Culling Dais
Artifact
, Sacrifice a creature: Put a charge counter on this artifact.
, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card for each charge counter on this artifact.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- C
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Scars of Mirrodin
- Price
- $0.32
- EDHREC rank
- #7263
Culling Dais trades your creatures for charge counters, then cashes those counters for cards — a slow engine that only pays off in decks that want creatures dying repeatedly on a schedule. Outside of specific sacrifice loops, like the zero-cost egg cracking that Atla Palani, Nest Tender enables or the -1/-1 counter synergies that Vizier of Remedies exploits, it's too clunky to justify the slot.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Atla Palani, Nest Tender
Atla Palani, Nest Tender hatches eggs by killing 0/1 tokens, and Culling Dais turns every egg sacrifice into a charge counter you cash in later — the Dais doubles as both an outlet and a card-advantage engine in the same slot.
Omarthis, Ghostfire Initiate
Omarthis, Ghostfire Initiate cares about moving counters around, and Culling Dais generates charge counters from otherwise-expendable creatures, feeding the kind of counter accumulation and redistribution that Omarthis turns into a board-state advantage.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Culling Dais is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but it sees essentially zero competitive play outside Commander. In Legacy and Vintage, the opportunity cost of a two-mana artifact that drains one mana and one creature per activation is simply too high when those formats demand immediate impact. Commander is where Culling Dais actually lives, and even there it's narrowly slotted — it belongs in decks with a dedicated sacrifice theme or a reliable source of expendable tokens, not as a generic draw spell. In Oathbreaker it faces the same niche limitations: plausible in the right build, irrelevant in most.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Vizier of RemediesLesser MasticoreDross ScorpionCulling Dais
Infinite card draw; Infinite death triggers; Infinite draw triggers; Infinite ETB; Infinite LTB; Infinite sacrifice triggers
View on Commander Spellbook ↗Price Context
Current price
$0.32 bulk tier
At $0.32, Culling Dais is deep bulk — you're paying for cardboard, not demand. It's stable at that floor; this is not a card with upward price pressure, so buy it if you need it and don't think twice about the cost.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.