Cow31337Killer wrote: ↑4 years ago
toctheyounger wrote: ↑4 years ago
Definitely agree there. It's just such an easy win. There's not a single modicum of needing to play Craterhoof with any precision, talent or timing, it's just cast, swing, win. Very boring.
Lol I love how people complain that
Craterhoof Behemoth|AVR is an "easy win" or requires "no talent" when you literally have to build up and maintain an entire board of creatures before the card even does anything. Even then, you're winning with COMBAT DAMAGE which is one of the EASIEST wincons to strategize against in EDH. Seriously, there's so many measures against Craterhoof and combat damage in general that people should be playing in their decks anyway. Honestly, I think the reverse of your statement is more accurate: If a player loses to
Craterhoof Behemoth|AVR over and over again, maybe it says something about THEIR lack of timing and talent, and not the person playing Craterhoof.
That being said it is a very popular card so I can understand why people might be sick of seeing it so often haha
You DON'T need to maintain a board though is the point. You just need to have enough of a board at the start of a turn, that you count up and win. If the count isn't high enough, you don't play it until it is. At some point in the game, you will have more than zero creatures at the start of your turn. It's ridiculous to think that the board will be wiped every single turn. And there are enough token generators that even
that won't do enough. I find it kind of crazy that people insist that it takes some sort of skill to have creatures alive on your board at the start of the turn - this isn't a situation where you're trying to assemble a specific piece - you just need SOMETHING to survive, and that's not necessarily skill - that's just time. There's enough cheap token producers as well that it's not unreasonable to be able to put out an additional 4-5 tokens at the end of someone's turn.
In the end, craterhoof isn't a combo, but it has the same feels to me as a combo. "Ok, I have assembled enough math, now I win." I'll even say that some combos are more interesting to me than craterhoof, because at least then the player has to demonstrate some amount of skill or decisions beyond "Is math high enough?"
While Combat Damage would be a fine and interactable amount of win con to deal with, Craterhoof puts it so high, so fast, that it becomes nearly un-interactable. Blockers? That's been mathed and theres enough to trample over - no interesting blocking step for you.
Plowshares/Path to Exile/instant speed removal? No, single target creature interaction won't stop it. You literally need a
counterspell (must play blue), a
fog (admittedly, not enough played in Commander), or an instant speed wrath and enough mana up to cast it (
Rout). Each of those is actually quite easy to forsee for the Craterhoof player, and generally avoid (not to mention that green
can negate every one of those). If I'm playing white, I don't want to have to keep up 4-7 mana every turn just because the green player has a boatload of lands and might untap with a handful and a half of 1/1's. Not playing with 7 of your lands for the whole game is a quick way to lose the game. But then, having the player suddenly spit out a bunch of tokens, drop craterhoof, and give all his creatures +10/+10 is a quick way to die as well.
In the end, Craterhoof is a card that requires minimal and incidental set up (you want to be spitting out creatures
anyways), and is interactable only in a very limited window, with a very limited amount of answers, that are generally locked to specific colors. It forces you to consider every green boardstate to be a threatening board state, and means that you need to consider wrathing a board of only 1/1's just in case, should you not have another answer. Is it bannable? maybe not, but I find it boring, and I don't run it, because I don't find it fun for either the opponents, or even for the player playing it. I have never seen someone satisfied by winning off a craterhoof "Whoof! That was a close one, you almost had me!" Just... no.
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It's my same issue with
Torment of Hailfire right now. On paper, it looked like it would be an interesting 'wrath' effect that gave your opponent some choices to make, and would cause a bit of interesting chaos and change up the board state. In reality, it doesn't get cast until (x-hand size)*3 = dead. Usually waiting until post-wrath effect, so that boards are fairly clean, then an x=14 usually is enough to get through the 4-5 cards in hand, 1-2 permanents, and 8x3=24 to take out whatever half of life people have remaining. It's like an exsanguinate, but cheaper.