Sculpting Steel & Triskelion

[aosquirrels]

My opponent has a Triskelion in play.  I cast Sculpting Steel and in response my opponent removes the three counters on it.  Once Sculpting Steel resolves and I name the aforementioned Trike does my Sculpting Steel have three +1/+1 counters on it or not?

[theLastGnu]

It enters the battlefield with 3 counters, regardless of how many counters the trike had when declaring the spell, resolving it, or while it's on the stack. This is because steel enters the battlefield AS a copy of the artifact, and as such will enter the battlefield in the same way any other instance of the artifact would. Copying an Engineered Explosives, for example, would result in it entering the battlefield with counters equal to how many colors you spent to pay Sculpting Steel.

[LotusHead]

Copying an Engineered Explosives, for example, would result in it entering the battlefield with counters equal to how many colors you spent to pay Sculpting Steel.

I did not know that.  But I did find out copying an Assembly Worker (from Mishra's Factory), Sculpting Steel will come into play as a Mishra's Factory (which is not an artifact at first).

[Delha]

The way I think this is to imagine that you'd cast the copy target as a spell, so it ETB in a "base state". If you played a brand new Trike, it'd get counters. If you played a brand new Factory, it wouldn't be a creature yet. If you played a brand new EE, it would Sunburst based off what you paid this time.

In short, I see removing counters or animating into an Assembly Worker as changes that were applied after the card was played. Since the copy uses the "base state", none of those changes are relevant.