entirely.
Selection, Not Card Advantage
This is the section to read if you read one. A cantrip replaces itself. It does not add anything. Start with seven cards, cast a cantrip, and you have six cards plus the one it drew, which is seven. You are exactly where you were.
What you bought is quality. You looked at part of your library, you influenced what came off the top, and the seven cards you now hold are a slightly better seven than they would have been. That is real and it is worth a card slot. It is just not the same thing as drawing cards.
The failure this causes is specific and common: a deck packed with cantrips whose owner believes it has plenty of card draw. It does not. It has plenty of card selection, it runs out of cards on schedule like any deck with no draw engine, and the owner concludes the deck is unlucky. How many real draw spells a deck wants →
If you want that checked on a list rather than guessed at, the deck rater counts card advantage as its own slot and will tell you whether the number is real. Rate a decklist, no account needed →
The Deck Thinning Myth
Cantrips are frequently defended on the grounds that they thin your deck: one fewer card in the library means better draws later. This is very nearly worthless, and the reason is worth holding onto because it applies to fetchlands and every other "thinning" argument too.
Cantrips improve your later draws by making your deck smaller.
Drawing a card at random does not change the expected ratio of lands to spells in what remains. Take a random card out of a 99 card deck and the rest of the deck has the same composition it had before, on average. Nothing improved. What genuinely improves your draws is the selection half of the card, and a cantrip with no scry, surveil or look attached to it is doing almost nothing beyond cycling.
The distinction is the whole point. Ponder pushing a third land to the bottom of your library is a real improvement to the next two turns, and it happened because you looked, not because your deck got one card shorter. That is why a scry attached to a draw is worth more than the same draw alone, and why nobody plays a one mana spell that only says draw a card.
Cantrips Are Weaker in Commander Than People Expect
In Modern or Legacy a cantrip is digging toward one of four copies of a card, in a sixty card deck, with a game plan that needs a specific piece. Looking at three cards is a real chance of finding what you need.
Commander is a hundred cards with no duplicates. There is exactly one of everything, so looking at three cards is very unlikely to find any particular one, and a deck that needs a particular one should be running a tutor instead. Why singleton changes everything →
What a cantrip is actually doing on turn two
You keep a hand with two lands and four expensive spells. It is fine if you hit land drops and unplayable if you do not.
Turn two you cast Ponder rather than holding up nothing.
You look at three cards, find a land, and take it. That is the cantrip earning its slot.
What it did not do was find your commander, your board wipe, or the combo piece. In a singleton deck it was never likely to.
So cantrips in Commander are land smoothing with an upside, and should be counted that way rather than as card draw.
None of which means cutting them. A couple of cheap cantrips genuinely reduce how often a hundred card deck stumbles on mana, and stumbling is the most common way a Commander game gets away from you. What they should not be doing is standing in for the six to ten real card advantage pieces a deck of that size needs. Fixing land problems at the source →
What Counts, and Where People Disagree
Because it is slang, there is no authority to settle the edges. Three cases come up.
Cards that do not say draw. Impulse and Sleight of Hand both put a card from your library into your hand and neither uses the word draw. Almost everyone calls them cantrips, because the job is identical. The distinction becomes real the moment another card triggers on drawing, since neither of these will set it off.
Cycling. Discarding a card to draw a card is the same replacement effect wearing different clothes, and plenty of players call it cantripping. It is a keyword with actual rules behind it, so if precision matters, say cycling.
Expensive spells that happen to draw. A six mana spell that draws a card is not a cantrip in any useful sense, because the word carries "cheap" as much as it carries "replaces itself". Once the spell costs real mana you are just describing a card that draws.
FAQ
What is a cantrip in Magic: The Gathering?
A cantrip is a cheap spell that draws you a card as part of doing whatever else it does, so casting it does not reduce the number of cards in your hand. Ponder, Opt and Preordain are the classic examples: one mana, a little bit of looking at your library, and a card to replace the one you just spent. It is player slang rather than an official term, so it appears on no card and in no rulebook.
Is a cantrip card advantage?
No, and this is the most useful thing to understand about them. A cantrip replaces itself, meaning you end with exactly the number of cards you started with. What it buys is card selection: you get to look at part of your library and improve which cards you have rather than how many. A deck full of cantrips and no real draw spells will run out of cards exactly as fast as a deck with neither.
Where does the word cantrip come from?
Dungeons and Dragons, where a cantrip is a minor spell a caster can use freely without spending a real spell slot. Magic players borrowed it for the same idea: a spell so cheap in resources that casting it barely counts, because the card comes straight back. The word originally meant a small magic trick or a mischievous spell in Scots.
Do cantrips thin your deck?
Not meaningfully. Drawing a card at random does not change the expected ratio of lands to spells in the rest of your library, so simply removing a card from your deck buys you nothing. What genuinely helps is the selection half: Ponder letting you push a third land to the bottom is a real improvement to your next few draws, and it is the looking rather than the drawing that did it. Deck thinning is one of the most persistent bits of folk wisdom in Magic and it is close to worthless on its own.
Are cantrips good in Commander?
Less good than in sixty-card formats, and a lot of players over-run them. In Modern or Legacy a cantrip is digging toward one of four copies of the card that wins the game. In Commander your deck is singleton, so there is exactly one of everything and looking at three cards is very unlikely to find any particular one. They are still fine for smoothing out land draws in the first few turns, but a Commander deck wants real card draw and real tutors much more than it wants a pile of one-mana replacements.
Does a cantrip have to say draw a card?
Strictly yes, and in practice most players are looser than that. Impulse and Sleight of Hand both put a card from your library into your hand without using the word draw, and almost everyone calls them cantrips because they do the same job. The distinction only matters when another card cares, since an effect that triggers on drawing a card will not see either of them.
Find out if your deck really draws cards
TurnZero HQ measures every deck against a blueprint for its archetype, counting card advantage as its own slot, so you can see whether the number is real. Free on iOS, Android and the web.
Get Started Free