Out of curiosity, why are you against using Oil counters? Are there just too many words since the card has to define what it's doing with the counters?
My cube already has +1/+1 counters that can be put on creatures via stuff like Felidar Retreat, Siege Veteran or Luminarch Aspirant. I don't want to make my drafters have to keep track of potentially two different kinds of counters on a creature with dice. The wordiness is also annoying outside of the dedicated limited environment where the oil counter itself might matter when paired alongside cards that care and/or proliferate effects.