Ruin Crab

Creature — Crab

Landfall — Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, each opponent mills three cards. (To mill a card, a player puts the top card of their library into their graveyard.)

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Alchemy	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Pre-release	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Standard	Legal
Standard Brawl	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (48)

doc_frank_18 on Nah Dude

1 month ago

Mystic Speculation OUT ----- Retreat to Coralhelm IN!..... Splendid Reclamation OUT ----- Ruin Crab IN.....

TheSurgeon on Bruvac's Millibuster

1 month ago

dash.secrets I apprecuate your comcern, and this is true, if ruin crab is already on the board. I don't prescribe to such rigid thinking, it's a handicap. What I mean to say is, there's nothing forcing me to play Ruin Crab in my first Main Phase, I can wait until second, after I've played Conversion, and drop land in any Main Phase I choose. Not as ideal as Altar, I admit, but it fits the strategy.

JagDogger2525 on Bruvac's Persistent Petitioners

1 month ago

Not sure if you're still on yet Ruin Crab instead of Hedron Crab - Hedron Crab is great in 1v1 don't get me wrong yet why not mill everyone at once

wallisface on U/G Mill

2 months ago

Some thoughts:

• Evolving Wilds is a really bad card - i’d recommend Prismatic Vista instead.

• you need more crabs to make this plan more reliable. Where’s the playset of Ruin Crab?

• I wouldn’t bother with Primordial Hydra, it detracts from the mill plan. Your deck’s never winning through damage.

• Memory's Journey serves no purpose and i’m not sure why it’s here.

• Jace, the Perfected Mind is miles better than Jace, Memory Adept

• Ghost Quarter isn’t great in mill because it doesn’t force your opponent to search, which means they can avoid being hit by Archive Trap. You want to be running Field of Ruin (field has the added bonus of letting you trigger your crabs again).

Asgeren on Garden of Damia

2 months ago

Thanks ldvatwa! And yes! Exactly what I want to try out with Ruin Crab ;)

ldvatwa on Garden of Damia

2 months ago

I love the build! As you mentioned Ruin Crab above, it always puts in work in my mill decks. Even in non-ramp decks like my Kwain, Itinerant Meddler mill deck. As well The Wise Mothman and my now defunct Lord Xander, the Collector. Few things felt as good as dropping a Boundless Realms or Reshape the Earth with Ruin Crab on the board!

NallexJr on Blue/Black Budget Mill

4 months ago

Balaam__ I totally see where you're coming from with the Jace's Phantasm and Vantress Gargoyle, there is definitely a world where I can use those spots in my deck for better mill cards. I am looking at removing at least one more copy of the gargoyle, as its inability to block if I don't have a large hand size and it's 2 CMC don't make me super excited 90% of the time.

The idea behind it, at least for me, is that they allow me to put pressure on from multiple angles, and because I can get that 5/5 flyer with phantasm on turn 2, it means I can keep my opponents from building any real board state before turn 4 or 5 when their library is basically gone. It also is just a nice threat by itself, when I don't get the combos I need, or when mana is tight. Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab remove a few more cards, but they aren't very useful otherwise, which is why I feel that Jace's Phantasm and Vantress Gargoyle are a better fit for me.

As far as competitiveness goes, I'm mostly just looking to have a fun mill deck that i can throw into rotation whenever I get tired of the same old same old. I'm not too worried about tourney play.

Balaam__ on Blue/Black Budget Mill

4 months ago

Something that was explained to me when I was working on my own mill deck is that to be effective, one has to pretty much fully commit to Mill. It may not seem like much, but investing in creatures whose primary function is to deal damage is using resources in a suboptimal way.

Jace's Phantasm and Vantress Gargoyle themselves appear to benefit from Milling, but don’t contribute to your goal in a meaningful way. These creatures’ sole purpose is to take 20 life and chip away at it, while ignoring the 60 of your opponent’s library. The rest of your deck is designed to reduce the 60 in their library to 0, while ignoring their 20 life points. So you have two unrelated strategies functioning in tandem, neither working at full capacity, when you could have fully committed to one and achieved results faster.

The obvious recommendation would be to run the crabs—Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab—but that would probably interfere with your allotted budget, as well as necessitating that you retool the portion of the deck built to work around the phantasm & gargoyle, neither of which you may be willing to do.

I think what you have here already is fine as long as you aren’t actually trying to win tournaments with it, so if I were you I’d continue to shop this around for feedback and maybe a path forward will present itself. Again, there are plenty of people who use this site that are actual experts, not armchair theorists in tinfoil hats like myself.