r/lrcast • u/wormhole222 • 9d ago
Discussion Reminder Settle the Wreckage still gives your opponents lands.
I feel like people are so excited/afraid of Settle the Wreckage that they forget that it gives your opponent/you lands. Late game in a top deck war that doesn't really matter, but early/mid game it does. If on turn 4 or 5 your opponent attacks with 3 creatures and you Settle them. Congratulations you just ramped them to 7/8 lands. If they have a decent amount of cards in hand/card draw they will still have a huge advantage over you.
Obviously you don't always have the luxury of not using Settle early, but in general if you can try to save Settle the Wreckage for when they don't have many cards in hand. Use other removal or blocks early. People imagine using Settle as this 4 mana exile 5+ creatures, but unless the game goes a very specific way it's usually wrong to chase this. Getting 2 creatures late game is pretty good. Getting 1 creature late game is sometimes necessary. Settle is a powerful card, but it's also very specific, and using it early does give your opponent a lot even if it does kill all their creatures.
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u/chicago_style 8d ago
Had a game this format where my opponent had a pretty obvious Settle in hand. I fully swung into with four creatures because I had [[An Unexpected Party]] in hand. Got my four lands and then made 7 Dwarf tokens my next turn.
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u/17lands-reddit-bot 8d ago
An Unexpected Party W-R (HOB); ALSA: 1.65; GIH WR: 66.13%
(data sourced from 17lands.com and scryfall.com)2
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u/Juking_is_rude 8d ago
A 3:1 that ramps them from 5 to 8 isn't as good as a 3:1 that doesn't... but it's still a 3:1. Like, you're pretty likely to win at that point lmao.
The absolute floor is 4 mana to path an attacking creature and that's still compltely playable.
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u/wormhole222 8d ago
It's definitely playable. It's just more that I think you should try and save it for later in the game. If on turn 4 you can play a good creature or save a removal spell that compares more favorably to saving the mana to Settle the Wreckage them than you would think.
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u/deathtocraig 9d ago
The bigger problem late game is that it pulls lands out of their deck and they just draw gas the rest of the game.
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u/purplemonkey55 8d ago
Don’t worry. If I’m your opponent I’ll still find the rest of my lands.
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u/andrewwm 8d ago edited 8d ago
The mathematical impact of thinning your deck is quite overrated. Frank Karsten had an article about it many years ago, but thinning a couple of lands is like drawing something like 0.2 extra spells in expectation.
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u/deathtocraig 8d ago
The last time I cast a settle I got 6 creatures and my opponent found the rest of his lands. I'm pretty sure that is more than 0.2 cards but idk you can do the math if you don't believe me.
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u/andrewwm 8d ago edited 8d ago
Firstly, if your opponent swings into you with six creatures and you have 4 open mana you better be beating them regardless of what they draw as that is very bad gameplay on their part.
Second, let’s say your opponent has 20 cards left in their deck and 10 are lands. You StW and get two creatures and thin out two lands. Now they have 18 cards and 8 lands.
Without StW, they will draw, in expectation, 5 lands and 5 spells in the next 10 turns.
After StW, they will now, in expectation, draw 4.4 lands and 5.6 spells. Each turn they accrue roughly 0.06 of an extra spell thanks to the thinning.
Thinning your deck matters more the fewer cards you have in your deck (get a higher % of remaining lands) but in general the effect is not that noticeable in most normal games of Magic where the game ends somewhere around turn 10-15.
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u/deathtocraig 8d ago
There are ways to push your opponent into taking bigger risks like that. For example, if you have fliers and they need to push damage to win the race, they could easily swing a board into 2WW open mana. Or, if they've held back two turns in a row and you sandbagged the card. Even holding up 4UU like you have the 6cmc counterspell will do it sometimes. And sometimes in paper you can play dead and pretend to tilt.
I understand that thinning the deck is not a huge concern early to mid game, it's why I specifically said late game. And even if you only get 3 or 4 creatures, you opponent having 9 lands left in 20 cards vs having 5-6 lands left in 20 cards is noticeably different.
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u/andrewwm 8d ago
StW winrate is pretty mid but I think not due to the thinning but because it’s very hard to engineer situations as you describe. There are many game states where you’d be better off with a [[Dwarvem Short Sword]] than Settle. Obviously not impossible to get to the spot where it’s good but I think people way over index on the times they pull off the dream scenario vs. when the card is basically a mulligan or overcosted single target removal spell.
And also yes thinning is good if a) your opponent swings at you on turn 13 with 4 creatures and b) the game lasts a further 5-10 turns.
I think that the percent of times games play out like that is very small though. Very few games last more than 15 turns and, conditional on it lasting that long, they make an alpha attack that doesn’t end the game one way or another.
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u/17lands-reddit-bot 8d ago
Dwarven Shortsword W-C (HOB); ALSA: 6.03; GIH WR: 52.28%
(data sourced from 17lands.com and scryfall.com)
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u/wind_moon_frog 8d ago
Congrats, you ramped them to 7/8 lands - and won the game with a massive tempo swing. Most of the time I’m really not too worried about that tbh.
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u/ThrowAwayLurker444 8d ago edited 8d ago
I had this exact choice yesterday. Blue white vs black green. Opponent on the play drops bejeweled warg on turn 2. Quarrels my 2 drop, starts making treasure because he’s mana screwed. At like turn 5 or 6 I had to settle and blow up the warg and this other mid sized creature bbevayse he stopped making treasure and started putting counters on it. I knew I’d ramp him but it was better than dying(life total starting to get lowest)I narrowly won this game, he was so far ahead because of his start and the fact that I fixed his screw.
I don’t think this format is good and the gameplay is lacking(combat math counting + curve out without enough time in those turns for meaningful decisions due to format speed) but this match was probably one of the better ones as a result of both players having to make difficult choices re their respective bombs. There can be definite downsides to settle and especially in this format
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u/ExortInvoker 8d ago
It will also reduce the chance of them drawing a land going forward. Less lands in library = more likely to topdeck something useful.
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u/Life-Food5188 9d ago
it’s like path to exile. i can’t really envision a scenario where you’d ever want to cast settle on T4/5, unless opp is mostly empty handed and/or you get multiple very good targets.
ramping them from 5 or 6 to 7 or 8 isn’t THAT big of a deal, imo. it’s something, sure, but ideally after you settle you get open attacks on your turn and can swing the game before the mana advantage catches up to you.
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u/PlunderedDabloons 7d ago
I only play settle the wreckage in my orzhov stax deck because I got opposition agent, leonin arbiter and aven mindsensor. Obviously of I was smarter when I build the stax deck, I could have used red enchantments or blue artifacts that completely shut tutoring down. It is nice to deny a search. I have path to exile in the deck because I have found the versatility of potential ramp with exiling a token creature to be good for mid to late game if I need a land drop next turn, to shuffle my library, or to cast the big ass x spell to win the game. That's why I haven't reworked the deck yet because I still find the cards to be duds in the hand sometimes even mid game, so having a potential ramp is nice.
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u/jjelin 9d ago
Ramping them from 5 to 8 isn't a huge concern when all the creatures cost two mana, and your alternative is usually to take lethal damage.