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Moxonomy

Nick Valentine, Private Eye

Legendary Artifact Creature — Synth Detective2 generic manaBlue mana

Two engines share one legendary body, and they point in different directions. The evasion clause is straightforward pressure: a 2/2 that only artifact creatures can block will connect against most boards, and it wants to attack to do that. The investigate trigger is the opposite instinct. It rewards artifact creatures dying, which means chump-blocking, trading, and being sacrificed elsewhere on the battlefield, not on Nick's own attacks. The two abilities don't cooperate so much as coexist: one wins the game with damage, the other refills your hand off the attrition happening around them. The real design story is the color it lives in. Turning creature death into card draw has historically been black's territory, from Skullclamp on down; routing that draw through investigate gives a mono-blue artifact deck a way to monetize its dying tokens, mana rocks with bodies, and sacrifice fodder without ever touching the sacrifice-for-value color. Each artifact creature that dies becomes a Clue, and a board built to lose small bodies on purpose converts its own graveyard into a slow, compounding draw engine. That makes this the payoff at the top of an artifact-attrition shell rather than a beater: the evasion keeps the clock ticking while the death trigger ensures you're never empty-handed, and the blue frame is the quiet part doing the load-bearing work.

Nick Valentine, Private Eye (pip)
PIP · #563rare
Pricing
Normal:
Foil: $2.29
Oracle Text

Rules text

Nick Valentine can't be blocked except by artifact creatures. Whenever Nick Valentine or another artifact creature you control dies, you may investigate. (To investigate, create a Clue token. It's an artifact with "2 generic mana, Sacrifice this token: Draw a card.")
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
N/A
Pioneer
N/A
Modern
N/A
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
N/A
Brawl
N/A
Historic
N/A
Alchemy
N/A
Timeless
N/A
Standard Brawl
N/A
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
N/A
PreDH
N/A
Pauper Commander
N/A
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
N/A
Penny Dreadful
N/A
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
N/A
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
N/A
TLR
Legal
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