A lot of decks have to play a big number of high-cost cards to see them as often as possible, subjecting your deck to possibly bricking, but with Luffy, you can tone down the amount of cards you play since you can search him with Nami or In Two Years
Rich visited the cave where one finds Articuno, but he made no mention of Articuno
This allows the Aethermage to play into a great space that supports a ton of classic Azorius strategies without getting ahead of itself
Development liked the card, but they tweaked some creatures to balance out the mana curve and needed to change a two-drop red creature to a three-drop creature
While this may not be the most expensive Magic card ever sold, its rarity and connection to the Power Nine make it an incredible find
Those were the two things that needed to happen for this to take off, which explains why this was one of the only rares in Theros to gain on its preorder price