For this project, I used two different tools. I used a manual tile cutter and a wet saw. The great thing about the manual tile cutter is it requires no setup, however, it can only cut straight lines across a tile (cutting a tile in half for example) and pieces that aren’t very side (no more than 3in otherwise it risks breaking the tile in spots your don’t want it snapped). The manual tile cutter has a small grinder that runs along the tile to create a score line. Once a line is scored, you simply put pressure on the handle which snaps the tile giving you a clean cut.
The wet saw is for my intricate cuts or for cutting larger pieces. I used the tile saw to get the “slice” pieces I needed at the end of each shelf. I also used it to cut the pieces around the crown. You can definitely get away with owning just a manual saw, as long as you don’t have many unique cuts or have to cut a tile in half length wise.