MTG Investigate Explained: Clue Tokens, Rules, All 135 Investigate Cards, the Create-a-Clue Change, the Best Clue Commanders and a Budget Morska Deck (2026)

Investigate is Magic’s card-advantage-on-a-delay mechanic. When a card tells you to investigate, you create a Clue: a colourless artifact token with “{2}, Sacrifice this token: Draw a card.” You don’t draw right away. You bank a card and cash it in later, whenever you have two spare mana. Right now 135 cards investigate, from Tireless Tracker in 2016 to a Star Trek Saga that isn’t out yet, and 126 of them cost under a dollar.

There’s also a second story most guides haven’t caught up with. Avatar: The Last Airbender (November 2025) printed 19 cards that make Clues without saying investigate: they just say “create a Clue token.” It was widely read as the end of the keyword, but the next three sets printed investigate again. We counted every card on both sides of that change, and worked out which cards it actually affects (one). This guide covers the exact rules, how Clues compare to Treasure, Food and the other tokens, every investigate card in one table, the 28 cards that make Clues without investigating, the Clue payoffs, where it’s all legal, the best Clue commanders on EDHREC, and a $71.95 budget Morska, Undersea Sleuth Commander deck you can buy in one click.

What Investigate Does: The Rule

Investigate is a keyword action, rule 701.16 of the Comprehensive Rules, and the whole rule is one sentence. The Clue itself is defined with the other predefined tokens in rule 111.10. From the current rules text (25 September 2026):

701.16a “Investigate” means “Create a Clue token.” See rule 111.10f.

111.10f A Clue token is a colorless Clue artifact token with “{2}, Sacrifice this token: Draw a card.”

Four things follow from those two lines, and they come up in almost every game:

1. Investigating is not drawing. Nothing that triggers on drawing a card happens when you investigate. It happens later, when you sacrifice the Clue. That delay is the point: you choose when the card arrives.
2. A Clue is an artifact token. It counts for anything that counts artifacts or tokens, and you can sacrifice it to anything that wants an artifact. Sacrificing it that way does not draw a card, because the draw only comes from the Clue’s own ability.
3. There’s no tap symbol in the cost. You can crack several Clues in the same turn, at instant speed, including the turn they arrive. Most of the other sacrifice-for-value tokens can’t do that (see the comparison table below).
4. “Investigate twice” means two Clues. Cards that investigate more than once, or investigate “for each” something, simply create that many tokens. 18 of the 135 investigate cards can make more than one Clue at a time.

How Clues Work in Practice

A Clue is a card split into two payments. The first is whatever the investigate card cost you. The second is {2} whenever you want the card. That makes investigate weaker than a straight cantrip if you measure mana for mana, and much more flexible if you measure time. The standard play pattern:

• Crack Clues at the end of an opponent’s turn. Any mana you held up for a counterspell or a trick and didn’t need turns into cards. This is why blue decks like Clues: holding up {2} is never wasted.
• Crack them when you have nothing better to do with the mana. Early turns belong to your development; Clues fill the gaps later. A Clue made on turn two is often sacrificed on turn five or six.
• Don’t crack them if something else wants them. Clues are artifacts, so they can feed Tamiyo’s Journal (sacrifice three, tutor any card), Alquist Proft’s X-draw ability, sacrifice outlets and “artifacts you control” counts. A Clue that sits on the table can be worth more than the card it would draw.
• Remember “second card each turn” triggers. A Clue cracked on an opponent’s turn is usually your first draw that turn; one cracked on your own turn, after your draw step, is your second. Several modern Clue commanders, including Morska, reward exactly that.

Timing matters in one more way. A Clue’s ability uses the stack like any activated ability, so an opponent can respond to it, but the Clue is already sacrificed as a cost. Destroying a Clue in response to its activation does nothing: the card is still drawn.

Clue vs Treasure, Food, Blood and the Other Tokens

Magic now has eleven predefined artifact or enchantment tokens with a built-in activated ability. Here they are as the Comprehensive Rules define them. The last column is the one that matters for Clues: only three of the eleven have no {T} in the cost, which means only those three can be cashed in several at a time in the same instant.

Clue, Gold and Shard are the tap-free three. Treasure is faster (no mana to activate) and Blood filters rather than adds a card. Shard is the only other token that draws without tapping, but only two cards in paper Magic make Shards (both versions of Niko), so in practice a pile of Clues is the one that turns into a whole handful of new cards at once, which is why late-game Clue decks save them up and crack four or five at the end of an opponent’s turn. A Clue that becomes a creature (Tangletrove Kelp turns your other Clues into 6/6 Plants each combat) can still be sacrificed for a card the turn it animates, because summoning sickness only stops {T} abilities.

The 2025 Template Change: “Create a Clue Token”

Until late 2025, making a Clue almost always meant investigating. Only six cards made one any other way, and each did it as part of a bigger effect: Fae Offering makes a Clue, a Food and a Treasure together, The Third Doctor and Transmutation Font let you choose a Clue or another token, Overencumbered hands an opponent a Clue, a Food and a Junk, Madame Vastra makes a Clue and a Food, and Case of the Pilfered Proof adds a Clue to tokens you’re already making.

Avatar: The Last Airbender (21 November 2025) changed the wording. Its 19 Clue cards, plus 2 more in the companion Eternal set, all say “create a Clue token” and none of them says investigate. Wizards’ official rulings for those cards spell out that creating a Clue this way is not investigating, and that abilities which trigger when you investigate won’t trigger. Here’s every set that added a Clue maker, with both wordings counted:

Three things stand out in that timeline:

• Investigate is not retired. After Avatar, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Eternal set gave us April O’Neil, Live on the Scene (March 2026), Marvel Super Heroes printed Panther Pounce and Agent 13, Sharon Carter (June 2026), and Star Trek (out 13 November 2026) has In the Pale Moonlight, a Saga whose chapter II says “Investigate.” Since Avatar, the count is 4 new investigate cards against 22 new “create a Clue” cards: the plain wording is now the usual one, but both are in use.
• Karlov Manor is the heart of the mechanic. Murders at Karlov Manor, its Commander decks and Ravnica: Clue Edition (all February 2024) added 61 of the 135 investigate cards between them. The original home, Shadows over Innistrad (April 2016), added 25, and the Doctor Who Commander decks another 13.
• The change breaks exactly one card. We checked every card in the family for text that cares about the act of investigating rather than about Clues. There’s one: Erdwal Illuminator (“Whenever you investigate for the first time each turn, investigate an additional time”). It doubles Tireless Tracker, but not Air Nomad Legacy. The 27 Clue payoffs all say things like “whenever you sacrifice a Clue” or “Clues you control,” and those work the same whichever way the Clue was made. Academy Manufactor, which replaces “create a Clue,” also works with both.

So for deckbuilding, a “create a Clue token” card is a normal Clue card in every deck except the ones running Erdwal Illuminator. Here are all 28 cards that make Clues without investigating, oldest first:

Every Investigate Card

All 135 cards that investigate, sorted by how many Commander decks run them on EDHREC. Prices are the cheapest ordinary (non-promo, non-special) printing on Scryfall at the time of writing. It’s a cheap mechanic: 126 of the 135 cost under $1, and the most expensive is the Modern Horizons 3 Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student at about $17. A little under half, 63 cards, investigate repeatedly (on a trigger or an activated ability) rather than once.

The Best Investigate Cards for Commander

The EDHREC column tells a clear story. These are the cards Clue decks, and plenty of non-Clue decks, actually play:

Tireless Tracker

The most-played investigate card by a wide margin, in about 205,000 decks. Every land drop makes a Clue, and every Clue you sacrifice grows the Tracker. In a green deck with any ramp it draws a card a turn for the rest of the game, and it’s cheap, well under a dollar after its many reprints.

Forensic Gadgeteer

About 114,000 decks. It investigates whenever you cast an artifact spell, and it makes activated abilities of your artifacts cost {1} less, which cuts every Clue to a single mana. In an artifact deck it’s a card-draw engine; in a Clue deck it halves the cost of the whole plan.

Tamiyo’s Journal

About 64,000 decks. A colourless five-drop that investigates every upkeep and lets you tap it and sacrifice three Clues to search for any card. It’s slow, but it’s a tutor that also draws, and it fits any deck.

Ethereal Investigator and Wojek Investigator

Both are Commander-first cards. Ethereal Investigator investigates once per opponent when it enters (three Clues in a normal four-player pod) and makes a flying Spirit whenever you draw your second card each turn. Wojek Investigator investigates every upkeep once for each opponent with more cards in hand than you, which in a pod is often all of them.

Kellan, Deduce and Disorder in the Court

Kellan, Inquisitive Prodigy’s adventure half investigates and gives you an extra land drop; Deduce is a two-mana instant that draws a card and also leaves a Clue behind; Disorder in the Court blinks X creatures (yours for value, or blockers out of the way) and investigates X times.

Fateful Absence and Declaration in Stone

Premium white removal where the Clue goes to the opponent. That’s a real cost, but a Clue is slow card advantage and removing their best creature now usually matters more. It’s worth knowing when a Clue deck’s payoffs don’t care whose Clue it is: “whenever you sacrifice a Clue” only counts yours.

Clue Payoffs and Cards That Are Clues

Making Clues is half the deck. The other half is cards that reward you for having and sacrificing them. There are two groups:

• 27 payoffs whose text refers to Clues: “whenever you sacrifice a Clue” triggers (Tireless Tracker, Graf Mole, Ulvenwald Mysteries, Persuasive Interrogators, Lonis, Genetics Expert), cards that change what Clues are (Armed with Proof makes them Equipment, Tangletrove Kelp makes them 6/6 creatures, Merchant of Truth gives them exalted) and cards that spend them (Tamiyo’s Journal, Lonis, Cryptozoologist, Alquist Proft).
• 16 cards that are Clues themselves, with Clue in the type line. The best known are the Karlov Manor weapon cycle, a nod to the board game: Candlestick, Knife, Lead Pipe, Rope and Wrench, one-mana Equipment you can later sacrifice for a card. Also here: Red Herring, Scene of the Crime (an artifact land you can sacrifice for a card) and Agent’s Toolkit. They all count for “Clues you control” and can be sacrificed to anything that wants a Clue.

One ruling applies to the whole table: an effect that refers to a Clue means any Clue artifact, not only a token, so Wrench can pay for Alquist Proft’s ability or trigger Tireless Tracker. The table includes the 27 payoffs plus the 14 typed Clues that don’t already appear in the payoff list, ranked by EDHREC decks:

Investigate Rules Interactions

Opponents can investigate too

Fateful Absence, Declaration in Stone and Zuko’s Exile give the Clue to the controller of what you removed, and Panther Pounce says “target player investigates,” so you can pick yourself or anyone else. The Clue belongs to whoever created it. Your “whenever you sacrifice a Clue” triggers don’t see an opponent’s Clue.

One Clue can’t pay two costs

You can’t sacrifice a single Clue to activate its own draw ability and, at the same time, to pay for something like Alquist Proft, Master Sleuth or Lonis, Cryptozoologist. Choose one: the card from the Clue, or the other ability.

“Whenever you sacrifice a Clue” means any sacrifice

The trigger doesn’t care why you sacrificed it. Sacrificing a Clue to Tamiyo’s Journal, to Ezrim, Agency Chief or to a generic sacrifice outlet triggers Tireless Tracker and Graf Mole just like cracking it for a card.

If the spell loses its target, no Clue

Some spells investigate as part of a targeted effect. If every target is illegal when the spell tries to resolve, it doesn’t resolve at all, and you don’t get the Clue.

Erdwal Illuminator counts only investigating

Erdwal Illuminator’s trigger reads “whenever you investigate for the first time each turn.” Clues from Avatar-style “create a Clue token” cards or from Transmutation Font don’t trigger it. It’s the only card where the two wordings play differently.

Academy Manufactor applies to any Clue

Manufactor replaces creating a Clue, Food or Treasure with creating one of each. Investigate is “create a Clue token,” so every investigate becomes three tokens, and so does every “create a Clue token” card. That’s why it sits in about 401,000 EDHREC decks, far more than any card that actually investigates.

Clues and artifact cost reducers

Forensic Gadgeteer reduces Clue activations to {1} (it can’t go below one mana). Clues also count as artifacts for affinity-style cost reductions and “for each artifact you control” effects, which is why Clue decks slot so easily into artifact decks.

Where Investigate Is Legal

Clues are legal almost everywhere, and 64 cards from the family are Standard-legal right now. Counts are from Scryfall’s legality data today. The one investigate card that isn’t Commander-legal is In the Pale Moonlight, only because Star Trek isn’t released until 13 November 2026.

• Standard: 42 investigate cards and 21 “create a Clue” cards are legal right now, mostly from Karlov Manor, Avatar and Marvel.
• Modern: 79 investigate cards, including Thraben Inspector, Tireless Tracker and Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student.
• Pauper: 30 investigate commons. Thraben Inspector is the long-time staple.
• Bans: none of the 172 cards in the family is banned in any major format. Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student is restricted in Duel Commander.

The Best Investigate Commanders

These are the legendary creatures in the family ranked by how many decks EDHREC has with them in the command zone:

Tivit, Seller of Secrets (Esper) leads with about 12,900 decks. Every time it enters or connects, each player votes for evidence (you investigate) or bribery (you get a Treasure), and Tivit lets you vote twice, so you always get at least two tokens. Browse a community Tivit deck on KrakenTheMeta for one take on it. Morska, Undersea Sleuth (Bant) is second: it’s the face commander of the Deep Clue Sea precon, which holds 22 cards from this family, more than any of the 174 precon lists we track. Sophia, Dogged Detective, Tamiyo and Lonis, Cryptozoologist round out the top five. If you’d rather start from a precon and improve it, run the list through our budget swaps tool or the deck analyzer.

Budget Morska, Undersea Sleuth Clue Deck ($71.95)

Morska is the cleanest investigate commander to build around. It costs {G}{W}{U}, it investigates at the beginning of every upkeep on its own, you have no maximum hand size, and whenever you draw your second card each turn, Morska gets two +1/+1 counters. “Each turn” means everyone’s turns, so the plan is simple: make lots of Clues and crack one after your normal draw on your turn, then two on each opponent’s turn. Morska grows by two counters on every turn where you manage it.

The deck below is 100 cards, every one checked against Scryfall for Commander legality and Bant colour identity, priced at the cheapest ordinary printing ($71.95 total, 36 lands). 43 of the 100 cards mention Clues or investigate, or are Clues themselves.

• Clue engines: Tireless Tracker, Tamiyo’s Journal, Ulvenwald Mysteries, Thorough Investigation, Merchant of Truth, Wojek Investigator, Bygone Bishop, Lonis, Cryptozoologist, Search the Premises, Ongoing Investigation, Magnifying Glass and Forensic Gadgeteer.
• Burst Clues: Ethereal Investigator, Wavesifter, Armed with Proof, Ezrim, Confirm Suspicions and Disorder in the Court each make two or more at once.
• Second-card payoffs: Morska, Ethereal Investigator, Loxodon Eavesdropper and Jolrael, Mwonvuli Recluse all trigger on your second draw each turn. Chart a Course, Brainstorm, Harmonize and Growth Spiral turn on those triggers even without a Clue.
• Clue payoffs: Tireless Tracker, Graf Mole, Tangletrove Kelp (your Clues become 6/6s each combat), Armed with Proof (your Clues become Equipment) and Academy Manufactor (every Clue comes with a Food and a Treasure).
• Interaction: Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Fateful Absence, Declaration in Stone, Generous Gift, Beast Within, Counterspell, Arcane Denial, Supreme Verdict, plus Lightning Greaves and Heroic Intervention to protect the board.

Most of the price is in a few staples. These are the ten most expensive cards in the list:

Upgrades, in order: Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student (another Clue maker that flips into a planeswalker), Rhystic Study and Mystic Remora for extra draws on opponents’ turns, and faster mana (Chrome Mox, Mana Vault) if your table plays at that speed. Cheaper still: cut Heroic Intervention and Academy Manufactor (the two most expensive cards) for Graf Mole-style value cards and the deck drops by more than $20. Looking for more card-draw ideas? Our guide to the best card draw in MTG has the wider list, and the card finder shows current prices for anything you swap in.

Related Mechanics

Investigate sits in a family of “value later” mechanics. Surveil (the other Karlov Manor workhorse, which Clue decks love for smoothing draws), connive (draw and discard with a counter) and the cloak option on Ransom Note, covered in our manifest and cloak guide. For more token makers of every kind, see the best token generators list, and for decks built around sacrificing artifacts and creatures, the aristocrats guide. And if you want to see how other players build Clues, browse community decks on KrakenTheMeta.

Investigate FAQ

What does investigate mean in MTG?

Investigate means “create a Clue token” (rule 701.16a). A Clue is a colourless artifact token with “{2}, Sacrifice this token: Draw a card.”

Does investigate draw a card?

Not by itself. It gives you a Clue, and you draw when you pay {2} and sacrifice the Clue. Draw triggers happen then, not when you investigate.

Can you sacrifice a Clue at instant speed?

Yes. It’s an activated ability with no timing restriction and no tap symbol, so you can crack it any time you could cast an instant, including the turn it was made, and crack several in a row.

Is “create a Clue token” the same as investigate?

You get the same token, but it isn’t investigating. The only card in Magic where that matters is Erdwal Illuminator, whose trigger needs you to investigate. Every Clue payoff works with both.

Is investigate being retired?

No. Avatar: The Last Airbender used “create a Clue token” on all 21 of its Clue cards, but TMNT Eternal, Marvel Super Heroes and Star Trek have all printed investigate cards since. The plain wording is now more common (22 new cards since Avatar against 4), but investigate is still in use.

How many investigate cards are there?

135 cards investigate, 28 more create Clues without investigating, and 16 cards are Clues themselves (Clue in the type line).

Are Clues artifacts?

Yes. Clue is an artifact type, so Clue tokens count as artifacts for every artifact synergy, and an artifact with Clue in its type line (like Wrench) counts as a Clue.

What’s the best investigate card?

By play rate, Tireless Tracker (about 205,000 EDHREC decks), then Forensic Gadgeteer and Tamiyo’s Journal. For raw Clue output, Academy Manufactor triples every Clue you make.

What’s the best investigate commander?

Tivit, Seller of Secrets has the most EDHREC decks, followed by Morska, Undersea Sleuth. Morska is the easier one to build on a budget and comes with its own precon, Deep Clue Sea.

Can Clues be creatures?

Only if something makes them creatures. Tangletrove Kelp turns your other Clues into 6/6 Plant creatures each combat, and cards like Red Herring and Parcel Myr are artifact creatures with the Clue type. Because a Clue’s ability has no {T}, a creature Clue can be sacrificed for a card even the turn it arrives.

Investigate is ten years old, cheap to build, legal almost everywhere, and still being printed under both names. For most decks, one or two good Clue makers are just efficient card advantage. For a Morska or Tivit deck, they’re the whole engine, and every Clue you don’t need right now is a card waiting for the right moment.