Arcbound Reclaimer

Modular was the signature mechanic of its era: a way to make artifact creatures feel like load-bearing parts of a machine rather than disposable bodies, since the +1/+1 counters migrate on death and the value never quite leaves the board. Most of the cycle just shuffled stats around. This Golem repurposes those counters into fuel for graveyard recursion, and the design's whole tension lives in how few there are. It arrives as a 0/0 with two counters, and each counter spent buys back an artifact card to the top of your library. Spend one and you have a 1/1 that can still recur once more; spend the second and its toughness drops to zero, so it dies to state-based actions. That death does not cost you the recursion (the activation already on the stack resolves independently of its source and still returns the card), but it does end the body, and the choice is whether to cash out twice or hold the last counter to keep a creature alive and to feed Modular when it eventually trades. The recursion costs no mana, which makes each activation feel free, but the counters are a finite resource the card cannot replenish on its own; this is not an engine that runs every turn unless something outside it restocks counters. Because it is an activated ability targeting a graveyard card, it uses the stack: a quick opponent can exile the target in response and strand the spent counter. And the card returns to the top of your library, not your hand, so even a clean resolution is a delayed draw rather than an immediate one.