Arcbound Shikari

Front-loading is what makes this modular payoff strange. The mechanic was built as a death-trigger economy: a creature carries a counter budget and hands it off when it dies, so the value is always deferred until something breaks. This one refuses to wait. Its entry trigger drops a +1/+1 counter onto every other artifact creature you already control, paying out immediately and then paying out again later when it dies and dumps its own two counters onto a survivor. The 0/0 printed body is the tell that this was never meant to be cast alone: it arrives as a 2/2 off its own counters, and its job is to make the counters already on your board matter more than any it keeps. First strike is doing quieter work than the keyword suggests. A modular deck wants its counters landing on bodies that win combat outright rather than trade into it, so a first-striking recipient converts a pile of counters into damage that gets through unanswered. Steering an artifact-counter mechanic that spent its early life in mono-artifact shells into aggressive red-white is the whole design gesture: this is modular reimagined as a go-wide anthem rather than a slow accumulation, a Cat Soldier built to reward a board that is already there.