Unsurprisingly, the Final Fantasy MTG set has some pretty compelling cards for Commander. As usual, many of these come from the set’s preconstructed decks, however, there are some stellar cards in the main set too. From the moment they were revealed, both Vivi Ornitier and Noctis, Prince of Lucis caught the attention of players.
As is often the case, this attention quickly caused a range of price spikes to synergistic combo pieces. Curiously, these spikes are still happening, almost two weeks later, as players pick up cards that were missed the first time around. While it’s only doubled in price so far, Artificer’s Intuition has a lot of potential.
Artificer’s Intuition
On the surface, Artificer’s Intuition might seem like a pretty bad deal. While you do get to search up some cheap artifacts, you’re forced to get rid of one at the same time. Basically, this lets you change trash in your hand into low-cost treasure, but that’s about it.
Thankfully, there are plenty of low-cost artifacts in Commander that are very much worth playing. So long as you’ve got artifacts to discard, Sol Ring, Skullclamp, and Sensei’s Diving Top are always good. While this means Artificer’s Intuition always has potential, the real trick lies in graveyard-based shenanigans.
Currently, Artificer’s Intuition sees most play alongside Tameshi, Reality Architect, who can capitalize on artifacts in the graveyard. This allows you to repeatedly activate Artificer’s Intuition over and over again, filling the graveyard with everything you need. After that, you just need to spend a little more mana with Tameshi to bring them onto the board.
Essentially, Noctis, Prince of Lucis does the exact same thing, albeit with a slightly different cost. Rather than needing to pay an extra white mana with Tameshi, you just need to spend three life. Thanks to Commander’s higher starting life total, this seems like a pretty sweet deal, as Artificer’s Intuition becomes a cheap repeatable tutor.
While Noctis will have artifacts coming back with a Finality counter, this synergy has a great deal of potential. Artificer’s Intuition can even find all but one component of an infinite combo with Noctis. You just need to find Mox Diamond, or Chalice of the Void, and any other zero-cost artifact.
Sadly, as mentioned, the last piece of the puzzle, Aetherflux Reservoir, can’t be found with Artificer’s Intuition. Still, adding this card to the 99 of Commander and cEDH decks could provide some added redundancy.
The Spike
As mentioned, Artificer’s Intuition has only doubled in price so far. This spike happened quickly over the past couple of days after the synergy was showcased on the r/mtgfinance subreddit. This focused attention led to over 150 copies of the card being sold, putting a massive dent in the available supply.
Notably, Artificer’s Intuition only has one printing at the moment, from 2004’s Fifth Dawn. This makes copies of Artificer’s Intuition rare by default, especially higher conduition examples. Due to this rarity, there are now just 70 copies of Artificer’s Intuition left on TCGplayer, only eight of which are near-mint.
Since they’re now so scarce, the price of these near-mint copies has doubled, at the time of writing. Just a few days ago, these copies were selling for $2.94, but recent sales have topped out at $6.15. Currently, the cheapest near-mint listing is for $5.90, but that doesn’t include a $3.99 shipping cost.
Thankfully, if the total cost of $9.89 is a bit much, there are worse condition copies available for significantly cheaper. A damaged Artificer’s Intuition will set you back just over $2, and lightly played copies are around $5.30. Considering the low supply, there’s a good chance that these prices could soon increase, but that’s hardly guaranteed.
The Once and Future Spike
Notably, this isn’t the first time that Artificer’s Intuition has spiked in price. Ahead of the release of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, Artificer’s Intuition spiked hard, reaching a $15 average price online. This was thanks to Containment Construct, which similarly offered a cheap way to play freshly discarded artifacts from your graveyard.
While Noctis should be slightly easier to use, being a Commander, this definitely isn’t a new synergy in the grand scheme of MTG. As such, we can look at this past price spike, and notably its fall from grace. While the price of Artificer’s Intuition did hit $15 briefly, it wouldn’t last long.
After one month, the average price of Artificer’s Intuition had dropped by $5, and it continued to tumble from there. By November, eight months later, the price was back down to just $3 on average. With this in mind, it seems that any spike that we’re seeing right now may not last too long into the future.
That being said, it’s hard to ignore the fact that Noctis, Prince of Lucis is a Final Fantasy card. Due to this, there’s a chance that more Commander players will be interested in building around this legend. While this seems possible, or even likely, we’ve not seen a tremendous amount of Noctis-based price spikes just yet.
Ultimately, as always, we’re just going to have to wait and see what happens in the future. Potentially Artificer’s Intuition is still cheap, even at $9, but we won’t know that until it spikes further. This current price could be as high as it gets this time around, but we won’t know for sure until the dust settles.
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