Mimic Vat

Most cloning effects copy something currently on the battlefield, which is why so many of them read as removal-bait the moment they resolve. The imprint clause inverts that timing entirely: the artifact harvests its target from the graveyard, after the creature is already dead, which means the answer comes before the engine ever fires. You don't choose what to copy; you wait for the right thing to die. That delay is the whole machine. Once a creature is imprinted, the artifact becomes a recurring token factory, and crucially it copies the printed card, not the dying object, so any enters-the-battlefield trigger the original carried comes along free every single activation. The mandatory exile of each token brings its own brake: you rent the effect once per turn rather than owning a permanent army, and the haste makes that rental aggressive rather than incidental. The single-card memory is the real tension. Imprinting a better creature wipes the old one back into its graveyard, so the artifact rewards patience and punishes greed; you are always weighing the body you have against the body that might walk into the kill zone next. It is symmetrical, too, which is the quiet teeth: an opponent's best creature dies into your factory just as easily as your own, turning their removal and their losses into your value. Few artifacts of its era asked you to think this many turns ahead about whose creatures were dying and why.