MTG Foundations really is a set for all seasons. There are cards here for you no matter what kind of player you are, or what formats you frequent. Standard is getting the most love, of course, but Commander gets plenty to chew on too. One MTG Foundations card that will likely make a splash in both is Scrawling Crawler. This frightful little Phyrexian hasn’t set the discussion boards on fire just yet, but its potential is through the roof. If you’re a fan of drawing cards, you may need to reevaluate your stance when this critter comes to town.
Scrawling Crawler In MTG Standard
- Mana Value: 3
- Rarity: Rare
- Stats: 3/2
- Card Text: At the beginning of your upkeep, each player draws a card. Whenever an opponent draws a card, that player loses 1 life.
Mechanically, Scrawling Crawler is very much a mash-up of popular MTG cards past. It has the forced extra card draw of Howling Mine and the damage-on-draw effect of Underworld Dreams. Whole decks have been built around the synergy between these two types of cards in the past. Putting both together on one card feels fairly dangerous as a result.
Scrawling Crawler is a creature, which makes it more vulnerable than the cards it imitates. It also lets it swing for three, however, which is a sizable advantage in itself. Costing only generic mana to cast is also great, particularly when Underworld Dreams needs three black to do just half of what Crawler does.
On the surface, this looks mostly like a made-for-multiplayer Commander card, and we’ll certainly get to that. Dig a little deeper, however, and you’ll find that Standard actually has a ton of support for it currently. Both Razorkin Needlehead and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse are in the format, offering redundancy for the damage-on-draw effect. You can run all three cards in a Rakdos shell, alongside Insatiable Avarice for a flexible tutor/burst damage spell.
If you want to splash out a bit, this strategy can really benefit from a third color. Blue gets you Dictate of Kruphix, sneakily reprinted in the Foundations Starter Collection, for extra forced draw. You can also run tried-and-tested Dimir staples Faerie Mastermind and Ertai Resurrected. Alternatively, Winter, Misanthropic Guide can supercharge the strategy if you add green. Turning on Delirium shouldn’t be difficult, especially given Crawler is an artifact creature.
Crawling Into Commander
Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t discuss Scrawling Crawler’s potential in MTG Commander. Because its abilities affect each opponent, they scale up very nicely into multiplayer. There’s an argument that this draws your opponents three total extra cards while only drawing you one. That downside is mitigated by all the extra damage those draws will deal in a dedicated deck, however.
If you thought there was a lot of support for this style of play in Standard, Commander takes it to another level. You can play all of the Standard pieces we already mentioned, as well as classics like Howling Mine and Underworld Dreams. Nekusar, the Mindrazer is also a great Commander for such a strategy.
Throw all of this together with a few Wheel of Fortune effects, and you have an unconventional burn deck that punishes the many, many greedy decks in Commander. Nekusar is a popular Commander already, sitting at #15 overall at the time of writing according to EDHRec. Even more so than Duskmourn’s Razorkin Needlehead, Crawler is a no-brainer addition to that deck.
Even outside of Nekusar decks, I think there’s a solid argument to run Crawler in Commander. Any kind of Aggro deck will appreciate both the extra draw and extra damage on offer here. Colorless Commander decks also struggle with finding quality pieces, and card draw in particular. Crawler fills both roles, helping out Commanders like Karn, Legacy Reforged immensely.
It’s early days, but so far Scrawling Crawler is being undervalued by the community despite all of these qualities. With the way Foundations finance is going, I don’t foresee this being the case for long. If you like the cut of Scrawling Crawler’s jib, I’d grab your copies sooner rather than later.
