Tool to search for cards with similar functionality

Question

I'm looking for a tool/website that would aid in deck building, specifically by providing alternatives to a specific card, say Fog. It should respond with traditional data plus suggestions of similar cards like Haze of Pollen or Commencement of Festivities.

I've looked on Google's Play Store, and also tried many of the leading websites (TappedOut, ChannelFireball, etc.) While TCGPlayer and Amazon will recommend cards based on other buyers purchases, those suggestions may not be similar in nature to the first card.

Gatherer does have comments on many cards, but it's too time consuming to scroll page after page.

Answer 1

MythicSpoiler provides something they call "Thesaurus" (usually used for finding word synonyms).

Although not the site's primary functionality, you can search for specific cards and it will yield you similar cards in nature and functionality, and excluding any other factors, which has its own pitfalls - for example, it wouldn't give you just any other green card, but it might give you a non-green alternative with the same function. The range is limited to three cards at a time, though.
Searching for Fog, for example, you will get suggestions for Druid's Deliverance, Moment's Peace, and Moonmist.

This is an exclusively manual process, as stated by its creator. You can choose to partake in this process by submitting your own card suggestions.

---

There are attempts to solve this issue procedurally as well, such as this attempt to solve it via NLP (Natural Language Processing). They link to a GitHub repository, but unfortunately there seems to be no existing implementation to try it out yourself quickly.

---

That said, for the multitude of cards available as alternatives to Fog, you're better off doing a specific Gatherer search (or search the database tool of your choice in a similar manner), for example for all green spells with the phrase "Prevent all combat damage that would be dealt this turn". This is the only process I can think of that will guarantee that you're not missing the card you're looking for, as long as you choose your search parameters sensibly - for example, the above search won't yield Terrifying Presence as a result.

Answer 2

I use scryfall and search for some of the unique terms, and take out some terms that might lead to false positives.

https://scryfall.com/search?q=o%3A%22Prevent%22+o%3A%22all%22+o%3A%22damage%22+-o%3Atarget+-o%3Achoice&order=cmc

Here, I decided to search for "prevent", "all", "damage", and the filtered out "target" and "choice" because they were giving a lot of spells that prevented damage from one creature, and that's not really what a Fog is. They have a syntax guide on the website that will help you build complex searches like this. the most basic syntax is using o: to search for words in the text box and -o: to exclude terms.

Answer 3

MTGAssist.com was built specifically for this. Here's an example for Fog: https://www.mtgassist.com/search.php?similar_to=fog

You can even combine it with other search options to find exactly what you're looking for.

Hope this helps, Adam

Answer 4

Your question inspired me to add Search similar cards feature to my program Mtgdb.Gui. See screenshot below to estimate the quality of search result.

See also feature description in application wiki.

---

Wiki to get more information and screenshots

Answer 5

Metamox.com is exactly what your looking for. Enter a card name and it will give you every card that functions like or similar to it. I use it when building my decks for strong synergy.