Image courtesy of Scryfall.com

White artifacts, oil counters, and the metagame ripple

Argent Dais arrives in Modern Horizons 3 as a thoughtfully aggressive gatekeeper for White-based artifact strategies. This rare artifact costs {1}{W} and, at first glance, looks like a modest—yet sturdy—pocket of control. It enters the battlefield with two oil counters already resting on it, a nod to the newish oil-counter motif that echoes themes of oil, industry, and slow-burn advantage. The card’s blueprint is simple but elegant: accelerate a buildup of oil counters by provoking multi-attacker turns, then exchange those counters for graveyard-shifting removal. The vibe is classic White tempo with a twist of political control, and it arrives at a moment in MH3 where creature-based combat has room to breathe. 🧙‍♂️🔥💎

How it actually plays out on the table

• Starting point: Argent Dais costs 2 mana and enters the battlefield with two oil counters. You’re starting from a foundation that rewards you for pushing waves of attackers. The two counters give you a clear short-term lever: you don’t need to wait for a long game to leverage the first exile ability. ⚔️
• Oil counters as fuel: Whenever two or more creatures attack, the Dais gains an oil counter. That means board states with wide, aggressive lines become accelerants for your removal plan. In multiplayer, you can often build toward a “two attackers, two counters” cadence across turns, quickly stocking the artifact for a decisive moment. 🧭
• Exile with payoffs: For {2}, T, Remove two oil counters from Argent Dais, you exile another target nonland permanent. Its controller draws two cards. This is the quintessential double-edged blade—exiling a bomb on an opponent’s board is powerful, but the card draw goes to that same opponent. The net effect hinges on choosing the right target and timing it with the board’s shape. If your opponent fights for a stalemate piece like a stax battery or a problematic planeswalker, exiling it can swing tempo in your favor even as your opponent clocks an extra draw. 🪄

Strategic implications for the post-release metagame

In a landscape where MH3’s unique pieces encourage more nuanced board interaction, Argent Dais adds a deliberate, math-forward option for White shells. The metagame impact is likely to lean into a few core patterns:

• Attack-then-exile tempo: The oil-counter mechanic rewards players who commit to multi-creature attacks to fuel the Dais. In decks that can push early or midrange threats while keeping the board relatively open to absorb blockers, Argent Dais becomes a reliable tempo engine. The ability to exile a troublesome permanent—whether it’s a mana rock, a problematic enchantment, or a problematic creature—gives you a targeted answer in a format where single answers often aren’t enough. ⚔️
• Political and unintended card draw volatility: For the opponent, two drawn cards aren’t always a win condition in itself, but it raises the stakes of every exile decision. Decks will need to be mindful of how often they attempt to use Argent Dais and what they expose to their own color pie. The dynamic invites a dance of mutual concessions and micro-political play in multiplayer formats. 🎭
• Compression of removal into a single artifact: Argent Dais offers a compact removal engine at a relatively low cost, especially in boards with several attackers. It can coexist with other white staples like flicker effects or anthem effects to amplify the board’s resilience while you accrue more oil counters. The risk, of course, is overextending into a fragile board that can be punished by mass removal, so timing and sequencing become the name of the game. 🧲
• Where it shines in formats: Historic, Modern, and Commander formats all stand to feel the ripple. In eternal formats like Modern and Legacy, Argent Dais slots into white artifact-centric shells, where its synergy with attack pressure and counter generation can be a real force multiplier. In Commander, its political texture—exiling a commander’s threat while forcing card draw to another player—can create memorable board states and spicy late-game decisions. The card also appears in multiple formats that reward artifact synergy or token swarms, tapping into White’s resilience and removal toolkit. 🧙‍♀️

Deck-building notes and practical archetypes

• White artifact-control with a splash: Pair Argent Dais with efficient evasive threats or creature-doublers and token makers to maximize the number of attackers, fueling oil counters quickly. A handful of board-wipe or enchantment-removal options helps keep the dais alive for longer, turning it into a stabilizing force as you push toward a late-game exile plan. 🧪
• Stax-ish tempo variants: In multiplayer settings, Argent Dais can be a component of a control-stax shell where opponents race to stabilize, and you nudge them toward a tempo window where the exile becomes a decisive tempo swing. The key is to protect the Dais while forcing lines of attack that generate counters. 🔒
• Opponent-centric targeting: Since the exile target is any nonland permanent, the optimal targets are often the biggest individual threats—comet-like bombs, game-ending auras, or locks that stall your plan. The two-card reward to the owner means you’ll want to time it against an opponent who’s about to win, or when you’ve got a concrete plan to capitalize on the new board state. 🧭

Limitations and counterplay

No card sits in a vacuum. Argent Dais has clear strengths, but its drawbacks are real. It relies on multiple attackers to stockpile oil counters, so if the board stalls, the Dais sits idle. The exile ability requires paying mana and removing counters, which means you must weigh the benefit of removing a permanent against the risk of handing an extra two cards to the opposition. Against heavy disruption or spot removal, timing becomes even more critical, and a misstep can leave you with a gilded artifact that’s suddenly under direct fire. Still, when deployed with patience and board presence, Argent Dais can tilt the table in your favor in substantial, memorable ways. 🪙

Story, art, and collector flavor

The card’s lore and flavor sit neatly with White’s archetypal themes of order, protection, and measured power. The crisp oil-counter mechanic evokes a tangible, almost industrial aesthetic—oil as a resource that compounds through ongoing conflict. The art, by Carlos Palma Cruchaga, captures a gleaming, almost ceremonial artifact that feels at home on a well-worn battlefield. For collectors, the rarity and foil options add a little sparkle to a deck that aims to outthink and outmaneuver, not just outrun opponents. The price tag sits modestly on the spectrum for a rare MH3 artifact, making it a compelling pickup for players who want a nuanced control piece with a distinct playstyle. 💎🎨

Where to see more and stay in the loop

If you’re curious about how Argent Dais might influence ongoing conversations in the broader MTG community, check out these five articles from our network for context on metagame shifts, data-driven insights, and deck-building experiments:

• nft-stats-midevil-2448-from-midevils-collection
• nft-stats-pill-money-podz-1000-from-pill-money-podz-collection
• nft-stats-hiney-kin-2135-from-hiney-kin-collection
• nft-data-pullo-2538-from-pullo-collection-on-magiceden
• master-days-gone-combat-with-stealth-resources-boss-fights

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