So like, what’s actually wrong with Craterhoof?

[pokken]

You think that Goblin Bombardment and Massacre Wurm are bottom of the barrel cards?

I think massacre wurm is super dated and only works at sorcery speed, and Goblin Bombardment requires both a board state and enough creatures to clear out their creatures, so is kind of like saying "if I have a superior board to craterhoof in advance, I can beat it" which is meaningless. sure I guess you can have Grave Pact lock in place and that'll stop it? Yay?

Sweepers and sweeper adjacent effects are fine against hoof but keeping the board 100% clear is not really an answer and certainly not one that makes you a lot of friends.

[DirkGently]

It's not as though you need to keep the board 100% clear to stop a craterhoof though. Hoof with 5 other creatures usually isn't lethal through blockers against even one person, and you need 10+ to be lethal against all opponents at once. If someone has 10 creatures on board, I don't think a wipe is unreasonable. And of course targeted removal can throw the math off as well.

The ideal answers, ofc, are counterspells/countertriggers, instant-speed wipes like cyc rift, and fogs.

[NZB2323]

You think that Goblin Bombardment and Massacre Wurm are bottom of the barrel cards?

I think massacre wurm is super dated and only works at sorcery speed, and Goblin Bombardment requires both a board state and enough creatures to clear out their creatures, so is kind of like saying "if I have a superior board to craterhoof in advance, I can beat it" which is meaningless. sure I guess you can have Grave Pact lock in place and that'll stop it? Yay?

Sweepers and sweeper adjacent effects are fine against hoof but keeping the board 100% clear is not really an answer and certainly not one that makes you a lot of friends.

You may need a board state for Goblin Bombardment to work, but the hoof player needs a board state for Craterhoof to work. And a lot of the decks that run Goblin Bombardment are decks like Edgar Markov, Krenko, Mob Boss, and other decks that have a bunch of tokens.

Each commander is different. Olivia Voldaren can snipe off guys at instant speed. Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded can cheat in creatures at instant speed. Ghen, Arcanum Weaver can reanimate enchantments at instant speed.

Massacre Wurm may be cast at instant speed, but you can get put it in instant speed with Corpse Dance, Whip of Erebos, Chainer, Dementia Master, ect. If you have Mikaeus, the Unhallowed or Undying Evil you can sacrifice the wurm. If you're playing white also you can blink it. If you're playing red you can cheat it into play with Sneak Attack. Green has lots of ways to cheat it into play at instant speed.

But sure, if you're playing Rakdos and refuse to run board wipes or cards like Archfiend of Depravity and have Goblin Bombardment in play with no board presence, I guess you can complain about Craterhoof?

[pokken]

It's not as if it's unbeatable I just don't think it's a very fair scaling wincondition and it doesn't have enough attack surface. The stuff you're talking about all 1) kills way slower and 2) has the attack surface of "play a removal spell and shut it off" for the most part.

I think "refusal to run board wipes" is a bit of a straw man. I clearly am pro board wipe. I just don't think anti creature stax locks are most peoples cuppa and generally are vulnerable to removal while they aren't really closing the game.

Board wipes are fine. But there are a ton of ways that plan goes south.

I'm just not personally a fan of the play patterns hoof decks have.

[materpillar]

Just Wrath of God more often is like saying just Doom Blade Chulane, Teller of Tales. That's great in theory and not nearly as good in practice. Questions tend to be stronger than answers and Craterhoof Behemoth is one of the strongest questions outside of infinite combos.

It's way way easier for the green player to answer Goblin Bombardment, Massacre Wurm or whatever wrath spell you mention than it is for you to answer Craterhoof Behemoth.

[NZB2323]

Just Wrath of God more often is like saying just Doom Blade Chulane, Teller of Tales. That's great in theory and not nearly as good in practice. Questions tend to be stronger than answers and Craterhoof Behemoth is one of the strongest questions outside of infinite combos.

It's way way easier for the green player to answer Goblin Bombardment, Massacre Wurm or whatever wrath spell you mention than it is for you to answer Craterhoof Behemoth.

Well Chulane, Teller of Tales can be recast from the command zone, and that deck has a ton of card draw. I guess they can recast hoof with Finale of Devastation, or get it back with eternal witness.

Outside of Heroic Intervention, green decks don't have a ton of answers to board wipes, and after a wipe it's harder for them to draw spells when a lot of their draw spells are based on them having creatures.

And while green may have a bunch of enchantment removal, how many spells is the green player running that can answer Archfiend of Depravity?

I guess to a degree I agree though. I don't currently play any decks that run Craterhoof, but in my Orzhov deck I'm not afraid to run Crippling Fear, Damn, Winds of Abandon, Cleansing Nova, and Austere Command, but in my Neheb deck I guess I'd have to rely on Archfiend of Ifnir.

[Hermes_]

The ideal answers, ofc, are counterspells/countertriggers, instant-speed wipes like cyc rift, and fogs.

No, the ideal answer is that they play something you (general you) find interesting instead.

[Dunadain]

The ideal answers, ofc, are counterspells/countertriggers, instant-speed wipes like cyc rift, and fogs.

No, the ideal answer is that they play something you (general you) find interesting instead.

Come on, were having a civil discussion here, no need to get hostile. I also don't appreciate you trying to speak for me, what you find interesting and what I find interesting are two different things.

[3drinks]

The reason this keeps happening is because the vast majority of players don't play ways to stop ETB. They are greedy players that want to rely on ETB value and then complain when someone else does it better. Start maining more Hushwing Gryff and Strict Proctor. I don't think it's reasonable to complain about something you choose not to address. Fewer bombs, more interaction is the direction a healthy format should take...

Either go faster, more aggressive, reap the value harder, or slow down, capitalize on others over-reliance, and punish them. These are really you're only options. Give me Triumph of the Hordes over this eight mv dude any day of the week, anyway.

[pokken]

The reason this keeps happening is because the vast majority of players don't play ways to stop ETB. They are greedy players that want to rely on ETB value and then complain when someone else does it better. Start maining more Hushwing Gryff and Strict Proctor. I don't think it's reasonable to complain about something you choose not to address. Fewer bombs, more interaction is the direction a healthy format should take...

Either go faster, more aggressive, reap the value harder, or slow down, capitalize on others over-reliance, and punish them. These are really you're only options. Give me Triumph of the Hordes over this eight mv dude any day of the week, anyway.

There are only like 10 things that interact with ETBs and they're white and blue except Torpor Orb. Incidentally, white and blue are where 90% of the other things that are good against hoof live.

Wizards needs to open the gates a bit on interactivity I think.

This is going to sound pretty wild but I wouldn't mind if they thought about changing ETB effects so that they were countered if the creature wasn't still on the battlefield when they resolve

[PrimevalCommander]

Wraths, while effective and necessary against go-wide decks, are not near enough Hoof deterrent unless you clear the board every other turn, or every turn depending on the green deck. Any green deck that wants to go wide could present a "lethal" board state almost every turn cycle or every other turn cycle due to token production. My green aggro decks would require heavy interaction or board wipes almost every turn to keep Hoof from being non-lethal at almost any point after turn 6-7. That is why I don't play it in that deck. I play the "lesser" overruns to make it a little more challenging, and I still overrun the table quite easily.

Spot Removal also quite variable in its effectiveness due to the assumption that the Hoof player is only a few damage points from lethal. It is quite easy to overkill the table more than enough to account for the loss of one creature. Though it will save you occasionally if you have the spot removal.

On-board answers are laughable in their effectiveness because a competent player wouldn't play their finisher into on-board answers. Remember the opponent has the control of timing of their finishers, which is why "just play answers" is a weak argument. Of course we have to play answers, but having them in your deck does not mean you will always be able to answer these big table-kill threats. Commander is a big game of resource accumulation and balancing. If I'm setting up a big finisher and I see every opponent with mana open and tons of cards in hand, I'll poke the bear and try to pull interaction or at least wait for a moment where interaction has been used by my opponents, or mana/cards are at a minimum to maximize the effectiveness of the play. Control decks are built to reduce sheilds-down moments, but having absolute control of timing of my alpha strike makes it difficult to hold answers up for turns at a time.

Everyone is building out to a win, but the barrier to lethal on the table is so low for Craterhoof in the "fair" sense of combat damage as to make it an eye roll for me when I see it.

[PrimevalCommander]

I think massacre wurm is super dated and only works at sorcery speed, and Goblin Bombardment requires both a board state and enough creatures to clear out their creatures, so is kind of like saying "if I have a superior board to craterhoof in advance, I can beat it" which is meaningless. sure I guess you can have Grave Pact lock in place and that'll stop it? Yay?

Sweepers and sweeper adjacent effects are fine against hoof but keeping the board 100% clear is not really an answer and certainly not one that makes you a lot of friends.

I happen to still do a LOT of work with Massacre Wurm and have been since it's printing. Even sweeping 5-6 utility dorks mid game can be a lot of solid value as a floor. The ceiling is totally removing the token player from the game. While -2/-2 is not as effective as it may have been 5 years ago, but many token decks still play a lot of x/2's and just having it around makes those players twitch when their board gets big since bringing it back can wipe their board and hit for a good bit of damage.

Hoof is kind of the Cyclonic Rift for green aggro. No it's not unbeatable, but it is so far and away the best card for that job that it invalidates almost all other competition and becomes a crutch for those strategies that just gets boring and repetitive.

[ISBPathfinder]

You think that Goblin Bombardment and Massacre Wurm are bottom of the barrel cards?

I think massacre wurm is super dated and only works at sorcery speed, and Goblin Bombardment requires both a board state and enough creatures to clear out their creatures, so is kind of like saying "if I have a superior board to craterhoof in advance, I can beat it" which is meaningless. sure I guess you can have Grave Pact lock in place and that'll stop it? Yay?

Sweepers and sweeper adjacent effects are fine against hoof but keeping the board 100% clear is not really an answer and certainly not one that makes you a lot of friends.

When Massacre Wurm was brand new I thought it was overrated and bad and my opinion has gone down since it was new. I am not saying that it can't work I just think it has zero flexability and sorcery speed situational removal is not very good. My opinion is mostly that its not very good removal and its not very good pressure though. I would only really be interested in it if I was pushing flicker / rez strategies really hard.

This all said though, the speed of the decks I have been playing against has only been going up in a more competitive direction. I lose to noncreature strats all the time and slow sorcery speed situational creature removal just doesn't cut it for me and what I play against.

[PrimevalCommander]

This all said though, the speed of the decks I have been playing against has only been going up in a more competitive direction. I lose to noncreature strats all the time and slow sorcery speed situational creature removal just doesn't cut it for me and what I play against.

Fair enough. I find myself in an adjacent situation to @DirkGently where my new playgroup is small and a few steps back in evolution of the format. They play minimal draw, low-to-medium synergies, and have poor threat assessment. So some of these splashy sub-optimal creatures do much more for me than someone in a higher power meta. Though I am building a few decks targeted to their power level so I can enjoy some of the slower and durdlier types of games that I came to love when I was young in the format.

I do play Massacre Wurm in a reanimator deck, so I can have it on-tap pretty much whenever I need. Night Incarnate does it better, but I like being able to hit token decks for 12-20 damage since I usually win with Kokusho, the Evening Star life drain, or some other non-combat win condition.

[Mookie]

Another thing I'll call out re: 'why people dislike Craterhoof' is forecasting. If you play a Darksteel Reactor that wins in 20 turns, no one will have a problem with it. If you play a threat like Sheoldred, Whispering One that will probably win if it sticks around for a few turn cycles, that's usually also fine - if no one at the table has removal, that's on them. Where threats start to become a problem is when you run into cards that win if their controller gets to untap with them - stuff like Nyxbloom Ancient and Thousand-Year Storm are kill-on-sight cards that can take over a game if their controller gets a single full turn with them, and those are cards I see people sometimes complain about.

Finally, we have cards that win the game immediately if they resolve, like Craterhoof, Expropriate, and Torment of Hailfire. These tend to be the win conditions that people are most likely to complain about, and I would hypothesize it's at least partially because the window of interaction is so narrow - pretty much just Counterspell or bust. Which is fine in some metas, but in more casual metas, people don't always hold open interaction. More broadly, I think games are more enjoyable when people don't have to hold open mana all the time and can instead spend that mana on something more proactive - it's important for the game to be able to progress.

...still, we're far past the era of 2+ hour grindy games of attrition, and games do have to end eventually, even if it is a surprise.
/ramble

[BaronCappuccino]

I suppose it depends on how much of a surprise it really is. Are Torment of Hailfire or Exsanguinate really a surprise when the black board state is a bunch of swamps, one of the coffers, maybe a doubler of some sort like Caged Sun or Crypt Ghast -- a state capable of a lethal casting of one of the above? Maybe it can be, but perhaps it shouldn't be? It's 100% reasonable to assume that a black deck laying out the ability to tap for obscene mana is looking to win with it. The same goes for the green deck with a huge army of currently innocuous creatures. It's just respecting your opponent's intelligence to assume they have a plan to do something winny with them. The window isn't the card. "My opponents are trying to win" should be in the thought processes of every player. The forecasting is five+ turns. If the board state and the payoff come from scratch in the same turn for these two scenarios, then you're versing a combo deck and that's a different discussion.

[materpillar]

I suppose it depends on how much of a surprise it really is. Are Torment of Hailfire or Exsanguinate really a surprise when the black board state is a bunch of swamps, one of the coffers, maybe a doubler of some sort like Caged Sun or Crypt Ghast -- a state capable of a lethal casting of one of the above? Maybe it can be, but perhaps it shouldn't be? It's 100% reasonable to assume that a black deck laying out the ability to tap for obscene mana is looking to win with it. The same goes for the green deck with a huge army of currently innocuous creatures. It's just respecting your opponent's intelligence to assume they have a plan to do something winny with them. The window isn't the card. "My opponents are trying to win" should be in the thought processes of every player. The forecasting is five+ turns. If the board state and the payoff come from scratch in the same turn for these two scenarios, then you're versing a combo deck and that's a different discussion.

Alternatively, I can be playing against Ayula, Queen Among Bears bear tribal that's been forecasting bears every turn for the past 5 turns so I assume they only have bears. Then, whomp Craterhoof Behemoth and I am very very surprised. A pile of creatures can imply a whole lot of win conditions that aren't the hoof. That's pretty straightforward. What is they're a sultai pile of value creatures ETB creatures? Wrathing might actively hurt your ability to team up with everyone else to kill this person before they generate too much value while lining up their ability to recur their creatures but if you don't wrath you're getting closer to getting hoofed.

[Dunadain]

I suppose it depends on how much of a surprise it really is. Are Torment of Hailfire or Exsanguinate really a surprise when the black board state is a bunch of swamps, one of the coffers, maybe a doubler of some sort like Caged Sun or Crypt Ghast -- a state capable of a lethal casting of one of the above? Maybe it can be, but perhaps it shouldn't be? It's 100% reasonable to assume that a black deck laying out the ability to tap for obscene mana is looking to win with it. The same goes for the green deck with a huge army of currently innocuous creatures. It's just respecting your opponent's intelligence to assume they have a plan to do something winny with them. The window isn't the card. "My opponents are trying to win" should be in the thought processes of every player. The forecasting is five+ turns. If the board state and the payoff come from scratch in the same turn for these two scenarios, then you're versing a combo deck and that's a different discussion.

Alternatively, I can be playing against Ayula, Queen Among Bears bear tribal that's been forecasting bears every turn for the past 5 turns so I assume they only have bears. Then, whomp Craterhoof Behemoth and I am very very surprised. A pile of creatures can imply a whole lot of win conditions that aren't the hoof. That's pretty straightforward. What is they're a sultai pile of value creatures ETB creatures? Wrathing might actively hurt your ability to team up with everyone else to kill this person before they generate too much value while lining up their ability to recur their creatures but if you don't wrath you're getting closer to getting hoofed.

Sure there's a fine needle to thread and the fact that there are pros and cons to taking certain actions against certain play patterns is part of what makes magic a strategic game.

As others have said, you can always just ask a player if they are running hoof. I would assume any mono green creature based deck is running hoof or some other card that will quickly turn they're army into a lethal threat unless they explicitly said that all creatures in their deck are bears.

[ISBPathfinder]

It's not as though you need to keep the board 100% clear to stop a craterhoof though. Hoof with 5 other creatures usually isn't lethal through blockers against even one person, and you need 10+ to be lethal against all opponents at once. If someone has 10 creatures on board, I don't think a wipe is unreasonable. And of course targeted removal can throw the math off as well.

The ideal answers, ofc, are counterspells/countertriggers, instant-speed wipes like cyc rift, and fogs.

It is worth mentioning though that if you are "that person" of your meta it doesn't matter if hoof is lethal for everyone if its always lethal for you. There are a lot of commanders / decks that can rebuild a board of 5+ creatures the turn after a wrath with some level of consistency. There are a lot of creatures that can ETB and make 3 other creatures on their own resulting in 4 creatures in play from a single play.

It feels a lot worse when a craterhoof to kill you as a player is always what your opponents are looking to accomplish. It feels even worse when the worse of a deck your are playing trying to be nice to them just exposes you to the hoof play even more.

[TheGildedGoose]

It's not as though you need to keep the board 100% clear to stop a craterhoof though. Hoof with 5 other creatures usually isn't lethal through blockers against even one person, and you need 10+ to be lethal against all opponents at once. If someone has 10 creatures on board, I don't think a wipe is unreasonable. And of course targeted removal can throw the math off as well.

The ideal answers, ofc, are counterspells/countertriggers, instant-speed wipes like cyc rift, and fogs.

It is worth mentioning though that if you are "that person" of your meta it doesn't matter if hoof is lethal for everyone if its always lethal for you. There are a lot of commanders / decks that can rebuild a board of 5+ creatures the turn after a wrath with some level of consistency. There are a lot of creatures that can ETB and make 3 other creatures on their own resulting in 4 creatures in play from a single play.

It feels a lot worse when a craterhoof to kill you as a player is always what your opponents are looking to accomplish. It feels even worse when the worse of a deck your are playing trying to be nice to them just exposes you to the hoof play even more.

This is a player problem, not a Hoof problem.

[ISBPathfinder]

This is a player problem, not a Hoof problem.

So..... if I have that perception in their eyes I am not allowed to play a more casual deck ever? I have to hardmode it all the way through every time? If they didn't have hoof in their deck then I wouldn't be dying half as often to this sort of thing.

[materpillar]

Sure there's a fine needle to thread and the fact that there are pros and cons to taking certain actions against certain play patterns is part of what makes magic a strategic game.

Yeah, but the hoof doesn't increase interesting play patterns, it dramatically deceases them. Which is why I hate it. With hoof, if some green player hits 10 creatures the options are "hold up Counterspell forever", "immediately wrath", or "risk 120 damage". It's pretty black and white in the most boring way.

Hoof incentivizes certain play patterns that I find immensely unenjoyable.. It also warps deckbuilding in a direction that I find dramatically reduces my enjoyment of the format.

As others have said, you can always just ask a player if they are running hoof. I would assume any mono green creature based deck is running hoof or some other card that will quickly turn they're army into a lethal threat unless they explicitly said that all creatures in their deck are bears.

I find the idea of having to ask every new green player I interact with if they're running hoof to be a perfect example of why I hate the card. It warps gameplay fairly dramatically by merely existing in a deck to a degree that is dramatically more noticeable than any other card in casual commander.

To clarify, I don't mind to losing to cards that turn armies into lethal threats. Getting wrecked by Beastmaster Ascension is a-ok by me. I dislike hoof because it can turn fairly casual, battlecruiser looking boardstates into a "Counterspell (or niche interactive spell) or die immediately" situation.

For comparison, I find Thassa's Oracle to be dramatically more tolerable that Craterhoof Behemoth. By all metrics, the oracle is the more powerful card. It's even harder to interact with. Outside of instant self mill like Demonic Consultation, Oracle is usually more predictable. An opponent having a hoof lethal pile of creatures sitting around while not playing hoof is a lot more likely than a blue player burning through their entire deck without oracle. It's a lot easier to get blindsided by a hoof than blindsided by an oracle.

[TheGildedGoose]

This is a player problem, not a Hoof problem.

So..... if I have that perception in their eyes I am not allowed to play a more casual deck ever? I have to hardmode it all the way through every time? If they didn't have hoof in their deck then I wouldn't be dying half as often to this sort of thing.

You're not going to solve out of game behavior with in game mechanics.

[3drinks]

This is a player problem, not a Hoof problem.

So..... if I have that perception in their eyes I am not allowed to play a more casual deck ever? I have to hardmode it all the way through every time? If they didn't have hoof in their deck then I wouldn't be dying half as often to this sort of thing.

You're allowed to play whatever you want. You cannot control the perception others have of you, that is their's and their's alone to decide.

[materpillar]

You cannot control the perception others have of you, that is their's and their's alone to decide.

Technically yea, but in practice you have a lot of control over how others perceive you.