Pointed Discussion

Proliferate affects cards with counters, so this will require at least one sacrifice before it begins to passively accumulate counters while you're charging other more powerful cards.

I think its really good to have it on the battlefield, sacrifice your creatures when they are about to die, and draw the cards when you need it

The obvious comparison is Carnage Altar, which is more expensive mana-wise but yields a more immediate benefit and a repeatable benefit. I don't think I'd take this over Carnage Altar and there is no point in running both.

Fairly better than Carnage Altar, for me.

"I'll chump block with my Perilous Myr and sacrifice it before combat damage..."

Love all the comments so far, and with the addition of proliferate this will make an excellent hand fillerer.

Good thing they have Venser's Journal in the same set.

Not that great. You need to have constantly mana available to sac it in response to a removal spell. :| And it's a one-shoft card drawer too... 1/5

Why? It's good when played right, in limited at least. Cashing your chumpblockers and tokens for card advantage isn't too bad. Add proliferate and we got pretty neat draw engine here. That extra isn't problem most of the time, because it's barely worth to waste removal on dais before it got 3+ counters.
Yes, it's somewhat situative, but far from useless.

Ok this would be awesome with Mimic Vat, imprinted with a Coretapper. In two or three turns you can be drawing 6-9 cards. Wow! What do you guys think?

This deninitely has potential in a profilerate deck, when you're gonna proliferate anyway, being able to get your hand reloaded is definitely interesting. Only have to sec once. Trying to make some kind of infect proliferate deck, and this might be useable. WIth this on the field, the first removal spell from an opponent basically means a card for you. This should not be underestimated, colourless card draw is nice, having to splash blue for card draw is so frustrating, SOM has given us some colourless standard card draw, I love it.

@DacenOctavio - I like the sarcasm; as if trying to play four 6CC enchantments in the same game in order to draw four cards when you sacrifice an Eldrazi Spawn is a feasible or superior strategy to simply using Culling Dais. I know you're kidding, though.

I'm building a UR burn/draw deck (red burn that doesn't run out of gas) using Skullclamp and weak pingers like Goblin Arsonist and Perilous Myr. It's true that it only allows you to draw once, but the deck is too lean and fast for Carnage Altar. With this, I could start building up for a large-ish draw which would hopefully contain enough burn to seal the deal. We'll see...

fuel for Furnace Celebration

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Green would benefit from this the most. It's colorless for the plus side and nature guys have a tons of ways to get token creatures. You could also use it with Nuisance Engine and uhhh Rhys the Reedemed in white, if you desperate.

Reminds me of Safe Haven and City of Shadows. I like this artifact for it's low cmc and almost nothing for maintenance/use. 4/5 Solid. It's a good card to have on the board any time you are playing with creatures. Some of your creatures are probably going to die by your opponents hands, so this is great even without proliferate, sac to Culling Dais and get some extra use out of your creature that just got Doom Bladed.

Isn't this the same art as that on Font of Mythos??

Useful. You play creatures, people play removal. Turn their removal into card advantage. Turn your Act of Treasons, Mark of Mutinys, and Act of Aggressions into slowtripping removal. Get 2 going and start proliferating. It's slow, but for long games and color combinations that don't have access to Jace Belerens, Phyrexian Arenas, and the like, this is a great cheap alternative, and drawing 7 cards off of one is not difficult to do if you actually proliferate with something like a Throne of Geth.

Remember, you get more value out of most creatures the longer they stay alive. If you just play a dude and sacrifice him, it's often the same as Cycling the card; however, sacrificing creatures with death triggers is a great way to get the value out of the creature while getting potential card advantage. If you're in a situation where you need to draw some more gas and/or block a creature that doesn't have trample, you can also block the creature, then sacrifice it at the end of declare blockers step to get the Culling Dais' effect. You don't take the damage, and you get potential CA. Elegant card design.

The second ability also doesn't care how the charge counters got onto Culling Dais. For example, you could load this up with an Energy Chamber, Power Conduit, Vedalken Infuser, Surge Node, or Coretapper, without sacrificing a single creature.

Culling Dais just got a new toy to play with.Archon of Justice + Mimic Vat + Culling Dais = Exiling your biggest threat once a turn. Unwinding Clock if you'd like to do it on their turn, too.

It's the in the activation cost of the second ability that keeps me from putting it into a deck...

Don't want to keep one mana open each turn to make sure my opponent doesn't shatter this and thus gets the card advantage instead this way.

Act of Aggression.
Act of Treason.
Traitorous Blood.

Highly underrated card. Block, sac, Mimic Vat, etc. Or use it with tokens. And you can prevent lifelink from going off from say, oh gee I dunno Wurmcoil Engine? If anyone still uses that card. Side note: the comments on this card are freakin' LAME (I'll probably get downrated by the people who can't stand criticism of any kind for this but I don't really care). Final note: @Jabberwock, what the heck are you talking about? The guy/gal isn't sarcastic and doesn't mention any enchantments at all, unless of course he/she edited them out of his/her comment.

Its definitely a Johnny card. Combos well with Reassembling Skeleton, Mortician Beetle, and proliferate. I had a fun little sac engine deck before Zendikar rotated :)

I play this card alongside Glissa, the Traitor in a Heartless Summoning deck. It's actually very consistently drawing me cards, but my favorite thing to do with it is cast it, sac a few creatures that were gonna die anyways after blocks, then draw cards from it and recur it with Glissa, the Traitor. Lather, rinse, repeat.

4x Archon of Justice
4x Day of Judgment
4x Stonehorn Dignitary
4x Mimic Vat
4x Culling Dais
4x Fiend Hunter
4x Elite Vanguard
4x Suture Priest
4x Inquisitor Exarch
2x Sun Titan

22x Plains

Easily one of my favorite standard decks I own. Ton of exile, revival, draw, etc. I think one of my favorite things is that I will be willingly day-ing when I have a full field goin :P

This is one of those quiet but great cards. It has come to occupy a few EDH/Commander slots for me now. This really ads a ton of value to every creature it eats, and combines powerfully with creature steal effects.

In slower formats this is a 2 drop that guarantees you'll never lose card advantage, and with the right deck can ensure great things happening. Compare this to Phyrexian Vault where here you never have to leave mana open to ensure the sac outlet ability.

Hey, it's a trash can! You put old stuff into it, and if you're desperate, you can also eat from it!

Wow. Here I was searching all over the place for a good sac outlet in EDH and somehow I missed this card. I'm wondering why this isn't an auto-include in every EDH deck.

It can;
-Sacrifice your commander in response to a tuck effect from Spin into Myth or Condemn
-Sacrifice a creature in response to removal, essentially netting you a 2-for-1
-Sacrifice itself for a measly at any time, meaning it's unlikely you won't draw cards from this save for a Krosan Grip

I'd be shocked if this didn't net a decent card advantage in most EDH games. Definitely going to be playing this in there a lot more.

"Culling on the Dais, on the Dais, Culling on the Dais, Culling on the Dais!" Classic.

This is card advantage. You put it into any deck that runs creatures. When a creature gets nuked or is going to lose in combat without killing, you sac it, building up your counters to reload your hand.