The 30 Best Scarecrows in Magic Ranked

Shire Scarecrow | Illustration by Alexander Mokhov

Not every creature type shows up equally. Some come back often and can be part of a set’s core themes, like elves and goblins, while others serve a specific narrative role, like a story arc’s Big Bad. Then you have oddballs that act as many sets’ glue cards, creatures that play the thankless job of making the Limited environment functional.

Technically speaking, today’s creatures are all outstanding in their field: They’re scarecrows. Not a single brain cell between them, but that doesn’t mean that they’re pushovers. There are some truly scary threats and fun build-around cards here, even if most of Magic’s scarecrows amount to Draft chaff.

What Are Scarecrows in MTG?

One-Eyed Scarecrow | Illustration by Dave Kendall

Scarecrows are a creature type that’s often used on commons and uncommons to give Limited environments color fixing in the form of mana dorks and mana filters. That’s not the only thing that they do, but it’s the most common role that scarecrows fill in a new set.

The first scarecrow was Scarecrow from The Dark. Every scarecrow except Straw Soldiers is an artifact creature, and they’re often colorless so that they can fit into any Draft or Sealed archetype.

#30. Antler Skulkin + Shell Skulkin

The second tier of Skulkin cards has the blue shroud enabler in Shell Skulkin, but I like Antler Skulkin’s combo potential with Ashnod's Altar. Just add a white creature with a good enters ability, and you have an engine. It gets even better with payoffs like Celes, Rune Knight.

#29. Crossroads Candleguide + Signpost Scarecrow

It may be a mana negative color fixer, but sometimes you’ll take that, especially combined with some targeted graveyard hate. Crossroads Candleguide is sometimes played in Vhal, Candlekeep Researcher decks to filter generic mana. The same applies to Signpost Scarecrow, minus the enters ability.

#28. Field Creeper

As a vanilla 2-drop, Field Creeper has got a bit of that “Plug in and play” quality to it. If we’re talking baseball, it’s a 0-WAR, replacement level card.

#27. Sparring Dummy

I’m writing this update before we know much about what’s going on in Secrets of Strixhaven, so this could be way out of date depending on what kinds of lessons and lesson payoffs we get in that set. Sparring Dummy is an interesting take on Millikin that probably won’t replace the dork in self-mill decks, but I reserve the right to withhold final judgement until our next visit to Arcavios.

#26. Rattleblaze Scarecrow

The situational persist means that Rattleblaze Scarecrow can be a combo piece, but it isn’t consistent and it’s too expensive as a 6-drop to want it much.

#25. One-Eyed Scarecrow

Yes, there are Garth One-Eye decks out there that play One-Eyed Scarecrow for flavor reasons. I tip my straw hat to you, likely Vorthos builders.

#24. Jawbone Skulkin + Fang Skulkin

I find it a little funny that even non-red decks play Jawbone Skulkin sometimes if they can consistently play it for free. Fang Skulkin is the wither enabler in the cycle, though it comes in for 2 mana instead of 1.

#23. Wildfire Wickerfolk

Wildfire Wickerfolk has the potential to be a 2-mana hasty 4/3 trampler, which isn’t horrible, but it isn’t great either. The haste-matters decks like Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes and Ognis, the Dragon's Lash haven’t adopted it as an auto-inclusion yet, so that tells you something.

#22. Wreckage Wickerfolk

Wreckage Wickerfolk works in a lot of different decks just as a 2-mana surveil 2 spell. Its pair of card types helps out delirium decks, and its enters trigger stocks your graveyard, whether you want to keep things there, exile them for value, or reanimate them.

#21. Lockjaw Snapper

The deck that most consistently plays Lockjaw Snapper right now is The Scorpion God, though any -1/-1 counter deck could sleeve it up. If you’ve already spread a bunch of counters around, this scarecrow acts as a rattlesnake that may make your opponents think twice before attacking you.

#20. Scorn Effigy

You’ll sometimes find Scorn Effigy in foretell decks or paradox/cast from exile decks. It’s not much other than budget curve filler that doesn’t hurt your colors.

#19. Shire Scarecrow + Scarecrow Guide + Foraging Wickermaw

Decks built around Tales of Middle-earth commanders sometimes use Shire Scarecrow as a budget mana filter, which lines up with the roles it has in any deck besides scarecrow typal and defender decks.

Scarecrow Guide is a very similar card with a 2/1 reach body that doesn’t have the Lord of the Rings flavor. Foraging Wickermaw from Lorwyn Eclipsed joins the ranks of scarecrow mana filters as the surveil option.

#18. Heap Doll

Heap Doll trades itself for a card in your opponent’s graveyard, something that’s fine in general and better when there’s something you want to shut off like a self-reanimating threat or a flashback spell. It’s a 1-drop that Yisan, the Wanderer Bard can snag with its first verse counter, I guess, and some commanders can reanimate it easily.

#17. Grim Poppet

Grim Poppet is fine. A 7-drop that lets you move -1/-1 counters around at will can be a real threat to even indestructible commanders, though you’ll want a proliferation engine to ensure that this guy gives you more than three counters to dole out, unless you’re digging into cards from the original Lorwyn and Shadowmoor blocks, Amonkhet, or Lorwyn Eclipsed.

#16. Farmstead Gleaner

Untap abilities are primed for misuse, especially when you have permanents that borrow activated abilities from cards in your graveyard or in exile. Farmstead Gleaner sets up infinite combos with Palladium Myr or Sol Ring and creatures like Marvin, Murderous Mimic, Trazyn the Infinite, and Rex, Cyber-Hound to make each of those creatures infinitely tall.

#15. Wingrattle Scarecrow

Thanks to abilities that give creatures +1/+1 counters when they enter, persist creatures are the fuel for many infinite sacrifice combos, though Wingrattle Scarecrow can only be that in black+ decks like Gev, Scaled Scorch. Its conditional persist makes it less consistent than creatures that always have it, but it’s a decent budget replacement or back-up option.

#14. Wickerfolk Thresher

While it’s perfectly at home in a scarecrow build, what holds Wickerfolk Thresher back in a pure delirium build is that you have to attack with it to get the payoff. Besides its stats, it’s not the kind of creature you want to rebuild with after a board wipe, or to try to catch up after a few turns of mana screw, for example. There are worse cards to play, but it’s a slot you can improve.

#13. Wild-Field Scarecrow

Aside from the obvious scarecrow deck, Wild-Field Scarecrow acts as a safety net to draws lands in decks without access to green’s land tutors. You can play it in decks that want lands in their hand for discard fodder, like Borborygmos Enraged.

#12. Oasis Gardener

Oasis Gardener is one of the best of the mana dork scarecrows. Its combination of stats, mana value, and abilities is perfectly in line with what you’d want to pay. It’s a solid budget card for when you need an extra lifegain trigger, a mana dork, or an artifact creature for abilities like affinity or delirium.

#11. Osseous Sticktwister

Man, that’s a lot of text for an uncommon, ain’t it? Osseous Sticktwister’s delirium ability is basically an edict or forced discard, though each player can just take the chip damage. An artifact creature fits perfectly into delirium decks, though lords and typal support can make it even more of a problem.

#10. Scuttlemutt

Another of the better mana dork scarecrows is Scuttlemutt, which also has utility as a color manipulator. Think of abilities like Tam, Mindful First-Year; you can combine Scuttlemutt and Tam to protect almost any creature from most kinds of removal.

#9. Dread Tiller

Dread Tiller arrives thanks to the Blight Curse precon from Lorwyn Eclipsed Commander, so it’s tailormade for -1/-1 counter and blight decks. I appreciate that it’s a scarecrow that interacts with your lands, which fits perfectly with what the creature type often does.

#8. Scarecrone

One of the few cards that interact with scarecrows, Scarecrone is a functional yet slow sac outlet and reanimation package. The reanimation ability enables a janky infinite turn combo involving Coretapper and Magistrate's Scepter, but you can use it when your commander is an artifact creature or if you have a bunch of them in your deck. Think along the lines of Marvin, Murderous Mimic or Rendmaw, Creaking Nest.

#7. Painter’s Servant

Painter's Servant’s primary role is as a color hoser and a combo piece. It combines with Grindstone to mill a player out, with Teysa, Orzhov Scion as an exiling board wipe, or with Llawan, Cephalid Empress to lock your opponents out of the game. You can even play it fairly: Use it to make cards with protection from any color essentially untouchable in combat or by removal.

#6. Reaper King

Reaper King is the most popular scarecrow commander, a classic in the 5-color typal commander mold. It turns every one of your scarecrows (including changelings) into removal, so you can easily handle combo pieces, utility lands, or any problem that you can target and destroy. A Reaper King Commander deck is pretty much all scarecrows, shapeshifters, and artifact/artifact creature payoffs. The only time you’ll play it outside of the command zone is if you’re running a Maskwood Nexus deck that takes advantage of a bunch of different lords.

#5. The Swarmweaver

The Swarmweaver is a delirium payoff, spider lord, and insect lord all wrapped into one. It’s a passable commander, but I’d rather run it in the 99 of a deck like Zask, Skittering Swarmlord, Grist, the Hunger Tide, or Reaper King.

#4. The Reaper, King No More

There’s a mild irony in how The Reaper, King No More is likely a more consistent, powerful commander than Reaper King. It works in the blight and -1/-1 counters space, which means you shouldn’t keep your proliferation cards too far away. You can use wither creatures to add more -1/-1 counters to the board and accelerate your game plan, too.

#3. Rendmaw, Creaking Nest

For my money, Rendmaw, Creaking Nest is the more fun commander from the Death Toll Duskmourn Commander precon. While it doesn’t care about the graveyard, the closest synergies it has are with delirium cards and other card type matters payoffs. The goaded bird tokens that it makes are a really neat way to force your opponents to just shut up and play Magic (read: attack), though you might wind up helping players that want sacrifice fodder.

#2. Scaretiller

Scaretiller fits perfectly into vehicle and spacecraft decks since it helps you to ramp and it wants you to tap it. Commanders like Tocasia, Dig Site Mentor and Urza, Lord High Artificer that could grant it an activated ability are also valid options. It’s kind of like Solemn Simulacrum, in that it has obvious synergies with certain decks, but it’s a 4-mana card, so you can always improve the efficiency or impact of its slot in your deck.

#1. Pili-Pala

Pili-Pala’s untap ability makes it easy to go infinite. Grand Architect forms a 2-card combo, but there are lots of other ways to go about it. You can use Training Grounds for cost reduction on the activated ability, then Urza, Lord High Artificer to give Pili-Pala the ability to tap for . If Pili-Pala and Sol Ring are both in your graveyard, Trazyn the Infinite can tap and untap itself for infinite mana. Every once in a while, we get a new toy that does something fun with this scarecrow.

Best Scarecrow Payoffs

Scarecrows only have two explicit payoffs. Reaper King is the typal lord that also turns your scarecrows into removal spells. Scarecrone is a typal sac outlet that gives you card draw, and you can use it to reanimate your scarecrows. Wickersmith's Tools is a -1/-1 payoff that you can trade in for a whole army of scarecrow tokens.

Apart from that, if you have a high density of scarecrows, you’ll want artifact payoffs like Agent of the Iron Throne or Reckless Fireweaver, artifact creature payoffs like Canoptek Spyder, and cost reducers like Foundry Inspector. Cards that care about the number of card types your cards have are also worthwhile, including delirium cards.

Are Scarecrows Good?

Not really, no. Scarecrows often play a very important role to make sure a set’s Limited environment is playable, since they provide colorless common and uncommon bodies that offer you mana fixing. As a result, there aren’t many rare or mythic scarecrows with explosive abilities, typal lords or payoffs, or other forms of support.

What Sets Have Scarecrows?

The following sets all have at least one scarecrow in them. Some contain just one reprint of a scarecrow that appeared in a previous set. Morningtide, Shadowmoor, and Eventide have the most scarecrows among all Magic sets. Sets that take place on Eldraine, Innistrad, and Lorwyn-Shadowmoor tend to have more scarecrows than others.

• The Dark
• Portal Three Kingdoms
• Morningtide
• Shadowmoor
• Eventide
• Innistrad
• Shadows over Innistrad
• Eldritch Moon
• Core Set 2019
• Ultimate Masters
• Modern Horizons
• Commander 2019
• Throne of Eldraine
• Commander 2020
• Jumpstart
• Zendikar Rising Commander
• Kaldheim
• Innistrad: Midnight Hunt
• Unfinity
• The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth
• Commander Masters
• Wilds of Eldraine
• Outlaws of Thunder Junction / Outlaws of Thunder Junction Commander
• Duskmourn: House of Horror / Duskmourn Commander
• Innistrad Remastered
• Aetherdrift
• Avatar: The Last Airbender
• Lorwyn Eclipsed / Lorwyn Eclipsed Commander

Are There Any Scarecrow Commanders?

As of Lorwyn Eclipsed, there are four legendary scarecrows:

• Reaper King
• Rendmaw, Creaking Nest
• The Reaper, King No More
• The Swarmweaver

Reaper King is the most obvious commander for a typal theme. Rendmaw, The Reaper, King No More, and The Swarmweaver are each functional commanders for what they’re trying to do; I’d argue Rendmaw is the most fun overall.

Wrap Up

Reaper King | Illustration by Jim Murray

Scarecrows aren’t the most powerful creature type, but they serve their purpose as bit players. Their commanders are fun, and the ones with untap or persist abilities can be combo pieces. That’s honestly a lot more than some creature types get.

Which of Magic’s scarecrows do you run and why? Would Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow from DC Comics be an artifact creature, or a human scientist/doctor, or something else entirely? Let me know in the comments below or over on the Draftsim Discord.

Until next time!