Hey, what is library manipulation?
For my purposes, library manipulation is something that lets you choose which card to draw out of several cards, usually on top of your library. This differs from tutoring where you look for the exact card you want from your entire deck and put it in your hand or on top of your library. It also differs from raw card drawing where you replace the card you cast with several cards sight unseen. Let's compare.
Personal Tutor is a tutoring spell. Surprise! You can only look for sorceries with it, but you can look through your entire deck for exactly the sorcery you want and put it on top. Powerful stuff, but not library manipulation by my definition.
Divination is a card drawing spell. You cast it, giving up one card, to draw two cards off the top. Doesn't matter what they are, you just draw them. Also powerful, but not library manipulation by my definition.
Ponder is a library manipulation spell. You cast it, look at three cards, decide in what order you want to draw them, or even decide to put them on the bottom of your library if you don't want to draw any of them. For your trouble, you immediately replace Ponder by drawing a card. Really powerful stuff.
Great! What do I do with it?
Tutors add a lot of consistency to a deck, especially in the Commander format where you are only allowed to run a single copy of any given card except basic lands. Demonic Tutor is incredibly powerful for this reason. For a measly 1B, it can "become" any card in your deck. So, if you really need to cast Wrath of God this turn but you don't have it, pretend you have a second copy in your deck that costs 3BWW instead of the usual 2WW casting cost. Nifty, right?
Library manipulation spells also add a lot of consistency to a deck. Although they don't give you the exact card you need right away, they give you the best of a selection of cards and create better draws. What you end up doing is drawing the card you need more often than you would otherwise. A good example of this is Sensei's Diving Top. Turn after turn, for a 1 mana activation cost, you get to draw the best card out of the next three on top of your library. Even if there weren't a bazillion different tricks you can do to make this card even better (fetchlands, Future Sight, etc), that would be pretty darn good on its own in this format.
I want to point out that there are a lot of spells that are considered "cantrips." These are spells that typically have a small effect on the game and then replace themselves. The net effect is library thinning rather than library manipulation. A blue example of this is Gitaxian Probe, which can even be cast without using up your mana by paying life. It lets you look at an opponent's hand and then draw a card. With such a large starting life total in the Commander format, playing this card is like playing with a 98 card deck. A non-blue example is Urza's Bauble. It costs no mana to cast, you get to see only one card instead of the entire hand, and you have to wait to draw the replacement card. For this post, I'm not looking at cantrips since they don't fit the definition above.
The bottom line is that including library manipulation in your deck increases consistency in an otherwise very random format. The tradeoff is that it eats up slots in your deck for cards that would otherwise do something that affects the game directly. It also uses up some of the mana you would be using for those very same spells. Think of it like a tax on the spells you are playing.
Instant vs. Sorcery
Instant library manipulation spells play a special role. If you are playing blue, you probably have counterspells. If you have counterspells, you probably want to leave mana open to cast them on your opponents' turns. If your library manipulation spells are at instant speed, you can cast them immediately before your turn (at the end of your opponent's turn). This allows you to leave mana open for the longest possible amount of time in case something particularly nasty tries to ruin your day.
Sorcery speed spells must be cast on your own turn during the main phase(s). They are "slower" in the sense that they use up mana on your own turn so that you have less mana open for countering spells on your opponents' turns. If you are playing defensively, that means you will cast sorcery speed spells on later turns when you have developed your mana more. Which one is better? In general, instant speed spells that you can cast sooner with a smaller window of opportunity for opponents' to swoop in and take advantage of the situation where you are tapped out are going to serve you better. But it's never that simple. You have to also consider the mana cost of the library manipulation spells and the curve of the costs in your deck.
How much do my spells cost?
In general, you want to run spells that have the biggest effect for the least cost. Which one of those two things you prioritize will depend on your deck and what you are trying to accomplish. For example, Lightning Bolt does three damage for only 1 mana. That's about as good as it gets. Yet, I've never actually seen Lightning Bolt in a Commander deck (YMMV). Why? Because three damage isn't all that great in this format, even if it does only cost 1 mana. In that same deck slot, you could run a card like Fireball or Earthquake that is way more flexible and scales with the amount of mana you have available.
Library manipulation goes hand-in-hand with control decks that tend to sit back and influence how the game develops. It's not always the case, but it's often true. These decks have the time to worry about drawing the best card for the situation. Library manipulation also tends to support combo strategies where putting the right combination of cards together wins the game. By running more library manipulation, you increase consistency, which means you can put the combo together more often and increase your win percentage. Library manipulation is a friend to combo and control.
What does this have to do with how much my spells cost? In a combo deck, the combo pieces cost whatever they cost. You don't have much of a choice about it if you want to run that particular combo. For example, Mind Over Matter + Temple Bell costs X + Y. But the other spells you run, you do have a choice over. How you choose to get to that combo (and how quickly, with how much protection) is up to you.
With control decks, the further you can push your deck down the curve the better, almost always. For example, Swords to Plowshares is an awesome spell for dealing with one creature. Unless that creature has shroud or hexproof, Swords will almost certainly deal with the problem. At one white mana and instant speed, Swords is the go-to spell for spot removal. Path to Exile is also a contender. In other words, if you are looking for ways to deal with creatures in your control deck, these spells are your benchmark. Anything that costs more mana will put a strain on your available mana in any given turn, no matter how much "bigger" the effect is.
Want another example? Take a look at Counterspell vs. Cancel. They both do the same thing, but Cancel costs 1 mana more than Counterspell. Which one is better? Counterspell is almost always the better choice. But what about Render Silent? Is that better? Like Cancel, it also costs 1 mana more than Counterspell, in this case one more W mana. Plus, it has a nifty additional effect that the controller of the spell it counters can't cast anymore spells this turn. The question is, how often does that additional effect actually impact the game? How often are you not able to counter an important spell because you don't have the mana you need open (or in the right combination of colors)? Most of the time, good ol' Counterspell gets the job done with less problems.
It's up to you!
Take a look at your deck, especially if you are playing combo or control. Are you running library manipulation spells? Are they the most efficient versions of those spells (furthest down the curve), showing you the most cards (options) for the least mana? Especially if you are playing control, how many of your spells are at instant vs. sorcery speed?
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