Why Ruination is my least favorite card

[DirkGently]

I see people occasionally promoting Ruination as a fair version of MLD, or as a good tool to keep greedy multicolor manabases in check. I disagree with that perspective. I think Ruination is an absolutely terribly designed card that, if it were widely used (which it happily is not) would make the game substantially worse.

Part of what I find vexing is that Ruination is frequently mentioned in the same breath with Blood Moon and Back to Basics. While I'm not in love with either of those cards, I think they're at least reasonable. But I don't think that comparison is fair at all, for a couple important reasons.

The first is that Ruination, like other MLD, is essentially uninteractable outside of blue. Yes, niche answers exist in other colors, but the odds of having those on-hand, with mana available, at the time ruination is cast is very low - even if you do decide to run them. B2B and BM can be removed easily by the bant colors, a few in black, and colorless answers exist in black and red (plus it's not like blood moon is a problem if you're in mono-red, you're probably the one playing it).

The second is that I think supporters of Ruination haven't considered exactly what Ruination punishes. BM, B2B, and Ruination all punish nonbasics, yes, but to very different degrees.

Under BM, if you have 80% basics, you're doing fine. if you have 50% nonbasics, you should be able to function pretty well at a slightly reduced capacity. Even at 20%, if you've planned ahead and fetched/ramped/etc a couple, you should be able to remove the BM or function around it. It's only really devastating if you've got no basics at all, or haven't planned ahead and get caught out.

Under B2B, things are tougher especially if you've tapped out, however any future nonbasics enter normally. If you have a lot of nonbasics - anything beyond 30% or so - you're probably in trouble, but you can use nonbasics to find an answer even if you didn't plan ahead as well.

So what we see from both of these cards is that they mostly punish people running a high number of nonbasics, and for not planning ahead by including removal and/or having basics to cover their most crucial requirements. I think that's generally a positive way for punishing nonbasics to work.

Ruination is a different animal. Assuming the caster isn't running any nonbasics, how many lands per opponent does ruination need to kill to be good - put another way, how many lands does it need to blow up for an opponent to have gotten "punished" for running "too many" nonbasics? And the answer feels like it's somewhere between 1 and 2. 4 mana "destroy a land from each opponent" is fine, but not amazing. 4 mana "destroy 2 lands from each opponent" is bananas. Any more than that is obscene. So Ruination basically says that, if you have more than 1 nonbasic land in play, you're too greedy and must be punished - and even 1 is basically parity, you didn't "beat" their card. That is a ridiculously low bar for the card to be effective. Cards which punish you for being greedy should actually have a fail case if you weren't greedy.

This extreme punishment, combined with the rare use of the card, makes deckbuilding decisions around it miserable.

Nonbasic lands are very good. There are many nonbasics that are strictly better than basics if you don't particularly care about land types, and lots of utility lands with powerful effects. In a format like commander where running out of stuff to do is very bad, being able to get utility from lands can be really valuable to increase the likelihood that you can keep moving forward even if you have a bad draw or are stymied by an opponent. I'd argue that, in an environment without nonbasic hate or reasons to care about types (beyond fetches), an optimal manabase for a 3c deck usually has 0-3 basics, 2c has 2-10, and even monocolor is probably best off running half nonbasics for utility.

You may notice that even being remotely close to any of those numbers would mean absolute annihilation by an opponent playing Ruination. So you're put in a very annoying position - play a strong, optimized manabase and then get randomly obliterated if an opponent happens to be one of the 0.4% of players who include Ruination (and they draw it and cast it), or bend over backwards sacrificing the consistency and utility of your manabase in every game you play. (and EDHrec data surely skews more competitive than the average meta, so the number is almost certainly lower)

I don't understand how anyone can think that Ruination promotes good decision making. Building a manabase to combat ruination in 3c deck isn't "good decision making", it's wearing a bulletproof vest in the shower. And besides that, Ruination and the decisions around it aren't fun. Inconsistent manabases aren't fun. Running out of gas isn't fun. Getting randomly obliterated isn't fun. Blood moon can be handled by good planning and some reasonable deckbuilding concessions, but the deckbuilding demands to handle Ruination are absurd and the card is so rare that it's not remotely worth it.

In a world where Ruination sees major play, fixing lands become garbage and utility lands need to be absolutely incredible. Saying Ruination is a good card for the format, imo, is tantamount to saying that you don't think anyone should play any nonbasic land that isn't win-the-game levels of good. And I don't think that's a good, or a fun, way to play the game.

[TheGildedGoose]

"So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." - Revelation 3:16

I don't like half measures. If I want to leave my opponents rudderless, I'm going to cast Armageddon and guarangoddamntee there are no survivors. The fact that Ruination can arbitrarily leave my opponents lands to interact with makes it too inconsistent for me to fulfill the exact same role Armageddon plays. Yeah, yeah, you can build your own mana base to be unaffected by Ruination, but a) that's probably a trap and b) winmore.

Honestly, while I disagree with you about the merits of MLD, I'm inclined to agree with your overall assessment of Ruination. Blanket nonbasic hate that doesn't draw a distinction between Cabal Coffers and Rakdos Guildgate isn't great.

[pokken]

My least favorite thing about ruination is how badly it punishes budget 3c* manabases which are usually a much higher ratio of nonbasics than high quality manabases if you're doing it right. Playing lots of the cheap multicolor lands and karoos and temples and buddy lands and stuff.

I've been on a campaign locally to get people to stop playing stuff that forces people to play blue and the counterspell argument figures prominently. It is a horrible design space for multiplayer to assume someone will have blue to stop you. Stack based wins belong in cedh, not even really in high power games imho

[Dragoon]

I've been on a campaign locally to get people to stop playing stuff that forces people to play blue and the counterspell argument figures prominently. It is a horrible design space for multiplayer to assume someone will have blue to stop you. Stack based wins belong in cedh, not even really in high power games imho

I really wish WotC would rework the colour pie to allow all colours to counter some spells. Stuff like Withering Boon and Illumination can sometimes come in handy.

[pokken]

I really wish WotC would rework the colour pie to allow all colours to counter some spells. Stuff like Withering Boon and Illumination can sometimes come in handy.

It's lame but it'll be probably a decade before there's critical mass if they started today. They could do more heroic intervention and teferis protection type stuff.

[Wallycaine]

I really wish WotC would rework the colour pie to allow all colours to counter some spells. Stuff like Withering Boon and Illumination can sometimes come in handy.

It's lame but it'll be probably a decade before there's critical mass if they started today. They could do more heroic intervention and teferis protection type stuff.

Personally, as more stuff like those two comes out, the less and less I buy the "only blue can interact with the stack" argument. Responding to wrath of God with a heroic intervention or Teferi's Protection is frequently *better* than countering it.

[pokken]

Personally, as more stuff like those two comes out, the less and less I buy the "only blue can interact with the stack" argument. Responding to wrath of God with a heroic intervention or Teferi's Protection is frequently *better* than countering it.

Right but how many of these effects are they? I can mana a deck with 18 good counterspells but there are maybe 3 or 4 spells that protect lands reactively across all the colors for example. And zero in black or red unless you count reds few janky counterspells.

It sucks because they have to be careful about making more Boros charmageddon combos. Better would be countering effects I think but I'm not sure.

If you had critical mass of these effects I would agree but it's nowhere close.

The issue though then is it becomes the TP that is uninteractible but I guess that's probably fine. It would likely be a net good for the game to have people being less sure of sweepers and mld succeeding.

[Wallycaine]

Personally, as more stuff like those two comes out, the less and less I buy the "only blue can interact with the stack" argument. Responding to wrath of God with a heroic intervention or Teferi's Protection is frequently *better* than countering it.

Right but how many of these effects are they? I can mana a deck with 18 good counterspells but there are maybe 3 or 4 spells that protect lands reactively across all the colors for example. And zero in black or red unless you count reds few janky counterspells.

It sucks because they have to be careful about making more Boros charmageddon combos. Better would be countering effects I think but I'm not sure.

If you had critical mass of these effects I would agree but it's nowhere close.

The issue though then is it becomes the TP that is uninteractible but I guess that's probably fine. It would likely be a net good for the game to have people being less sure of sweepers and mld succeeding.

Hence the "as more and more". And sure, you can load up a deck with 18 counterspells, but most decks don't run that many. If you're not focused on being the fun police, most decks run a handful, which we're getting close to if not already at in sweeper protection effects.

[pokken]

Meh. Not even dude there's like 3 playable anti land sweeper cards and zero free ones.

Call me up when there is fierce guardianship analogue and force of will and force of negation level interaction. Tp, boros charm and heroic intervention are not even close.

I can run 4 or so good counterspells and 2-3 free ones and they also remove other things.

If white had 5 playable iterations on teferis protection maybe

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Outside of the actual gameplay itself, social stigma has done wonders fpr me in avoiding MLD. A few dirty looks and some heavy intimations about how uncool those cards can be does wonders to prevent second appearances of said cards.

Of course there are always exceptions: some people lacl social self-awareness and others just choose not to care. In those cases, I just refuse to play against them in the future and salt the earth for them by telling anyone and everyone in earshot exactly why I no longer will do so. Turns out most people don't like mld and will usually jump the people who indulge in it. C'est la vie, don't be a pest and I won't have to demolish you in the kangaroo court of public opinion.

Gameplay-wise, there's not much bracing for mld outside of blue. But again, with a little charisma and mass appeal, you shouldn't have to deal with it twice.

[BeneTleilax]

In terms of threat politics, just saying "so and so runs MLD" is a good way to get them killed before they can set up. Part of that is an artifact of my meta, which tends towards creature board stalls starting in the early game, so if everyone decides to make someone archenemy from the jump, that person is unlikely to see their fifth turn.

I think "Ruination fixes 5C" more broadly is an artifact of the anti-rule-0 position that has mostly deteriorated in casual EDH. Around 2015-2017, people figured that the social contract was somehow responsible for the power creep and general format warp toward faster ramp and 3+ colors. This argument was always weak, IMO, and did not survive contact with 2020. I've certainly seen it far less, although I avoid reddit for my own sanity. At the risk of aggroing Dirk, I also think that the split between casual and cEDH has meant that most people who don't like rule 0 just left casual EDH and took their complaints with them.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

At the risk of aggroing Dirk

It's official: Dirk is a field boss of the EDH subforum. God save you if he pulls his multiquote attack, there's like no frames to dodge it.

[5colorsrainbow]

I do believe they are exploring more Teferi's Protection like cards with stuff like Glorious Protector and Semester's End to give white more space to play in.

[pokken]

Cosmic Intervention was the third one I was thinking of that actually saves lands

• boros charm
• heroic intervention
• cosmic intervention
• teferi's protection

[folding_music]

can't believe everyone's not jamming Equinox, insanely powerful card giggle

you could house-rules errata Ruination so it's another From the Ashes? unless yr a CEDH group? not a perfect solution cos people dont necessarily have a group

[onering]

I'd like to see a white cantrip that gives all lands indestructible until end of turn and just costs W. White decks are light an cheap cantrip options, so the chances of it being ran randomly as a deck thinning option go up, and protecting all lands rather than just your own protects the table instead of just the caster.

[pokken]

I'd like to see a white cantrip that gives all lands indestructible until end of turn and just costs W. White decks are light an cheap cantrip options, so the chances of it being ran randomly as a deck thinning option go up, and protecting all lands rather than just your own protects the table instead of just the caster.

All lands except target player's lol

[Hawk]

Not a lot to add other than a +1. One of my earliest decks in the format was Karn, Silver Golem. I'm poor, so it wasn't like a fullblown Shops deck or anything, but I put a fair amount of my meager budget into it in a world pre-Wastes to get it functional. I hated the first time I slammed into Ruination (which was in a friggin 2011 Precon! ) as it was basically just an instant scoop. That's not THE reason Karn is no more, but it's for sure on the list.

[onering]

I'd like to see a white cantrip that gives all lands indestructible until end of turn and just costs W. White decks are light an cheap cantrip options, so the chances of it being ran randomly as a deck thinning option go up, and protecting all lands rather than just your own protects the table instead of just the caster.

All lands except target player's lol

Nah, then it turns Geddon into "%$#% that one guy right there, draw a card" if the Geddon player spends W more. For as often as it would reverse MLD to screw only the MLD player, the MLD player would use it just to screw one person and save their own lands.

I'll say for Ruination itself: Lots of people blow out of proportion just how devastating it can be unless it nukes most of a player's lands. Taking out 2 lands from all your opponents is big, its a great rate sure, but it also A) makes you an immediate target both from just pissing people off and from announcing that you run MLD without immediately winning and B) makes you have to build your deck around it unless you are ok with losing 2-3 non basics yourself, which means you've either weakened your own deck to pull off Ruination or that Ruination is much less powerful in your deck. Quite honestly, Ruination often just sucks. There's enough games online where at least one opponent would laugh it off that I wouldn't ever want to run it outside of mono red or a basic land ramp heavy deck, and even then a lot of times its just going to be a strong play that draws archenemy hate rather than something that wins the game. People don't avoid the card just because its mean, they avoid it because its crap, and even when it runs wild on someone it tends to bully the wrong player, hosing the precon while leaving the threat relatively unscathed.

Ten years ago budget decks relied a lot more on basic land ramp Ruination as punishment for being greedy made more sense. There were still a lot of people trying to jam as much extra value as they could into their land slots with mediocre cards and the players relying the most on fixing lands tended to be more enfranchised and running stronger decks because the good fixing lands were more expensive. Today, there are plenty of cheap fixing lands that are actually good, and precons of course are filled to the brim with non basics. Even budget players will have plenty of nonbasics in their deck that are reasonable inclusions, so Ruination doesn't just hit the stronger decks with expensive manabases and the players trying to get cute with techy lands anymore. That, and the number of really good nonbasics has increased to the point where running a basic heavy mana based outside of mono color is handicapping yourself.

I really would like to see something like "3R: Destroy all lands that tap for more than one mana or have a non mana activated ability" though. That would skip the problem of hurting budget mana bases while actually adding a cost to running all those strong utility lands. I want to see cards that hurt everyone running Field of the Deads, Cradles, Coffers, etc while leaving Billy Budget unscathed.

[Dunharrow]

I like the idea of a pitch card in white that says 'all permanents gain indestructible until end of turn'.
And how bout a modal spell?
GW
Instant
choose one:
- Permanents you control gain hexproof until end of turn
- Permanents you control gain indestructible until end of turn
- Prevent all combat damage that would be dealt this turn

[hyalopterouslemur]

It's more a hoser. You have to actively make yourself vulnerable to it, thus making it good gameplay. Or you're playing Hermit Druid.

And hating on the dude with the $500 mana base is so delightfully Marxist.

[DirkGently]

You have to actively make yourself vulnerable to it, thus making it good gameplay.

Why is that good gameplay? I would argue for a hoser to create good gameplay there have to be reasonable ways to play and/or build around it. For most decks, playing at least ~50% nonbasics (and I'd argue more like 80%+) is a good decision in every context EXCEPT versus ruination. where running almost any becomes a liability. That's terrible gameplay imo. It's a gotcha that countering requires massive sacrifices to mitigate and is so rare to encounter that building around it is a terrible idea. I don't see how that could possibly be construed as "good gameplay".

Or you're playing Hermit Druid.

I find it weird that you'd bring this up since it kinda implies that you think running a lot of nonbasics is an unusual thing to do. Especially with how many strictly-better-than-basic lands we have at this point, I don't understand why anyone would run more than a handful of basics unless their deck particularly cares about typing or mass-basic fetching.

And hating on the dude with the $500 mana base is so delightfully Marxist.

As has been pointed out, budget manabases can easily have a huge number of nonbasics. I mean, for %$#%'s sake, I'm looking at the "Aura of Courage" precon (first 3 color precon list I picked out) and it has 14 basics out of 38 lands, or roughly 2/3 nonbasics. You think it's Marxist to blow up 2/3 of a precon's lands?

And a $500 manabase is still peasant tier, get on my level.

[illakunsaa]

This extreme punishment, combined with the rare use of the card, makes deckbuilding decisions around it miserable.

So basically tldr is that we need more ruination.

[DirkGently]

So basically tldr is that we need more ruination.

As explained, that's the world where nonbasics that aren't Gaea's Cradle become basically untenable. Maybe you run fetches with one triome. But all the budget fixing, guildgates up to temples and painlands become pretty risky and not worth playing. Everyone's fixing becomes much worse and the viable card pool becomes smaller. Fun?

[Cyberium]

Curious. A playmate in my local shop said he prefers Ruination over other types of nonbasic hate, because "it's done after it's cast, and I don't have to watch my nonbasics being liability."