Lurking Automaton
Artifact Creature — Construct
Reveal this card as you draft it and note how many cards you've drafted this draft round, including this card.
This creature enters with X +1/+1 counters on it, where X is the highest number you noted for cards named Lurking Automaton.
- CMC
- 5
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- C
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Conspiracy
- Price
- $0.21
- EDHREC rank
- #30980
Lurking Automaton enters with +1/+1 counters equal to the number of artifacts you reveal from your hand — in a dedicated artifacts deck, that's a massive body for three mana. The payoff scales hard with your hand size, but it's a zero in artifact-light builds.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Lurking Automaton is a Commander card through and through — the format's longer games mean you're more likely to be holding a fistful of artifacts when it lands, and artifact-tribal commanders give it a real home. In Pauper it's legal and the artifact synergies exist, but three mana for a vanilla creature without evasion competes poorly against that format's efficiency bar. Legacy and Vintage have no interest: the card does nothing on an empty hand and offers no redundancy or interaction. Stick to Commander, specifically in artifact-dense lists where the counter ceiling regularly hits five or six.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.21 bulk tier
At $0.21, Lurking Automaton is deep bulk — you're paying for cardboard and shipping, not the card. That price is stable; there's no meaningful demand driver to move it, and it's unlikely to be a chase reprint target.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.