ENTRY 20: SCARECROWS

Scarecrows are a Magic the Gathering type I've reviewed before, and not just limited to clothes, pumpkins and straw. "Scarecrows" in Magic the Gathering terms can be rickety constructs of just about anything, and in Duskmourn they've got their own little culture known as the Wickerfolk! These were apparently once humans who used magic to transform themselves into something that could better survive the house, but their original minds are trapped as prisoners in the autonomous wicker bodies, which are driven mostly to just keep creating more of themselves. An official lore guide says that they "infect" victims with splinters that start growing rapidly through their flesh, which is deliciously nasty!

We begin the review with the simplest one, Wickerfolk Thresher; a 5/4 artifact creature paid for with green mana. All wickerfolk have that "delirium" mechanic with varying effects, and in this case it lets you draw an extra card whenever Thresher attacks. If it's a land card, you get to play it immediately, because the thresher is just that good of a farmer I guess! We can see that, since this menacing humanoid bundle of sticks has scythe arms! It also has no "facial features" other than three tightly swirled stick bundles, kinda like three roses that may also represent "eyes."

Wildfire Wickerfolk, a green and red card, depicts a wicker figure that's perpetually on fire, and its face is a single wicker "spider web" sort of shape eerily illuminated by the flames. It has haste, so it can attack right away, and its "delirium" effect not only boosts it from 3/2 to 4/3, but gives it the "trample" ability; this means that if it's blocked by a smaller creature, the defending player still takes basically "spillover" damage, ie if a 4/3 creature is blocked by a 2/2, the opponent still takes 2 damage! I guess a big burning bundle of sticks is probably pretty difficult to stop.

Osseous Sticktwister is a black mana scarecrow that's only 2/2, but it has the "lifelink" ability, giving you health whenever it does damage, and its Delirium effect is pretty mean, forcing each opponent to either sacrifice something of their own or take unblockable direct damage from the sticktwister anyway. Its design is pretty awesome, too; its basketlike body is a big flaring dome from the waist down, like a dress, but it also has some skulls woven into it. It's upper body looks more like a flaring, conical bird's nest that's full of even more skulls, and its arms incorporate human bones. Just a really ominous figure, and I love those eerie green and blue lamps that surround it, formed from clutching hands. There's also some more spindrells in the background, too! The shadowy eyestalk things the cellarspawn create!

Duskmourn's scarecrow cards are then rounded out by two legendary examples, the first of which is the black and green Swarmweaver, resembling a crooked rotten tree creature, actually formed from tied together broken branches, with one of those antique woven honeybee hives for a head! You knew that honey farms used to make the hives out of big egg-shaped basket things, right?? That's why we think of honeybees as living in "hives" like that, even though it's actually certain wasps that make anything similar in nature. Swarmweaver also has a pair of ominous eyes glowing in the mouth-like open cavity of its hive, and we see it "breathing out" a bunch of little insects.

Every time the Swarmweaver enters play, you get to create two of those black and green insect tokens, the ones also made by the Broodspinner from a few reviews ago. But if Swarmweaver's Delirium is activated, all insects and spiders get +1/+1 along with the deathtouch ability!

Even weirder however is the other legendary wickerfriend, Rendmaw. The "Creaking Nest" is also black and green, and a hefty 5/5 with both Menace and Reach. Every time Rendmaw enters play and every time you play any other card with two or more types, Rendmaw creates a 2/2 black bird token with flying...for every player!? EVERYONE gets a bird?? These birds are also permanently "goaded," meaning they must attack each turn that they can, but if possible, they have to attack a player other than yourself.

Creatures can't usually attack their own controllers, either, so in a typical two player game, that last detail means nothing. But in a game with three or more players, your friend Rendmaw is handing out free flying dinosaurs to everybody willy-nilly, and then forcing those birds to go after everybody but you, so all your enemies are just running around screaming getting pecked and clawed by screeching ravens in hilarious Alfred Hitchcock pandemonium. When it's down to just you and one other person, any birds they have left will have to come for you next, but hopefully you took advantage of that chaos to pick off the biggest threats to yourself first.

Last but not least, we have the Scarecrow Token released just for Duskmourn, a design so cool, it's actually kind of a shame it's only for a token: this wicker figure seems to have been built around a human skeleton, but we see the heads of multiple living crows, with oversized red eyes, bursting from tattered grey cloth in its torso, as if they serve as this entity's actual heads!

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