Last updated on October 20, 2026
Wishcoin Crab | Illustration by James Paick
While Magic plays with all manner of fantastical creatures, from classics like dragons to in-universe creations like vedalken, plenty of more mundane animals get a fantastical spin, often by making them very, very large.
Crabs are scattered throughout the Magic Multiverse, as one would expect—everything evolves into crabs with enough time. Let’s figure out the best crustacean to improve your next brew.
What Are Crabs in MTG?
Charix, the Raging Isle | Illustration by Viktor Titov
Crab is a creature type in Magic with a few defining traits. They’re a predominately blue creature type and they often have toughness greater than their power as a mechanical reference to their natural defenses. Many crabs are vanilla creatures designed for Limited, but non-vanilla crabs have a wide range of abilities. There’s also a subtheme of crabs that mill players when permanents enter.
#20. Salvage Scuttler
Salvage Scuttler could be a decent synergy piece in low-powered decks fiddling with trinkets like Cryogen Relic and Sewer-veillance Cam, though the high cost keeps it from competitive play.
#19. King Crab
King Crab verges on a color pie break as a repeatable source of removal in blue. The initial cost of 6 restricts its playability, but it’s a great way to mess with the Timmies in your pod. Putting the creature on top of the library is particularly brutal because your opponent stops drawing new cards.
#18. Shambleshark
Shambleshark plays well with Simic Tempo. You can hold up this and a Counterspell, then play whichever one becomes relevant. Throw in a few more flash creatures like Frilled Mystic and Nightpack Ambusher to trigger evolve and you have a brew.
#17. Scrabbling Skullcrab
The first of the mill crabs, Scrabbling Skullcrab has the most restrictive permanent type and thus ranks lowest. It’s respectable if you find an excuse to mingle enchantments and mill—perhaps a commander like The Master of Keys—but you shouldn’t expect to deal with this often.
#16. Mirrorshell Crab
Mirrorshell Crab does a great job adding a flexible card to your Pauper Cube. Blue control loves a counterspell early and a big threat late, which makes this crab relevant whenever your draw it.
#15. Growth-Chamber Guardian
Growth-Chamber Guardian feels like a card that never saw its full potential. A decent-sized threat that draws another, which eventually draws another, feels like a card just waiting for the perfect shell. Perhaps the trick is ignoring adapt and relying on cards like Innkeeper's Talent and Bristly Bill, Spine Sower for counters.
#14. Red Death, Shipwrecker
Red Death, Shipwrecker might be more curious than good. A mana dork that goads a creature would be pretty sweet, but giving your opponents cards seems like a slippery slope. The small mana advantage and goaded creature don’t seem to be worth a card.
#13. Horseshoe Crab
Horseshoe Crab thrives as a combo card. You’ll typically look to sharing abilities with cards like Marvin, Murderous Mimic or Experiment Kraj plus mana dorks like Incubation Druid that tap for multiple mana.
#12. Chromeshell Crab
Chromeshell Crab has one of the stronger morph abilities in the game. Swapping creatures works well: You can give away the 3/3 for something more impactful, like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse.
#11. Sharktocrab
Sharktocrab is one of those rare Limited uncommons that exceeds its format. If you can reliably pump out +1/+1 counters, this is a stellar tempo play to keep you aggressive while your creatures grow and grow.
#10. Charix, the Raging Isle
Charix, the Raging Isle has one of the highest toughnesses of any crab, or any Magic card for that matter. That’s great for defender decks and other toughness-matters archetypes, though the activated ability lets it exist in different flavors of mono-blue.
#9. Scuttling Sentinel
Combat tricks on a stick have all sorts of uses: You can trigger Beast Whisperer, use flicker or bounce spells to reset Scuttling Sentinel…. Having a body is also nice for mass pump effects or ways to spread +1/+1 counters.
#8. Uchuulon
Though Uchuulon is a crab, its textbox feels more ooze-driven as it floods the board with token copies of itself. It provides decent graveyard hate and a slow threat, though I’d want an additional reason to run this—maybe a token commander or typal synergies.
#7. Iceberg Cancrix
Iceberg Cancrix has a much easier mill ability to achieve since you only need snow permanents. Which includes the Cancrix, so they’re great in multiples. Expect most of your triggers to come from snow lands.
#6. Geometer’s Arthropod
Geometer's Arthropod sneaks extra card advantage into X-spell decks. A cheap, dedicated draw engine is pretty good, though I worry about playing cheap non-ramp cards in a big-mana archetype.
#5. Eddymurk Crab
Eddymurk Crab has made its stamp on Standard as an extremely cheap flash threat. All you need to make this effective are cheap instants and sorceries like Consider or Burst Lightning. In a Peasant Cube with a deeper card pool, you can even draw on cards like Mental Note to accelerate the milling.
#4. Mirelurk Queen
Mirelurk Queen offers decent card draw. I appreciate that this isn’t restricted to the player milling cards, so it’s as applicable in a self-mill deck like Teval, the Balanced Scale as one like Bruvac the Grandiloquent that hits everybody else. This might be Mesmeric Orb’s best friend.
#3. Homer, the Hermit
Homer, the Hermit is one of the few crab commanders, and it currently looks like the most effective. Landfall and mill plays nicely with the best crabs, and I enjoy the flexibility of targeting any player, so you can choose your flavor of mill. This commander looks pretty niche right now, but I have high expectations for it once we hit the oceanic plane of Nauctis.
#2. Ruin Crab + Hedron Crab
Hedron Crab is arguably the most iconic crab in Magic as a mill staple in Modern. Ruin Crab takes a more Commander-friendly approach by milling each opponent. Both are critical as low-cost mill engines that come online early and often benefit from fetch lands. While Hedron Crab has slightly more utility since it can mill you, both are some of the first cards mill players reach for.
#1. Crabomination
Crabomination offers immense card advantage since it almost always casts a second spell and makes your opponent discard a card. The card from hand helps the extremely rare situation when you exile nothing but lands; it ensures you get some value.
I love this card in Cube because of its cost. Its strong enough to cheat into play with cards like Reanimate or Sneak Attack, but the cost is low enough that it’s unlikely to get stranded in your hand like a Griselbrand or Atraxa, Grand Unifier.
Best Crab Payoffs
Few cards in Magic directly care about crabs. Scuttletide becomes an anthem if you have delirium, but it’s generally used more as a discard outlet. Auspicious Aquarium is also technically any anthem, though you’re unlikely to see test cards in the wild.
Homer, the Hermit and Uchuulon reward you for controlling a wide board of crabs.
Toughness-matters cards like Jaws of Defeat and Arcades, the Strategist are less direct payoffs. Most crabs have higher toughness than power, so they’re a natural fit in this archetype.
Other Crab-Related Cards
Three cards in Magic make crab tokens: Hard Evidence, Scuttletide, and Specimen Collector. While the Collector is largely forgettable, the other two are worth discussing as they’re comparable to the crabs in the top 10.
Hard Evidence isn’t flashy, but it’s a glue card of sorts: a cheap card for your spellslinger strategy that replaces itself and makes a blocker so you impact the board. It’s also a 1-mana Clue, which matters for investigate and artifact decks.
Scuttletide is extremely efficient for a discard outlet, and it impacts the board. Creating blockers makes time to develop your graveyard into a serious threat, and it’s a good engine for decks without access to red or black.
Are There Any Crab Commanders?
There are four legendary crabs that can be your commander, one of which wasn’t even good enough to make the list:
Of these, I’d say Homer, the Hermit is the only one of interest; the others are more curiosities.
Wrap Up
Mirrorshell Crab | Illustration by Cristi Balanescu
Crabs are the ultimate end goal of evolution… though that might not be as true in a world where you can become a dragon. While Magic’s crabs take a backseat to the more fantastical elements of the game, they’re still quite useful when you need a high-toughness creature or want to build a mill deck.
What’s your favorite crab in Magic? Did I miss any exciting ones? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord! If you want more Draftsim, check out our YouTube channel and newsletter, both called The Daily Upkeep!
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