Originally Posted by
mrblueduck
I can do that. I have been a large proponent of Settler for quite some time, and once he was announced in VMA I decided I was going to finally start playing MTGO again. I went ahead and built the deck from scratch initially starting with just one Settler like my paper version. It quickly became apparent that it was out performing its one copy, so I decided to try two and was not disappointed. I have even tried a third copy in the SB over Blood Moon, but it was really hard to tell how much that third copy was really helping, and eventually changed it out for a more diverse SB slot. I guess I should first start with why I think its worth including in a list to begin, and that starts with one of two things : 1) Lands/turbo Eldrazi is gaining in popularity, and 2) The decline of Piledriver. Having access to a tutor-able wasteland, lets you beat Glacial Chasm and the Thespian stage combo. They use Needle to name wasteland, not a problem, you can still set them back with a brutally timed settler. To be honest Tabernacle does very little, but you can hit that too I suppose. Its also quite effective against Enchantress, blowing up Gaea's Cradle, hitting a crucial Grove OtBW and punishing slow control decks like Miracles. Those are all added benefits, the real reason I advocate Settler is the decline of Piledriver.
I have not played Piledriver in over a year and a half. Is that correct? I cant say with 100 percent certainty, but I constantly thought Piledriver was the worst card in the deck, and it wasn't really close. ( The worst card in the list currently is one of the three Goblin Chieftains, and again not really close). Piledriver was in the deck to really punish Combo decks and occasionally Merfolk. It however was quite weak to Zoo builds, and straight up a liability against RUG the most popular deck at the time. Back then the only way to really beat Combo was to simply be as faster then them and Piledriver excelled at that. Yes you can have Chalice, Thorns, Blast, or even Relic out of the SB, but you were still racing them, and it wasn't a particularly a fair race. However that changed with the Legacy GP in Atlanta. A goblin deck broke onto the scene running Main Deck Thalias and ended up top8ing. I originally kind of thought it was a fluke, and was hesitant to change ( my deck was doing pretty well after all, why change?? ), but after testing there was something to the Thalias. It really made me reevaluate what you were trying to do with Piledriver, and presented another option to beating combo, slow them down. At the time my current list provided one turn 3 kill against combo, one exact three card combo ( Lackey, Piledriver, Kiki). However even without a Piledriver in the deck, there were probably hundreds of combinations to assemble a turn 4 kill with Lackey, Instigator, and Matron triggers. So while Thalia is extremely good at slowing them down, it isn't the best main deck card, nor is a tutorable. Thats where Settler really shines. It interacts with Matron/Ringleader because you know, its a Goblin and its a fine maindeck hate card. With this small tweak I found myself winning a much higher proportion of combo matchups, as he was devastating for the slower combo decks like Show and Tell, Omniscience, Doomsday, and High tide, and still solid against the even faster ones such as ANT and the Perfect Storm. It came down to if you cannot speed up your deck to beat combo, you need to slow them down, and Settler was exactly what I was looking for.
I have already said way more then I intended, so I will try to say this extremely brief but there are a few more reasons that the second settler is better than lets say SCG, Krenko, a MD Thalia, or even Grenzo. Understanding exactly what counters you need on your Vial is extremely. extremely important, and having a converted mana cost of 3-4 is exactly what you were looking for. This really devalues SCG, as getting a Vial stuck on 5 is often a huge mistake, and having an underpowered 4 drop can help elevate these issues, as you are not forced to throw away a vial. Anyways, please let me know if you have any other questions.
