Little Known MTG Card Spikes Thanks To Final Fantasy Artifact Synergy

Last updated on May 27, 2025

Sage's Nouliths – illustration by Justyna Dura

The Magic card market is a bit calmer this Monday, after the huge waves that the upcoming Final Fantasy x MTG set caused in the last couple of weeks. But the boat is still rocking, and now it's time for Noctis, Prince of Lucis to shake up an old, little-known blue enchantment and push it close to the ten-bucks line.

Source: MTGStocks

Artificer's Intuition, a Fifth Dawn rare that most Commander players have never heard about, just went up over $9, an increase of about 65% in the span of just a couple of days.

The recent spike has a lot to do with Final Fantasy‘s Noctis, Prince of Lucis, for whom Artificer's Intuition is a match made in heaven. But Artificer's Intuition had already been gaining steam even before that: Between January and March this year, it steadily rose from about $2.5 to around $5, and that was long before the Final Fantasy reveals. So what's going on?

Why Is Artificer's Intuition Spiking?

Artificer's Intuition is a one-mana blue enchantment that lets you pay , discard an artifact, and tutor any artifact with mana value 1 or less. Most Commander players would probably have trouble recognizing this blue card, since it sees very little casual play… but Artificer's Intuition happens to have some cEDH chops, in decks with Tameshi, Reality Architect in the command zone.

And Tameshi decks have had an uptick of good results in cEDH tournaments as of late, especially since the beginning of the year, with Artificer's Intuition as part of Tameshi's usual entourage.

Then along came Final Fantasy, and things got all heated up between Artificer's Intuition and Noctis, Prince of Lucis!

Noctis, Prince of Lucis, an Esper commander from Final Fantasy‘s main set, lets you cast artifacts from your graveyard by paying life plus the artifact's cost. This makes effects like Artificer's Intuition‘s especially attractive: You get an artifact tutor, and you're able to discard artifacts on demand.

Noctis is clearly not as rabidly popular as Vivi Ornitier or Y'shtola, Night's Blessed – who are fast becoming two of the most popular commanders ever – but the Prince of Lucis still has a lot of fans. Preliminary decks posted to EDHREC show Artificer's Intuition appearing in roughly 20% of early Noctis brews. And the Prince is probably behind Hex Parasite moving from about $8 to around $12 as of late.

As usual, scarce supply is the last part of this story. Never reprinted since Fifth Dawn came out more than two decades ago, Artificer's Intuition is really a rare card to come by, and doubly so if you're looking for near-mint copies. And triply so if the MTG finance community is already speculating on the card, as it's been the case for a couple of days now.

What Will Happen With its Price?

Noctis, Prince of Lucis – Illustration by Jeremy Chong

With the usual caveat that this is not investment advice (always do your own research!), whether the current price will hold depends a lot on how popular Noctis ultimately becomes among Commander players.

On the one hand, this is not the first time that Artificer's Intuition goes sky high: It did something similar back in 2022 during the reveals of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, thanks to its synergy with Containment Construct. But the hype died down soon enough and the price went down to $2.

On the other hand, though, Noctis, Prince of Lucis is himself very affordable. He's part of the main FIN set, and currently sits at less than $3, so players that want to brew with him are going to have it easy on their wallets (compared to, say, Vivi Ornitier, who at the time of writing costs well above $100, and climbing!). And this Esper commander is already proving popular, with brewers including Artificer's Intuition in their Noctis builds.

And, as noted, while Artificer's Intuition is old and little known, it's not really draft-chaff or bulk-bin material: cEDH players are putting it to good use, albeit in a fringe archetype.