ENTRY 03: SCRABBLING SKULLCRAB!
This was, I think, the second Duskmourn creature I ever saw previewed, as a beautiful high-resolution upload of the artwork on its own. Like yesterday's new leech, a crab is another creature type we see with only modest regularity, and it's also another one illustrated by John Tedrick! Only two cards in and this guy is on FIRE! This "crustacean," or what used to be a crustacean, has a carapace that looks closer to raw meat than rigid chitin, except where it hardens into a large, hauntingly human upper skull face and thick, chunky crabby legs. It doesn't have a crab's trademark clawed forelegs that we can see, but a shrunken and bent pair of limbs that work together to give lower "mandibles" to the skull. I also get the impression that, while it's definitely the "face" and "mouth" of the crab now, what we're seeing is equally likely to have been the back end of a more natural crabby ancestor. It also has the brand new type combination of "crab SKELETON," so it's not just that it looks like it incorporates a skull, but that it's some sort of actual hybrid fusion with a set of human bones. Killer!
The flavor text says that, without sandy beaches to inhabit, Duskmourn's crab's "adapted to burrow into everything from carpet to flesh." The one in the illustration, however, looks like it's filling an entire human-sized doorway, so I hope you've got a LOT of flesh to go around, bucko! WISEGUY. YEAH!!! Except I guess there's also the fact that it has 0 attack, that it's an entirely defensive creature. Are skullcrabs...nice? Are they just sweet little fellas that don't bother anybody? That just want to be left alone to burrow into carpet, and sometimes presumably flesh, but evidently not flesh that anyone is using at the time? The "eerie" ability, another thing it shares with Balemurk Leech, forces the opponent to put two cards directly from their deck into their graveyard whenever you play an enchantment or use one of Duskmourn's new "room" cards, so basically a skullcrab doesn't hurt anybody but it does cause psychic damage to any mighty planeswalker (that's what you're supposed to be, as the player) who looks at it. RIP everyone else, but exactly the opposite would happen to me. It's happening to me right now. When I look at the Balemurk Leech or the Skullcrab my mind is filled with nothing but adoration and contentment. They should really clarify the mechanics so that when I'm playing the game, "eerie" makes me get more cards, or a peanut butter cup.
Scrabbly's illustration is also just beautifully composed; I love how the crab fills the scene, framed by a simple archway and floor that don't clutter the scene with any extraneous detail, and that this minimal visible architecture is almost the same meaty red as the crustaceoid itself, only contrasted by the lovely cool blue light pouring in from behind our little buddy. An awesome job!
