Arcbound Prototype
Modular's original printings lived in artifact colors, mana-costed to accept a splash of white at most through the occasional colorless Assembly-Worker. This one commits to white outright, which is the whole point: a two-drop that dies for value and hands its counters to whatever artifact creature outlives it, built to slot into a white-based counters-matter shell rather than a mono-artifact chassis. The 0/0 body is entirely a function of the counters it enters with, so removal aimed at the creature never fully answers it; the +1/+1 counters redistribute on death to a target artifact creature, converting a chump block or a sacrifice into a permanent stat gain elsewhere. That death trigger is where the card earns its keep, because it turns counter-manipulation from a stat-line curiosity into an engine: proliferate the survivor, or feed the Prototype to something that wants the trigger, and the counters compound rather than trade one-for-one. What separates it from the older Arcbound creatures is the color identity itself, opening modular to white's counter-support suite (anthem effects, proliferate, resilient go-wide bodies) instead of the artifact-aggro decks the keyword was first built for. The rate is deliberately plain; the interest is in the plumbing between the death trigger and whatever white shell is already stacking counters.

