There’s a brand new price spike on the horizon, as The Enigma Jewel leaps up in price with a 383% spike. This artifact card looks like a brewer’s best friend, but it’s failed to find a spot in any competitive decklist, so has sat costing just $1 for most of its existence.
Until early this year, that is, when it started to trend steadily upwards. Since MTG Aetherdrift launched, Enigma Jewel has skyrocketed from $1.80 to $8.70, with most of the growth happening over the last three days.
Released in 2023 in the Lost Caverns of Ixalan MTG set, The Enigma Jewel is a cheap, one-mana artifact that taps for mana, which can then only be spent to activate abilities.
The reason for this price spike is relatively simple. The card is seeing play in a brand new combo deck that’s shot onto the scene in Standard.
This Izzet artifacts list is strictly speaking part midrange, part combo. It runs Repurposing Bay, a new Aetherdrift card that’s essentially an artifact-themed version of the classic card Birthing Pod. It lets you sacrifice an artifact, then go searching your deck for another artifact that costs one mana more.
Repurposing Bay costs two mana to activate however, which makes it pretty hard to use in anything but a casual deck. Enter The Enigma Jewel, which can pay the cost for Repurposing Bay each turn, making the card suddenly much more viable.
So what else does this Repurposing/Enigma Jewel play? Tons of awesome artifacts of course, from Collector’s Vault and Mazemind Tome (which can also benefit from Enigma’s mana) to Simulacrum Synthesizer and the new Affinity creature Memory Guardian. Heck, we even have artifact-based removal in 2025 Standard, with cards like Chainsaw and Legion Extruder.
What makes this a combo deck? Well, while it can easily win with no combo at all just using its droid army, it also packs a copy or two of Radiant Lotus and Boommobile. See the synergy? You just have to sacrifice your whole board of artifacts with the Lotus and you can make an enormous amount of mana, then use that mana with Boommobile’s exhaust ability to hit your opponent in the face for lethal damage… In the game, that is. Please no punching.
Repurposing Bay lets you tutor up these artifacts when you’re ready to use them, so you don’t need more than one copy of the relevant card. And if your combo is disrupted, there’s plenty more this deck can do to pull things back.
Izzet Artifacts had a (very small) presence in Pro Tour Aetherdrift at Magic Con Chicago. While they didn’t make it to the top of the leaderboard, the two Izzet artifact decks in the tournament did put up a good fight, winning 60% of their matches.
Now it looks like a Grixis variant is racking up wins on MTG Online, adding cards like Demonic Junker, another affinity card that can deal with big creatures and become a relevant threat; and Oildeep Gearhulk, a potent beater with hand disruption powers.
Time will tell whether this strategy has the potential to take over Standard and become one of the best MTG Arena decks of the month (I know I certainly don’t have enough wildcards to craft it).
To stay up to date on the latest in Magic: The Gathering you can check out our MTG release schedule guide – which will fill you in on upcoming sets like Tarkir Dragonstorm.
Source: Wargamer
