#spiny starfish

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Spiny Starfish

Artist: Alan Rabinowitz TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[i-am-worm]

Inktober 2025 - Day 7 - Starfish CREATURE BONUS

How's about a starfish mermaid? Based on spiny starfish! She's got extra eyes on her palms. :D

[does-it-fit-galar]

Staryu and Starmie

Starfish are odd creatures. They have no brain or blood, the ends of their arms have eyes and hundreds of tiny feet, can just pop out it’s stomach to eat and regrow their arms in a pinch. There are also over 2,000 different species in the world, and six of them can be found in UK waters. Let’s work through them alphabetically.

The Bloody Henry Starfish is actually the name for two of the six species. This is because, Henricia Oculata and Henricia Sanguinolenta (to give them their scientific names) are so similar that it’s incredibly difficult to tell the two of them apart.

They can be found in seabeds up to 1m (about 39 inches) deep all around the UK, and occasionally in rock pools. On average they grow to be about 10cm (about 4 inches) wide, but they have been known to grow to twice that size.

Although Bloody Henry Starfish get there name from their purple-red colour, they can also be brown, lavender, or dark red.

Common Starfish are found all around the UK and, being the most common type of Starfish in the North East Atlantic, certainly lives up to its name. They can be found in rock pools and seabeds up to 6m (about 19.6 inches) deep.

Like all Starfish, Common Starfish are predictors, particularly of shellfish like clams and oysters. They eat their prey by prising their shell open with their arms, sticking their stomach inside and using the acid to digest the shellfish into a soup like substance, before reabsorbing their stomach with the soup attached. Unsurprisingly they’re seen a something of a pest on oyster and mussel beds, especially as a plentiful food source will always draw lots of them.

Unlike out stereotypical image of a five armed Starfish, the Common Sunstar can have between eight and sixteen arms; though between ten and twelve are the most common. As you’ve probably worked out, they get their name from the fact they look a bit like the sun. These Starfish can be found all around the costs of the UK, and can be found anywhere from shallow water and rock pools, to the bottom of parts of the ocean up to 50m (about 164 feet) deep.

Common Sunstars aren’t fussy about what they prey upon and will not only eat Sea Cucumbers, Brittle Stars and different species of Starfish, but other Sunstars as well.

Cushion Stars are, in my opinion, the cutest of all the Starfish on this list, being only 5cm (about 2 inches) wide with five short and stubby arms. They’re found all around Great Britain (though they’re less common along the North East Coast) and can be found in both shallow water and rock pools, and in parts of the sea up to 100m (about 328 feet) deep.

Cushion Stars are protandrous hermaphrodites. This means that they are all born as males before transitioning into females if they grow beyond a certain size.

The largest of all the UK Starfish, Spiny Starfish can grow to be up to 70cm (about 27.5 inches) wide. They have green skin and are covered in white spines.

Spiny Starfish are mainly found along the South West Coast of England and Whales. However, out of all the Starfish on this list, Spiny Starfish are the most versatile when it comes to the depth they’ll live at, inhabiting shallow, costal waters, to oceans up to 200m (about 656 feet) deep.

[bitch-dont-krill-my-vibe]

Sand sifting starfish

Astropecten polyacanthus is known by many names -  sand sifting starfish, comb sea star and spiny sea star. It grows up to 13 cm, is found in the Indo-Pacific region, and has arms lined with sharp, comb-like spines which are used for protection.

Interesting fact: it produces the same neurotoxin (Tetrodotoxin) as pufferfish, porcupine fish and triggerfish. This was discovered after a Japanese man suffered paralytic poisoning after eating a trumpet shell which had acquired the toxin via predation of the sea star.

Images: 1) Aboral surface of sea star  2) Oral surface of sea star  All Images taken at Middle Harbour 19/11/2018

References: Cork, J. (2015). Astropecten polyacanthus. [online] Australian Museum. Available at: https://australianmuseum.net.au/astropecten-polyacanthus-mller-troschel-1842 

Narita, H., Matsubara, S., Miwa, N., Akahane, S., Murakami, M., Goto, T., Nara, M., Noguchi, T., Saito, T., Shida, Y. and Hashimoto, K., 1987. Vibrio alginolyticus, a TTX-producing bacterium isolated from the starfish Astropecten polyacanthus. Nippon Suisan Gakkaishi, 53(4), pp.617-621.

[peculiarflavor]

Best Use of Own Babies(!?) as Weapons: Spiny Starfish

[3-slugcat-pilots-7-ornithopters]

Building a commander deck that relies 100% on one non commander creature to do anything, and will be mostly bad cards otherwise.

How many protection and recursion spells should I run?

[fabricioqueiroga]

Estrela do mar, Estrela do mar de espinhos

[magicjudge]

This is kind of a weird question, but it is somewhat valid for a strategie with an Ezuri Commander deck. Can a creature regenerate multiple times without dying?For example, the spiny starfish blue creature has an ability where if you tap one blue mana, it rengenerates and at the end of the turn, you get starfish tokens based on the amount of times you regenerate it. Basically, could I just tap 5 blue or so mana and at the end of the turn, get 5 starfish tokens?

You can activate the regeneration ability multiple times in a turn, but all that does is set up multiple regeneration shields. The creature doesn’t actually regenerate until it would be destroyed. When that happens, a renegeration shield is used up and it regenerates instead of being destroyed.

You only get a starfish token for each time the creature actually regenerates in the turn, not how many times you activated the ability.